Author: Admin147

Hello, readers —

Remember last week, when I was going on about pigs in pokes, and the undesirability of buying them? I mentioned that I had no idea what a poke was. Well, I opened my work e-mail over the weekend, and fabulous and intrepid reader Janet had TOLD ALL:

“A poke is early type of paper bag–something to hold candy, peas and other types of loose foodstuffs. It is essentially a square piece of paper folded into a cone. The bottom point is folded up so that the candy or dried beans won’t fall out. The sheets of paper came in different sizes 4″, 8″ and 10″. Apparently, the shopkeep could figure out costs per weight this way.”

Have you ever seen a clearer description of anything? But wait, Janet did even more research on the subject:

“The pig in a poke is a great image as you would really have to stuff the pig into poke pretty hard. Be pretty tight. General stores used these for years until a girl in New England invented the type of squared paper bag with a floor some time after the Civil War. As for the poke, I’m told that in Germany you can still get food this way.”

Janet, please find me at the conference, if you will be attending: I want to buy you a drink, or at least a cup of coffee, because now, I have the pleasing image in my head of all of those American agents and editors who travel every year to the Frankfurt Book Fair, buying pigs in pokes from street vendors. After hearing them spout the truism for so many years, that image makes me absurdly happy.

While I am praising wonderful readers, Arleen, who has apparently TAKEN classes with Robert J. Ray and Jack Remick (who will be offering Pathways to the Novel on the Sunday following the conference), was kind enough to send in the class’ website. Not only that, but she provided a link to more info about co-teacher Jack Remick Add to this her rave review of the class she took, and I think I can safely say that this constitutes a recommendation.

Do remember, the Sunday classes fill up fast, so if you are interested in taking one, please sign up soon. Also, don’t forget that registering for the summer conference BEFORE June 6th (better known as a week from today) will give you a $50 discount on the cost of attending! If you have not yet picked your top choices for agent and editor meetings, check out my blogs about the scheduled attendees, April 26 — May 12 for the agents and May 18 — 26 for the editors.

And, while I’m at it: if you have not already put the first 50 pp. of your work into standard format, so it is ready to send out to any agents or editors at the conference who might conceivably ask to see it, check out my post of February 19. If you do not already know why this is an EXCELLENT idea, consider my recommendation of the previous sentence multiplied a thousandfold. (Not adhering to standard manuscript format — which is DIFFERENT from book format — has cost a lot of good writers a fair reading from agency screeners.)

My, that was a lot of housekeeping, wasn’t it? I actually do have a topic for today: what materials should you bring with you to the conference — and, more importantly, to your agent and editor meetings?

At minimum, of course, you’re going to want a trusty, comfortable pen and notebook with a backing hard enough to write upon, to take good notes, and a shoulder bag sturdy enough to hold all of the handouts you will accumulate and books you will buy at the conference. I always like to include a few sheets of blank printer paper in my bag, so I can draw a diagram of the agents’ forum, and another of the editors’, to keep track of who was sitting where and note a few physical characteristics, along with their expressed preferences in books.

Why do I do this? Well, these fora are typically scheduled at the very beginning of the first day of the conference, a very, very long day. By the time people are wandering into their appointments at the end of the second day, dehydrated from convention hall air and overwhelmed with masses of professional information, I’ve found that they’re often too tired to recall WHICH editor had struck them the day before as someone with whom to try to finagle a last-minute appointment. Being able to whip out the diagrams has jogged many a memory, including mine.

I always, always, ALWAYS bring bottled water to conferences — even to ones like PNWA, where the organizers tend to be very good about keeping water available. When you’re wedged into the middle of a row of eager note-takers in a classroom, it’s not always the easiest thing in the world to make your way to the table with the water on it, nor to step over people with a full glass in your hand. A screw-top bottle in your bag can save both spillage and inconvenience for your neighbors.

If I seem to be harping on the dehydration theme, there’s a good reason: every indoor conference I have ever attended has dried out my contact lenses, and personally, I prefer to meet people when my lenses are not opaque with grime. I’m wacky that way. If your eyes dry out easily, consider wearing your glasses instead.

Even if you have perfect vision, there’s a good reason to keep on sippin’. If you are even VAGUELY prone to nerves — and who isn’t, in preparing to pitch? — being dehydrated can add substantially to your sense of being slightly off-kilter. You want to be at your best. Both conferences and hotels, like airports, see a lot of foot traffic, so the week leading up to the conference is NOT the time to skip the vitamins. I go one step further: at the conference, I dump packets of Emergen-C into my water bottle, to keep my immune system strong.

If this seems like frou-frou advice, buttonhole me at the conference, and I’ll regale you with stories about nervous pitchers who have passed out in front of agents. Trust me, this is a time to be VERY good to yourself. If I had my way, the hallways would be lined with massage chairs, to reduce people’s stress.

You will also want to bring some easily transferable pieces of paper with your contact information printed on it — why, come to think of it, a business card would be perfect for that! Seriously, it is VERY worth your while to have some inexpensive business cards made, or to print some up at home, for two excellent reasons. First, unless you make a point of sitting by yourself in a corner for the entire conference, you are probably going to meet other writers that you like — maybe even some with whom you would like to exchange chapters, start a writers’ group, or just keep in contact to remind yourself that we’re all in this together. The easier you make it for them to contact you, the more likely they are to remain in contact.

It’s just that simple.

Second, it’s always a good idea to be able to hand your contact info to an agent or editor who expresses interest in your work. They don’t often ask for it, but if they do — in a situation, say, where an editor from a major press who is not allowed to pick up an unagented book REALLY wants to hook you up with an agent — it’s best to be prepared.

I shall no doubt return to this topic between now and the conference, but let me start the chant now: avoid the extremely common mistake of walking into ANY writers’ gathering thinking that the only people it is important for you to meet are the bigwigs: the agents, the editors, the keynote speakers. Obviously, if you can swig a one-on-one with Ann Rule, go for it — I once spent several hours stranded in a small airport with her, and she is an absolutely delightful conversationalist. But don’t let star-watching distract you from interacting with the less well-known writers teaching the classes, who are there to help YOU, or the writer sitting next to you in class.

I have met some of the best writers I know by the simple dint of turning to the person rummaging through the packaged teas on the coffee table and saying, “So, what do you write?” Believe me, it’s worth doing. Someday, some of your fellow conference attendees are going to be bigwigs themselves, and don’t you want to be able to say that you knew them when?

And even if this were not true (but it is), writing is an isolating business — for every hour that even the most commercially successful writer spends interacting with others in the business, she spends hundreds alone, typing away. The more friends you can make who will understand your emotional ups and downs as you work through scenes in a novel, or query agents, or gnaw your fingernails down to the knuckle, waiting for an editor to decide whether to buy your book, the better.

Even the most charmed writer, the one with both the best writing and the best pure, dumb luck, has days of depression. Not all of us are lucky enough to live and work with people who appreciate the necessity of revising a sentence for the sixth time. Writers’ conferences are the ideal places to find friends to support you, the ones you call when your nearest and dearest think you are insane for sinking your heart and soul into a book that may not see print for a decade.

So stuff some business cards into your conference bag (if you file a Schedule C to claim your writing as a business, the cost of having the cards made is usually tax-deductible — and no, you don’t have to make money as a writer in every year you file a Schedule C for it. Talk to a tax advisor experienced in working with artists.), along with a folder containing several copies of your synopsis AND five copies of the first five pages of your book, as a writing sample.

Why? Well, not all agents do this, but many, when they are seriously taken with a pitch, will ask to see a few pages on the spot, to see if the writing is good enough to justify the serious time commitment of reading the whole book.

They don’t like, you see, to buy a pig in a poke.

Having these pages ready to whip out at a moment’s notice will make you look substantially more professional than if you blush and murmur something about printing it out, or simply hand the agent your entire manuscript. Don’t bother to bring your entire book with you to the conference, UNLESS you are a finalist in one of the major categories. You will never, ever, EVER miss an opportunity by offering to mail it instead, and in fact, agents almost universally prefer it. This is true, even if they insist that they want to read it on the airplane home.

Why the exception for the contest finalists? Well, agents tend to be pretty competitive people. Literally the only reason that an agent would ask for the whole thing right away is if he is afraid that another agent at the conference will sign you before he’s had a chance to read it — and I can tell you from experience that the category winners and placers at the PNWA do get mobbed by agents. (In case you didn’t know, one of the main prizes that the first-place winners receive, in addition to the nifty gold pin, is a breakfast meeting with ALL of the agents and editors. Awfully easy to chat about your work over fruit cup, I always find.) So I have known agents to read a chapter or two of the winners’ work in their hotel rooms.

Otherwise, don’t hurt your back lugging the manuscript box around; the sample will do just as well. From the writer’s POV, the sole purpose of the writing sample is to get the agent to ask you to send the rest of the book, so make sure that these pages are impeccably written, totally free of errors, and in standard format. (Again: if this is news to you, rush into the archives immediately, and take a gander at my post for February 19th.) If you feel that an excerpt from the end of the book showcases your work better, use that, but if you can at all manage it, choose the first five pages of the book as your sample — it just exudes confidence in your work.

More conference preparation tips follow, of course. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

Today, I am switching gears, moving from the agents who are scheduled to be at this summer’s PNWA conference to the editors. (If you missed any or all of my posts on the agents, check out the archived blogs for April 26 to May 17.) Typically, all conference attendees are scheduled for one appointment with an agent and one with an editor, but all too often, aspiring writers make their preference choices for these appointments blindly, or based solely upon the blurbs that the agents and editors provide. My hope, in showing you how much other information is out there about these people, is to help my readers get in the habit of researching publishing industry professionals before meeting with or querying them. The more you know about them, the more likely you are to find a good fit for you.

Why is a good fit so important? I’ve said it before, and I shall say it again: there is no such thing as a universally good agent or editor, one who will be the perfect choice for every single marketable book on the planet.

Why? Well, I grew up in a winemaking family, so a food and wine metaphor strikes me as most apt. If you ate a delicately-flavored fish with a very heavy red wine, such as a Cabernet Franc, the fish would not appear to its best advantage: the taste of the wine would overwhelm it. Conversely, if you drank a light Sauvignon Blanc with a powerfully-flavored meat dish, such as a cassoulet or a juicy steak, the taste of the wine would be overpowered by the food. However, if you paired the fish with the Sauvignon Blanc, and the Cabernet Franc with the steak, the result would be two distinctly different combinations of partners of equal strength and complementary qualities. You would enjoy your meal more, because all of the aromas and flavors would be shown off to their full advantage.

See where I’m going with this?

As a writer, you want your book to be paired with the agent and editor best suited to bringing out your work’s many excellent qualities. Yet much of the time, writers become so intimidated by the array of choices or frustrated by the long road to signing with an agent that they will snatch at an agent or editor simply because s/he IS an agent or editor. The result, often, is like an exquisite white fish in beurre blanc absolutely drowned by a tannin-rich red wine: they just don’t merge well enough to produce an enjoyable experience for anyone concerned. And, since the writer is typically the person with the least power in the situation, it’s usually the writer who suffers.

However, hooking up with the right agent — instead of just any agent — and with the right editor — ditto — can make a book shine, and this is as true whether we’re talking about work intended for the rarified palate of the literary fiction reader or the meat-and-potatoes tastes of the mainstream reader or the exotic taste buds of the SF/Fantasy reader. An agent who does not understand a book can rarely sell it, no matter how marketable the concept is, and an editor who really wants a different kind of book than you want to write will push you toward a compromise volume that satisfies neither.

This is why I am so adamant that knowing merely the general genre preferences of an agent or editor is not enough: the prudent writer needs to learn what SPECIFIC kinds of prose appeal to them — and, in an industry as subject to fashion as publishing, what KINDS of prose appeal to them right now, as opposed to a decade ago. To that end, I have been passing along information about individual sales for the various agents. And now, insofar as I am able, I am going to share information about individual acquisitions that the editors have made recently, so you may judge for yourself who of these people is the right fit for you.

As usual, bear in mind that I have gleaned this information from the standard industry databases and resources, which are not always completely accurate or up-to-date. I am not making recommendations here, merely passing along data. And, also as usual, I’m going to start with what the editors say about themselves, if they have posted blurbs.

Alphabetically, the first editor scheduled to appear at PNWA is Colin Fox of Warner. Here’s what he has to say for himself, in the post elsewhere on this fine website:

“Colin Fox (Editor) has worked at Warner Books for nearly six years, editing both fiction and nonfiction. His list of novelists includes such folks as the Pacific Northwest’s very own Robert Dugoni, along with David Baldacci, Brian Haig and Donald E. Westlake. On the nonfiction side, Colin has edited Billy Crystal, Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson, Henry Louis Gates, the family of Terri Schiavo, comedian David Cross and country star Gretchen Wilson. His primary areas of interest include commercial fiction, politics, current events, gambling, narrative nonfiction, pop culture, sports, business and humor.”

Hmm. He works with some pretty heavy hitters, but he’s trying not to be intimidating (“such folks” is a nice down-to-earth touch). I’m not sure that the NF list tells us much about how he would work with a writer new to the biz, as presumably “such folks” were pretty well-established as celebrities before he worked with them. Also, current event books are almost invariably written by well-established journalists, pundits, or political players, another kind of celebrity.

Let’s take a gander at what he’s acquired in the last three years, to see what he’s looking for in non-celebrity books, as well as what flavors of commercial fiction he favors:

Fiction: “Co-author of THE CYANIDE CANARY Robert Dugoni’s debut legal thriller A MATTER OF JUSTICE, billed as ‘in the tradition of Scott Turow and Brad Meltzer.'” (Acquired 2005, in a 2-book deal; if this deal sounds familiar, it was because it also appeared on the sale list of agent Meg Ruley.); Donald Westlake’s next three books (acquired 2003).

NF: Politics/Current Events: “Parents of Terri Schiavo Mary Schindler and Robert Schindler and siblings Suzanne Schindler Vitadamo and Bobby Schindler’s untitled memoir, promising to ‘share their love and sorrow, joy and pain, and some shocking revelations as they honor Terri’s life, mourn her death, and finally tell the whole story.'” (Acquired 2005 by Jamie Raab at Warner, but Colin Fox was the actual editor.)

NF: Gambling: THE PROFESSOR, THE BANKER AND THE SUICIDE KING author Michael Craig’s THE FULL TILT POKER STRATEGY GUIDE: Tournament Edition, “a comprehensive tournament strategy guide, featuring tips from the site’s high-profile pros (including Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, Erik Seidel, Andy Bloch, Mike Matusow, and Ted Forrest) on all of the varieties of tournament poker.” (Acquired 2006, for buckets of money, as I suppose is appropriate for a gambling book.); Card Player magazine columnist Matt Lessinger’s THE BOOK OF BLUFFS: 66 Poker Bluffs and Why They Worked, “a detailed look at the fine art of bluffing your opponents out of monster pots.” (Acquired 2004)

NF: Sports: Head writer of The Huddle.com David Dorey’s FANTASY FOOTBALL: THE NEXT LEVEL, “going beyond the stats and projections to offer the underlying tools, principles, and strategies for creating an optimal fantasy team year in and year out.” (Acquired 2006: please note that this book was sold to him by an agent who is scheduled to come to the conference, Byrd Leavell.)

NF: Humor: “Star of Fox’s Arrested Development and HBO’s Mr. Show David Cross’s first book, a collection of essays and stories.” (Acquired 2005); Comedian Billy Crystal’s 700 SUNDAYS, “based on his Broadway play of the same name, a poignant and personal portrayal of his youth.” (Acquired 2005, again by Jamie Raab, but Colin Fox was the actual editor.)

NF: Religion/Spirituality (which, please note, was not on his general interest list): LA Times Rome bureau chief Tracy Wilkinson’s “untitled book about the chief exorcist for the Diocese of Rome, Father Gabriele Amorth, and the new generation of exorcists who are following him, along with tracing the history of exorcism from its roots in the early days of Christianity to its current revival.” (Acquired 2005)

NF: Memoir (which, please note, was not on his general interest list): Country music singer Gretchen Wilson’s GRETCHEN WILSON: I’ll Tell You What a Redneck Woman Is, co-written by Allen Rucker, “telling her rags to riches story and offering a roadmap to living the fun, independent and empowering life of a Redneck Woman.” (Acquired May, 2006 — for publication this coming November! Lightning speed that makes the 1-year sprint to get the Schiavo book out for the first anniversary of her death look like a casual mosey…)

Don’t be surprised that this list is not longer — editors, even at major houses, simply do not acquire very many books in any given year. Thus the tough market. However, since Mr. Fox is listed on several sales here as the editor, with someone else doing the actual acquisition, it is possible that I’ve missed some books. However, I couldn’t find any narrative NF or business books at all, and his main sports seem to be couch- or chair-based.

Also, don’t be too put off by the fact that most of these books are written either by celebrities or people with tremendous, already-visible-at-the-time-of-acquisition platforms. Two of these books — the fantasy football book and Robert Dugoni’s thriller — were sold by agents coming to this summer’s conference, Byrd Leavell and Meg Ruley, respectively. Which opens up the very real possibility of a backstage-at-the-conference deal (which happens more than you might think). If Mr. Fox hears a pitch in an appointment that he really likes, he might well give one of these agents a heads-up about the author and the project.

Which, in case you don’t know, is usually what editors at the major houses do anyway, when they find a project at a conference; in Mr. Fox’s case, we simply have a better idea of which agents he might pick. Given Warner’s list in general and Mr. Fox’s list in particular, I would be astonished if he directly acquired any book at any conference, rather than referring a book he liked to an agent.

Why? Most of the major publishing houses have firm policies against acquiring unagented books, although some editors have been known to find ways around such rules. For this reason, you are far, far more likely to have your work picked up by an editor from a small press at any literary conference than an editor from a large one.

And yet there are a couple of very good reasons that you might want to try to get an appointment with an editor like Mr. Fox from a major house. First, as I said, if he falls in love with your project, he may well help you find an agent to sell it to him. Books discovered at conferences have in the past been sold in this way, over drinks while the conference festivities are still roaring away. You might get lucky.

Second, and infinitely more likely, you may well end up working with one of these editors one day, and it is a real advantage if, when your agent is drawing up a list of editors to whom to send your book, you can say, “Oh, I know her — we met at the PNWA conference two years ago.” This has happened twice to me in the last two years, in fact, and in both cases, the fact that they could put a face with the name proved helpful. Also, having spoken with these editors in the past, I had some idea of what they might be like if we did indeed work together.

This leads me to a piece of advice I have literally never seen in another other forum devoted to writers: think of your conference meetings as a chance to impress agents and editors with your personality, as well as your work. Or at least. as a time when it is extremely important not to make a bad impression. Negative first impressions, I have found, linger FAR longer than positive ones, and you certainly don’t want to be the writer who is remembered for having lost her temper and thrown a glass of water at someone in a group meeting. Be as charming as you can without being smarmy.

If you meet an editor from a major house at the conference who strikes you as someone you might want to work with down the road (as in, after you land an agent), go ahead and send her an effusive thank-you note after the conference. Couldn’t hurt, and such graciousness is so uncommon that the editor may well remember your name later on, when your agent slides your manuscript across her desk.

