Put on Your Game Face

We have a joke among my friends that there’s Work Jessica and just plain old Jessica. Hopefully all of you really only ever see Work Jessica.

Work Jessica is my game face. It’s the image I want to present to the public. It means that I dress a certain way and act a certain way. And while, hopefully, Work Jessica isn’t too far off from regular Jessica, there are subtle differences. And no, I’m not going to tell you what they are and ruin the illusion.

Recently, at a conference, I was walking around, sort of confused actually. I had come out of one room in the giant hotel and was trying to get my bearings. I’ll admit, I was probably weaving and a little scattered. You know the person, you’re trying to walk around her, and just as you are about to go left she weaves left and when you try right she turns right. Well, I was that weaver and yes, it’s irritating, but, since we’re at a conference, we all have our game faces on so we grin (albeit tightly) and finally make our way around. Well, that’s what we should do.

Apparently the woman behind me didn’t feel the same way. Her solution to the situation was to storm by me, sighing deeply and huffing just a little. She was obviously irritated. The problem with this is that she didn’t know who I was. If she was an unagented author she had just acted incredibly rudely to a potential agent. If she was a bestselling author she had just acted very rudely to a potential reader, and if she was an agented but unpublished author she could have acted very rudely to a potential editor. See, here’s the thing: When at a business event like that we don’t know who’s listening in, watching, and just generally paying attention to our every move. And that’s why it’s important to keep our game faces on. When you get up to your room, the door is shut and it’s just you and your roommate and you’re allowed to huff and puff all you want, but when out in public I implore you to try as hard as you can to keep that public persona as charming as possible.


Jessica

Clean-sweeping the old WIP

I loved that old, now-axed show CLEAN SWEEP on TLC. It gave me hope that one day I could de-clutter my house. But of course every time I get in the middle of a de-cluttering project, it's some sort of immutable law that either (a) a neighbor will show up uninvited or (b) some medical crisis will break loose and you have to leave your pulled out clutter in situ for days on end ... in which case, clause A of the De-Clutter Law comes into full play.

The point is, of course, that everybody's junk looks the absolute worst when a person is elbow-deep in it. It looks hopeless. You've got all of it pulled out, bright and unforgiving daylight shining down on it, instead of having it tucked away in the shadows. You can't ignore it. You can't pretend it isn't there.

And what's worse? Once the junk's gone from the place it was, and you see the floor that held it, that floor's not bare. It's covered with dust bunnies and scuff marks and stuff you really don't want to ponder about. (OK, YMMV, as you may be a stickler for moving your junk and vacuuming under it, whereas I will vacuum around it. Don't care what they say, that edge cleaner on my vacuum doesn't really clean the edges.)

If I could avoid collecting the clutter to begin with, I wouldn't have this problem. But it's not always possible, because well-meaning family members WILL give you another tea pot or mug or thingamabob for the collection you didn't really want to begin with but that now is the instant answer to their gift-giving quandaries. The only thing I can do, then, is to ward off my increasing tolerance for piles of clutter in my life.

I was thinking about all this as I continued tearing apart my WIP. I am in the middle of a chapter that is pivotal to the whole book. It goes in the exact opposite direction that it needs to go in, and thus I am gutting it like the trout it is.

At the moment, the chapter is one hot mess. I keep cutting and cutting and cutting, until I think, "Gee, it'd be simpler if I just start from scratch." But then, just as I am about to highlight the entire last half of the chapter and hit DELETE, I see, sheesh, that there's some dialogue that would be PERFECT for the new chapter.

So I've got little scraps of dialogue in the midst of a lot of blank lines, and I am trying to build the chapter around those scraps.

It will happen. I still remember having to do a massive revision the first time, thinking, "I can't do this," as I cannibalized the old manuscript for the new. And then there came the tipping point, the realization, like a six year-old on a big two-wheeler, that, "Whee! I'm doing it! I'm doing it!"

I know it will come, that tipping point. I'm holding out for it -- that, and a lovely Godiva truffle, or if I can't have that, a Snickers miniature. But in the meantime? Pshew. There sure are a lot of dust-bunnies in this WIP.

Are you Superstitious

I don’t like to think of myself as a superstitious person, primarily because it seems kind of silly. That being said, I’m superstitious, whether I want to admit it or not.

For example, years ago I made a decision not to tell anyone in the office about a book I was excited about until I had finished most of the manuscript. Why? Because it seemed that every time I got excited enough to tell everyone about those first few chapters the rest of the book would fall apart. I was convinced that if I kept it a secret the book would hold together.

When an editor calls to tell me she’s excited about a book or getting second reads from others in-house I purposely keep my game face on for the editor, the author, and for myself. In other words, I squash any premature excitement. I don’t want to jinx it.

BookEnds has a weekly meeting and each week I need to type up my agenda notes on sales, negotiations, submissions, etc., for discussion during the meeting. I will not add any book to the sales column until negotiations are fully final. Even if we’re 99% there and I know it’s a done deal, I will not add it. Again, I don’t want to jinx anything.

What about you? When it comes to your writing career, is there anything you’re superstitious about?

Jessica

Jim Dandy isn't feeling so dandy

Cynthia’s grits bag, here.

Yes, I know, I’m usually content to hang out in the back corner of Cynthia’s fridge, right behind the sweet salad cube pickles and the jar of mushrooms. But enough is enough.

I’m feeling ignored. Here I am, a grain, a warm and nourishing hot cereal, the staff of life. And Cynthia pretends I don’t exist.

I’ve seen those looks she gives me. It’s all regret and remorse and “I don’t have time for you.” She lets her gaze skitter right over my blue and white Jim Dandy label and fix firmly on the butter that she’s reaching for.

Butter that, by rights, should be melting on ME, not some whole wheat bread in the toaster oven.

Talk with her about it? Talk, you say? That’s a laugh. You know how we grits bags are. We’re the strong silent types. You get as much out of us as you would out of Gibbs off NCIS. We’re all about the sticking-to-the-ribs business, not the warm and mushy stuff.

Although, I have to admit, we do the warm and mushy stuff pretty darn tootin’ well.

It’s not like I’m hard to fix. You start some salted water on the boil, go away, take a quick shower, come back in, and dump a cup of me in there. And then, while you stir me for five minutes – just five minutes – I’ll give you an absolute free gift of a facial.

Sure, I pop a little, and I splatter sometimes, but that’s why you’ve got long handled spoons and oven mitts in the kitchen. See? I play well with others, especially a good sharp cheddar cheese.

And then you switch me off, and I show you how I can finish cooking all by myself while you spend 20 minutes primping and preening and doing whatever it is you do to make yourself presentable to the rest of the world. Grits, see, we don’t care about stuff like that. We are plain and unassuming and don’t require a whole lot of gussie-ing up.

(Although, in the interest of full disclosure, lots of people seem to be ashamed of us and dress us up worse than a pink-dyed poodle. We are, however, best when we stick to our roots.)

Stick, you say? You’re saying that my propensity for sticking on plates and on pots may be why she’s not reaching for me in the morning? Sticking is what I DO. It’s who I AM. I stick to your ribs. I give you complex carbs. And fiber. And vitamins. I am sticking with you through the thick and the thin of the day.

And besides, if you don’t lollygag over your plates and the grits pot, but go right then and rinse them, it’s no problem. I know when I’m not wanted, and I make a graceful exit.

Which (sob) is what I’m thinking right now. I should emigrate to someone else’s fridge, someone who will love me and consume me and value my contribution to her day. Because (sob), it’s embarrassing when the Gibbs of the grains world breaks down in public.

Becoming George Sand - Rosalind Brackenbury

As a certified (or certifiable?) Chopin fanatic, I knew of George Sand because of her relationship with Chopin. So I was drawn to this book when I saw it at the bookstore, hoping to be able to read about the composer of the most beautiful piano music ever written.

Unfortunately, the reading of it didn't live up to my expectations. Rather than a novel about a feminist writer ahead of her time, her relationship with one of the great Romantic composers, and life in the rich literary and musical society of Paris in the 1800s; I found myself immersed in Chick Lit of the worst kind. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy well written Chick Lit at times (Bridget Jones anyone?), but this wasn't that.

I guess one of my biggest complaints about this book is that I found all of the characters to be entirely unsympathetic.

The main character, Marie, is researching George Sand in order to write a book about her. There are clumsily incorporated flashbacks to George Sand's life, but the main story focuses on Marie. And Marie's biggest problem in life is that she is trying to balance the security of her 20-year old marriage with the excitement of her younger lover. I'm afraid that I just can sympathize with a woman who complains, "In the twenty-first century, it seems to be necessary to lie to one's children as well as one's husband. What she is doing is simply not what married women, mothers, do. Not in this country, not in this town, not in this century, two hundred years after George's birth. When did this change happen? When did history turn over in the night and decree that adultery was a punishable offense again, punishable not by stoning or imprisonment, but by more subtle means? Being accused of cheating, of immaturity - the new sin - of being unfit to bring up one's children?" Call me old-fashioned (and Marie probably would) for thinking that marriage means something, including forsaking all others for your spouse; but when was adultery socially acceptable?

Marie does get her come-uppance - her husband finds out about her lover and leaves her; and her lover also leaves her to be faithful to his wife and children - but even by the end of the book, Marie shows no signs of acknowledging that her views may be maybe just a wee bit wrong.

And the characters in the flashbacks don't come across any better. George Sand seems to be quite stupid, while Chopin is weak and whiney. And as for the rich artistic community of 19th Century Europe? Lots of name dropping but never fleshed out.

My previously held views of the Chopin/George Sand relationship (and keep in mind that I am a Chopin fan) was of Chopin, the frail but brilliant genius who was bullied to death by the domineering George Sand. This book tries to portray Chopin as weak and selfish, who depended on George Sand to manage and plan and look after him. Who knows what the truth was. Probably somewhere in the middle.

Oh well. I am playing the piano at church tomorrow, and if nothing else, reading this book this week has inspired me to slip some Chopin into the service. Maybe one of the preludes (mentioned in this book) for the offertory...

Facing the mom brigade

It is 2:22 as I write this, and in -- ye gads -- 38 minutes, I need to be out of my yoga pants, out of my THE STORY NEVER ENDS tee shirt that was my sole recompense for stepping in and rescuing a desperate conference organizer and agreeing to speak to a herd of only slightly interested teenagers about writing.

I need to be OUT of these and IN something presentable that wouldn't get me aired on TLC's WHAT NOT TO WEAR ... and most importantly smiling (but not too dementedly) at the elementary school teachers and (whisper this) the other moms when I pick up The Kiddo.

The Husband usually has this afternoon pick-up duty, and he could care less what he looks like when he picks up The Kiddo. He has no idea how merciless women can be on each other. They rival vultures when it comes to efficiency in picking things off the bone.

So, since I have been job-hunting, I have been getting up in the morning, showering and putting on make-up, and instead of something dry-clean-only, I put on a cute casual outfit and take The Kiddo to school. Then I come home, presto-change-o into yoga pants and T and job hunt on the internet. Thus, every afternoon, I have to rip off such comforting duds and pull back on my protective haz-mom gear.

Dr. Phil would have a field-day with this, I'm sure, plumbing into the dark recesses of my inferiority complex about getting laid off. But honestly, it has zip to do with that. I'm absolutely petrified of the professional SAHM. This is the creature that always pays for yearbooks the minute the notice comes in, sends gourmet goodie bags for all holidays including St. Patrick's Day and remembers to never, ever send anything with nuts as a class birthday treat.

Speaking of birthdays, this creature sends out cute little birthday invitations to the entire class BY MAIL a month ahead, inviting the children to frolic at some exotically themed party. Before you ask, yes, The Kiddo goes to public school. Do you think I'd be idiot enough to send her to a fancy private school where I'd never measure up?

It's not that these moms don't mean well. They do. They're wonderful, and a great resource. Ask them for anything from a Kleenex to an epi-pen and they'll pull it right out of their handy absolutely-this-season's big designer tote slung casually over their shoulder as though it doesn't weigh 15 pounds. Me? I'm lucky if I have a spare Band-Aid or a dusty Life-Saver in the recesses of my tiny purse.

Always before, though, I had the excuse of being a "working mother." They'd forgive so many of my many, many lapses because I worked.

But now? It's becoming clear to me that I am NOT cut out to be a professional grade SAHM.

Take for instance the other morning when I was running late. I'd noticed a rank smell in the car that I couldn't place. It had been mild the night before, horrid the next morning. The Husband commanded me to open up the trunk, which I did. Voila! A bag of garbage that I had no recollection of having put there, and that The Husband had no intention of admitting that he forgot.

"I'll drop it off after I take The Kiddo to school," I told him. Over my shoulder to The Kiddo as I backed out, I gave her this solemn promise: "Sweetie, I know I'm not wearing make-up this morning, but I'll wear my sunglasses so that no one will see, OK? And this afternoon, I'll wear make-up."

She looked relieved, complained about the garbage, but otherwise we made the trip to school and I dropped her out.

Then disaster struck as I was about to make my getaway. One of the Professional SAHMs recognized my car and made a bee-line for me. I sat there praying mightily, "Please, God, no, no, no!" but the Lord did not see fit to intercede.

So she popped open my passenger door and stuck her head in, only to give me some insider piece of knowledge : "You know," she said, "That end door is open until 8 a.m., and you can just drive right over there and drop her off. That's what I do with (name omitted to protect the innocent). Easy-peasy."

To which I'm thinking, Please don't draw in a deep breath. And please, please, please don't make me have to call your name because I know you're (name omitted's) mom, but I have absolutely no clue what your GIVEN name is.

I didn't say any of this, of course. I smiled. Said something like, "Really?" Added a few inane comments about school. Hoped I made some sense and didn't blurt out the word "garbage" because it was so omnipresent on my mind.

In all of this, I realized that I had -- oh, my ever-lovin' goodness gracious -- slipped off my sunglasses. This woman had seen me without make-up. I had been caught without cosmetics in the school drop-off line by a woman wearing the coolest little cotton top (without a wrinkle, I might add) and denim capris (which meant the blasted woman had to shave her legs that morning) and wearing make-up down to lipstick.

She moseyed onto her car. I peeled out of there as if I were a getaway driver at a bank robbery. First thing I did? Toss the garbage. Second thing I did? Say a prayer of thanksgiving that at least I had taken a shower that morning.

Have I told The Kiddo? Are you kidding?

OK. 2:46. The count-down is on and I probably have to refresh my make-up at this point, too.

Brainstorming

Once, long ago, a reader made a comment on my blog that agents should just stick to selling books, that she didn’t want an agent who would “tell her what to write” because that’s not an agent’s job. Obviously this comment has stuck with me, not because I was hurt by it in any way, but because it made me think about the different expectations writers have of their agents.

I never “tell” an author what to write, but I do spend a lot of time brainstorming with my clients, some more than others. With some of my clients we will spend hours, days, and weeks trying to come up with the perfect idea or even the best way to shape a book. Others, of course, do that all on their own and I don’t have much, if any, input at all. Either way works for me.

In my opinion, an agent’s job is to partner with an author to help build a writing career. However what works for the author is going to be up to the individual author. That being said, I absolutely love brainstorming. I remember the first time I learned the word “brainstorm.” I was in third grade and part of an academic decathlon type of group. Our instructor coached us in the freedom of brainstorming and I was hooked. I loved using my imagination to create ideas, no matter how crazy they might have seemed, and I love it to this day.

I often joke with my clients during these brainstorming sessions that I get the easy part. I throw ludicrous ideas their way and then leave it up to them to see if they can make it work. Sometimes they have come up with absolutely brilliant books and sometimes they’ve laughed in my face. Sometimes they’ve simply said no way and sometimes they too get excited after one of our sessions. I don’t brainstorm because I’m a frustrated writer, I don’t brainstorm because I think everyone needs to do things my way. I brainstorm because I have ideas, because we’re all working in a creative environment, and because I think success in all business means being open to new things.