And, as always, remember that you want to walk out of the conference with as many invitations to send your first chapter or proposal as you possibly can. It’s usually easier to finagle an extra editorial meeting than an extra agent one, so keep checking in with the appointment table at the conference; since the editorial meetings are done in groups, there is often a spare chair to be had at the last minute. Yes, that editor from the major house with the agented-work-only policy probably won’t pick up your book, but there’s always the off chance that he’ll refer to you a terrific agent. Not to mention being a great opportunity to practice your pitch, and hear what other people are writing.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

PS: Jot it on your calendar now: on June 24th, I am going to be leading a seminar for PNWA members on how to polish your pitches before the conference. Details follow.

Hello, readers —

Finally, here is the last installment of my series on the agents scheduled to attend this year’s PNWA conference! If you are joining us late, and are interested in seeing my take on who represents what and why among the scheduled attendees, feel free to check out these posts in the archives on this site: the series has run from April 26 to today, May 17. Phew!

The final agent on our list is Joe Veltre of Artists Literary Group, and I have to say, apart from not having posted a blurb about himself on the PNWA website (and the fact that the name of his agency really ought to have an apostrophe in it, because the first word is possessive), he seems at first glance to be the kind of agent I like to see at conferences. He has broad interests, and a solid track record of taking chances on previously unpublished writers. He has a strong sales record — how strong, you ask? Well, he was able to start his own agency a couple of years ago. (If you are interested in the hows and whys of his setting up Artists Literary, here is are links to articles about him and it.) His sales are from across the publishing industry (rather than concentrating on just a few houses, as some agents do), and he has a history of taking positive steps to help aspiring writers. He has even written a series of articles for RomanceTimes.com, intended to enlighten those who would enter the industry.

Since he didn’t post a blurb on the PNWA’s website, I lifted one from elsewhere. Here’s what it says about him on Publishers Marketplace — or at least part of it; I weeded out the information that is primarily about the agency, was not relevant for our purposes, or could apply to any agency in the biz. The guy’s gotten around:

“Joe Veltre is the founder of Artists Literary Group… Veltre began his career at St. Martin’s Press, where he was a Senior Editor, overseeing several imprints, including the Dead Letter/Minotaur Mass Market Mystery program. At St. Martin’s, he acquired books across a wide range of genres, including literary and commercial fiction, thrillers, mysteries, narrative non-fiction, sports books, and pop culture. He then worked as a Senior Editor at HarperCollins, where he acquired and edited high quality non-fiction, working with business writers, journalists, and academics. From there, he went to Miramax, serving dual roles as Director of Development for Miramax Films and Editor-at-Large for Miramax Books. Immediately prior to founding ALG, Veltre served as a Literary Agent and the Foreign and Film Rights Director for Carlisle & Company, a boutique literary agency in New York. There he worked with a wide range of commercial and literary authors, built strong relationships with publishers overseas, and film and television producers, studios, and agents. Veltre’s depth of experience working with major publishers and film companies is the perfect combination for working with authors as their literary agent.

“As the head of ALG, Joe regularly speaks at conferences around the country on topics vital to both aspiring and experienced authors. He is constantly looking for new authors, focusing on a wide range of subjects, including: commercial fiction & non-fiction, literary fiction, thrillers, women’s fiction, mysteries, narrative & political non-fiction, academic and historical non-fiction, romance, suspense, business & how-to non-fiction, and young adult books. He works closely with artists on their literary needs, including: academics, historians, journalists, novelists, filmmakers, sports figures, photographers, doctors, interior designers, TV personalities, business consultants, and military personnel.

“Veltre graduated from Emory University and also attended the University of Alabama’s Graduate English Program, where he taught literature and writing.”

Okay, here’s a quiz to see who has been paying attention all along: who out there recognizes the code term in the last paragraph? And what does it mean? Hint: remember a month or so ago, when I was talking about author bios?

Pencils down, everybody: the code term is “attended,” as opposed to “graduated from.” Mr. Veltre is, I gather, a grad school dropout, which is actually QUITE common in the publishing industry. Especially amongst editors, who are often former English grad students who did not finish their dissertations — thus the nicknames ABD (all but dissertation) and professor manqué. (It is also quite customary for people who DID complete all of the requirements for a Ph.D., such as yours truly, to twit such people about it.) I don’t know at what point our friend Mr. V. left his program, though, or why.

I bring this up, however, not for twitting reasons, but because Mr. Veltre mentions in his blurb working with academics, which is rather unusual for an ABD; it is far more common for those who have fled academia screaming to be more than a touch hostile to your garden variety Ph.D. holder. For this reason, if you are an academic or writing for the academic market, I would recommend sounding him out a little before you pitch. You might, for instance, want to stand up and ask him a few pointed questions during the agents’ forum. If he is indeed someone savvy about academia who LIKES to work with academics, leap over people, if you have to, to give him your pitch. However, before you go to the trouble, let’s go through his recent sales to see if he is still working with academics on a regular basis.

Since Mr. Veltre lists SO many interests, a savvy writer’s first instinct should be to double-check that he sells consistently in all of those areas — that’s a pretty hefty array of contacts to maintain for someone who occasionally likes to pause in his networking long enough to sleep and eat. So here’s what I found for the last three years, broken down by category, in more or less the order he’s listed them himself. As usual, do bear in mind that the standard industry databases are not invariably infallible, and the dates listed are for the initial sale to the publishing house, not date of publication. Please note, too, that Mr. Veltre’s sojourn with Carlisle & Company ended in mid-2004 (mysteriously, he also lists a sale with Inkwell Management in that year), so sales prior to mid-2004 may reflect those agencies’ policies and preferences, rather than his own.

Fiction: PUG HILL author Alison Pace’s THROUGH THICK AND THIN, “about two estranged sisters — one a single, Manhattan workaholic, the other a newly suburban stay-at-home mom — brought back together as they embark on a mutual weight-loss quest that will either finally break them or bond them forever.” (Berkley, sold 2006); LITTLE and THE HIAWATHA author David Treuer’s THE TRANSLATION OF DR. APELLES, “in which a lonely translator discovers a manuscript written in a ‘dead’ language that only he understands and unravels a story leading to his own first true love.” (Graywolf, sold 2005); U Va. Poe/Faulkner fellow and NYT journalist Taylor Antrim’s debut THE HEADMASTER RITUAL, “focusing on the political machinations inside a prestigious prep school as experienced by a first-year history teacher.” (Houghton Mifflin, sold 2005); Robyn Harding’s first novel THE JOURNAL OF MORTIFYING MOMENTS, “about a young woman living two lives–independent and successful in her advertising career, an insecure wreck with her boyfriend–who writes down her worst moments with men over the years to see where she is going wrong, with those ‘moments’ serving as a structure for the book, as she strives to reconcile the two sides of her persona.”(Ballantine, in a 2-book deal, sold 2003; just once, wouldn’t you like to see a female protagonist who is good at BOTH her job and her relationships, or perhaps bad at her job and good at her relationships? Just for variety.)

Fiction: Thriller: Crown editor Jason Pinter’s debut THE MARK, “about a young reporter who becomes a fugitive after being accused of killing a cop, and who must team with a headstrong female law student to uncover a story that could shatter a city.” (Mira, in a three-book deal, sold 2006); Nick Stone’s MR. CLARINET, “set predominantly in the voodoo landscape of Haiti, an ex-cop turned P.I. travels to investigate the strange disappearance of a wealthy family’s missing son.” (William Morrow in the US, Penguin in the UK, for an amount of money I have heard nebulously described as hefty, sold 2005); Sarah Langan’s first novel, THE KEEPER, “in the vein of CARRIE, about two sisters – one who wreaks vengeance upon the small town that wronged her and the other sister who must find a way to stop her.” (William Morrow, at auction, sold 2005)

Fiction: Women’s/Romance (again, the official databases lump both categories together): “21-year-old former fashion model Amanda Kerlin’s SECRETS OF THE MODEL DORM, a year in the life of a young, aspiring model living in a small apartment rented by a modeling agency exclusively to its new clients, as she navigates close quarters among competitive strangers, fueled by alcohol, drugs and obsessive dieting habits.” (Atria, sold 2006; imagine being a former anything at 21.); Jennifer van der Kwast’s first novel POUNDING THE PAVEMENT, “in which a smart, cynical young woman fights to survive in the New York film world, as she looks for work and love, while trying to stay one step ahead of her wicked boss.” (Broadway, at auction, sold 2004, when Mr. Veltre was still at Carlisle and Co.); Grad student Lauren Willig’s THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE PINK CARNATION, “in which a young American grad student travels to London to research the famous Napoleonic spy the Scarlet Pimpernel, where she finds an even more alluring historical story…. and a ‘hero’ of her own.” (Dutton, in a 2-book deal, in 2004, while in the employ of Carlisle & Co.; one wonders if the reason she sours on the Scarlet Pimpernel is that she discovered in her research that he was a fictional character, not a real person — and that he was NOT a Napoleonic spy, but rather an English aristocrat, and thus on the OPPOSITE side from Napoleon, as well as being active years PRIOR to Napoleon’s coming to power, rather than during his reign. The protagonist couldn’t have been a very GOOD grad student without having discovered THIS much while still on THIS side of the pond, no?)

Fiction: Suspense: Journalist Bob Morris’ BAHAMARAMA, “about a guy who just left prison after serving two years on trumped on charges and wants to see his girlfriend, currently overseeing a magazine fashion shoot in the Bahamas, but he arrives to find her kidnapped and has to try and rescue her.” (Minotaur/St. Martin’s, in a three-book deal, sold 2003; he probably means “trumped-up.”)

Fiction: SF/Fantasy (which, please note, was not one of his listed areas of interest): Talia Gryphon’s SHADOW THERAPY, “the first of a series about a paranormal psychologist and sexy blonde, who is drawn into the case of a ‘Fangxiety’ ridden vampire who hopes to save his soul through therapy and, of course, her body.” (Ace, in a three-book deal, sold 2005)

Fiction: I have no idea how to categorize it (Chick lit? Paranormal romance?): Valerie Stivers’ debut BLOOD IS THE NEW BLACK, “about a young woman at a glossy fashion magazine who discovers that the reigning tastemakers have a thirst for blood, pitched as THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA & MEAN GIRLS meets BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER.” (Three Rivers Press, at auction, sold 2006)

NF: Narrative: Journalist Shana Alexander’s VERY MUCH A LADY, “looking at the dark truth behind the killing of Scarsdale Diet Doctor Herman Tarnower, the high drama of a sensational trial, and the fate of Jean Harris, a complex woman doomed by love and her own desire.” (Pocket, sold 2004)

NF: Political: Jennifer Abrahamson’s SWEET RELIEF, “about Marla Ruzicka, the 28-year-old American relief worker and founder of CIVIC (Campaign for Innocent Victims of Conflict) killed in Iraq by a suicide bomber in April — after having collaborated on the first part of the manuscript.” (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, following the sale of the film rights to Paramount, sold 2005; this is technically listed as a biography.)

NF: Business: Consultant and seminar leader Andy Wibbels’ EASY BAKE BLOGS, “a ‘business blogging cookbook’ on how to leverage blogs to build and market your business.” (Portfolio, sold 2005); NY Jets head coach Herman Edwards with Shelly Smith’s YOU PLAY TO WIN THE GAME, “the life lessons he lives by and uses to motivate others throughout his successful career.” (McGraw-Hill, sold 2004, with Inkwell Management)

NF: General: Ted Steinberg’s AMERICAN GREEN: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn, “a historical and muckraking look at the lawn industry, a billion dollar subculture, including the disastrous environmental effects and the humorous lengths to which people will go to have the perfect lawn.” (Norton, sold 2005)

NF: Pop Culture (which, please note, was not one of his listed areas of interest): British photographer Alison Jackson’s DOUBLE TAKE, “an Americanized version of her successful UK book presenting satiric photographs of dead ringer look alikes of public figures in odd, compromising, and humorous scenarios, including look-alikes of President Bush, Colin Powell, Martha Stewart, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, and Michael Jackson.” (Crown, sold 2004 when Mr. Veltre was still at Carlisle and Co.); Julia Bourland’s TWIGS: The Go Girl’s Guide to Nesting, “a lively guide for smart, young women on decorating their first homes or ‘nests,’ be it a studio apartment or suburban home, featuring tips on making your ‘nest’ both a spiritual dwelling and an enjoyable place to entertain.” (Perigee, sold 2004, when Mr. Veltre was still at Carlisle and Co.; whew — aren’t you glad they went to the trouble of defining ‘nest’for us? We might NEVER have figured it out.)

NF: Memoir (which, please note, was not one of his listed areas of interest): Veteran producer Ed Feldman with Tom Barton’s TELL ME HOW YOU LOVE THE PICTURE: A Hollywood Life, “a revealing and humorous memoir by a producer who has worked with everyone from Elizabeth Taylor to Harrison Ford and Glenn Close, on such films as ‘Save the Tiger,’ ‘Witness,’ and ‘The Jungle Book,’ ‘The Truman Show.'” (St. Martin’s, sold 2005); Blogger and photographer Stephanie Klein’s STRAIGHT UP AND DIRTY: The Life of a Young New York Divorcee, “a humorous tell-all tracing the author’s return to single life as a “firm, fashionable, and let’s face it — fetching” twenty-something, plus a memoir based on the author’s childhood experience at Fat Camp.” (Regan Books, for scads of money, sold 2005); Matthew Polly’s AMERICAN SHAOLIN, “a memoir from the first American — a 90 pound weakling at that — to study kung fu with monks at the original Shaolin temple in China, in a two-year martial arts odyssey that includes grueling days of training, a forbidden romance with a local woman, and ultimately a challenge match against a rival kung fu master with the Temple’s honor at stake.” (Gotham, sold 2005); T.J. Waters’s CLASS 11: Inside the Largest Spy Class in CIA History, “about how he was moved to action by 9/11, leaving the business world to join the CIA, becoming the eldest member of one of the Agency’s most diverse training programs at 37 (joining a pro athlete, a 9/11 widow, a chef, a single mom, and Navy Seals, among other trainees), providing an insider’s look at what it takes to become an elite agent in the revamped CIA.” (Dutton, at auction, sold 2005); First Gulf War veteran Buzz Williams’ memoir SPARE PARTS, “following his 28-day transition from a student on a college campus to a warrior in Kuwait, providing an inside look into the preparations and experiences of the hundreds of thousands of reservists who fought in the conflict-and who increasingly represent a core part of our military force strategy.” (Gotham, sold 2003); Journalist Malcolm MacPherson’s ROBERTS RIDGE, “the true story of US Navy SEALs who, seeking to bring home a wounded soldier, get caught in a ferocious battle with Qaeda forces trying to hold their position atop an Afghanistan mountain, told through the perspective of three young warriors, of whom only one survives.” (Bantam Dell, sold 2003; I believe he means al Qaeda and Afghani.)

YA: Brian Tacang (writing as Simon P. Binaohan), BULLY BE GONE: The Misadventures of Millicent Madding, the first in a series “about a young inventor who belongs to the Wunderkind – her school’s most ‘talented’ kids — who look to Millicent’s latest invention for help defending themselves against bullies, which leads to an even bigger disaster which only Millicent can mend.” (HarperCollins Children’s, sold 2003)

No, I cannot tell you why Mr. Veltre (or whoever inputs his sales into the standard industry databases for him) is so fond of putting things in quotation marks that are not in fact quotes. However, I’m inclined to forgive him — did you happen to notice how many first-time authors there were on this list? I may greet this guy at the airport with a fruit basket, on general principle… note, too, the number of vampire titles, those of you who write about bloodsucking creeps.

I do have some reservations, though, based on this list. In answer to our earlier question, I could not find any academic sales at all for the last three years — which, once again, reminds us that it is ALWAYS a good idea to check any agent’s stated representation categories against his recent sales. Nor could I turn up any historical NF, literary fiction, or mysteries. The only How-to book I found under his name was sold in 2001, and the only YA book I found was not particularly recent.

This does not mean that you should not pitch works in these categories to Mr. Veltre, of course — but you might want to do it in the hallway or after the agents’ forum, rather than expending your precious single agent appointment on someone who may or may not be interested in your area. Since he did not provide the PNWA with a blurb, it is probably best to err on the side of caution.

As I have said before, when in doubt, go to the agents’ forum and listen carefully. If you like what you hear from Mr. Veltre, introduce yourself and ask if you can pitch to him. In the past, the agents who did not post blurbs tended not to have all of their appointments filled, so it is always worth checking with the appointment desk about an agent who wows you at the forum.

What do I make of the fact that after so many successful memoir sales, Mr. Veltre is no longer listing memoir as an interest? Simple: it’s the worst period in my lifetime to be trying to sell a memoir, for a million little reasons. If I were looking to find an agent for a memoir at the moment, I would seriously consider sticking the book in a drawer for a year, until the publishing industry has stopped panicking about a few isolated incidents of fraud. If you do want to go ahead with a memoir now, be prepared for questions about whether you have signed releases from every living person you mention.

Oh, and speaking of embattled memoirs, in case you’ve been curious: to the best of my knowledge, my memoir (A FAMILY DARKLY: LOVE, LOSS, AND THE FINAL PASSIONS OF PHILIP K. DICK) was NOT released last week, contrary to Amazon’s assertions. That fine emporium’s website is now saying that the book will ship in 1 to 3 months — let’s hope that they’re right about that. My publisher has not yet given me a specific release date, for a whole slew of very complex and very boring legal reasons. (If you want to learn about the memoir’s blood-curdling saga on its road to publication, please see my posts of March 20 and April 18.) I shall keep you updated, though.

Tomorrow, on to the editors! Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

Only three agents left in my ongoing series on agents scheduled to attend the upcoming PNWA conference, to help you make your meeting choices. Kudos to our good webmaster Andrew, who has now made it possible for those of you who have not been following the whole series for the past few weeks to check them out in the archives. Thanks, Andrew!

Today, I’m stepping out of alphabetical order a little, because two of the three remaining agents are very, very difficult to track down. The third was gloriously easy — sales pouring out of the standard databases as though I’d just stuck a nickel in the right slot machine — and hey, I’m only human. As a reward, #3 gets a blog all to himself.

Perhaps it isn’t fair to lump the other two together — one has a blurb posted on the PNWA website, and one does not; one has a listing in the standard agency guides, and the other does not. What they do seem to have in common is not posting their sales on the standard industry databases; neither apparently has a website. So really, I have had to rely almost exclusively upon their own promotional statements (where they exist) and a whole lot of web surfing to find out anything about them. Which, as you may have noticed, does not put me in the best of moods.

Speaking of which: I notice that there are a few more agent blurbs now up on the PNWA’s website, including more pictures, as well as blurbs for Farley Chase and Byrd Leavell. Check them out, if only so you can recognize them by sight at the conference.

The first agent for today, and the one who took the time to post a blurb on the site, is Ann Tobias of A Literary Agency for Children’s Books (how, oh HOW do they come up with these names?). Here’s that blurb:

“Ann Tobias (Agent) is both a children’s book editor and literary agent. She heads A Literary Agency for Children’s Books, which was established in 1988 in Washington, D.C., and is now located in New York City. As an agent, she represents authors and artists of books for children of all ages –from infancy through adolescence — picture books, mid level novels, young adult fiction, and selected nonfiction and poetry.

“Ann is also the Executive Editor of Handprint Books, a start-up children’s book publishing company in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Handprint Books specializes in picture books but has begun adding novels for the mid-level reader to its list as well.”

As I said, I wasn’t able to pull up any sales for her or her agency on the standard industry databases, and in doing some research, I found out why: she is listed in the standard agency guides as preferring not to share information about specific sales. Hmm. Makes it a trifle hard for prospective clients to figure out what she likes to represent, doesn’t it?