I have to say, brainstorming is one of the best things about my job. I love working together, creatively, with others, and I can’t thank my authors enough for allowing their crazy agent to throw her wacky ideas their way. Hopefully it’s of some help.

Jessica

Anti-Christ seeking virtual personal assistant

OK, so those of you who follow my blog regularly know that in early August, I got slammed with a curve ball right outta of left field: my dayjob position (along with those uber-important extras like health insurance) was eliminated.

So I joined the ten percent of the Georgia population looking for work. It has been, to say the least of it, an eye-opening experience.

A friend of mine reminded me not to forget the telecommute option and to search Craigslist in major cities for jobs that I might be qualified for that allow telecommuting. Off I went to Craigslist.

Since my strengths are in writing and in marketing and PR, I looked there first. Boy, did they leave more than my ears pink!

I had no idea ANYBODY was looking, for instance, for a sex-toy blogger. I mean, come on. How do you blog about, erm, sex toys, without blogging about ... oh, man. I'm reaching for anything to fan myself with. Shoot, I suspect in some southern states, sex toys are still illegal.

Plus, almost every major city has a few "customer service rep" positions listed for telephone call centers and chat rooms with really suspicious-sounding names, listings that brag how "the right person" can make a quick thousand bucks a week. 'Scuse me, but even my MacBook is blushing at the thought of what "the right person" might be saying or typing.

(Insert more fanning now.)

And then there are the ones that pretend to be legit, but if you look at them with even one eye open, they make you worry for the impressionable young people out there. For instance, a hip-hop independent label was advertising for a marketing PR person -- and the pay? That would be T-shirts and the chance to hang around with Hip-Hop stars. Uh, yeah. That'll pay the electric bill.

Plus, there are the truly outlandish ones, such as one that said, "The Anti-Christ really needs your help!" I mean, gracious, I'm a motivated job hunter, but a Faustian bargain so soon? Get thee behind me, Satan!

Craigslist has a bounty of contract work, and some of them just make me laugh. For instance, today on Craigslist I found a perfectly WONDERFUL opportunity: Personal Appearance Booker sought for Nat'l Media Personality & Author.

It's a commission-only position, but they're quick to point out that it has the potential of unlimited reward. Uh, right. I'm an author, and I do my OWN personal appearance bookings, because I know exactly how lucrative those book signings really are.

To be fair, I've found a few seemingly legit opportunities for uptight prim and proper types like myself, and I've applied for them. But, uh, the sex toy blogger? And the Anti-Christ's virtual personal assistant? If you want 'em, they're ALL yours.

An Author's Seduction

I’m a big fan of marketing guru Seth Godin. You may have heard me talk about him before, and if you follow me on Twitter you’ve definitely seen me retweet his posts. Seth tends to write very short blog posts, but in a few words he is really able to get me thinking. His recent post on the Art of Seduction made me think of what both published and unpublished authors need to do when it comes to marketing.

We live in a world where everyone wants everything to come easily and be easy. Unpublished authors berate agents for not having uniform guidelines that would simply allow them to shoot out one query letter to everyone, and published authors are seeking the magic promotional item that will hit all potential readers in the same way and make them buy books.

It’s never going to happen. Uniform submission guidelines mean that you’re assuming all agents are exactly the same, and thankfully that’s not true. We all have different tastes and different ideas. We love different types of books and different authors, and thankfully so.

The same holds true for published authors. I talk to authors all the time who seem to want to know the magic of marketing. They want to know how another author had such success and what she did to attain it. The truth though is that it doesn't work that way. One uniform promotional idea that will resonate with everyone means that all readers are the same and even if you are writing in the same genre as another author, your readers are not the same.

If you really want to succeed when it comes to finding an agent or getting new readers, then you constantly need to be re-creating and rethinking your strategy to appeal to many different types of people. What works for one might not work for you, what works for one of your books might not work for the next. What works when charming and wooing one girl is not likely to work with another and what works on that girl one night, might not work the next.

Jessica

A Wii Matter

Last fall, The Kiddo wrote a fairly persuasive letter to us about all the benefits of her acquiring a Wii for Christmas. The letter talked about she would get exercise and how it would be a way we could do things as a family. Oh, and it included a whole mess of "please-please-pleases."

Needless to say, The Husband and I fell for it hook, line and sinker, and we gave the Guy in The Big Red Suit the okay to bring one in on his sleigh. Rudolf wanted to keep it. Guess Santa knew who would win THAT tusslin' match if it involved The Kiddo's Wii.

Fast-forward all these many months. I give the thing regretful looks as it silently reproaches me for not sticking to the yoga promise I made to Wii Fit. I sometimes join The Kiddo for a spirited tennis doubles match, and on occasion, I will be the low man on the bowling family trio.

The Husband, though, loves it. He and The Kiddo are particularly enamored with Wii Golf. Why, I don't know, because that's one sport that he USED to flip right on past.

It's not a casual match-up between them, either. It's a to-the-death fight, with both of them providing sound effects that definitely blow up the golf-clap decibel meter. You'd think they were fighting it out for the honor of donning the Green Jacket, the way they muscle each other around that virtual golf course.

The Husband: Aaack! The ball hit the flag pole and bounced off!

The Kiddo (in her most helpful tone): You should have hit it a little softer.

(Thoughtful, respectful silence as The Kiddo lines up her shot, and then) The Husband: I wouldn't do that if I were you. See? The wind? Coming from the northeast? That's pretty stiff.

(Long debate ensues about wind angles, spin, choice of club, followed once again by silence and then a good sound whack)

The Kiddo (anguished): It went in the water! You told me the wind --

The Husband (laughing in his most evil tone) You should have listened to me and put more spin on it. Now I'm a stroke ahead.

The Kiddo: Hmph.

The Husband: (whacks ball, says something that sounds too much like a muffled swear word): Bogey.

The Kiddo (laughing in her most evil tone): You should have never tried that short cut through the trees. This hole is SO easy. (whacks ball) Ooooh! A BIRDIE! Oooh, Mommy! I got a BIRDIE! Wait? That was the last hole? Mommy, Mommy, I won! I won! I beat him!

The Husband: Hmph. I was doing okay until that last hole. I led every one.

I swear, this is a regular occurrence in our household. Now there is absolutely not a single sport The Husband won't watch on ESPN (yes, he even watches the lumber jack competitions), and they both look disappointed when they shout for me to come witness their holes in one and I don't exhibit proper awe and amazement. Each has such a feat to his or her credit, feats that they extol about with as much detail as if they had actually been on a golf course.

You know, maybe Rudolf SHOULD have kept the thing. That evil Santa ... he must have known what a Wii would do.

Work of Cover Art

Queries aren’t the only thing I’m behind on. I’ve also fallen behind on my Bravo TV watching, and since Bravo seems to take up the majority of my DVR space, that’s saying a lot.

Finally though I’m catching up and watching Work of Art, the Bravo reality show for competitive artists. Believe it or not, this show is much more interesting than I would have thought. Of course, anything that uses the format behind Project Runway and Top Chef can’t fail in my mind. One of the reasons that I love watching these shows is that I feel in some way it gives me insight into my own world. Fashion design, cooking, and creating art are not that much different from writing a book. All of these people bringing their art into the business world.

Work of Art is particularly interesting, though, because of one episode. In episode three the artists were asked to create a book cover for a Penguin Classics book. This was probably the first time I actually felt I knew what the judges were talking about. In some cases, the art was interesting, but there was no way it was marketable as a book cover, and in other cases the art might have made an interesting book cover, but it wasn’t necessarily great art. The trick for these artists was finding the balance between the two. And this got me thinking: Have you ever seen a book cover (other than your own) that’s really stuck with you simply because it was a great piece of art, a piece you would like to have to hang on your wall? Have you ever bought a book because the cover was so gorgeous you couldn’t resist?