(Since I have been going on regular diatribes for several weeks now about how much more useful SPECIFIC preference information is than general category information, I will spare you the repetition of it here. Suffice it to say that EVERY marketing category contains a broad range of possible books.)

So: if you write for the children’s or YA markets, I would suggest that you try to pitch to Ms. Tobias at the conference. I wish I could narrow it down more than that, but without either a stronger indication from the lady herself or a list of recent sales, I’m afraid I cannot.

Sorry.

Let me share what I was able to find out. She does seem to sell pretty consistently in her chosen field: 12 last year and 23 in 2002, and with her editorial connections, that makes abundant sense: Ms. Tobias used to be a children’s editor for Harper & Row (THAT’S how long ago it was!) and Scholastic. She has also freelance-edited for William Morrow and Dial. The good editorial connections cut both ways, however: she has said in past agency guides that she obtains most of her clients through recommendations from editors.

She has also apparently submitted the same piece of advice to The Guide to Literary Agents for years on end, advice so unusual that it bears repeating here:

“Read at least 200 children’s books in the age group and genre in which you hope to be published. Follow this by reading another 100 children’s books in other age groups and genres so you will have a feel for the field as a whole.”

It’s probably good advice, although I would suspect that as an expectation, it is a standard that would rule out from authorship any parent who had a child under the age of 6. Even if you read to your kids like a fiend, when would a working parent have time to read that many books?

Her overall point is well-taken, though: it does behoove an author to know her target market. And evidently, Ms. Tobias does commit very heavily to those writers she does sign: I found an interview on the web where she stated that she does submissions to only one editor at a time, rather than a mass submission, and lets each editor have it exclusively for 2 months. (Which, interestingly enough, is the length of time her agency guide listing says to expect as a response time for queries. This is not an agency for impatient souls, I’m guessing.) She also indicates that she does quite a bit of editorial work on her clients’ books before sending them out.

Actually, that web interview was rather interesting; if you are planning to pitch a children’s book at the conference, you might want to check it out.
Two statements she made there struck me as yielding useful information about how to pitch to her:

In response to a question about what impresses her in a new manuscript: “Everything else –plot, characterization, setting, pacing, language — emanates from the theme. So, one of my first questions when I get a manuscript is, ‘What does this author want kids to think about?’ If an author can extend a kid’s thinking without preaching, then I’m interested in that manuscript.”
Later in the interview, she returned to this notion: “I’m talking about writing that does what it sets out to do. If the theme is strong and the writing makes it all work, then that is what I’m looking for.”

I find these very telling statements, even though they sound general at first blush: good writing alone is not enough for her to pick up a book, nor is a good story, necessarily. I would guess that she prefers a children’s book that has a moral over one that does not. And all of the charming Roald Dahl-ish embellishment in the world may not help win her over to a book without a point.

So if I were planning to pitch to Ms. Tobias, I would practice and practice my pitch until I sounded like the reincarnation of Aesop. The FIRST words out of my mouth at the meeting would be a one-sentence statement of theme, followed by another sentence explaining what a child could learn from the book. THEN I would start to talk about characters and plot.

I would also guess that she has a strong preference for books that read well out loud, based upon another statement in that interview: “I’m looking for writing that is honest, where the author has paid attention to the language and the rhythm. I’m not talking about poetry, but internal rhythm that good prose has. I’m looking for writing that moves me, writing that makes me think, that shows me something funny even.”

Rhythm and surprise are crucial to reading out loud, so it might be a good idea to test-drive your work on some children (public libraries and elementary schools usually LOVE it when authors want to read their work to kids) between now and the conference. That way, you can nonchalantly work in an anecdote during your meeting about how the kids gasped this part of the plot or cheered that character. (It’s not a bad idea in general to see how your target market responds to your work; the prospect of pitching to Ms. Tobias will just give you additional incentive.)

And that is absolutely everything I was able to dig up on her.

Which brings me to our next agent, Alice Volpe of the Northwest Literary Agency. She has not posted a blurb on the PNWA site, so I went looking for information on her. As nearly as I can tell, NW Literary is not listed in any of the standard agency guides, nor does it apparently have a website. It also evidently does not routinely list its sales on the standard industry databases, and its clients are not, I gather, given to boasting about their connection with the agency in interviews.

In short, I’ve known employees of the NSA who were more forthcoming with information. How secret could anything any reputable agency does POSSIBLY be?

And it IS a reputable agency, very much so; that’s the strange thing. I’ve met Alice Volpe at several conferences (where, come to think of it, she had seldom posted blurbs), and I have found her charming, gracious, knowledgeable, and funny. My impression of her is that she is not the type of agent who exaggerates what she can do for a client (as some do, you know): she seems to shoot from the hip, and she represents some quite successful authors. I genuinely like this person.

So it was really, really bugging me that I couldn’t find a blurb for her; I wouldn’t care, if I didn’t think she might be a good agent for some of you out there. Since I remember having heard Ms. Volpe speak before, I went rifling through my notes from past conferences, to see if I had jotted down any preferences she may have expressed in passing back then. As I do not write (and seldom edit) much genre work, my notes on her are sketchy, I’m afraid, apart from this cryptic notation from 2003: “She likes fiction that keeps her awake.”

Sorry. Apparently, she didn’t mention WHAT keeps her from drifting off.

Eventually, I did find blurb she had posted for another conference, one where she was a speaker. To give credit where credit is due, this blurb was borrowed — for a good cause! — from the Write on the River conference, so do think of the fine people who put up that website with kindness:

“Alice Volpe has worked in book publishing for the last 30 years. She began her career ‘on the inside’ of the industry in New York, working at Macmillan, Harcourt Brace, and Time-Life, as well as in Tokyo, Japan for Time Life Books, Kodansha International, Harper, Britannica and Grolier.

“She has held the positions of book publicist, staff writer, editor and publisher, and opened Northwest Literary Agency (Northwestlit@aol.com) in the 1980′s to help bridge the chasm between lone author and remote, corporate publisher. Her clients include J.A. Jance, Carola Dunn, Judith Smith-Levin, J. Carson Black, Lee Lofland, Jeffrey Layton and many others.”

There, that didn’t threaten national security, did it?

If you are a big fan of any of the writers listed above, but would like more information before you commit to ranking Ms. Volpe high on your meeting choice list, I have a humble suggestion. As you may have noticed, Ms. Volpe as listed an e-mail address in the blurb above. An enterprising writer COULD conceivably use that address to ask for a list of what the agency is looking for in a book at the moment. Heck, you could invite her to chat over coffee at the conference.

If, like most writers, you are too shy (or fearful of offending someone who might be interested down the line in representing you) to do any such thing, I can only repeat some advice that I gave earlier in the series: go to the agents’ forum on the first full day of the conference and listen very, very carefully to what Ms. Volpe says she wants pitched to her. And if you answer her description, dash on up to the dais after the forum is over (or speak to her after she gives a class, if she gives one), and ask if you can give her your elevator speech (which is the 30-second version of your pitch; don’t worry, I’ll write about it before conference time).

I know that this may seem rude to some of you, inconsiderate of other writers at the conference, or just plain pushy. I’m not going to lie to you — if you accost an agent outside of your scheduled meeting time, other writers will probably glare at you, and if you do it too far into the conference, the agent may be too tired to hear your pitch. Naturally, you should observe some basic rules of etiquette, such as not cornering an agent in the bathroom (I’ve seen it happen) and allowing them to eat their dinners unmolested.

However, if you are serious about using the PNWA conference — or any literary conference, for that matter — in order to find yourself an agent, being too polite may cost you vital opportunities. You really do want to walk out of the conference with permission to send SEVERAL agents your work, not just one. Hanging all of your hopes upon your single agent appointment elevates it emotionally from a nice conversation at a conference to the most mind-bogglingly stressful fifteen minutes of your life.

The moral (to make Ms. Tobias happy): do you really want to put all of your eggs in one basket?

It is perfectly acceptable to introduce yourself to someone standing in a hallway at a conference, even if that someone happens to be an agent. Even if that somebody happens to be the agent of your dreams, the one whose approval would make you faint dead away. Again, be polite, and try not to catch somebody who is obviously dashing into a meeting or the bathroom, but do not be afraid to introduce yourself. The agents really are at the conference in order to meet writers.

In my opinion, it is even more important to take advantage of this kind of hallway pitching opportunity with agents who make it hard to find out about them through the standard impersonal means. An agent who has neither a blurb nor a website should expect to be mobbed after the agents’ forum, I think, because until that agent expresses a firm opinion (in SOME forum, somewhere) about what kind of book she would like to represent, it is simply not reasonable to expect conference attendees to guess. It’s my considered opinion that many of the agents and editors who reserve expressions of their likes and dislikes for conferences actually enjoy the rush of popularity after they have finally vouchsafed an opinion.

But hey, ask me again a few weeks from now, when I haven’t just expended a couple of fruitless hours in trying to track down who and what a couple of recalcitrant agents represent. My mood will probably be more generous then.

The last agent tomorrow, then on to the editors! Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

Welcome back to my continuing series on the agents who are scheduled to attend this summer’s PNWA conference. Even if you are not planning to attend (heaven forbid! Had I mentioned that someone from the agency that represents yours truly will be there?)?), I hope that this series is being helpful to you, not in only familiarizing you with some agents you might conceivably want to query, but also in teaching you to look beyond the one-paragraph blurbs in selecting an agent. The more information you have about these people, the more likely you are to connect with the right agent.

One of the trends that I hope has been becoming apparent throughout this series is that blurbs are not infallible indicators of which agent is best for you. Blurbs are, after all, primarily PR for a business. They not always accurate reflections of sales preferences and practices — indeed, as we have seen, sometimes there are significant differences from the actual sales record, and in other instances, the agents change their minds over time about what they want to represent. So gleaning up-to-date information on their preferences is very important.

(And no, I don’t know why more agents don’t realize that it is in their best interests to be as honest, current, and specific about their preferences as possible. It’s one of the eternal mysteries, like the origin of evil and why you can never find your car keys when you’re in a hurry.)

As we get closer to conference time, I am going to write a post or two about how to listen to agents and editors when they speak from the dias, what is and isn’t a useful question to stand up and ask during a forum, and so forth. (And in case you are prone to last-minute jitters, some successful veterans of the querying wars and I are going to be at the conference, available to help you practice your pitch before you walk into your meetings; more news on that later.) The more of you who make good connections with agents and editors at the conference, the better, I say.

The next agent on our alphabetical hit parade is Susan Ann Protter of, you guessed it, the Susan Ann Protter Agency. (How DO they come up with these names?) Here’s her blurb from elsewhere on the PNWA site:

“Susan Ann Protter (Agent), a native New Yorker, has worked in the publishing industry for three decades. After a brief stint as a French teacher, she began her career at Harper & Row (now HarperCollins) as associate director of subsidiary rights. In 1970 she left and became a consultant to Addison-Wesley requiring her to commute weekly to Massachusetts. In the course of these trips she met several authors who were at a loss as to how to proceed with their manuscripts. She advised them that although she had never been an editor she knew many people who were and would be happy to introduce them. And so her literary agency was born.”

Anne interrupting here for a moment. I’m going to alter the next paragraph of her blurb a little, in order to insert publishing houses and dates for the sales she lists here. It will save repetition later on. (Please note that these dates are publication dates, not initial sale dates for the book in question, as most of them were not on the standard deals databases, and sometimes, I was not able to track down the original hardback edition of the book.)

“Over the years she has handled a variety of books including the best sellers GETTING ORGANZIED (Warner, 1991) and THE ORGANIZED EXECUTIVE (Warner, 2001) by Stephanie Winston, THE HOUSE OF GOD BY Samuel Shem (Putnam, 1984) and THE PLANTATION BY George McNeill (Bantam, 1977) as well as the works of mystery writer Lydia Adamson: the Alice Nestleton series beginning with A CAT IN THE MANGER, the Dr. Nightingale series and the new Lucy Wayles series (There are many in these series, mostly published in the 1990s). She is the agent for FURY ON EARTH: The Biography of Wilhelm Reich, WALDHEIM: The Missing Years by Robert Edwin Herzstein (Paragon; 1989) and INSIDE THE MIRAGE: America’s Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia by Thomas W. Lippman (Westview, 2004). She also handles parenting and self-help books such as the classic THE TEENAGE BODY BOOK by Kathy McCoy, PhD and Charles Wibbelsman, MD (updated edition, Perigree, 1992). TWENTY TEACHABLE VIRTUES by Jerry L. Wyckoff and Barbara C. Unell (paperback from Perigree, 1995), THE REAL VIATMIN AND MINERAL BOOK by Shari Lieberman, PhD and Nancy Bruning (Avery 3rd edition, 2003), STOPPING SCOLIOSIS by Nancy Schommer (Doubleday, 1987) and SEW FAST SEW EASY: All You Need to Know When You Learn to Sew by Elissa K. Meyrich (paperback from St. Martin’s/Griffin, 2002). And she presently represents a number of prominent award winning science fiction writers and editors such as Ian R. MacLeod, John G. Cramer, Patrick O’Leary, Rudy Rucker, Kathryn Cramer and David G. Hartwell.

“She is a member of the Association of Authors Representatives where she serves on the program committee. She is also an agent member of the Author’s Guild. Her agency deals with all publishers and maintains an office in Manhattan.”

This is undoubtedly an agent with a long and distinguished sales history, but I added the dates above to make a point: almost every agent will list sales in her blurb, but not all of them list their most recent sales. Sometimes, agents and editors will not update their blurbs for years on end (which may be the case here: Stephanie Winston, Samuel Shem, and Elissa Meyrich each have another book out since the ones listed.) It is always, always worth your while to check out not only the books the agent lists as having sold in the past, but what the agent has been selling in the last few years.

Why? In addition to tracking the agent’s current interests, looking up recent sales will also give you a clearer picture of what the agent’s connections are these days: junior editors come and go at publishing houses very frequently, so being able to sell a book five years ago will not necessarily mean the connections to sell a similar book to the same publishing house now. It is reasonable to expect that someone with a career as long as Ms. Protter’s would have long-standing connections with senior editors and publishers, however.

Here are the sales I was able to turn up for her for the last four years. (As always, bear in mind that not all agents or editors post all of their sales on the standard industry databases, and that those databases are not always 100% accurate.) It’s an interesting list:

Fiction: SF/Fantasy: David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, editors, YEAR’S BEST FANTASY 6, “including fantasy fiction by Neil Gaiman, Garth Nix, Connie Willis, Gene Wolfe, Bruce Sterling and others.” (Tachyon Publications, sold 2006.); Rudy Rucker’s SF novel (Tor, sold 2003; Mr. Rucker’s NF: Science: LIFEBOX: THE SEASHELL AND THE SOUL, Four Walls Eight Windows, sold 2004, was apparently handled by a different agent.)

NF: Politics: “Former Middle East bureau chief for the Washington Post Thomas Lippman’s BEYOND THE MIRAGE: The American Experience in Saudi Arabia, examing the 60-year marriage of convenience between Saudi Arabia and the United States.” (Westview Press, sold 2003)

I couldn’t find any more, but as the standard agents’ guide lists her as representing 40 clients, I assume that she hasn’t been posting her sales regularly. (It does give me pause, however, that there are so many pre-2000 sales listed in her PNWA blurb.) That agents’ guide also told me that she does not represent westerns, romance, children’s, or YA.

But if you write SF or fantasy, she sounds like she would be a good choice. If memory serves, David Hartwell is — or was; as I said, people move around — an editor at Tor, and she has sold at least one book there fairly recently, so I would assume that Ms. Protter has connections there. (A cautionary note to those writing in these genres, however: she has specified in agents’ guides in the past that she is not interested in reping Star Wars or Star Trek™  based work.)

On to the next agent on our list, Rita Rosenkranz of, you guessed it, the Rita Rosenkranz Agency. Here is her blurb from the PNWA site; in the interests of fair presentation, I have added the dates for the titles she lists here:

“A former editor with major New York houses, Rita Rosenkranz (Agent) founded Rita Rosenkranz Literary Agency in 1990. Her adult non-fiction list stretches from the decorative–FLOWERS, WHITE HOUSE STYLE: More Than 125 Arrangements by the Former White House Chief Floral Decorator by Dottie Temple and Stan Finegold (Simon & Schuster, published 2002) to the dark–SAVING BEAUTY FROM THE BEAST: How to Protect Your Daughter from an Unhealthy Relationship by Vicki Crompton and Ellen Zelda Kessner (Little, Brown; Books for a Better Life Award, 2003). Other titles include FORBIDDEN FRUIT: Love Stories from the Underground Railroad by Betty DeRamus (Atria Books, essence.com bestseller, came out in paperback in 2005); OLIVE TREES AND HONEY: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World by Gil Marks (Wiley, 2005 James Beard Award winner); BRANDED CUSTOMER SERVICE by Janelle Barlow and Paul Stewart (Berrett-Koehler, to be published this summer), BUSINESS CLASS: Etiquette Essentials for Success at Work by Jacqueline Whitmore (St. Martin’s Press, published 2005).

“She represents health, history, parenting, music, how-to, popular science, business, biography, popular reference, cooking, spirituality, and general interest titles. Rita works with major publishing houses, as well as regional publishers that handle niche markets. She looks for projects that present familiar subjects freshly or less-known subjects presented commercially.”

Before I move on to Ms. Rosenkranz’s recent sales, allow me to pause and define the all-important concept of freshness for readers new to it. In the publishing world, a fresh concept is NOT an original one, as reason might dictate; a fresh concept is, as Ms. Rosenkranz is honest enough to tell us here, an unusual spin on a well-traveled subject. (The industry jargon for completely original book concepts is, I kid you not, “weird.”)

So if you are pitching a book that you believe to be fresh, here’s a good rule of thumb: find a couple of well-known books (or, even better, movies) in the area, and see if you can create a one-line descriptor of your book playing on that theme. As in: “It’s THE DA VINCI CODE set in China!” or “It’s A MILLION LITTLE PIECES meets Anita Hill!” This is what is known as a Hollywood hook, and it’s a great way to introduce a NF book project in a way that makes it sound fresh AND commercially viable.

On to Ms. Rosenkranz’ recent sales. She has a very strong adult NF list:

NF: History: “Pulitzer finalist and Deems Taylor award winner Betty DeRamus’s FORBIDDEN FRUIT: Loves Stories from the Underground Railroad, a collection of real-life stories about slaves, masters and slaves, and slaves and free blacks, using previously untapped sources including unpublished memoirs, family reunion publications and interviews with elders.” (Atria, sold 2003; she found elders old enough to remember the Underground Railroad in 2003?!?)

NF: Parenting: Lisa Chavis’ SHOULD I MEDICATE MY CHILD, “a guide for parents on how to handle common childhood illnesses and injuries – including specific over-the-counter medications/products and when to contact a medical professional.” (Perigee, sold 2002)

NF: How-to: Dr. Larina Kase and Harrison Monarth’s SPEAK UP!: From Scared Speechless to Spectacular Speaker, “which will help the reader overcome fear of public speaking, and to speak with confidence in all situations.” (McGraw-Hill, sold 2006; this was technically categorized as reference.); Christina Katz’s WRITER MAMA, “showing how moms can launch a successful and productive writing career while taking care of the kids.” (Writer’s Digest Books, sold 2005; also officially categorized as reference.); Wayfinding consultants Jan R. Carpman, Ph.D. and Myron Grant’s DIRECTIONAL SENSE: Learning to Competently Find Your Way Around, “explaining how to read maps, follow signs, ask directions, and recognize landmarks, so that everyone, including the directionally challenged, can find their way from here to there.” (M. Evans, sold 2004; again, categorized as reference.)