Jessica

A fresh view

They say it takes a village to raise a child, and it takes at least that to give me an idea for a blog post -- at least this one. My thanks to Dana Elmendorf, Lickety Splitter, Lola Sharp and Stephanie Thornton all contributed to my lightbulb moment for today's blog post.

Lola, Stephanie and Dana had all talked about revisions, the pain that they can be, and the long slow slog that writing often is. Lickety Splitter had posted a couple of pix of herself -- with and without glasses.

I was reminded of how blind I am. I am, without corrective lenses, legally blind. You know that E on the eye chart? That's about all I can recognize with the right eye that God gave me, and it doesn't even exist with the left eye that God gave me.

Thank the Lord that the God who created my less-than-perfect eyes also created the guys who invented (a) glasses, (b) contact lenses and (c) the plastic that makes both of 'em possible.

Since 7th grade, I've worn glasses -- hateful demon things that steam up when you walk out of an air conditioned building into Georgia's heat, fog up when you're trying to stir gravy, slip and slide when you're working outdoors. Contacts are infinitely better -- until they dry out, tear or pop out, I can at least pretend I have "normal" vision.

It was flat amazing the first time I put glasses on and I could see, though. The blackboard came alive with math problems -- gee, no wonder I had been skating by with a C in math. The trees had leaves. And yeah, those black shadowy holes in people's faces? Those gaz-y-boos were eyes.

I think about the things people take for granted with their vision -- things we see and don't marvel at every day. My mom, toward the end of her life, lost a substantial amount of her vision in one eye thanks to acute glaucoma, a complication of some meds she'd had to take. It made her feel so insecure and so fearful.

If vision is a wonderful thing, then re-vision is even better, even if I do carp about it, because revision is literally seeing something again. I'm in the process of revising a completed manuscript of mine. Yes, it's hard. Yes, all my darlings are screaming to be saved. Yes, I'd rather be creating something fresh and new.

But I am in a way. I'm looking over the work I did on the MS, and I'm using my fresh and "new" (well, as new as I can get 'em, anyway) eyes on this.

Part of those "new" eyes? Well, that would be whatever wisdom and knowledge I've learned after having four books published and (more importantly) after having written at least 8 books, maybe more.

So if it is a love/hate relationship between me and my glasses and me and my revising, well, at least I get new eyes out of the deal!

The Reason for "Rules"

Believe it or not there is a reason behind every “rule” agents have when it comes to querying. The reason isn’t to make your life crazy, but to help give you a better shot on the road to publication.

On the BookEnds website we advise all authors to put the word “query” or “submission” in the subject line of their query. The reason for this is that we’ve set up our spam filters to push those words through. If “query” or “submission” come up in the subject line my server knows not to mark it as spam and push it through, and my email manager knows not to mark it as spam and to file it automatically in my query folder so I can read it later.

Believe it or not there is a reason for our madness.

Jessica

Dum-dum-de-dum

I should be worried, I guess, that one of The Kiddo's favorite shows is SAY YES TO THE DRESS. I don't let her watch it much -- mainly because I'm worried about the message it's beaming into an unformed young mind.

No offense, but what is that show (or its southern cousin, SAY YES TO THE DRESS ATLANTA) really saying? Spend tens of thousand of buckaroos on a dress you'll wear for a half-hour service? My stingy bone just can't wrap itself around that.

But we Southerners are weird enough about weddings without a show like SYTTD. I do declare, Southern girls are obsessed about THE Day from the time they're old enough to loop a towel through a headband and hum Here Comes The Bride. If we could skip the getting-hitched part and just do the wedding ceremony, I know a bunch of Southern women who'd get married a dozen times over, different dresses every time.

It is a rite of passage, complete with an arcane set of rules that are just now beginning to relax. But here are a few that are still around:

1) The bride (at least the Southern bride) wears a tiara and a white dress. Period. I don't care if she was married three times.

2) Bridesmaid dresses must, absolutely, without fail, be the ugliest thing that you as a friend of the bride will be forced to pay the earth for and never ever wear again. And they must come with dyed-to-match shoes.

3) It ain't a Southern wedding without a bolt of tulle. Or maybe two bolts.

4) People will talk and your mama will be shamed if you let your Maid of Honor talk you into letting your bridesmaids wear black. Or red. So don't go there.

5) You can get cutesy all you want with the shower invitations, but the wedding invitations better be white linen with black script.

6) Rule #5 will be waived for all graduates of SCAD -- the Savannah College of Art & Design. But then, so few of those artist types even bother with tying the knot -- wait. That sounds just a bit gossipy, no?

7) Grandma will faint in the church pew if you wear a strapless dress. But she'll get over it and be fine for the reception.

8) Wedding albums are required by southern law to include the entire newly-grafted-together clan, complete with fake grins of congenial familial love, even though most of this bunch of in-laws never met before that day and won't see each other again.

9) You should spend just slightly less on the cake than you do on the dress. And as long as it's pretty, who cares if it's edible?

10) See rule # 3.

I'd thought weddings were pretty much universal in their method of torture -- until I was writing a book about an Oregonian bridesmaid. Tawna Fenske had no clue what I meant when my Oregonian bridesmaid/heroine was griping about tulle. Tawna took me under wing and shared with me that we Southerners are a bit ... fixed in our ways when it comes to hitching people.

Now, when I see a wedding announcement that runs half a page (just about every Southern girl's lifelong ambition), going on and on about the gown featuring embellishments of embroidered lace, a sweetheart neckline and yards of heavy satin, why, I just grin and say, "Bless 'er heart," and then ... say a quick prayer that The Kiddo won't be so fixated.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Let me preface this by stating that I am not a fan of zombies. In fact (confession time), I found the zombie scene in Pirates of the Caribbean to be so disturbing that I had to close my eyes and I couldn't watch it.

However, I am a fan of Jane Austen, and when a friend whose taste in books I generally respect (waves to Kirsti if you are reading this!) suggested this as a fun read, I decided to give it a try.

Basically, this book takes the events of Pride and Prejudice (which I'm pretty sure that most people are familiar with, either from the book or one of the many film versions), and sets it in an England that is under attack from zombies. Elizabeth, as well as being intelligent and well read etc, is also a fierce warrior, taking delight in beheading the "unmentionables."

The bare bones of the plot are essentially the same as in the original, with any possibility to include gore and fighting added in.

Was it entertaining? Yes, for the first 50 or so pages, until the novelty of the re-write wore off. I found myself missing the language and the subtlety of the original, as it tended to be over-simplified in this version. Not surprising though, considering the whole premise of zombies!

So I think from now on, I will stick with re-reading the original. And maybe occasionally drooling over Colin Firth in the BBC version!

Training Proof

This morning I did the equivalent of my upcoming tri. Here I am ready to brave the lake:


(Wow, look at that ankle tan line...)

Look at me go!



This wasn't today, but a previous weekend when Matt and I biked up Cull Canyon:



And getting ready to sail. That will be tomorrow. I'd rather be tri training, sadly.

Query Friday

I haven't done a status on my queries lately, I guess because I've been closed. But for those who don't follow me on Twitter, I thought I should update you. As of a week or so ago (I've totally lost track of time) I'm fully caught up on queries, although still closed. That means I don't have any queries left to answer. If you've sent me a query anytime in the past year you should have an answer. If you haven't received an answer the letter was lost in some way or another and you should re-query after September 6.

The weird thing about closing to queries is that for some reason it gives me the freedom to request more proposals. I find that as I’m reading queries and the numbers in my inbox actually go down (instead of stay stagnant) I am requesting more partials than I have all year. I've been finding time to get to those too and at this point have roughly 20 left together. Some date back to June, the rest are from July and August.

--jessica

Holding on & Letting Go

You know that show on TLC, BURIED ALIVE? Where people have somehow managed to survive in homes that are piled and piled and piled with stuff? Most people look at shows like that and say, "How'd they ever get that bad? What happened?" But me? I know. I KNOW.

Not because I have a mile-high stack of old newspapers and a barrel of bottle caps in my living room, thank God, but because of The Kiddo. Getting her to let go of anything is like pulling hen's teeth.