NF: Science: Kitty Ferguson’s A SECRET MUSIC, “which traces the legacy of the ancient philosopher and shaman Pythagoras and his followers, explaining how ideas whose origins are shrouded in myth can have had such an enduring impact on human thought and modern science.” (Walker, sold 2005)

NF: Business: Executive etiquette expert Jacqueline Whitmore’s MILLION DOLLAR MANNERS: An executive’s guide to turning contacts into contracts,
“a guide to using courtesy and good manners to stand out from the pack and flourish professionally.” (St. Martin’s, at auction, sold 2004)

NF: Reference: Jeremy Smith’s AMERICAN-BRITISH BRITISH-AMERICAN DICTIONARY, “a comprehensive (and humorous) translation dictionary.” (Carroll & Graf, sold 2005; this is, I suspect, an excellent example of a book that is fresh rather than weird; I believe we’ve all seen similar concepts before.)

NF: Cooking: “Founding editor of Kosher Gourmet magazine as well as chef, rabbi, historian and expert in the field of Jewish cookery Gil Marks’s A TREASURY OF JEWISH VEGETARIAN RECIPES FROM AROUND THE WORLD.” (Wiley, sold 2003); “Chief of communications at the FBI Pat Solley’s LIFE IN A BOWL OF SOUP, a cookbook with 100 recipes from around the world, with a look at the legends, science and history of soup through the ages, inspired by the author’s website www.soupsong.com.” (Three Rivers Press, sold 2003; again, this book could probably safely be described as fresh.)

NF: Spirituality: “Writer, scholar, and Andrew Weil website expert Lynne Bundesen’s WOMAN’S GUIDE TO THE BIBLE.” (Jossey-Bass, sold 2005)

NF: General: “2001 Writer’s Digest National Self-Published Book Award for non-fiction Carolyn Michael’s ENCHANTED COMPANIONS: Stories of Dolls in Our Lives, a collection of men and women’s memories of their dolls, expressed in their own words and accompanied by photos.” (Andrews McMeel, sold 2002)

I didn’t find any health, music, or biography, but I did find several recent sales in categories not on her list:

NF: Gift: Artist Margot Datz’s SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR THE LANDLOCKED MERMAID, “an illustrated gift book offering humor and wisdom.” (Beyond Words, sold 2006)

NF: Sports: Darrin Gee’s ONE SHOT AT A TIME: Seven Principles for Transforming Your Golf Game and Your Life, “a golf instruction book, based on the author’s Seven Principles of Golf, these same principles also serve as the teaching philosophy for his nationally recognized golf school, The Spirit of Golf Academy, based on the Big Island of Hawaii.” (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, sold 2005)

NF: Pop Culture: Mad Magazine contributor Arie Kaplan’s PICTURE STORIES, “a collection of profiles of comic book and graphic novel pioneers, as well as their contemporary counterparts.” (Chicago Review Press, sold 2005)

What are we to make of Ms. Rosenkranz’s selling so many books lately outside of her stated areas of interest? Well, I would guess that she is quite serious about being open to fresh takes on familiar topics (although I think that golf book sounds rather like a lot of other golf books, but hey, I don’t play the game). I seldom suggest pitching to any agent outside her stated areas of interest, but if you have a marketable NF concept with a twist, she might be a good choice for you.

I could not track down a website for Ms. Rosenkranz (nor for Ms. Protter), but I notice from her blurbs in the standard agents’ guides that she “stresses strong editorial development and refinement before submitting to publishers, and brainstorms ideas with authors.” Translation: if you sign with her, expect to spend some serious time incorporating her feedback. As in months. (See my earlier set of advice about making sure you find an agent whose critique style matches yours.)

Another gem of wisdom gleaned from a guide: she reports that she is seeking authors “who are well paired with their subject, either for professional or personal reasons.” Translation: she is going to ask you right away what your platform is. So MAKE SURE you give some thought BEFORE you enter your meeting with her about why you are the best person in the known universe to write this particular book.

In fact, before you even consider pitching your NF book to ANY agent, you should have such a pat answer prepared for the platform question that you automatically blurt it out when anyone refers even remotely to your work. The guy who sits next to you on the bus should hear your platform 27 times between now and the conference. I am serious about this: find your selling points and get them down cold.

Happy Mother’s Day, everybody, and keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

Boy, this is a long series, isn’t it? Of the 19 agents scheduled to attend the PNWA summer conference, we’ve gone through 12. Hurrah! And, after today, we will have gone through 14, so I hope to finish up with the agent round-up sometime next week. That way, you can rush right over to the online registration on this very website and make your choices!

Unless you want to wait until I go through the editors immediately thereafter — and, if I can find enough info on them, the fine folks who are teaching the Sunday seminars. (If any of you have ever taken a class with any of these teachers before, please take a moment e-mail me a review. I’ll be happy to preserve anonymity, if requested.)

The first agent du jour is Maura Kye-Casella of the Denise Marcil Agency. Here is her blurb, lifted from not far from here on the PNWA site:

“Maura Kye-Casella (Agent) has been working at The Denise Marcil Literary Agency, Inc. since 2001. The Denise Marcil Agency was founded by Ms. Marcil in 1977 and represents a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction. Titles range from award-winning crime novels to best-selling women’s fiction to parenting and business titles. With regards to fiction, Maura is looking for submissions in commercial and literary fiction (including chick-lit, thrillers, paranormals, women’s fiction and multicultural novels) and in non-fiction she is actively seeking memoirs, pop culture, adventure, cookbooks and food related writings, lifestyle, humor, parenting and self-help titles.

“Maura’s recent books include LOST IN THE AMAZON (W Publishing) by Stephen & Marlo Carter Kirkpatrick, DARN GOOD ADVICE Babies/Parenting (Barrons) by Jan Faull and ONCE UPON A WEDDING NIGHT (Avon/HarperCollins) by Sophie Jordan.”

To Ms. Kye-Casella’s credit, the titles listed are all quite recent sales: LOST IN THE AMAZON was sold in 2004; Jan Faull published two books in Barron’s Educational Series DARN GOOD ADVICE in 2005, and ONCE UPON A WEDDING NIGHT was published in 2006. In one of the standard agents guides, I found a bit more info on what Ms. Kye-Casella likes: “well-written novels with an edgy voice, quirky characters, and/or unique plots and settings.” (THAT narrows it down, doesn’t it?) “I’m particularly interested in representing books that would appeal to 20- and 30-year-olds.”

Okay, that’s a rather broad brief, but we can work with it.

The agency’s website provides more information about the kind of books they like to represent, a focus specific enough that it bears reproducing here: in fiction, they want to be relevant. They call for “thrillers, suspense novels, and women’s contemporary fiction books that reflect the lives, challenges, loves and family issues facing today’s women — from twenty-something’s (sic) to retirees.” In one of the agents’ guides, they add that they are especially looking for “Latina and African-American fiction and chick lit.” They are explicit that they do not represent SF or children’s books.

In NF, the agency’s website is also very pointed: they want to help people, so I would consider working that angle into a pitch. “We are currently seeking self-help and popular reference books, including parenting, business, spirituality, and biographies. We are looking for authors with national platforms such as national seminars, columns, television and radio shows.” They specifically state that they do not represent political NF (and in one of the guides, they say that they also do not represent science books, although they have in the past).

Did something in that list make a light bulb suddenly appear above your head? ALWAYS pay attention when an agent mentions platform: it means that you should be very, very sure that your pitch includes a strong statement about why you are the best person in the history of the world to write this particular book.

It is worth noting that in both fiction and NF, Ms. Kye-Casella’s stated tastes are considerably broader than those of the agency. That is not usually a problem — individual agents often have connections that the agency’s principals do not — but do bear in mind that agencies, like publishing houses, do gain reputations for bringing certain types of books to editors. As a result, it may well be harder for an agent to sell her first book in an area new to the agency than her second.

I’m just saying.

Let’s take a gander at what Ms. Kye-Casella has sold recently, to see if this theory bears out. The usual disclaimers about the thoroughness of the standard industry databases aside, something struck me as I was pulling up these titles: Ms. Kye-Casella’s e-mail address was listed as the contact on most of Ms. Marcil’s recent sales, so it was a trifle difficult to tell what she had been helping sell and what she had sold on her own. (She also might just have been the person who posted the sales on that particular database; it looked as though the agency actually might not report all of their sales to the primary industry sources.) Her name appeared in all of the following listings:

NF: Memoir: Wildlife photographer Stephen Kirkpatrick and Marlo Kirkpatrick’s LOST: A Photographer’s Daring Expedition into the Amazon Jungles and His Dramatic Battle for Survival, “recounting the true-life account of Stephen’s five-man expedition. Lost for twelve harrowing days in the remote jungles of the Peruvian Amazon, battling poisonous reptiles, torrential rains, hunger, brutal heat and an unforgiving landscape in a desperate attempt to find their way back to civilization.” (W Publishing Group, sold 2004)

NF: Parenting: Authors of THE BABY BOOK, Dr. William Sears and Martha Sears, and their sons, Dr. Jim Sears and Dr. Bob Sears’ THE BABY SLEEP BOOK, “promoting a new method of getting babies to sleep, matching the solution to the individual baby.” (Little, Brown, $$$,$$$, sold 2003); “Dr. William Sears’s weight and fitness guide to help parents fight the children’s obesity epidemic.” (NAL, $$$,$$$, sold 2002)

NF: Science: Dr. Gail Browning’s EMERGENETICS, “outlining her unique brain profiling program, which analyzes both the thinking styles and behavior of the individual based on her original studies and the latest scientific information about the brain.” (Harper, sold 2003)

NF: Business: “Former Chief People Officer of PepsiCo Worldwide Michael Feiner’s THE FEINER POINTS OF LEADERSHIP, outlining his leadership laws for managing relationships with subordinates, bosses and peers.” (Warner Business, sold 2002)

Fiction: Thriller: Peter Spiegelman’s BLACK MAPS, “in which continuing character P.I. John March seeks a truly evil, blackmailing Wall Street banker and the truth about a 20-year-old money-laundering scheme.” (Knopf, in a $$$,$$$ two-book deal, sold 2002)

What are we to make of this list, especially the fact that much of it is not very recent, and that it’s a trifle odd that an agency that lists itself as 50-50 fiction and NF would post so few fiction sales? Well, I think we must conclude that the Marcil Agency is a trifle lax about reporting its deals to the industry’s standard tracking clearinghouses. Which means that, even after scouring the databases and the usual agents’ guides, I can’t tell you too much more.

I’m sure that this agency IS selling books, though, including quite a bit of fiction. If you want to do more research on Ms. Kye-Casella, I would urge you to check out the agency’s website, listed above. (See why I think it is SO important for them to have websites? Generally speaking, I prefer to judge an agency — or indeed, any institution — by its actions, rather than just what it says about itself, but at minimum, in order to make distinctions between agencies, we writers need at least to be able to compare their PR.)

Try not to hold the difficulty in obtaining information too much against this agency, which is a fine one, I’m told. Given the literally millions of aspiring writers out there, there are surprisingly few who do in-depth research on the agents they query; as you may have yourself noticed, providing writers with specific information about their internal workings and desires is not exactly industry standard practice. It is indeed hard to get this information, across the board.

Which would bug me substantially less if agents and editors didn’t tend to walk into conferences and open their mail assuming that everyone who approaches them is familiar with their work. I kid you not, in the Herman guide, the Denise Marcil Agency’s listing actually includes the sentence, “Do your homework to assure that I represent your type of book.”

The next agent on the alphabetical list is Jandy Nelson of the NYC- and Palo Alto-based Manus & Associates. I’m not seeing a blurb for her on the PNWA website, so I would urge you to go to their website and check her and the agency out.

The interests she lists on the website are narrative NF, “innovative self-help,” memoir, and health, in the NF realm; as one of the standard guides puts it, “her list also reflects her passion for serious health and sophisticated self-help books for women.” Her stated interests in fiction are literary, multicultural fiction, and women’s. (Another thing to know: the principal of the agency, Jillian Manus, used to develop projects at Warner Bros. and Universal, so this would be a good agency for projects with film potential.)

Ms. Nelson is an agent I have met at conferences past, and in the interests of full disclosure, I should also add that she read the first three chapters of a novel of mine some years ago and declined with thanks. In fact, she (or, one presumes, two ms screeners at Manus & Co) read it twice. Kind of a funny story: Ms. Nelson had asked to see the chapters, then I heard nothing for a couple of months. Adhering to the rule of waiting twice the stated turn-around time, then asking, I sent a polite little letter, asking if they had received my manuscript. Seems they had misplaced it, but could I send the chapters again? A few weeks later, back came the chapters in my SASE: no, thank you. So I went on my merry way. Then, eleven months later, I received a second package, again in a SASE of mine, containing an identical rejection letter to the first. Apparently, they had been doing some housekeeping. And I STILL like Jandy Nelson, which should tell you something about her inherent charm.

Losing manuscripts is far from uncommon, incidentally; the larger the agency, the more likely it is to happen. That doesn’t make it any less painful when it happens to you — as anyone who has known the agony of the “Should I call today, since they haven’t gotten back to me in four months? Tomorrow? Never?” wait can tell you. This is yet another reason to make sure every page of your submission has your name in the slug line: lest some pages go astray. After this incident, I also began taking the extra precaution of enclosing with my requested materials a stamped, self-addressed postcard, bearing the name of the agency and two options from which the recipients could choose: “Yes, the manuscript arrived intact on ____” or “No, all that arrived here was this postcard.” Everyone got a laugh, and I received confirmation that my submission was indeed where it should be, at least at first.

Ms. Nelson’s tastes are genuinely eclectic, a good match for the West Coast publishers to whom she primarily sells. Here are the sales I was able to dig up for her within the last few years; as usual, bear in mind that the standard industry databases I used to collect this information are not always 100% accurate. Because part of the point of my going through all of these is to help my readers learn what to look for in a list, here’s a pop quiz: what is most striking about this list of books?

NF: Memoir: Andrew Pham’s EAVES OF HEAVEN, “the sequel to CATFISH AND MANDALA, about the author’s father, Thong Van Pham, and the reversals of fortune his family suffered during the Japanese occupation of Vietnam, the French colonial era, and finally the Vietnam War before they began a new life in America.” (Farrar, Straus, sold 2004; CATFISH AND MANDALA, published by Picador in 2000, won the Kiryama Book Prize); Terry Tarnoff’s THE BONE MAN OF BENARES, “an exuberant memoir of Tarnoff’s raucous and hilarious adventures in Africa, Asia, and Indonesia in the 70s.” (St. Martin’s, sold 2003); “Mineko Iwasaki’s life story (she is the geisha who was the source for much of Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, and recently filed suit against Golden–and is the first geisha in over 300-hundred-year-old tradition to tell her story).” (Pocket, $$$,$$$, for world rights exclusive of Japan, interestingly enough, sold 2001); Al Martinez, I’LL BE DAMNED IF I’LL DIE IN OAKLAND (Thomas Dunne, published 2003).

NF: Health: MENOPAUSE: THE NEW OPTIONS, edited by Mary Tagliaferri, Debu Tripathy and Isaac Cohen, “a compendium that gathers together the leading experts on menopause and complementary health care to create a complete resource on alternative, complementary and conventional approaches to menopause in light of the WHI study that revealed the deleterious effects of hormone replacement therapy.” (Avery/Penguin, sold 2003); Nancy London, HOT FLASHES, WARM BOTTLES: FIRST-TIME MOMS OVER 40 (10 Speed, published 2001)

NF: Religion/Spirituality: LILY DALE author Christine Wicker’s new book, “which explores the inner-workings of a mega-church community.” (Harper San Francisco, $$$,$$$, sold 2005); Christine Wicker’s NOT IN KANSAS ANY MORE: Inside the Hidden World of America’s Magical Community, looking at witchcraft, voodoo, wizardry, and more.” (Harper San Francisco, $$$,$$$, sold 2003)

NF: Pets? Nature? — Journalist Mira Tweti’s BIRDS OF A DIFFERENT FEATHER: The Sometimes Funny, Always Fascinating, and Often Catastrophic Collision of Parrots And People, “an exposé of the world of parrots that reveals surprising scientific findings on parrot intelligence and behavior, the burgeoning global crisis of the illegal parrot trade and its dire consequences, the widespread emergence of bird clubs across the nation and the eccentric members of this hidden subculture among many other parrot fascinations.” (Viking, $$$,$$$, sold 2003; the phrase “an exposé of the world of parrots” tickles me no end.)

Fiction: Ronlyn Domingue’s debut THE MERCY OF THIN AIR, “a puzzle of a novel that pieces together two love stories that parallel and collide over two different periods in history in New Orleans, all narrated by a woman who while in the throes of a love affair dies in an accident and gets caught in The Between — a realm between life and the beyond.” (Atria, $$$,$$$, sold 2004); “Author of the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and Lambda Award winning THE WORLD OF NORMAL BOYS K.M. Soehnlein’s YOU CAN SAY YOU KNEW ME WHEN, about a son’s determination to uncover a mystery buried in his intolerant father’s past in order to find a connection with him after his death.” (Kensington, sold 2003); Tom Dolby’s debut novel THE TROUBLE BOY, “about a young gay screenwriter who traverses the worlds of New York nightlife, film, and public relations, and is caught in the middle of an accident that rockets through the tabloids, forcing him to make some tough moral choices.” (Kensington, sold 2002); Laurie Lynn Drummond’s UNDER CONTROL: STORIES ABOUT WOMEN, GUNS, AND FAMILY, “a collection of stories and one novella that explores the lives of women police officers based on the author’s many years on the force in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.” (HarperCollins, sold 2002; Harper Perennial reissued a short story collection called ANYTHING YOU SAY CAN AND WILL BE USED AGAINST YOU in 2004, which I assume is the same book, but I could be wrong about that.)

Pencils down, everyone: what did you pick as the dominant eyebrow-raiser? There are actually a few possibilities here. Three of her stated interest categories (Narrative NF, Self-Help, and Women’s Fiction) don’t appear here, so points to you if you noticed that. Points, too, if you noticed that Ms. Nelson’s memoir tastes aren’t particularly domestic; these are some pretty exotic locales for memoirs. But you get the most points of all if you noticed either that I went back 4 years for this list, instead of my usual 3, and that the vast majority of books listed are from 2003 and before. This would make me suspect a leave of absence, especially since the one listed 2005 sale was in October, or at any rate, extremely selective client acquisition.

However, as we learned from Ms. Kye-Casella’s list above, agencies do not always post all of their sales in the usual databases. A quick trip to Ms. Nelson’s blurb on the Manus website would be the prudent next step, to scope for newer sales. The clients listed there: Andrew Pham, Al Martinez, K.M. Soehnlein, Lisa Huang Fleishman (author of DREAM OF THE WALLED CITY, Washington Square Press, published 2001; Vintage released a paperback of her THE LINOLEUM ROOM in 2005, but I have not been able to find a deal listing for it), Laurie Drummond, Terry Tarnoff, Mineko Iwasaki, Katy Robinson (A SINGLE SQUARE PICTURE, Berkley Trade, published 2002), Christine Wicker, Mira Tweti, Nancy London… in short, essentially the same group of names as the sales list revealed.