The trouble started when she was a baby. Well-meaning folks would give her ... well, stuff. They assumed that we would be able to ditch the stuff when it outlived its usefulness.

They assumed WRONG.

The first time alarm bells went off was when she cried inconsolably when I gave away a faded old Winnie The Pooh shirt she could no longer wear. True, it was her favorite shirt, but she was three.

Over the years, it got tougher: baby toys, stuffed animals, bits and pieces of paper, drawings, rocks, freebies from fast-food restaurants, sticks. Yes, I said sticks. Like small tree limbs.

I did what I could to deal with the problem: involve her in the donating, letting her keep the profits from yard sales, trying to control what came in the front door -- ha! That's like holding back the Atlantic with a napkin.

I'd just about given up on any signs of progress until this week, when we tackled her wreck of a room, prior to school starting. Her room was AWFUL -- not messy, exactly, but stuffed with treasures. You couldn't really put anything away because you had to move something else, which meant you had to move something ELSE.

So I hauled out the black garbage bag and sell/give boxes, and we started in on her closet floor, filled with overflowing containers of Happy Meal (not bought by ME!) toys. By 12:30, we'd moved to a cupboard. By 1:30, we'd moved to the original target of our project: the top of her cedar chest, usually so cluttered you can't tell it's even a horizontal surface.

With every item, I asked: Do you really need it? Can you find a home for it? Still, it was agony for her until she sat down on her bare-to-the-wood cedar chest and said, "Wowee! It's like a seat!"

"Yeah," I told The Kiddo. "Originally that's just what I had in mind when I put it there, for you to have a window seat."

She asked me what we'd have to do to make that happen, and I said, "Find homes for some of the stuff you keep on there and give away or sell the rest."

After that, it was like a switch got flipped. She was ready to put stuff in the toss or sell pile, empowered. The room has a long way to go. But it's miles better than when we started.



How many times have I stubbornly held onto a concept or an idea or a character, even when I knew it wasn't working? I once sent out a project that got 37 rejections -- 37! And it wasn't until Tawna Fenske read it and said, "The mom is a whiner and the daughter's a brat, and I can't feel sorry for either of them," that I admitted defeat.

How many times have I moaned to CPs when an editor told me I needed to revisions? Every time, without fail, I've come away from the new project and said, "Wow! I did that! It's better! They were right!"

It's hard to let go of the familiar -- whether it's a prickly old stick that The Kiddo can't even remember the reason she first brought in her bedroom, or the WIP I loved, even though I know it doesn't work. But I've learned -- and I hope The Kiddo will, too -- that you can't grab onto the new until you let go of the old.

Book Hungry

When my "Twitterpack" started hounding me about a book I'd never read, a book I SWORE I'd never read, I hemmed and hawed. Then an impromptu Twitter Book Club sprang up -- officially dubbed BOOK HUNGRY now -- and I was excited. These were great ladies, ladies whose opinions about writing and books mattered to me. I said sure, that I was in.

And seconds later they gleefully sprang the first book on me: HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins. The book I'd never read. The book I'd sworn to NEVER read.

"It's good," they said. "It's really, really good."

Yeah, right, that's what a zillion people say about TWILIGHT, and another equal zillion say they despise it.

The whole concept of the HUNGER GAMES -- a post-apocalyptic setting where a girl volunteers to take her sister's place in a to-the-death reality game -- gave me shivers. I don't like futuristic books. I don't like reality shows. So I was CERTAIN that I wouldn't like a book about a futuristic reality show where there could be no happy ending -- the main character would, by dent of my logic anyway, have to kill off all 23 of her fellow contestants, and what's likeable about THAT?

Still, I put the book on hold at the library, and when it came in, I picked it up. That evening, when I got in from shopping and the library at about 6:30, I heaved a sigh and started on the first page.

At 7:30, The Husband made growly noises about supper, saw I wasn't moving from the couch, and then went and slammed a bunch of kitchen cabinet doors and came back with a banana sandwich. The Kiddo asked me if it were all right if she fixed herself a heavy snack/supper. I didn't look up from the page, just mumbled, "yeah, sure."

Honestly? She could have asked if she could go rob a bank with her friends and I probably would have said, "Yeah, sure," at that point.

HUNGER GAMES is that good. It's a deep character study. A commentary on totalitarian governments. A love story. But most of all? It's flat entertaining. It sucks you in and doesn't let you go.

I shook myself loose from it once, to read to The Kiddo and get her to bed, and then I went right back to it. I finished it around 1 a.m., shut the book and heard my heart cry, "More! More!"

The main character, Katniss, is a teenage girl who has had to grow up fast to provide for her mother and her little sister. She finds herself, once she takes her sister's place, pitted against 23 other young people for her very life.

One of those 23 is a teenage boy named Peeta, who saved Katniss many, many years before. Katniss doesn't want to kill him -- doesn't want to kill anybody.

Collins makes you care for Katniss and Peeta and the locking conflict of how will both of them somehow survive keeps you flipping pages. Her characters are real and multi-dimensional. Her world-building is spot-on.

And to think I swore I'd never read this book. Why? Because of the blurb on the back and my preconceived notions and -- oh, yeah, the really biggie -- the fact that everybody said I had to read this book. I've always shied away from cult-like followings, even as far back as E.T., when I swore I wouldn't go see the movie. I didn't. My cousin and I, neither having seen E.T., would roll our eyes and say, "E.T., GO home," when we saw another merchandise tie-in.

But then we finally saw the movie when it came back to the theater in our small town for an encore performance. And we loved it and adored the ugly little alien. We finally got it, got what all the fuss was about.

And now I've finally got what the fuss is all about with HUNGER GAMES. My advice if you're a hold-out like me? Go. Read it. Now.

My fellow Book Hungry members are blogging today about their thoughts on HUNGER GAMES, and each month, we'll blog about the book our members have chosen. Check 'em out!


Karla Nellenbach
Patty Blount
Abby Mumford
Elizabeth Ryann
Kelly Breakey
Alyson Peterson
Vanessa Noble

Do We Impress You

Have any of your bloggers impressed you so much by their comments, or how they wrote them, it created a head slapping "I should represent this writer" moment, or conversely, "I should steer clear of this nut-case"?

I have learned on your website that content of the story is as important as the caliber of how it’s told. But, for those of us who realize the difficulties of the process, do our brilliant blogger comments impress you, in any way?

I think some of us try to behave and do everything right so we get to be on your good side, which means, we get to pass out and collect the homework and watch the rest of the class when you are out of the room. By the way, Tommy has a water balloon in his desk.

If you have covered this on your website I apologize for not digging deep enough or forgetting what it was you actually said. Okay, I’ll sit down now and shut up.

I liked this question because it touches on a conversation I frequently have with other agents, clients, and writers who read my blog. It first came up a few years ago when a client mentioned all the sucking up that goes on on my blog. Honestly, I had never seen it. I guess I took everything at face value. If a reader agreed with me or complimented what I said, I simply assumed they agreed or were complimentary. I suppose it’s sort of like learning that the cute boy in school likes you. Everyone else sees it, it seems obvious, all except to the girl he’s set his sights on. I’m afraid I’m still that girl who doesn’t really see it. I suppose there are those who think that agreeing with everything I say will warm my heart and make me want to represent you. It really won’t, just like disagreeing with what I say won’t make me not want to represent you.

In some ways, I see the blog as a separate aspect of my business from the actual acquiring, submitting, and selling of books, and in many ways it is. I suppose if BookEnds was a giant corporation I would work for two different departments. Blog Jessica would work for marketing, promotion, and, maybe, customer service. Agent Jessica would work in the agency department or maybe sales. Her job would be to represent authors and sell their books.

No comment has been so brilliant that I thought I’d love to represent that author. Meet the author maybe, but not represent. And the only comments that really turn me off so much that I know it’s an author I would never want to represent are usually posted anonymously by trolls. They are rarely intelligent or rational discussions. Usually they are attacks and nothing more. I tend to ignore them.

Behaving does not mean always doing everything right or agreeing with everything someone else says. Would any of you want an agent who only wanted to work with clients who nodded, smiled, and gritted their teeth? I don’t think so. Behaving means acting professionally and giving an honest opinion respectfully, even when it’s to disagree with the original post.

Jessica

Asilomar

I just returned home last night from a conference at beautiful Asilomar. Both mornings I went running on dirt paths by the beach with these views:





Also met some fabulous people and heard a lot of great ideas. I love not going to work!

Referrals from Clients

In my post A Different Way of Doing Business, a lot of discussion occurred in the comments section about the referring author’s responsibility and how I dealt with my client if a “bad” referral came in (for lack of a better word).

The minute you get a book deal, heck, the minute you get an agent, people are going to come from everywhere asking you to get them in the door with your agent. It’s natural, it’s normal, and good for them. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the business world it’s that the phrase “it’s not what you know, but who you know” really is true. Almost inevitably this means a client will come to me to say that Author J wants an introduction, she’s never read her work, but passed along my name. What I always say is that’s fine. No author, no family member, and no friend should be responsible for weeding out my submissions and I don’t judge my authors on the referrals they send or the number of authors who come to me using their names because they are in critique groups together or met at a conference.

I’ve gained a number of great clients through referrals, just signed one up as I’m writing this, in fact. I’ve also passed on a lot of material. You never know what will hit and I appreciate that my clients respect me enough and have enjoyed working with me enough to think my name is worthy of passing on. In my experience, clients will sometimes ask what happened with that other author, but rarely are they invested enough to get upset if I pass and never do I volunteer the information to the client.

What it comes down to is no one is responsible for your work, your career, and the way you present yourself but you. Once the introduction is made it’s up to the author who received the referral to close the deal, so to speak. No one else can do that for her.

Jessica

Let 'er rip

It’s back to school time again … already.

The Kiddo seems as ambivalent as I am about the start of school, mainly because of the concept of homework that she was firmly introduced to last year. She likes school, thank goodness. But I don’t know of any kid who really likes homework.

At least The Kiddo gets to start fourth grade in the school she knows, with friends she’s familiar with. My fourth grade year was the first year in a brand-spanking new school to me, and I didn’t know anybody in my class.

There were upsides – the lunchroom food was better, I loved the science and the social studies textbooks, and my teacher was great.

But it was also the year that I first started having to ride the bus (which meant getting up earlier), the year that I realized I didn’t know how to make a long-distance phone call to my mom to come pick me up when I was sick, and the year that a pair of pants graced me with a split seam down the back.

By funny coincidence, earlier in the week of the pants-incidence, we’d read a story about a boy whose pants had split. I’d not paid any attention to it beyond answering the questions and thinking, “Wow, that must have been embarrassing.”

Then a few days later, I heard the tell-tale riiiip in the straddle of my black-and-white checked pants and I found out just how embarrassing a split straddle was.

I had no idea what to do. It was a warm spring day, and I wore no jacket to tie over my suddenly exposed backside. I kept wondering how I was supposed to get from my desk – middle of the row, middle of the room – to let my teacher know what had gone wrong.

Probably if I had just walked up to her desk without making a big deal, nobody would have noticed. But it was probably the very way I tried NOT to attract notice that attracted notice. I heard giggles and snickers and was grateful to the bone when my teacher sent me to the office. In the deserted hallway, I didn’t have to worry about who might be seeing my underoos.

A very kind secretary let me stay in a little bathroom just off her office while she roughly stitched the rip back together. I remember wiggling my bare legs in the bathroom, my pants a world away on the other side of that door, and hoping nobody had to use the bathroom until my pants were mended.

I think about the me that I was in fourth grade, a funny little kid who loved Galileo and hated division and survived split pants. And then I think about The Kiddo. On the one hand, she seems so much wiser than I was, while on the other? So much younger. I wonder if my own mom thought the same thing when she, laughing in the kindest possible way at my predicament, ripped out the secretary’s stitches and began stitching a proper repair.

The Solitude of Prime Numbers - Paolo Giordano

I love prime numbers. To me they symbolize independence - "I don't need any of you divisors to stand strong as my own number!" When Dad was celebrating his 61st birthday a few years ago, he felt as though it was a bit of a let-down after his 60th the year before, until I pointed out that he had to celebrate a prime year, as another one won't come along until he reaches 67.

So it was the title of this book that attracted me. This book tells the story of two societal "misfits" who meet in high school, and stay friends into their adulthood. Alice suffers a skiing accident and ends up with a lame leg (though speaking as a physiotherapist, I don't see how a fractured fibula could result in the degree of disability Alice develops - it isn't part of the knee joint and isn't normally a weight-bearing bone), then subsequently develops a severe eating disorder and withdraws from her family. Mattia is traumatized by the disappearance of his twin sister (by his own fault), and develops self-mutilating behaviours and is possibly somewhere along the autism spectrum disorder, as well as being a mathematical genius. He is the one who considers himself and Alice to be prime numbers, possibly twin primes (two prime numbers separated only by one other number - e.g. 11 and 13, or 17 and 19).

Interesting concept, but unfortunately it didn't live up to my hopes. I found the vagueness to be annoying at times - Alice has an unspecified disability, her mother is dying of an unspecified illness, Mattia moves to an unspecified university. And the book just ends, with no resolution - just people drifting through space and time. I also found the characters to be very two-dimensional (though this was probably compounded by the fact that I started it just after finishing The Diviners with such strong characters) and therefore hard to care about.

It was an easy read, and tugged at my heart at times, but unfortunately not a favourable overall impression.

An Agent's Creative Side

Do you ever have those days when too many distractions make writing nearly impossible? Maybe it’s a day better spent researching or working on marketing and publicity or maybe it’s a day you just need to take a break from writing to get those other things done that are clogging your brain?

I don’t know if that’s the way it works for you, but that’s definitely the way it works for me. There are days when, no matter how many proposals are piled on my desk, I just can’t get to them. Editing, reviewing, reading, or writing revision letters for clients is a creative process. When I read those books or proposals I need to be at the top of my game. I need to be able to really think while I’m reading, analyze what’s working and what’s not working, and make copious notes to the author. If I have too many other things going on, things that can make it difficult for me to focus, it’s not going to be good for my client. It means that I’m distracted and that I might miss the fact that the heroine is a complete imbecile or the hero is just plain awful. If I’m distracted it means I can’t do my best work for a client and this is why it sometimes takes agents longer than it should.

If I’m distracted I think it’s better not to read for revisions the minute the work arrives on my desk, but to instead give myself time to get rid of the distractions and give myself a clean plate. Once my brain is clear, I settle in, turn off the phone and computer, and sit down to focus on what needs to get done. Granted, this usually doesn’t take weeks, but can sometimes mean that it takes a few days longer than I want it to. I try to keep my clients honestly informed of where I’m at with things and hopefully I never keep them waiting too long, but an agent’s job has a bit of a creative side too and just like writers, it’s important for us to embrace our own creative process so that we can do the best work possible on your behalf.

Jessica

A fortune by any other name

Now, first off, I want to say that I don't put much stock in predictions from horoscopes or fortune cookies. Most of them are so vaguely worded that a person could read just about anything into them, and apply them at will to life. Try it ... read the horoscope for your neighboring astrological sign and see if you can't apply it to your own life.

But tonight I found a couple of slips of paper that came from some fortune cookies we'd had earlier. The Kiddo keeps everything, including fortune cookie fortunes, and if we don't get her hoarding under control, one day she may well be the featured tortured soul on TLC's BURIED ALIVE.

The fortune cookies had been consumed and the fortunes read earlier this month, before my Tuesday surprise. They read as follows:

A long term goal will soon be achieved.

and

You will find great fortunes in unexpected places.

Well, tonight, when I found both little slips of paper, I shook my head. "Ha!" I thought. "Proves how accurate fortune cookies are."