There are a couple of ways to interpret this: I choose the upbeat one, and vote for Ms. Nelson’s now being enthusiastic for updating her list with a bunch of new clients. She definitely has an eye for the unusual, so she would be among my top picks for memoir (the more exotic the better!), literary fiction, and health books aimed at women.

Again, as with Ms. Kye-Casella, I would urge you to do your own research on Ms. Nelson and her agency. Get thee to a bookstore and read a few paragraphs here and there of her clients’ works, to glean an idea of what kind of prose she likes. And again, shake your head in wonder that in an industry where writers are expected to be familiar enough with prospective agents’ work to target the right ones, it’s not made easy to find out who represents what. Wouldn’t it be in everyone’s interests, including the agents’, to be as open with this information as possible?

Just my humble opinion, of course, more of which follows tomorrow. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

To readers who have come to this page looking for my former write-up on agent Jeff Kleinman: a year and 17 days after I originally posted a rather flattering overview of his work here, Mr. Kleinman contacted me to ask that I remove it. Naturally, I immediately honored his request, and I shall stop recommending him.

He said that something in it was inaccurate, but he did not specify what. Since 100% of the information contained in it came either from credible sources already available on the internet or in the standard agency guides, Mr. Kleinman’s own conference handouts, and things he had said publicly at conferences, I can only recommend that you contact him directly to verify ANYTHING you may have learned about him, here or elsewhere.

I am sorry if either the initial post or the removal of it causes anyone chagrin. What remains is what it left of the post after all references to him were removed.

Hello, readers —

A moment of silence, everyone: this is the day that my memoir is being released, according to Amazon. Hypothetically.

I can neither confirm nor deny this rumor, believe it or not: of all of the many, many aspects of the publication process over which the author has little or no control, the release date is perhaps the most shrouded in mystery. I have no idea why it should be kept a secret from me, when the marketing department is willing to speculate about it to such fly-by-night outfits as Amazon and Barnes & Noble; perhaps it has something to do with national security. My loose lips have never sunk any ships, to the best of my knowledge, but I guess you can never be sure.

By the way, are you given to toddling off to Amazon or Powell’s when you’re in the market for a book? Did you know that if you link through the PNWA website, the PNWA gets 10% of the sale? So you can donate indirectly to this fine organization by doing something you were planning to do anyway. How great is that?

{MATERIAL REMOVED AT AGENT’S REQUEST.}

…Which, I suppose, is understandable, and a good reminder to all of us that this is a business where manners really do count. So make sure to tell your mother on Sunday: she was right; you really should be polite to everybody.

I’ll let you know whether I have a book out as soon as I know for sure myself. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

Sorry to have skipped yesterday’s post; my sweet kitty passed away yesterday, and I wanted to spend her last few hours with her. A writer’s cat enjoys such an adversarial relationship with a writer’s computer — it’s the other pet, the one that sucks up all of that time and attention! — that a hiatus last night seemed appropriate.

All right, back to the grindstone: I have another double header for you today. The next agent on my alphabetical list, Kelly Harms, hails from the same agency as Meg Ruley, the Jane Rotrosen Agency, so it makes sense to tackle ’em together.

It particularly makes sense, because for the life of me, I have not been able to find a website for the Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Readers, if any of you manage to dig it up, please send me the link, and I’ll let everyone know.) It seems odd, in this day and age, that any agency wouldn’t have at least an embryonic website, but I suppose my thinking on the subject is largely colored by where I live. Even non-computer people know something about the web in the PNW, much as we pick up a certain amount of airplane jargon by regional osmosis.

By contrast, neither my agency nor my publishing house — neither of them small concerns — evidently employs an in-house computer expert. Nor is that at all unusual in NYC-based publishing: it is still to a remarkable extent a paper-based industry. Which is rather problematic sometimes, when one is trying to send documents back and forth across the country.

Still, industry computer phobia aside, it does make it significantly harder for a writer to learn about what an agency wants when it does not have a website — and, more to the point at the moment, it makes it infinitely more difficult for me to know what to suggest to you as the best means of approach. And in the case of this agency, that’s a pretty serious problem: according to the guide in my hand (which admittedly isn’t the most recent one), the Rotrosen Agency generally obtains its clients through referrals (as in, recommendations from a previously published writer of their acquaintance), rather than through queries.

Okay, I have the most recent agents guide in front of me now, and the entry looks remarkably similar. Except that they’re now accepting queries. However, their turn-around time info still apparently presumes that the people who solicit them have been referred. So I don’t know what to think. Go ahead and query ’em.

I’m not going to try to second-guess their internal policies (well, not much), but I do think it is absolutely safe to derive this much from the agency’s past history: if you have ANY interest whatsoever in this agency, MAKE SURE to talk to one of these agents at the conference, to ask if they’d be willing to accept synopsis from you if you sent it. Then write PNWA — REQUESTED MATERIALS in immense letters on the outside of the envelope, just to be sure.

You can’t be too careful in dealing with the exclusive.

Okay, let’s see what Kelly Harms has told us in her blurb (and no, I don’t know why so few of these agents seem to have proofread their blurbs before submitting them):

“Kelly Harms (Agent) is seeking all types of commercial fiction especially for the women’s market. She is new to the agent game, came from editorial but so far have authors writing mystery, suspense, romanitic suspense and women’s fiction, and one very sexy gang of vampires. She’d really like to have more thrillers and character driven mysteries and really smart, but not quite ‘literary’ women’s fiction is her favorite.”

Please, somebody, stand up at the agents’ forum this summer and ask what “really smart, but not quite ‘literary’ women’s fiction” is. (Beyond manuscripts devoid of semicolons, that is.)

Ms. Harms is being a bit modest here: she used to be an editor at Avon, recently enough that most of the sales that turn up for her in the standard industry databases are for books she acquired in that capacity, rather than as an agent. As in she seems to have switched teams in the middle of last year. So I shall break down the sales accordingly (do remember, please, that I only search for sales within the last three years, and the databases are not infallible.)

As an agent, she seems to have worked pretty closely with Andrea Cirillo (also of the Rotrosen Agency), so it might be worth your while to do some research on Ms. Cirillo’s tastes as well. Both of the sales I found were in the women’s/romance categories: Jennifer Estep’s KARMA GIRL, “the humorous adventures of an intrepid Lois Lane-style reporter whose forte is unmasking — and sometimes disrobing — America’s most illustrious superheroes” (Berkley, in a two-book deal, sold 2006); “Monica McCarty’s dark Scottish trilogy set around one real-life clan and their struggles with the English, battles for revenge, and epic seductions.” (Ballantine, sold 2005)

As an editor, Ms. Harms appears to have concentrated pretty exclusively on women’s fiction and romance as well, as befits an editor at Avon: Margo Maguire’s ISABEL’S CHOICE, “a medieval romance set in the beautiful Scottish highlands” (Avon, acquired 2005); “USA Today bestselling author and two-time Rita finalist Julianne MacLean’s next three historical romances” (Avon, acquired 2004; apparently, Ms. Harms had acquired books of Ms. MacLean’s in the past); Stephanie Lessing’s first novel SHE’S GOT ISSUES, “a humorous and occasionally over-the-top take on chick lit featuring a sweet and ditzy Manhattan 20-something with a sharp eye for fashion, who’s determined to work her way up from assistant to the assistant to…someone at Issues Magazine and one day become shoe editor; and she’ll have to do so while enduring the endless barrage of abuse hurled at her by her style-challenged boss and a deliciously evil array of female co-workers.” (Avon, acquired 2004)

So if any of you have been writing about heroes in kilts or shoes, I’d say Ms. Harms would be a terrific bet for you.

All right, let’s move on to Ms. Ruley’s blurb:

“Meg Ruley (Agent) joined the Jane Rotrosen Agency in 1981. The agency represents authors of commercial fiction, many of whom hail from the Pacific Northwest. She loves carrying heavy manuscripts in and out of Manhattan and hopes you will send her yours.”

Hmm. The agency’s listing in the most recent guide says it takes them two months to turn a REQUESTED ms. around; that’s a whole lot of toting in and out of Manhattan.

I have seen clearer indications of preferences, too. But then, a certain lack of accessibility perhaps should not surprise us, given the agency’s previously expressed preference for dealing only with referred authors and Ms. Ruley’s heavy-hitting client list, but let’s keep an open mind while we try to track down her authors who live in the glorious PNW. (Really, DO keep an open mind: it is not unheard-of for agents to come to conferences seeking authors for OTHER agents at their agencies. Do not automatically rule out agents from big agencies who seem to have a full complement of authors already signed.)

As you may see from what she’s been selling recently, I wasn’t kidding about the heavy client list. Because I am exceptionally devoted to my readers, I have even classified the sales by genre, so as to generate a list of preferences for Ms. Ruley. Don’t say I never did anything for you.

Fiction: Thriller: Michele Martinez’s COVER-UP, “in which the New York City federal prosecutor Melanie Vargas investigates the serial murders of the patients of a prominent Park Avenue plastic surgeon.” (William Morrow, in a $$$ two-book deal, sold 2005); “Co-author of THE CYANIDE CANARY Robert Dugoni’s debut legal thriller A MATTER OF JUSTICE, billed as “‘in the tradition of Scott Turow and Brad Meltzer,'” and FALSE JUSTICE. (Warner, sold 2005); Michele Martinez’s debut thriller MOST WANTED, “‘the first in a series featuring Melanie Vargas, in a wild race against the clock to solve a brutal Park Avenue murder while dealing with her own romantic and cultural complications.'” (William Morrow, sold 2003; someone should get Ms. Martinez a map of NYC — she’s evidently been stuck on Park Avenue for years now.)

Fiction: Mystery: Kaitlyn Dunnett’s KILT DEAD, “featuring a professional Scottish dancer who returns to her roots following a career-ending injury only to find herself suspected of murder.” (Kensington, in a three-book deal, sold 2005; the agency sure likes those kilts); Nancy Martin’s A CRAZY LITTLE THING CALLED DEATH and a second untitled Blackbird mystery (NAL, sold 2005); two novels from New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen, to the same editor as bought her last (Ballantine, sold 2004).

Fiction: Women’s/Romance (hey, the databases lump them together): Nancy Thayer’s HOT FLASH HOLIDAYS, “a new novel of menopause, mayhem, and mistletoe.” (Ballantine, $$$, sold 2005); Eloquent in its simple adherence to facts: “NYT bestseller and Rita winner Jo Beverley’s three more historical romances,” (NAL, $$$,$$$, sold 2004); Nancy Thayer’s THE HOT FLASH CLUB, “about the friendship among four mature women with different life styles and problems who meet, eat, and scheme, and a second untitled novel.” (Ballentine, sold 2003)

Fiction: General: Amy Wallen’s debut novel MOON PIES & MOVIE STARS, “which follows a Texas woman on her madcap Winnebago road trip in search of her runaway daughter,” and a second untitled novel. (Viking Penguin, sold 2005); “Rob Dalby of Tupelo, Mississippi’s WALTZING AT THE PIGGLY-WIGGLY, a southern charmer featuring a quirky” (what were the odds?) “Mississippi town, a second chance romance, inexplicable weather phenomena, and ballroom dancing in the most unlikely places.” (Crown, sold 2005)

YA: Six books by bestselling YA author Lurlene McDaniel, to the same editors as bought her last. (Delacorte Books for Young Readers, sold 2003; please note, however, that most of the online agents guides say the Rotrosen Agency does NOT rep YA.)

NF: Memoir: Ellen Currey-Wilson’s OUTSIDE THE BOX, “a humorous and poignant memoir about what happens when a boob-tube-junkie mom vows to raise her son TV-free, with insights on parenting in a media-crazed world (and how hard it is to buck the trend).” (Algonquin, sold 2006)

NF: Diet: “Mother-daughter team Jackie Scott and Diane Scott’s THE CALORIE QUEENS, from women whose combined weight loss on their program is 300 pounds, presenting their formula for calorie consumption — delicious but healthy recipes and down-home advice, tested extensively at their Lexington, KY church group.” (Warner’s Center Street, sold 2005)

NF: Humor: Rosemary Atkins’ AROUND THE CORNER FUDGE IS MADE, “a compilation of dirty childhood ditties usually learned on the playground or in the back of the bus.” (Chamberlain Bros., sold 2005)

I don’t know how many of these authors live in the PNW; the only regional trend I see here is Southern. But the fact is, this is an agency with a track record of selling genre books quite well. (If you wish to investigate further, other listed clients include Susan Andersen, Rhys Bowen, Jennifer Crusie, Alisa Kwitney, Patricia Lewin, Julia Spencer-Fleming, and Susan Wiggs.)

Tomorrow, out of the Highlands and on to a brand-new agency. Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

Have you been finding my series on how to read an agent’s blurb in a conference guide useful? I hope so, because it’s going to be a rather lengthy series, even if I rush through it: there are a LOT of agents coming to PNWA, 19 by my count.

In fact, the conference is known for high agent volume. At many smaller writers’ conferences, there are only one or two agents in attendance — and only a few writers are lucky enough to be able to get appointments with them. At PNWA, by contrast, there are always scads of agents and editors — and every attendee is guaranteed two appointments, usually one with an agent and one with an editor. Not to mention the relative ease of buttonholing the bigwigs in conference hallways.

If it sounds as though I’m pushing my own organization’s conference… well, I am, but not just because they are gracious enough to host my blog. I have been attending writers’ conferences all over the country for well over a decade, and I think PNWA’s is the most serious about helping writers make connections with agents and editors. (My favorite of the small, one-agent conferences, in case you’re wondering, is the Flathead River Writers’ Conference in Montana, a real gem.) The marketing and craft classes offered at PNWA are consistently strong enough, year after year, for writing “PNWA conference” on the outside of your query letters to agents who speak there (you know to do that, right, after you’ve seen an agent speak at a conference?) to make an actual difference in how a query letter gets read by agency screeners.

And that is not, as they say, something at which to sneeze.

Oh, and for those of you who have been following this series: both Lauren Abramo and Jennifer Cayea have now posted blurbs on the PNWA website. Hurrah! Please go and take a gander at them, to get a better idea of what they are coming to THIS conference seeking. (Ms. Cayea says, among other things, that she is very eagerly looking for a baseball book. Get writing that book proposal, all of you swingers!) I feel more comfortable about this, because it’s always better if people can tell you what they want in their own words.

On to the next agent (and back to the alphabetical list), Catherine Fowler of the Mill Valley-based Redwood Agency. Here is her blurb, lifted from elsewhere on this very website:

“Catherine Fowler (Agent) has more than 20 years of experience in book and Internet publishing having held senior positions for such prestigious companies as Random House, Simon & Schuster, Doubleday, Excite and WebMD. With Redwood Agency, Fowler is focusing on the core of her expertise and her passion: the development of high-quality projects, working with talented writers and editors, and negotiating contracts. Areas of interest include health, food and cooking, popular culture, women’s interests, narrative nonfiction, nature, parenting, aging, general reference, relationships, popular psychology, non-fiction “chick lit”, business, humor, lifestyle, cultural technology, quirky projects, memoir and the occasional novel.”

How’s that for a no-nonsense, straightforward blurb? (Although can anyone can tell me to a reasonable degree of certainty what NF chick lit is? Memoirs written by well-shod, bleached-blonde young professional women with man woes? Self-help books on how to coordinate your boyfriend du jour with your Prada handbag?) It tells us so directly who she is and what she wants (and kudos to Ms. Fowler for that!) that I have only two comments to make upon this blurb. (Okay, I have more, but I’ll save the rest until after I’ve gone through her client list.)

First, “the occasional novel.” I would take this very literally indeed, and consider very carefully about pitching fiction to Ms. Fowler, unless I were also planning on pitching an NF book in the same meeting. Yes, yes, there is always the possibility that a truly stellar pitch might wow her into falling in love with a novel at PNWA, but pitching is a high-stress activity: if you are new to it, it might be wise to stick to agents who are actively looking for your type of book.

Because, according to the standard industry databases, Ms. Fowler really isn’t kidding about the occasionally part. I found only one novel sale in the last three years, Sandra Kring’s debut novel UNDER THE TITTY MOON, “a tender, humorous story told through the innocent and wise voice of a simple-minded boy and portraying the complexity of life, death, war, prejudice, and family ties in a small-town family nearly torn apart by WWII.” (Delacorte, in a two-book deal, sold 2003)

Incidentally, as you may not be altogether astonished to hear, the title of this novel was changed: it was released as CARRY ME HOME. Hey, we writers have to pick our battles.

Second, if you are interested in pitching to Ms. Fowler, I suspect that it would be VERY prudent to check out her work at Excite and WebMD, at least enough to be able to conduct a reasonably well-informed conversation about it. Aside from the fact that it is always flattering when new acquaintances are already familiar with your work (you didn’t think I was going to all the trouble of listing agents’ recent sales just for the FUN of it, did you?), Internet publishing is a new enough facet of the publishing industry that writers’ conferences don’t tend to see a whole lot of experts on it. If you have any ambitions in that direction, Ms. Fowler might be a great connection for you to make.

I’m looking over the other sales Ms. Fowler has made in the last three years, and I have to say, she is apparently GENUINELY SERIOUS about liking quirky projects. Note, too, the recurring college theme:

NF: Health: Stella Mora-Henry, R.N. with Ann Convery’s THE EXPERT’S GUIDE TO LONG TERM CARE, “a comprehensive guide filled with personal stories to help caregivers make compassionate, informed decisions and tackle the toughest long-term care issues.” (William Morrow, sold 2004; I would have categorized this under Aging, but hey, I’m not the person who organizes the industry databases. Thank goodness.); Erika B. Hilliard, MSW, RSW’s SHY AND SUCCESSFUL: A Comprehensive Guide to Managing Shyness and Social Anxiety, “for consumer and therapists about shyness and social anxiety, as the author challenges the stigmatization of social anxiety and shyness in our culture and offers compassionate, alternative views.” (Marlowe & Company, sold 2004)

NF: Food and Cooking: Marcel and Shannon Biro’s THE KITCHENS OF BIRO COOKBOOK, “a companion cookbook by the stars of the upcoming national PBS restaurant reality and cooking series The Kitchens of Biro.” (Gibbs Smith, sold 2004); Restaurateur Sondra Bernstein’s THE GIRL & THE FIG COOKBOOK, “wine country-inspired French recipes and more from her restaurants, two of Sonoma County’s favorites.” (Simon & Schuster, sold 2003)

NF: Pop Culture: Whitney Shroyer, Letitia Walker, and Michael Traister’s THE SECRET LIVES OF SOCK MONKEYS: Daily Life at the Red Heel Monkey Shelter, “capturing an actual society of sock monkeys, including dioramic photos filled with humor and a bit of social commentary.” (Chamberlain Bros., 2005; I suspect that this MAY also have fallen under the category “quirky projects.”); Susan Marg’s LAS VEGAS WEDDINGS: History, Gossip, a touch of Elvis, and even a Chapel Guide, “a pop culture book about the creation, rise, myth and lore of Las Vegas weddings.” (William Morrow, sold 2003; this is another I strongly suspect of quirkiness.)