Then it occurred to me, in that scary way that makes you have a niggling grain of doubt, that both fortunes were sort of accurate.

For instance, the day I came back to work after two vacation days off and was subsequently told my position was eliminated, I had tweeted earlier that morning, "When I grow up, I wanna be a stay at home mom."

Okay, so losing my job is not exactly how I wanted such a long-term goal to come about. But it did. So I plan to file that fortune under the "be careful what you wish for" category.

The second fortune was also true. As I was composing my grocery list this weekend, the idea of buying groceries for the first time post-layoff completely wigged me out. I had to know EXACTLY what was in my freezer. For the first time in months, the Kiddo and I pulled the frozen chunks out, organized them and took an inventory. I swear, I had about four half-bags of frozen green beans that I'd opened, not realizing I'd previously opened a bag. And meat? And chicken? And rice? Had that, too, and didn't realize it. This week I didn't have to buy one ounce of meat.

So yeah, I found treasure in unexpected places.

It's not that I believe in the power of fortune cookies. Nope, I reserve that faith for prayer only. But I think me finding those fortune cookies was no accident ... I think it made me look at what life had dished out and realize, with very grateful heart and eyes, just what I had.

When we get bogged down in anything -- life, the dayjob, mothering, a frustrating WIP that just won't behave -- we tend to think only the negative about it. At least, I do. But this little find reminds me that treasure can be discovered in the most ordinary places -- it's not at the end of a rainbow, but right in front of our noses.

More on Product Placement in Books

Oh, what a difference a year makes. Last year I wrote a post about the possibility of product placement in books and whether or not authors would consider being paid to include products in their books and how readers might feel about that. At the time, it was a bit of a pie-in-the-sky idea. However, things are changing quickly and dramatically all over the world and publishing is no exception. Now there is regular talk of “enhanced ebooks,” ebooks that might include short videos or links. Think of the implications this could have.

Now instead of simply giving your protagonist a Leinenkugel to drink you could actually link to an ad for Leinenkugel or the Leinenkugel website. The website could be created by the company to sell the product specifically to readers of your book. Obviously this is all speculation, but it makes one wonder about how much books will really change in the future and how much authors could and might benefit, not just from the sales of the book but the potential ad space.

Just a thought. What do you think?

Jessica

Gleeps, Trixie!

The Kiddo and Trixie Belden have now been officially introduced. After my rocky start with Nancy Drew, I was a little afraid of whether the Girl Shamus would hold up to the test of time.

I loved Trixie growing up ... I identified with her hatred of all things to do with housework, her difficulties in math and the fact that she blurts out the first thought that comes to her mind. I thought it was cool how the Beldens and Jim Frayne and Honey Wheeler (and gorgeous Di with the violet eyes) all got to go on super interesting trips and solve mysteries. (Psst ... I also had a huge crush on Brian, the would-be doctor). My parents bought me almost every one of the Trixie Belden books for Christmas one year, and I read them all.

So I didn't want this re-reading of Trixie to be a letdown. And I desperately hoped that the Kiddo loved her as much as I did when I was a kid.

That being the case, I girded my loins and started reading THE SECRET OF THE MANSION aloud to the Kiddo. And I was surprised ... by a lot of things.

1) Trixie seemed a little more bratty to me at first ... but I figure that's just the mother in me coming out. The writer quickly worked to make her redeemable.

2) The pace of the story is lightning fast. While I remembered the big plot points (learning how to ride a horse, finding Jim, Bobby getting bitten by a copperhead), I didn't remember it happening in a two-day timespan.

3) For all of her moaning and groaning about housework, Trixie sure doesn't have to do a lot of it ... and apparently the Beldens shipped their laundry out to be washed (remember the big laundry truck that nearly flattens Honey on her first bike ride?)

BUT ... Surprise #4 more than offsets 1 through 3: Trixie is a very real, very human character, and the book is as interesting to me as when I read it the first time. I actually think I prefer her to that paragon of virtue Nancy Drew (the shame of it!). Plus, it's interesting that in 1948, a girl who was fearless and daring when it came to spiders, snakes and the like could be presented in a favorable light.

The Kiddo is very caught up in the mystery, pulled out only to ask questions like, "Mommy, what are dungarees?" and "Do they have to wear helmets when THEY ride a bike or horses?"

Reading old books does require quite a bit of annotation -- that dungarees are the same as jeans, that girls used to wear dresses a lot more than they do now, that a riding habit isn't the same as a nun's habit. But I like the fact that Trixie is still relevant today -- probably even more so than other girl detective heroines, and that her exploits (at least in the first mystery) are in line with what a parent would actually let her get away with. Score!

The Diviners - Margaret Laurence

I read my way through the Manawaka books by Margaret Laurence the summer that I was 17, living in Rivière du Loup, Québec, staying with a family and learning French. If I had had easy access to any other books in English, I probably would have given up after The Stone Angel as I detested that book, but fortunately I persevered and each book got better (in my opinion) so by the time I reached The Diviners, I quite enjoyed it.

I have not re-read any of these books in the past 16 years, but The Diviners has been on my "to be re-read" list for a while and I finally picked it up this week. And I am glad that I did! Looking back at my 17-year-old self, I'm sure that lots of this book (and probably the others in the series) went right over my head, but I thoroughly enjoyed this re-read.

How to summarize this book in a paragraph? Now there is a challenge. Morag Gunn is born in small-town Manitoba; loses her parents at a young age; is brought up by the town scavenger (garbage collector) and his dim wife; goes to university in Winnipeg vowing to escape the life she has grown up in; marries her professor; becomes a writer; leaves her husband; has a baby with a childhood friend/lover; raises the baby on her own in Vancouver, London (England), and finally McConnell's Landing (rural southern Ontario). It is her search to find herself - where she has come from and where she wants to go.

I found myself really relating to Morag on this re-reading. Loved in her own family but socially awkward outside of home; moving from place to place in search of "home"; introverted and living inside her head. There is a great scene where Morag learns to cry in front of others - that was also a difficult lesson for me to learn. And a time where her daughter tells her, "You're so goddamn proud and so scared of being rejected," that hit home for me as well.

I went looking for an image of the cover of the edition that I was reading (Banatam, 1975 - Mum must have bought it when it first came out in paperback), but couldn't find it. But along the way, I learned a bit about Margaret Laurence, and discovered that a lot of this book was autobiographical - born in small-town Manitoba; loss of parents when young; early writing career; worked at a newspaper; university in Winnipeg; married then separated from her husband; living in Vancouver, England, Toronto, and rural southern Ontario. There is even an element of the predictive in this book as Jules, Morag's sometimes-lover, commits suicide when he has terminal cancer - Margaret Laurence did the same in 1987.

So a good book, yes; but I don't know if that will inspire me to go back and re-read the rest of the series!

Even a fish ...

When I put out a call for humorous, happy and upbeat blog topics on Twitter, @mistyprovencher suggested that I write about what people should say to agents in the happy instance that they call to make you an offer.

But that advice could be summed up with the old saying about even a fish would stay out of trouble if he kept his mouth shut. So I figured, hmh, maybe it would be funnier -- and more helpful -- if I wrote a list of things NOT to say to an agent with an offer of representation on the table.

The top five faves ...

5) Great! So this means you're gonna join in on my slumber parties? Will we trade pedicures and brush each other's hair?*

4) Maybe this is too much information, but my husband has just ... (fill in the blank).

3) Terrific news! Today's the 10th, so by the 17th, you should have me in an auction? And I'll pencil in Oprah for, hmh, next month?

2) That book? You wanna sell THAT BOOK? Oh, sheesh. I just deleted it off my hard-drive because I had decided it stank.

1) So, um, how much more complex will a six-figure advance make my troubles with the IRS?

As you can see (hopefully), the common theme in the list of should-nots is TMI and too high expectations. An agent is, above all, a professional. If you wouldn't tell/invite/ask your dentist, your accountant, your doctor, or some other highly-trained, highly experienced professional, don't ask your agent.

So I guess the best advice I could give when (notice I say WHEN and not IF) that happy day comes to pass would be this:

1) Say thank you.