Another quirky project, this one technically categorized as NF: Other (hey, I told you, I don’t make up these categories!): Natasha Kogan’s THE DARING FEMALE GUIDE TO ECSTATIC LIVING, “a self-help book with an attitude that dares women to get as much as possible out of every aspect of their lives, with fun, inspirational, and practical dares, and filled with personal stories.”(Hyperion, sold 2004)

NF: Parenting: BLINDSIDED BY A DIAPER, edited by Dana Bedford Hilmer, “an anthology of original essays from notable writers, including Susan Cheever, Greg Behrendt, and Molly Jong-Fast, about the ups and downs and chaos in a couple’s relationship after baby arrives, and how to keep the partnership on track with a new little bundle of joy in the house.” (Three Rivers Press, sold 2006); Andy Steiner’s SPILLED MILK: Breastfeeding Adventures and Advice from Less-Than-Perfect Moms, “for and about ordinary mothers and their breastfeeding experiences, offering advice and solace from a variety of sources, with a sense of humor.” (Rodale, sold 2003)

NF: Reference: Natasha Kogan and Avi Spivak’s Students Helping Students six-book series, including Fishing for a Major, Have No Career Fear, Surviving Your Freshman Year, and Getting through College Without Going Broke, “all guides written and edited by college students and recent grads and full of advice on how to survive and succeed in college and beyond.” (Perigee, sold 2004)

NF: Advice/Relationships: “Seminar leader and personal growth coach Jane Straus’s THE TRUTH PARADIGM: A Bold New Approach for Living an Inspired and Truthful Life, a self-help title exposes the spiritual & emotional suffering triggered by deception and offers techniques to embrace truth as a guiding principle.” (Jossey-Bass, sold 2004); Susan Fee’s MY ROOMMATE IS DRIVING ME CRAZY! Surviving the College Roommate from Hell, “a practical guide to solving the most challenging roommate conflicts and situations.” (Adams Media, sold 2004; I wonder if this guide would have told me how to deal with my college roommate, who stopped going to classes altogether — they interfered with her ability to be totally nocturnal — and held all-night colloquia in our room. She also, bless her heart, cherished a large rat named Anton who ran around free and ultimately ate her concert-quality violin.)

NF: Business/Investing/Finance: Ron Burley’s UNSCREWED: The Consumer Guide to Getting Your Way, “tools for consumers frustrated by customer disservice to fight back and win against unscrupulous, incompetent and faceless companies.” (Ten Speed Press, sold 2005); Frances McGuckin’s previously published Canadian bestseller (125,000 copies! Self-published! In Canada!) BUSINESS FOR BEGINNERS: A Simple Step-by-Step Guide to Starting a Small Business and Big Ideas for Growing a Small Business. (Sourcebooks, in a two-book deal, sold 2004)

Kind of a fun list, isn’t it? I suspect, based upon it, that this might not be the best agent to pitch ultra-serious work — but an unusual or humorous spin on a familiar NF topic might find a home at this agency.

Another thing to note from this list: quite a few of these sales were to West Coast presses, indicating that Ms. Fowler probably has good connections out here. And since West Coast and East Coast publishing houses are known for having rather different tastes (because I love you, my readers, I shall spare you the tale of the months my agent and I expended in trying to get a NYC-based publisher to comprehend the concept of synergy, part of the basic LA vocabulary), if your book might appeal more to folks in this time zone, a West Coast-based agent might make a WHOLE lot of sense for you.

But — and this is a serious but, because I went through the databases in high hopes of learning something here — where is the NF chick lit? Am I never to learn what this elusive term means? Or where Barnes & Noble would place it within its bookstores?

This is not an altogether frivolous objection. You might have noticed, though, that a fair number of the areas listed in the blurb do not seem to have corresponding sales (Narrative, Nature, Pop Psych, NF Chick Lit, Humor, Lifestyle, Cultural Technology, and Memoir, to be precise; I think it’s safe to assume that THE DARING FEMALE GUIDE TO ECSTATIC LIVING would fall under “Women’s Interests.”) It is possible that there are Internet publishing titles in these areas that I missed, of course, but still, that’s quite a few categories.

What are we to make of this? Well, if Ms. Fowler is a good agent (and her past sales record indicates that she has been a VERY good one, especially in 2004), it probably means that she already has working relationships established with editors who are looking for these sorts of books. In other words, she has leads in these areas. (If she were not an agent with a solid sales record, I would suspect that these categories were gleaned from a quick perusal of the weekly bestseller lists, as all of these — except NF chick lit — are frequently represented there. But that would be a most uncharitable interpretation.)

Well, whatever NF chick lit is, I suspect its protagonists seldom sit up until midnight, typing away at their blogs. (Although their authors may.) I guess I am just not cut out for the chick lit life. In retrospect, finishing the dissertation was probably a mistake, in terms of developing my heroine chops to their fullest potential; graduate students are not known for their accessorizing prowess. If only I had thought ahead. But who knew non-fiction people would be expected to lead fictional lives?

And so, resigning myself to a lifetime of non-chick litiness, I bid you good night. Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

Welcome back to my ongoing series on how to decide which agents to rank highest on your PNWA summer conference form. I’ve had to skip around a little (see yesterday’s post for why), but I’m trying to plow my way through the EXTENSIVE list as quickly as possible, so you may submit your choices soon. Those appointments have a way of filling up fast.

All right, on to the third of the skipped agents in my alphabetical list, Farley Chase. Since he and Byrd Leavell hail from the same agency, Waxman Literary, I am going to defy alphabetical order (and length restrictions) and cover them both today. Both have a strong track record of representing books aimed at men (which is a polite way of saying that their client lists seem to be awfully darned heavy on Y chromosomes), so it makes even more sense to present them together.

Again, the standard disclaimers, even more important in the case of agents who do not have blurbs up on the PNWA website: my information on these people comes from the authors’ grapevine and the standard industry databases; you can, and should, do further research yourself on any agent who truly interests YOU. In the interests of full disclosure, I should probably add up front: the books I will be talking about today are not my proverbial cup o’ tea, for the most part, so I am not as familiar with this area of publishing as I am with others. To avoid misrepresenting some of these projects, I am going to be quoting directly from their books’ marketing blurbs, whenever possible.

Here is Farley Chase’s blurb from the Waxman website. It’s a pearl of its kind, because it includes both a quote from the man himself and the standard blurb information, apparently compiled by somebody else:

“‘I’ve had the privilege of working in several facets of the publishing world, with a variety of talented colleagues. With some I fostered my passion for good writing and smart stories well told. And from others I gained an invaluable business perspective on the world of books. Most importantly, I’ve learned that these are not mutually exclusive propositions and as an agent I’m able to unify these points of view, working closely with writers to realize their aspirations without losing sight of what’s viable or realistic. I take pride in a deliberate and detailed editorial approach and a proactive attitude toward developing new ideas with our writers.’

“Farley Chase has worked in publishing for nine years. After an internship with Minnesota’s non-profit Graywolf Press, he worked for several years at the New Yorker magazine. He has worked at The New Press, Talk magazine and later became an associate editor at Miramax Books where he worked with Martin Amis and B&N Discovery authors Mark Ross and Lily Burana, among others. He has been an agent for three years, first with Goldfarb & Associates and now The Waxman Literary Agency. In addition to representing his own clients, he manages the foreign rights for the agency. He is a graduate of Macalester College.”

What can one say about this two-part blurb, other than that Macalester is a good school? Actually, his personal statement is quite illuminating: note especially, “working closely with writers to realize their aspirations without losing sight of what’s viable or realistic.” This is industry-speak for saying that he recognizes that there are a whole lot of wonderfully-written books out there that are not particularly commercially viable. (And he should know: those books are sort of Graywolf’s specialty.) It’s a nice way of saying that he is willing to nudge good writers into writing work that would be easier to sell.

Which would make him, in theory, a good pitching choice for all of us out there who have been dismissed with, “Well, the writing is great, but I can’t sell the idea.” Mr. Chase seems to indicate that he would like to continue the conversation AFTER that statement.

We would have to check his sales record, though, to see how this philosophy plays out in practice — because this kind of statement can also be industry-speak for being eager to work with well-known non-writers to turn their ideas into books. It just goes to show you: you need to do your homework on agents you wish to approach, not just rely upon what they say about themselves on their websites and in agents guides.

In his blurb, Mr. Chase has given a major hint as to how he likes to work with his clients: “I take pride in a deliberate and detailed editorial approach and a proactive attitude toward developing new ideas with our writers.” Translation: he is an agent who expects his clients to rewrite their work based upon his input BEFORE he sends it out to the market. This can be tremendous, for a writer who is open to it, but can be terrible for writers who resent outside tinkering.

Think carefully about which kind of writer you are BEFORE you have a conversation with any agent. You will be FAR happier in the long run if you find an agent whose editing tastes correspond with yours.

Checking the last few years of Mr. Chase’s sales, I’m kind of surprised he has TIME to edit his clients’ work, or that “is looking for the previously unpublished. He seems to work with a lot of journalists and celebrities, so maybe it’s their prose he helps to mold into marketability. Here are some representative samples, grouped by type of book:

NF: Sports: Golf instructor Jim Hardy’s THE PLANE TRUTH FOR GOLFERS MASTER CLASS (McGraw-Hill, sold 2006); John Andrisani’s THE MICHELLE WIE WAY: An Analysis of the Power Swing Technique of Michelle Wie, a close look at what PGA Champ and NBC analyst Johnny Miller says is “one of the top five best golf swings of all time,” (Center Street, sold 2005); Noah Liberman’s THE FLAT STICK: “The History, Romance, and Heartbreak of the Putter, — a humorous, anecdotal and illustration-rich look at an implement — just a fancified cudgel — that has bedeviled, mystified, and charmed golfers at every level since the beginning of the game” (My, aren’t we poetic? Harper, sold 2005); Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt and ESPN The Magazine deputy editor Glen Waggoner’s A WHOLE NEW BALLGAME: How America’s Pastime Lost Its Way — And How It Can Head Home Again, “a candid look at the changes baseball has undergone in the past thirty years, from free agency to the ’94 strike, the home run race to the steroid scandal” (Harper, sold 2005); “Former senior editor at Golf magazine John Andrisani’s HEAVEN CAN WAIT: Jack Nicholson, Jack Nicklaus, Jack Welch and 22 other Golf Nuts Remember Their First Trip to Augusta, a collection of first-person narratives by professional golfers, celebrities, politicians, businesspeople, and others about playing America’s most fabled golf course for the first time.” (Thunder’s Mouth, 2004)

NF: Health (but really sports): TRUE FITNESS: A Customized, Scientific Approach, No Matter Your Starting Level, by five-time Olympic gold medalist Dr. Eric Heiden, Dr. Max Testa, and DeAnne Musolf (Harper — by auction, but then, not all of us have gold medals hanging around our necks — sold 2006).

NF: Business (but really sports): WSJ contributor and St. Paul Pioneer Press editorial writer Mark Yost’s profile of the National Football League, “chronicling the remarkable history and business decisions that have made the NFL the most successful organization in the sports industry” (unless, of course, you count the Olympics; Dearborn, sold 2005).

NF: pop culture: Tom Reynold’s I HATE MYSELF AND WANT TO DIE: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You’ve Ever Heard (Hyperion, sold 2005).

NF: cooking: Photographer Melanie Dunea’s MY LAST SUPPER, “a collection of portraits of fifty world class chefs – including Eric Ripert, Mario Batali, and Marcus Samuelsson – with descriptions and recipes for the meal they would have if they could have only one more.” (Bloomsbury, at another auction, sold 2006).

NF: history: BBC journalist Nick Hacking’s BOUND BY DECEPTION: Spying Between the United States and Israel Since the End of the Cold War, “tracking the statesmanship and spycraft practiced by two supposed allies when their strategic interests conflict, showing disquieting machinations from both countries that have had a profound impact on world events.” (William Morrow, sold 2004).

NF: biography (but sounds a lot like the last): Gary Ecelbarger’s third book BLACK JACK LOGAN: An Extraordinary Life in Peace and War, “a biography of the seven-term Senator, victorious and popular General, and later a Vice-Presidential candidate, a transfixing public figure transformed by the events of the Civil War who later went on to found Memorial Day.” (Lyons Press, sold 2004)

NF: memoir: “Thirteen-year Cornell student Rob Shuck’s THE UNDERGRADUATE, written with GQ journalist Mickey Rapkin, exploring this real life Van Wilder’s strong belief that if college is supposed to be the best time of your life, then the rest of your life should be more like college.” (Broadway, another auction, 2005); “Esquire and Vanity Fair humor columnist Brian Frazer’s HYPERCHONDRIAC, a humorous account of a lifetime filled with pop-psych treatments, prescription medications, self-help programs, and oddball remedies (Atria, sold 2005); US ambassador to the UN’s Agencies for Food and Agriculture Tony Hall’s CHANGING THE FACE OF HUNGER: One Man’s Story of How Liberals, Conservatives, Democrats, Republicans and People of Faith are Joining Forces to Help the Hungry, the Poor and the Oppressed (try saying THAT title three times fast; W Publishing, sold 2005); Joe Sutter’s AIR BORN: How My Team of “Incredibles” Built the 747 and Other Adventures From a Life in Aviation, “a memoir from the ‘father’ of Boeing’s famed 747 aircraft.” (Smithsonian, sold 2005)

Fiction (and I found only two of these in the past three years, people): Roger Alan Skipper’s debut TEAR DOWN THE MOUNTAIN, “linked short stories featuring a young couple in fictional Union County, West Virginia and their powerful but conflicting determination to both escape Appalachia and to stay” (Soft Skull, 2-book deal, sold 2005; since short story collections are almost invariably collections of already-published stories, this is probably a writer he met through magazine work); Milton Burton’s first novel NEVER LOOK BACK, “in which a Texas man looking to exact a revenge that’s substantially more than financial finds his plans changed due to an oil strike, leaving him with a slew of unanticipated temptations to consider” (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s, sold 2004).

The moral of all this? A blurb that seems to imply willingness to work with little books may not actually be aimed at the writers of little books, but designed to reassure writers of big books. And, of course, if an agent has an impressive track record of selling books on sports, golf, sports, war, sports, frat boys, and sports, a wise writer might not want to pitch him, say, a sensitive coming-of-age novel about a young girl. But if you write on his subjects (or might at some future date, or are interested in the coffee table book market), he would be a great connection for you.

On to Byrd Leavell, also of Waxman Literary. Here’s his blurb from the agency’s website, also a two-parter:

“‘Early in my career I started to realize that a certain segment of the population, guys between the ages of 16 and 40, were being routinely dismissed by editors with the phrase “they don’t buy books.” It had become a self-sustaining cycle, but the readers were still there. It soon became clear that in this group of underserved readers lay an opportunity, one that could be tapped by utilizing the potential of an extremely talented and unapologetic group of writers who were plugged into this audience through the Internet, and had already established huge followings.

“‘As an agent these are the situations I live for — working with authors on books that attempt to reach undiscovered audiences. And it doesn’t matter whether that book is about cleaning up dead bodies, drinking seven nights a week, or church camp. It’s all about taking a great idea and then working together to turn it into something that people want to read – twice. I love writing that makes an impact and the work I represent covers a broad spectrum, from nimble, intelligent literary fiction like Euny Hong’s My Blue Blood, to Tucker Max’s blistering I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and Erik Barmack and Max Handelman’s genre-defining Why Fantasy Football Matters.’

“A graduate of the University of Virginia, Byrd Leavell began his career at Carlisle & Company and then served as an agent at InkWell Management and Venture Literary. His clients include The Modern Drunkard, Tucker Max, and The Phat Phree. A fan of writing that makes an impression, he specializes in books that attempt to push the publishing envelope to reach new audiences.”

I find this blurb admirably straightforward: he wants guy stories amusingly told, plain and simple. How I wish that all agents were so up front about their desires! But how does this philosophy play out in his sales record? He has given us a few examples of his taste above, but let’s see if we can get a general impression of what he wants from what he’s sold recently:

NF: Sports: (Oh, my God, here comes more golf. Brace yourselves.) Curt Sampson’s GOLF DADS: Profiles of Fathers, Their Children and the Game that Binds them, “a series of 10 stories about the unique bond forged between fathers and children around the game of golf, including high profile athletes such as Nicklaus, Hogan, Singh, Trevino, and Sorenstam, as well as stories of lesser known golfers, such as in his recent “Back to the Mariposas” piece in Sports Illustrated about the son of a renowned lepidopterist” (Houghton Mifflin, sold 2006; a lepidopterist, in case you were wondering, studies moths and butterflies); Founder and head writer of The Huddle.com David Dorey’s FANTASY FOOTBALL: THE NEXT LEVEL, “going beyond the stats and projections to offer the underlying tools, principles, and strategies for creating an optimal fantasy team year in and year out” (Warner, at auction, for a whole lot of money, 2006); Sporting News columnist and CNBC commentator Erik Barmack and Fox Sports veteran Max Handelman’s TAKING A KNEE: Why Fantasy Football Matters and Our Lives Do Not, “a guide to the personalities, flawed strategies, tired excuses, excessive trash-talking, and compulsive behavior that goes along with managing a fantasy football team.” (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, at auction, 2004)

NF: Memoir: Tucker Max’s THE TUCKER MAX STORIES, “the true adventures of a man who built a following by indulging every whim, sleeping with more women than is safe or reasonable, and generally just acting like the drunkest person that ever lived.” (Kensington, 2004).

NF: Advice/Relationships: Reality show casting producer Brenda Della Casa’s CINDERELLA WAS A LIAR, “a hip, informative dating guide for women, in which she dispels the fairy tale myth and offers realistic advice for getting and keeping a prince.” (McGraw-Hill, 2005; PLEASE tell me it does not offer advice on hooking Tucker Max…)

NF: Reference: Co-founder of blog boingboing.net and editor-and-chief of Make magazine Mark Frauenfelder’s RULE THE WEB, “providing powerful and little-known tips, tricks, and workarounds the Internet offers.” (St. Martin’s, at auction, 2006)

NF: General/Other: Dax Devlon-Ross’s OUTSIDE THE BOX, “a collection of profiles of unique and inspiring African-Americans whose career choices go beyond the stereotypical molds associated with black America.” (Hyperion, 2004)

NF: Humor: Bob Powers’s HAPPY CRUELTY DAY, “a collection of 365 mini-short stories from his web site girlsarepretty.com, each full of dark and humorous guidance for how every day is to be celebrated.” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2005)

NF: Pop culture: Humor website ThePhatPhree.com’s LOOK AT MY STRIPED SHIRT! And Other Confessions of the Desperate, Lonely, Obnoxious, and Stupid, “biting social satire that ridicules people who make life less fun.” (Doubleday, another auction, 2005)

NF: Narrative: Gil Reavill’s AFTERMATH: Cleaning Up After CSI Goes Home,
a foray into the new field of bio-recovery (dial 877-TRAGEDY), in which the author will glove up, strap on a Tyvek suit, and work side-by-side with Aftermath technicians as he takes his readers on the journey of a crime writer who thought he could handle anything being confronted with the worst of everything.” (Gotham, 2005)

NF: Parenting (caught you by surprise, didn’t it?): Simon Rose and Steve Caplin’s DAD STUFF, “an illustrated guide to putting the fun back into being a father, full of useful explanations such as how to cope with the question — are we there yet?— and how to invent bedtime stories to lull your children to sleep.” (Broadway, 2004)

NF: Cooking: Frank Rich’s THE MODERN DRUNKARD: The Definitive Guide to Drinking in the New Century, containing such informative articles as “Drink Your Way to Fitness” and “How to Ace an Intervention” by the founder of Modern Drunkard Magazine (Riverhead, at auction, 2004, and no, I don’t know why this was categorized as cooking, rather than humor).

Fiction: Matt Marinovich’s first novel STRANGE SKIES, “about one man’s attempt to circumvent his life’s trajectory and the baby his wife is demanding they have by pretending he has cancer, which works brilliantly until he runs into a bald young boy and his mother in an airport bar” (Harper Perennial, 2006); I can’t resist including the description of Euny Hong’s MY BLUE BLOOD (Simon & Schuster, 2005): “the story of a descendent of Korean aristocracy living in NYC who, drowning in debt, tries her hand at courtesan-ship in the service of a Russian Madame and finds herself caught between a fiery classical violinist whose company she is paid to keep and a stuttering philosophy student who woos her with his intellectualism even as he repulses her with his plebian ways” (in other words, a slice-of-life novel);
Ryan Gattis’ KUNG FU HIGH SCHOOL, “the cinematically vivid story of a high school where students must fight daily to survive, told in the voice of a fifteen-year-old girl who, along with her martial arts master cousin, must avenge her brother’s assassination and somehow escape a brutal gang war for control of the campus” (Harcourt, 2004); Erik Barmack’s THE VIRGIN, “about a man who lies his way onto a shocking reality-television show.” (St. Martin’s, 2004)

If you don’t see a trend here, I can only suggest that you go back and read that list again.

If you write for men 16-40 (or, to be precise, THIS type of man aged 16-40; I know a lot of men in that age group who read, and even write, literary fiction, but we’re talking mass market here), Mr. Leavell is your man (and you are probably his); if not, well, you might be better off with another agent choice. And obviously, if you have any insight into sports (particularly golf) whatsoever, you should latch yourself onto these fine representatives of the Waxman Agency the moment you spot them at the conference and cling for dear life.

Isn’t it fascinating, though, to see so many titles represented by a single agency all at once? Really allows you to see the overarching patterns in a way that is almost impossible otherwise. (Although I have to say, if I had preferences this strong and specific, I would have gone out of my way to let conference-goers know about them in advance.) When agencies say that they specialize in certain areas, they usually are not kidding: pay attention to these trends, and address your queries to only those agents who represent YOUR kind of writing.

Trust me, you’ll be a happier camper — and a less often rejected one — if you do. Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

Everyone, please give a round of applause to eagle-eyed super-readers Toddie and Dave, who each informed me independently that I had, to put it politely, made an error in compiling my agent list. Turns out that the list of agents (and editors, for that matter) from which one can choose when registering for the summer conference online does NOT entirely correspond to the website’s page of posted blurbs. The website discrepancy would be a less serious faux pas, I think, if the conference registration form listed the agencies from which these blurb-free additional agents hail, but it does not. Makes them a bit harder to find, even for the web-savvy, eh?

So by sticking to only the blurbed agents, as Toddie and Dave were quick enough to catch, I had skipped no fewer than THREE agents in my alphabetical list so far. I’m going to address a couple of those left-out agents today, and then integrate the rest into subsequent posts, as the tyranny of the alphabet dictates.

I should have caught this myself, because for the last couple of weeks, I had been wondering why my agency wasn’t sending anyone this year. They generally do. Had I gone registration form-searching, I would have seen: actually, they ARE sending an agent this year.

Which brings me to the first of the skipped agents, Lauren Abramo, who hails from my very own Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (where I am represented by — since some of you have been asking — the perpetually fabulous Stacey Glick). Regular PNWA conference attendees may recognize the agency — both Stacey and the firm’s principal, Jane Dystel, have graced our conference in recent years.

I have not met Lauren personally, but I have nothing but good to say about D&G in general and Stacey in particular — especially impressive praise, when you consider that the agency has stuck with me through what has surely been one of the most trying memoir-publication processes in human history. Not every author enjoys that kind of support; I have been very, very lucky.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that little rant out of my system, let me add: no single agency, however marvelous, is going to be a good fit for every writer. And as I’ve been explaining for the past few posts, every agent has individual tastes and style. You need to figure out who might be simpatico with you and your book.

That being said, and since there’s no blurb for Lauren Abramo on the PNWA site, I am going to quote her blurb from the agency’s website verbatim:

“Lauren E. Abramo joined DGLM after earning an M.A. in Irish Studies at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Prior to attending NUIG, she completed a B.A. in English at New York University.

“With two particularly impractical degrees under her belt, Lauren sought work in publishing, and DGLM has turned out to be a great fit. She is an avid reader of fiction, especially anything literary, smart and fun, as well as non-fiction designed to make you think or laugh – particularly history, politics, current affairs and philosophy. She also enjoys books on science, though she cannot claim she always understands them.

“Born in New York City and raised not far outside it, she now lives in Brooklyn.”

Okay, back to me again. I’m reluctant to dissect this one too much, since I’ve already done so much cheerleading for the agency above, but allow me to say: while a lot of agents say that they are in the market for funny writing, it has been my experience that everyone at D&G honestly has a sense of humor. So if you write humorous work, MAKE SURE YOUR PITCH TO HER IS FUNNY.

Ms. Abramo is relatively new to the agency (as in within the last year), and is, I’m told, actively seeking new clients. So far this year, according to the standard industry databases, she has sold 3 NF books (2 reference, 1 pop culture) and one novel:

To Adams Media, a NF: Reference book by founder and executive director of Animals 101 Michelle River, DO DOGS HAVE BELLY BUTTONS?, a trivia guide to man’s best friend.

To Simon Spotlight Entertainment, Post Road literary magazine co-founder Jaime Clarke’s anthology SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes. (I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark, and guess that this one is the pop culture sale.)

Another NF: Reference book, Founder and president of PrepMatters Ned Johnson and Emily Warner Eskelsen’s THE SAT FIX: WHAT PARENTS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TEENS AND TESTS, an SAT resource guide for parents, sold to Palgrave.

And the novel, which sounds really cool: Lorraine Lopez’ FERMINA’S GIFT, “about four sisters who are each promised a ‘gift’ by their enigmatic Hopi caretaker and how they struggle with the responsibilities these ‘gifts’ entail, as well as the conflicts of sisterhood, love, marriage, and motherhood,” purchased by Warner/Solana.

I have met many, many aspiring writers at conferences who routinely avoid agents relatively new to the game in favor of the bigger wigs, but I think this is generally a mistake. The bigwigs might, at best, pick up one or two client at any given conference; they often pick up none at all, as their dance cards are already full. The lesser-known agents, on the other hand, are often “building their lists,” as the industry jargon has it, and thus might be open to a broader array of pitches. This in turn means that your chances of getting your work read and accepted are better.

Remember, too, that a new agent in a small agency and a new agent at a big, prestigious agency like D & G might easily have very different sets of connections. Just because an agent is new to the game doesn’t mean that she can’t help you; in fact, that is how agents BECOME big, usually, by discovering a great new author and riding together to the top.

I have a lot of territory to cover today, so on to the next skipped agent, Jennifer Cayea of Nicholas Ellison. Ms. Cayea is one of two agents at Nicholas Ellison, a subsidiary of Sanford J. Greenburger Associates; NE represents such bestselling authors as Christopher Moore and Olivia Goldsmith. Here is her blurb, borrowed from the NE website:

“Jennifer is building a select list of emerging authors of fiction and non-fiction. Prior to joining Nicholas Ellison, Inc. as an agent and director of foreign rights, Jennifer had a distinguished record as an editor at Random House, in the audio and large print division where she demonstrated a keen editorial eye and was known to be very aggressive in acquiring books. Her negotiation skills combined with her unique publishing background enable her to achieve the best possible results for the authors.”

Okay, this is a GREAT blurb for dissection, because it contains a lot of industry jargon. “Building a select list of emerging authors,” translated into English as she is spoke in these here United States, means that she is either a relatively new agent who has not yet built a client list, that she is just returning from an extended leave of absence, and/or is currently very open to representing previously unpublished authors on general principle (which is relatively rare). Let’s take a look at what she’s sold lately to try to figure out which is the most likely possibility:

December, 2004, Debut Fiction to William Morrow: Author K.L. Cook’s first novel THE GIRL FROM CHARNELLE, “following the family of a 16-year old girl after she is abandoned by her mother and her oldest sister, left to care for her father and three brothers while the family tries to regain its balance.” This book had some pretty hefty back-jacket candy, blurbs from the likes of Richard Russo, so I imagine this was a pretty sweet deal.

February, 2004, a pop culture book to Gotham, in a great big deal: “Legendary sound engineer Geoff Emerick and veteran music journalist Howard Massey’s HERE, THERE, AND EVERYWHERE: A Legacy of Sound, Music, and The Beatles, with a foreword by Elvis Costello, from the man in charge of the recording of such seminal albums as ‘Revolver,’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,’ and ‘Abbey Road,’ with stories of the groundbreaking recording techniques he pioneered to give them their unique sound and his post-Beatles days (including working Paul McCartney & Wings).”

(And, no, I don’t know why the publishing industry’s databases are so very full of typos, considering that much of the input is written by EDITORS. Go figure.)

These are great deals, but I can’t find anything she’s sold since, other than the world Spanish rights to Father Albert Cutie’s REAL LIFE, REAL LOVE: 7 Paths to a Strong & Lasting Relationship. Perhaps we’ll find more information on her webpage, which does include a list of her clients. Other than the three listed above, this list includes THE LOVE DIET by Mabel Iam (Rayo/HarperCollins); a short story collection by the aforementioned K.L. Cook, LAST CALL (University of Nebraska Press); BURN, PICTURE ME ROLLIN’, and EXPLICIT CONTENT by Black Artemis (NAL); DIVAS DON’T YIELD and OSHUN’S ARRANGEMENT by Sofia Quintero (Random House); THE SISTA HOOD: On a Mission by E-Fierce (Atria Young Adult Books); TAKE BACK YOUR POWER: How to Reclaim It, Keep It, and Use It to Get What You Deserve and YOU GO, GIRL! How to Raise Powerful Women by Yasmin Davidds (Atria Books); THE CHALUPA RULES by Mario Bàsquez (Plume); ASCENDING TO POWER: How I Achieved the American Dream by Rosario Marin (Atria Books).

Most of these books were sold prior to 2000. I would assume from this that she is VERY serious about building up a new list — which may make her a very good audience for a terrific pitch right about now. As anyone who habitually reads agents guides can tell you, being actually EAGER to work with the previously unpublished is not a very common trait, and it should be cherished wherever it crops up.

I do wish that her blurb gave more information about her specific interests — “fiction and non-fiction” covers quite a bit of territory, doesn’t it? Since her listed books are not very recent, I’m not sure what to advise you about what kind of work to pitch to her, other than to refer you to the lists above.

Please don’t hold this against her, though, because interest ambiguity is far from rare in the industry. In fact, preference vagueness is extraordinarily common in agents’ public statements about what they represent — as, again, anyone who has spent much time reading agents guides can tell you. It’s one of the best reasons to go to literary conferences: there, agents and editors will usually be far more explicit about their interests than they ever are in guides.

You may have noticed this phenomenon yourself, in trying to figure out whom to query. Many, many agencies will list themselves as accepting practically every genre under the sun, out of fear of missing out on that one bestseller in a category that they usually don’t represent. I think being vague about their tastes makes the aspiring author’s job considerably more difficult, as it is hard to second-guess the tastes of someone you don’t know personally. But it is accepted industry practice, and one of the reasons that it’s a good idea to perform as much background research as possible on agents you may be meeting at a conference.

But for instructive purposes, I am rather glad that Ms. Cayea’s blurb is so vague, simply because it IS so common. What does one do, when faced with this type of generality, since we at the PNWA have to make our agent choices so far in advance?

My advice is multi-part. If the list above strikes your fancy, sign up for a meeting with her. If not, attend the agents’ forum at the conference, and wait to see what she — or any other vaguely-blurbed agent — SAYS she is looking to represent at the moment. Then, if she seems like a good fit for you, run up after the forum is over and ask if you can give her your pitch, either on the spot or by arranging an informal appointment later in the conference.

Never underestimate the power of the spontaneous pitch.

And, as always, if any particular agent intrigues you, do some internet research. It can be very, very helpful not only in figuring out which agent to query, but also in figuring out what is and isn’t important to you in an agent — now, before you are in a room with several of them.

Before I signed with an agent, I found ranking my choices for conference appointments very annoying — not just because I didn’t always have access to much information about the agents in question (although often it was that, too), but also because I hadn’t given much thought to what I wanted in an agent. To be absolutely honest, as the veteran of two bad agent-client relationships, my primary criterion was that the agent was interested in my work; until I had offers from several agents simultaneously (not a very common luxury; I had won a contest), I had not seriously considered that I SHOULD have selection criteria of my own.

But I did, and you should, too. Not every agent is going to represent your work well; that’s just a fact. So why not sit down — preferably BEFORE you make your agent choices for the conference — and come up with a list of qualities you would like to discover in your agent? (Hint: it is helpful if you seek a bit more specificity than “a person who will sell my books.” Do you want someone that you feel comfortable picking up the phone and asking questions at the drop of a hat, or someone who has a more formal relationship with her clients? Do you want an agent who will leave you alone to work on your writing, or would you be happier if you received regular updates about what is going on with your circulating work? Etc.)

I guarantee that it will help make the selection process easier — and help you appreciate what an embarrassment of riches we have coming to the conference. Truly. Imagine, having access to so many disparate agents that we writers can narrow down our choices in order to find the best fit. Really, it’s a great thing, even if the necessity of making ranked choices is a stressful prospect.

Thanks again to Toddie and Dave for the heads-up about the skipped agents. In gratitude, here’s a tidbit that I know that Toddie will like, as we’ve been privately discussing the case of Kaavya Viswanathan, the Harvard sophomore who’s been under heat lately due to charges of plagiarism regarding her chick lit novel. (There are blogs and blogs out there now devoted to comparing her book to those of Megan McCafferty, Salman Rushdie, Meg Cabot, and Sophie Kinsella. If you want to avoid the feeding frenzy and look at a straightforward textual comparison between her work and Kinsella’s,. For other, more gleeful comparisons, check out the Harvard Crimson article.

The latest news, hot off the industry grapevine: this afternoon, Little, Brown announced that they “will not be publishing a revised edition of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Kaavya Viswanathan, nor will we publish the second book under contract.”

Ouch. So much for that immense advance — although one wonders if the Crime would have bothered to break the story if her advance hadn’t been so, well, large. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the mother of all chick lit books, BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY, primarily a rehash of the plot of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE? I’m not defending Ms. Viswanathan (although I do hope that she sits right down and writes a book about all of this; it would be interesting to hear her perspective on being a 17-year-old who got away with such a thing for a couple of years), but if we’re going to be jumping on paraphrasing the ideas of others without credit, by all means, let’s be consistent about it.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

I missed posting yesterday — no, not because of a miraculous breakthrough with my memoir, alas, but due to one of the nice-but-stressful phenomena intrinsic to life represented by an agent: on Tuesday afternoon, I was asked if I was still interested in writing a book I had mentioned casually, almost in passing, months ago. (One of the cocktail party tricks one rapidly learns as a working writer is to propose any idea for a publishable work to one’s agent as soon as it occurs to one.) Well, apparently, this one stuck, and now, a publisher is moderately interested in it. Interested enough, at least, to ask to see a proposal.

For the sake of giving you an accurate impression of what to expect from the publishing industry, let me also add: it is my understanding that a certain amount of this interest stemmed from the publisher’s anticipating being confined to bed for some time with a lingering head cold, and thus bored; he wanted something to read. Hey, we take our opportunities as we find them.

In any case, my agent and the publisher’s both being New Yorkers, they asked if they could have the proposal by the end of business (East Coast time, natch) Wednesday, to catch the publisher’s cold-induced reading time before it expired. So, being a good little writer, I sat down and churned out a proposal in a day.

For the record, I do not recommend this. Thank goodness, I caught myself thinking while my fingers blurred across the keyboard, that I already have a usable author bio!

I had to laugh, remembering how I spent Tuesday’s blog haranguing you about the vital importance of being an upbeat, can-do kind of writer, the sort who says, “Rewrite WAR AND PEACE by Saturday? No problem!” Here was a perfect real-life illustration of the importance of conveying that kind of attitude. It enabled my agent to jump on an opportunity as soon as it appeared, for both of our potential benefits.

As the late great Billie Holiday so often sang, “The difficult/I’ll do right now./The impossible/will take a little while.” (Will it vitiate my moral too much if I add that the name of the song was “Crazy, He Calls Me”?)

While I was writing like crazy yesterday, I also thought about how lucky I was to have enough experience with the trade to be able crank out the requisite pieces of a formal book proposal with the speed of a high school junior BSing on her English Literature midterm. That facility is definitely a learned skill, acquired through having produced a whole lot of promotional materials for my work over the last decade. At this point, I can make it sound as if all of human history had been leading exclusively and inevitably to my acquiring the knowledge, background, and research materials for me to write the project in question.

The Code of Hammurabi, you will be pleased to know, was written partially with my book in mind.

A word to the wise: any promotional material for a book is a creative writing opportunity. Not an invitation to lie, of course, but a chance to use your writing skills to paint a picture of what does not yet exist, in order to call it into being. For those of you new to the game, book proposals — the good ones, anyway — are written as if the book being proposed were already written; synopses, even for novels, are written in the present tense. It is your time to depict the book you want to write as you envision it in your fondest dreams.

That I have this skill in my writer’s tool bag is very valuable to my agent — because actually, she is too prudent a character to have told the publisher he could have the proposal that quickly if she didn’t know from past experience that I could pull it off. (Agents tend to be prudent people; the publishing world is surprisingly full of risk-averse souls, as you may already know if you’ve been querying with a particularly innovative book lately.)

I mention all of this not for self-aggrandizement purposes (although I am pretty pleased with myself for finishing it in time, I must confess), but as inducement to you to write up as many of the promotional parts of your presentation package well in advance of when you are likely to be asked for them. This is a minority view among writers, I know, but I would not dream of walking into any writers’ conference situation (or even cocktail party) where I am at all likely to pitch my work without having polished copies of my author bio, synopsis, and a 5-page writing sample nestled securely in my shoulder bag, all ready to take advantage of any passing opportunity.

Chance favors the prepared backpack.

Okay, so after all of this build-up, I hope you are chomping at the bit to get at your own author bio. First of all, let’s define it: an author bio is an entertaining overview of the author’s background, an approximately 200-250 word description of your writing credentials, relevant experience, and educational attainments, designed to make you sound like a person whose work would be fascinating to read.

Let me get the standard advice out of the way: use third person. Start with whatever fact is most relevant to the book at hand, not with “The author was born…” Mention any past publications (in general terms), columns, lecturing experience, readings, as well as what you were doing for a living at the time that you wrote the book. Mention any and all educational background (relevant to the book’s subject matter or not), as well as any awards you may have won (ditto). If your last book won the Pulitzer Prize, for instance, this is the place to mention it.

To put the length in easier-to-understand terms (and so I don’t get an avalanche of e-mails from readers worried that their bios are 15 words too long), this is 2-3 paragraphs, a 1/3 — 1/2 page (single-spaced) or 2/3 — 1 full page (double-spaced). And, as longtime readers of this blog have probably already anticipated, it should be in 12-pt. type, Times, Times New Roman or Courier, with 1-inch margins.

Yes, you read that bit in the middle of the last paragraph correctly: unlike positively everything else you will ever produce for passing under an agent or editor’s beady eyes, it is sometimes acceptable to single-space an author bio. Generally speaking, though, bios are only single-spaced when the author bio page contains a photograph of the author. I shall talk about this contingency tomorrow.

Got that length firmly in your mind? It should seem familiar to you — it’s the length of the standard biographical blurb on the inside back flap of a dust jacket. There’s a reason for that, of course: increasingly, the author, and not the publisher’s marketing department, is responsible for producing that blurb. So busy writers on a deadline tend to recycle their author bios as jacket blurbs.