2) Ask what her (or his) view of the book and the plan for going from here. (Revisions? Does she have an editor/house in mind?)

3) Ask what her plan B is if the book doesn't immediately sell. Ask this question with tact, so she'll understand that YOU understand worst case scenarios.

4) Ask what her preferences are on communication -- does she like frequent e-mails, or will she maintain radio silence until she has something to report?

5) Ask if she is an editing agent or not.

6) Tell her if the full is under consideration by any other agents.

7) Ask for 24 hours (AT LEAST) to consider her offer.

8) Say thank you. (Yeah, I know. But say it again anyway).

9) Hang up the phone.

Really, I add #9 in just because you're sure to forget to hang up and the agent will hear you freaking out after you think she's off the line. Now print this list, cut it out and tape it by your phone for when the happy day comes.

*This one was stolen without shame from Tawna Fenske. Yes, I'm a thievin' individual, and that makes Linda Grimes hopeful that I am soon to be corrupted.

Individualizing the Query

I was wondering what you think is the most important aspect of a query. I've read a ton of articles which all cite different things and I get the feeling that rather than emphasizing hook over plot, or characters over events, based on an article, I should strive to find out what it is that each individual agent wants to know. (Or is that wrong in and of itself?)

Is there one thing in a book that captures you more than one thing, and if there is, do you want to see that emphasized in a query? Or does balance and concise explanation of the plot outweigh your own personal preferences?

Unfortunately, I don’t think a query is a one-size-fits-all device. I don’t think the same query necessarily works for all agents or all authors. That being said, I don’t think it should either.

The most important part of the query is the blurb, the part that tells the agent about your book, the part that grabs her attention and makes her want to read more. Here’s the deal, though: What you should strive for is writing the query that best represents you and your book. It should show the reader a bit of your voice and the blurb shouldn’t necessarily be about hook or characters or plot. It should be that one thing about your book that makes it stand out from all others. For some this might be hook, for others character and for some plot.

If you read the query samples I’ve posted on the blog over the years you’ll see how very different they all are and yet, they all worked. A query that works for me won’t work for Janet Reid or Nathan Bransford or Rachelle Gardner, and that’s absolutely fine because the agent that represents you might not work for another author, even those in your critique group.

Stop trying to write queries and books that appeal to everyone. Write a query (and a book) that will appeal to many, but that is your best work.

Jessica

Annnd right outta left field

The year that The Husband and I got married was a banner year. There were huge thunder boomers every night that summer, until two or three in the morning. Our well pump got struck by one of those lightning bolts. My car burned up. I was diagnosed first with arthritis (nope) and then with lupus (nope, again) and finally fibromyalgia (check). And one evening I came in from work to find that the freezer compartment in our ancient, single door fridge had come loose and fallen into my eggs and my butter.

It was just not a good year for the roses.

This past year has been that way, too, since October when my mom got sick, and then in November she passed away. That seemed to unleash all manner of torment, from little things like our kitchen floor getting ruined by a cantankerous, tired old dishwasher, to really big and awful things.

It seemed like every time I would get a handle on things, another curve ball would slam past me across the plate. In fact, I was just emailing Tawna Fenske earlier this week that I was about due for another curve ball, because I was beginning to get settled in over my latest misfortunes.

Sure enough ... I was called in for a meeting with two other ladies at my dayjob on Tuesday and told, "You do good work, we hate to lose you, but this economy is making it impossible to keep you."

I freaked. I have been working a public job since I was 17 years old, even before that at my parents' business, and I'd never, ever been let go. Plus, I am the one who carries the health benefits.

The cold hard truth about writing for a living is that you have to sell a LOT of books before you can give up that dayjob. Think about it. Your royalty for a paperback comes in roughly at a quarter a book, depending on the cover price. That's gross pay, before your self-employment taxes, before you pay for private insurance, before you pay for your writing expenses (and they do add up.)

The health insurance is the real kicker. At least in Georgia, there's not really a good alternative to group plans through an employer. Private insurance can set a family back $1,500 a month -- and that's with a $5,000 deductible on each family member. I know that, because my optometrist was recently bewailing the high cost of coverage for his family.

This post is not meant to discourage you unpublished writers out there. It's just to put it in perspective how much of a loss my dayjob is to me, despite the fact that I am published. Keep that dayjob, unless you are lucky enough to have dependable coverage through some other option.

As for me, I've shed a few tears, the numbness is wearing off, and I'm getting myself in gear for a job hunt. We're better off than some folks in our position: our house, never that expensive to begin with -- is now paid off, our cars, which we drive until the wheels fall off, are paid for, we have a little savings, and very little consumer debt. We tend to be frugal, mainly because I've always been paranoid about this very thing happening.

I have some leads for job opportunities. I've dusted off the resume. And in between filling out applications and (hopefully) going for interviews, I'm going to be working like mad on the edits for the book I'm trying to revise. I'm not waiting for luck, any more than I'm waiting for that ol' Muse to come staggering in with her feather boa and her stilettos. Nope, I'm going to tackle this with the same faith, hope and optimism (not to mention hard work) that got me my first publishing deal.

But if you're the praying kind, please, please, keep our little family in your prayers.

What I'd LOVE to Say

I often start drafts of blog posts and then let them percolate for a while before finishing or posting. Ironically, the week I started this particular blog post I was alerted to this blog: http://slushpilehell.tumblr.com/

I don’t think there’s anything I could possibly add.

Jessica

Firing an Agent

Some months ago I asked my agent about the possibilities of getting my novel adapted as a graphic novel. He dismissed the suggestion, saying that those particular rights belonged to the publisher. After examining the contract, I realized that those rights are mine alone with all the other derivatives (film, dramatic etc). Recently I have found an agent who specializes in Graphic Novel who was interested in selling it, but asked that I get a waiver from the agent of record, since she is not willing to split her commission.

Without telling my agent about this I asked again about graphic novels. After the publisher acknowledged that those rights are mine, he responded that there was no point in trying to sell a graphic novel adaptation, since the graphic novel business was "nascent." Like the movie rights, which he has farmed out to an agent who has done nothing in two years. He admitted that he is content to wait for something to drop from the heavens and refuses to waive any of those rights.

As far as he is concerned, the novel he sold is a spent property, since the publishers is neither going to give up rights or put out any subsequent editions as long as they have a couple thousand unsold hardbacks in their inventory. He is also not interested in representing my current project as it is something the editor doesn't care for.

My agency agreement does not say anything about him keeping hold of unsold rights. Can't I just fire him and take my rights back?

I want to take a step back here. I recognize that you are frustrated and angry and I don’t blame you. That being said, I want to explain some things so that readers don’t get confused about what’s really wrong, or seemingly wrong, and what’s probably really happening. I’m going to address the movie rights first and then I’ll move on to the graphic novel rights. You say that your agent “farmed” the movie rights out to another agent who has done nothing. It’s very typical for a literary agent to work with a co-agent on movie rights, foreign rights, and other types of sub-rights. Just as a literary agent specializes in books, and certain genres of books, there are agents who specialize in certain territories or in movies. I can’t weigh whether or not this movie agent is doing anything, but I can tell you that it’s very, very difficult to get a movie option and not having one doesn’t necessarily mean nothing is being done.

Okay, on to your original question. I’m concerned that your agent didn’t seem to know what rights he held on your behalf. Certainly that’s not material I have in my head for every contract I’ve negotiated, but it’s easy enough for me to find out by reading the contract. To me that’s a red flag.

As to moving forward, if your agency contract says nothing about him keeping unsold rights, and you’re sure of this, then I see no reason why you can’t fire this agent and move forward with any rights in any way you want. What I might suggest, to keep things clean, is that you spell this out in your termination letter. In other words, you say specifically that you are terminating your agreement and that you are free to move forward with any unsold rights with no obligation to him.

Keep in mind, your agent still has the right to receive commissions on any contracts he did negotiate on your behalf and on any rights you licensed in those contracts.

Jessica