Before you launch into writing your own bio, slouch your way into a bookstore on your day off and start pulling books of the shelves in the area where you hope one day to see your book sitting. Many of my clients find this helpful, as it assists them in remembering that the author bio is, like a jacket blurb, a sales tool, not just a straightforward list of facts. If you write funny novels, read a few dozen bio blurbs in funny novels already on the market. If you write cyberpunk, see what those authors are saying about themselves. Is there a pattern?

In good bios, there is: the tone of the author bio echoes the tone of the book. This is a clever move, as it helps the potential book buyer (and, in the author bio, the potential agent and/or editor) assess whether this is a writer in whose company she wants to spend hours of her life.

Now, I should warn you now about a disappointment you are likely to encounter as you read through book jacket blurbs: there are a LOT of lousy bios out there, littering up the dust jackets of otherwise perfectly fine books. Reading these may seem like a waste of your time, but actually, you can learn a lot from the bad ones, which typically share some common traits. You can learn what to avoid.

What makes them bad quickly becomes apparent. The bad ones are too similar, which makes them inherently dull. At their worst, they are merely lists of where the author went to school, if anywhere, what the author did (or does) for a living before (or besides) writing, where they live now, and their marital status. So scores of writers end up sounding something like this:

“Turgid McGee was born in upstate New York. After attending the Albany Boys’ Reformatory, he served a term in the U.S. Air Force. After graduating from Princeton University, McGee attended law school at the University of Oklahoma.

“Now retired, McGee now lives in Bermuda with his wife, Appalled, and his three children, Sleepy, Dopey, and Sneezy. He is currently working on his second book.”

Yawn. But inducing boredom is not ol’ Turgid’s worst offense here — the biggest problem with this blurb is that it’s poor marketing material. Quick, based solely on that bio:

What is Turgid’s book about?

Why is he uniquely qualified to write it?

If you picked up this book in a used bookstore years from now, would you have any interest in checking the shelves to see what his second book was?

Turgid also made a subtle mistake here, one that perhaps only those who have read a whole lot of author bios — such as, say, an agent or an editor — would catch. Turgid says he attended the University of Oklahoma, not that he graduated from it. This is the standard industry euphemism for not having finished a degree program, and thus problematic, since (and knowing dear old Turgid so well, I can say this with authority,) he actually did obtain his law degree. But when a publishing professional reads “Daffy Duck attended Yale University” in an author bio, she is automatically going to assume that poor Daffy dropped out after a year.

Moral: if you graduated from a school, say so. (And as a personal favor to me, never, ever say that you graduated a school; retain the necessary preposition. I can’t tell you how many times I have been introduced as the speaker who “graduated Harvard.” It makes my molars grind together.)

Looking at my own bio on this website, I’m not sure that I’ve avoided all of Turgid’s mistakes, but as far as the industry is concerned, the 50-word bio and the 250-word bio are entirely different animals. The former does tend to be a list, but the latter is the author’s big chance to prove to the publishing industry that she is not only a talented writer, but a person who might actually be interesting to know. My personal rule of thumb: if the full-fledged author bio doesn’t give the impression that if you were trapped in a snowstorm for three days with the author, the author would be capable of keeping you entertained with anecdotes the whole time, the bio isn’t interesting enough.

And, perhaps, if you’re lucky, something in your bio will stick in your agent’s mind enough down the road that it will occur to her to pitch your offhand reference to it to a sniffly editor in an elevator. That’s the kind of thing that happens to interesting people.

I’ll go into the mechanics a bit more tomorrow. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

I’m feeling fairly optimistic today — and, as we all know, a tendency toward cockeyed optimism is an invaluable trait in a writer in the biz for the long haul. Today, though, I am optimistic for a reason — but because things are going better, I can’t tell you about them. Ironic, no? Once again, my memoir’s doings are shrouded in legally-induced secrecy (hypothetically, of course): shadowy behind-the-scenes negotiations are taking place in far-away rooms. Options are being discussed, you will be pleased to hear.

And all the while, yours truly, bedraggled champion of what I honestly do believe is a hell of a good story, keeps pushing for the right to have that story heard. The memoir’s saga is beginning to feel to me like a surrealistic update of one of those chivalric romances — you know, the ones where Sir Gawain or Lancelot have to undergo a seemingly endless series of tests before falling exhausted into the arms of their respective ladyloves and being offered a goblet of mead. Medieval ladyloves, like NYC-based publishers, are a testy lot: they liked to have their champions prove their devotion over and over and over again.

Yes, a writer’s life is indeed a romantic one. Just not the kind of romance most of us envision.

A few weeks ago, I had promised to talk about how to write an author bio, so you could have one all ready when an agent or editor asks to see it — at, say, a major conference taking place near SeaTac in a few months’ time. Or as a supplement to the rest of your novel, after someone at an agency has already fallen in love with the first 50 pages and asked to see the rest.

They will ask, in short, when your mind is on other things, like doing a lightning-fast revision on your book proposal so you can send it to that nice editor who listed to your pitch.

The request for a bio often catches writers by surprise. Agents and editors tend to toss it out casually, as if it’s an afterthought: “Oh, and send me a bio.” The informality of the request can be a bit misleading: your one-page author bio is actually a very important tool in your marketing kit.

How important, I hear you ask? Well, it’s not unheard-of for editors, in particular, to decide to pass on the book they’re being offered, but ask to see other work by the author, if the bio is intriguing enough. So actually, it is not a tremendously good idea just to throw a few autobiographical paragraphs together in the last few minutes before a requested manuscript, proposal, or synopsis heads out the door.

Which is, I am sorry to report, precisely what most aspiring writers do.

Big, big mistake: if the bio sounds dull, disorganized, or unprofessional, agents and editors tend to assume that the writer is also dull, disorganized, or unprofessional. Publishing types tend not to be the most imaginative of people. After all, they reason (or so they tell me), the author’s life is the material that he should know best; if he can’t write about that well, how can he write well about anything else?

A good bio is especially important for those who write any flavor of nonfiction, because the bio is where you establish your platform in its most tightly-summarized form. All of you nonfiction writers out there know what a platform is, don’t you? You should: it is practically the first thing any agent or editor will ask you when you pitch a NF book. Your platform is the background that renders you — yes, YOU — the best person on earth to write the book you are pitching. This background can include, but is not limited to, educational credentials, relevant work experience, awards, and significant research time.

For a NF writer, the author bio is a compressed résumé, with a twist: unlike the cold, linear presentation of the résumé format, the author bio must also demonstrate that the author can put together an array of facts in a readable, compelling fashion.

Tall order, no?

Lest you fiction writers out there think that you are exempt from this daunting challenge, think again. At least NF writers know in advance when they will be expected to produce an author bio: it’s typically the last piece of the NF book proposal. (For an overview on the basics of writing a book proposal, please see my blogs from August 23rd -29th, stored in the handy archives displayed on the right-hand side of this page.)

Fiction writers, on the other hand, are seldom warned in advance that they will have to write an author bio at all, much less that they will probably need it before anyone in the industry actually reads their work in its entirety. “A bio?” novelists say nervously when agents and editors toss out the seemingly casual request. “You mean that thing on the back cover? Won’t the marketing department write that for me?”

In a word, no. And readers, if you take nothing else from today’s blog, take this enduring truth and clutch it to your respective bosoms forevermore: whenever you are asked to provide extra material whilst marketing your work, train yourself not to equivocate. Instead, learn to chirp happily, like the can-do sort of person you are, “A bio? You bet!” Even if the agent or editor in question has just asked you to produce some marketing data that strikes you as irrelevant or downright stupid. Even if what you’re being asked for will require you to take a week off work to deliver. Even in you have to dash to the nearest dictionary the second your meeting with an agent or editor is over to find out what you’ve just promised to send within a week IS.

Or, perhaps more sensibly, drop me an e-mail and inquire. That’s what my blog is here for, you know: to help writers get their work successfully out the door.

Why is appearing eager to comply and competent so important, I hear you ask? Because professionalism is one of the few selling points a writer CAN’T list in an author bio — and to most people in positions to bring your work to publication, it’s regarded as a sure indicator of how much extra time they will have to spend holding a new author’s hand on the way to publication, explaining how the industry works.

How much extra time will they want to spend on you and your book, I hear you ask? (My readers are so smart; I can always rely on them to ask the perfect questions at the perfect times.) It varies from agent to agent, of course, but I believe I can give you a general ballpark estimate: none.

Yes, I know — all the agent guides will tell the previously unpublished writer to seek out agencies with track records of taking on inexperienced writers. It’s good advice, but not because such agencies are habitually eager to expend their resources teaching newbies the ropes. It’s good advice because such agencies have demonstrated that they are braver than many others: they are willing to take a chance on a new writer from time to time. Provided that writer’s professionalism positively oozes off the page and from her manner.

Trust me, the writers these agencies have signed did not respond evasively when asked for their bios.

Professionalism, as I believe I have pointed out several hundred times before, is demonstrated by manuscripts that conform to standard format. (And if you’re new to this blog and don’t know what standard format for manuscripts is, get thee hence without delay to my blog of February 19th. Submissions that are not in standard format tend to be rejected out of hand, without the courtesy of a full reading.) It is also, unfortunately for those new to the game, demonstrated through familiarity with the basic terms and expectations of the industry. Which most people only learn from experience.

So, as you have probably already figured out, “Bio? What’s that?” is not the most advisable response to an agent or editor’s request for same. Nor is hesitating, or saying that you’ll need some time to write one. (You’re perfectly free to take time to write one, of course; just don’t say so.)

Why is even hesitation problematic, I hear you ask? (Another terrific question; you really are on the ball today.) Well, let me put it this way: have you ever walked into a deli in New York unsure of what kind of sandwich you want to get? When you took the requisite few seconds to collect your thoughts on the crucial subjects of onions and mayo, did the guy behind the counter wait politely for you to state your well-considered preferences, or did he roll his eyes and move on to the next customer? And did that next customer ruminate at length on the competing joys of ham on rye and pastrami on pumpernickel, soliciting the opinions of other customers, or did he just shout over your shoulder, “Reuben with a pickle!” with the ultra-imperative diction of an emergency room surgeon calling for a scalpel to perform a tracheotomy with seconds to spare before the patient sustains permanent brain damage?

If you frequent the same delis I do, the answers in both cases are emphatically the latter. Perhaps with some profanity thrown in for local color.

NYC agents and editors eat in these delis, my friends. They go there to RELAX.

This regional tendency to mistake thoughtful consideration, or even momentary hesitation, for malingering or even idiocy often comes as an unpleasant shock to those of us who are West Coast bred and born. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we like to encourage meditation in daily life; there are emporia in the greater Seattle metropolitan area where the Buddha himself could happily hold a full-time job with no significant loss of contemplative time. “I’m here if you need anything,” the Buddha would say, melting into the background to think. “Just let me know if you have questions about those socks. Take your time.”

This is why, in case you are wondering, NYC-based agents and editors tend to treat all of us out here like flakes. In their minds, we’re all wandering around stoned in bellbottoms, offering flowers to strangers at airports and spreading pinko propaganda like, “Have a nice day.” I’ve met agents who are astonished that any of us out here have the mental capacity to type at all, much less write an entire book. I think my agent thinks I live in a yurt.

What does all of this mean, in practical terms, I hear you ask? That you should have an author bio already written by the time you are asked for it, that’s what, so you will not hesitate for even one Buddha-like moment when the crucial request comes. And that is my long-winded explanation of why I am going to spend the next few days teaching you how to write one. Write one now.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

No, I didn’t go quiet at the end of last week due to an excess of memoir-blockage-induced woe: I had an awful head cold. My ears kept squealing like a hog-calling convention, and I lost my voice for a few days.

Now, if my life were a short story written for a high school English class, this voice loss might pass for legitimate symbolism — or even irony, in a pinch. A bit heavy-handed, true, but certainly situationally appropriate: villains move to silence protagonist’s voice through censorship = protagonist’s sore throat. Both New Age the-body-is-telling-you-something types and postmodern the-body-is-a-text theorists would undoubtedly be pleased.

But the fact is, in a novel, this cause-and-effect dynamic would seem forced. Just because something happens in real life doesn’t necessarily mean that it will make convincing fiction.

My sore throat is precisely the type of symbolism that comes across as ham-handed in a novel. It’s too immediate, for one thing, too quid pro quo. Dramatically, the situation should have taken time to build — over years, perhaps — so the reader could have felt clever for figuring out why the throat problem happened. Maybe even anticipated it.

How much better would it have been, fictionally, if I weathered the storm now, not coming down with strep throat until just before the final crisis? That way, in fine melodramatic style, I would have to croak my way through testimony on the witness stand, while my doctor stood by anxiously with antibiotics.

The possibilities make my novelist’s heart swoon. Just think how long it would extend a courtroom scene if a key witness were unable to speak more than a few emotion-charged words before her voice disappeared with a mouse-like squeak. Imagine the court reporter creeping closer and closer, to catch the muttered words. Or just think of the dramatic impact of a high-stakes interpersonal battle where one of the arguers cannot speak above a whisper. Or the comic value of the persecuted protagonist’s being able to infect her tormenters with strep, so they, too, are speechless by the end of the story.

Great stuff, eh? Much, much better than protagonist feels silenced, protagonist is silenced.

Then, too, readers like to see a complex array of factors as causes for an event, and an equally complex array of effects. Perhaps if I had been not speaking about my subject for a lifetime (which, actually, is quite true: I had never shared the core information in my memoir before a couple of years ago), then I would be fictionally justified in developing speech-inhibiting throat problems now, or a childhood of chronic sore throats (also true in real life, as it happens).

But a single event’s sparking a severe head cold? Dramatically unsatisfying. Makes the protagonist seem like a wimp. Because, frankly, readers, like moviegoers, like to see protagonists take a few hits and bounce up again. Even better is when the protagonist is beaten to a bloody pulp, but comes back to win anyway.

One of the great truisms of the American novel is don’t let your protagonist feel sorry for himself for too long. We see this philosophy in movies, too. Think about any domestic film with where an accident confines the protagonist to a wheelchair. Got it? Now tell me: doesn’t the film include one or more of the following scenes: (a) some hale and hearty soul urging the mangled protagonist to stop feeling sorry for himself, (b) a vibrantly healthy physical therapist telling the protagonist that the reason he can’t move as well as he once did is not the casts on his legs/total paralysis/missing chunks of torso, but his lousy attitude, and/or (c) the protagonist’s lecturing someone else on his/her need to stop feeling sorry for himself and move on with his/her life? Don’t filmmakers — yes, and writers, too — EXPECT their characters to become better people as the result of undergoing life-shattering trauma?

Now, we all know that this is seldom true in real life, right? Generally speaking, pain does not make people better human beings; it makes them small and scared and peevish. That sudden, crisis-evoked burst of adrenaline that enables 110-pound mothers to move Volkswagens off their trapped toddlers aside, few of us are valiantly heroic in the face of more than a minute or two of living with a heart attack or third-degree burns. Heck, even the average head cold — with or without a concomitant voice loss — tends to make most of us pretty cranky.

And dramatically, we as readers accept that the little irritations of life might seem like a big deal at the time, even in fiction, because these seemingly trivial incidents may be Fraught with Significance. Which often yields the odd result, in books and movies, of protagonists who bear the loss of a limb, spouse, or job with admirable stoicism, but fly into uncontrollable spasms of self-pity at the first missed bus connection or hot dog that comes without onions WHEN I ORDERED ONIONS.

Why oh why does God let things like this happen to good people?

One of my personal favorite examples of this phenomenon comes in that silly American remake of the charming Japanese film, SHALL WE DANCE? After someone spills a sauce-laden foodstuff on the Jennifer Lopez character’s suede jacket, she not only sulks for two full scenes about it, but is seen to be crying so hard over the stain later that the protagonist feels constrained to offer her his handkerchief. Meanwhile, the death of her dancing career, the loss of her life partner, and a depression so debilitating that she barely lifts her head for the first half of the movie receive only a few seconds’ worth of exposition. Why? Because dwelling on the ruin of her dreams would be wallowing; dwelling on minor annoyances is Symbolic of Deeper Feelings.)

Edith Wharton remarked in her excellent autobiography (which details, among other things, how terribly embarrassed everybody her social circle was when she and Theodore Roosevelt achieved national recognition for their achievements, rather than for their respective standings in the NYC social register. How trying.) that the American public wants tragedies with happy endings. It still seems to be true.

I have heard many, many agents and editors complain in recent years about too-simple protagonists with too-easily-resolved problems. I have heard in conference presentation after conference presentation the advice that writers should give their protagonists more quirks — it’s an excellent way to make your characters memorable. Give ’em backstory, and if you want to make them sympathetic, a hard childhood, dead parent, or unsympathetic boss is a great tool for encouraging empathy. Provided, of course, that none of these hardships actually prevent the protagonist from achieving his or her ultimate goal.

In other words, feel free to heap your protagonist (and love interest, and villain) with knotty, real-life problems; just make sure that the protagonist fights the good fight with as much vim and resources as someone who did not have those problems.

Again, this is not the way we typically notice people with severe problems acting in real life, but we’re talking fiction here. We’re talking drama. We’re talking about moving a protagonist through a story in a compelling way, and as such, as readers and viewers, we have been trained to regard the well-meaning soul who criticizes the recently-bereaved protagonist by saying, “Gee, Erica, I don’t think you’ve gotten over your father’s death yet,” as a caring, loving friend, rather than as a callous monster incapable of reading a calendar with sufficient accuracy to note that Erica buried her beloved father only a couple of weeks before. Why SHOULD she have gotten over it already?

Let’s move the plot along, people.

I don’t think that the agents, editors, and readers who resent characters who linger in their grief are inherently unsympathetic human beings; they are just easily bored. In a short story or novel or screenplay, people who feel sorry for themselves (or who even possess the rational skills to think at length over the practical ramifications of obstacles in their paths) tend to be passive, from the reader’s POV. They don’t do much, and while they’re not doing much, the plot grinds to a screaming halt. Yawn.

Or to express it in the parlance of agents and editors: next!

This is a very, very common manuscript megaproblem, one about which agents and editors complain loudly and often: the protagonist who stops the plot in order to think things over, rather than taking swift action. Or stops to talk the problem over with another character, rehashing the background information that the reader already knows. When you see these pondering scenes in your own work, even if the project in question is the most character-driven literary fiction imaginable, pause and consider: could the piece work without the pondering scene? Often, it can, and brilliantly.

A more subtle form of this megaproblem is the protagonist who waits patiently for all of the pieces of the mystery to fall into to place before taking action. Why, the reader wonders, did the protagonist NEED to know the entire historical background of the problem before doing something about it? Because the author thought the background was interesting, that’s why.

Longtime readers of this blog, chant with me now: “because the plot requires it” should NEVER be the only reason something happens in a story. Wouldn’t it be more interesting, and substantially more active, if the protagonist acted on PARTIAL information, and then learned from the results of what she had done that she needed to learn more?

In the midst of manuscripts where 2/3rds of the book is spent hunting down every last detail before the protagonist acts, I often find myself wondering: is it really such a good thing that HAMLET is so widely taught in high schools? Yes, many of the speeches are mind-bogglingly lovely, but here is a protagonist who more or less sits around feeling sorry for himself and not acting until the final act of a very, very long play — is this really the best exemplar of how to construct a plot? Yes, it’s beautifully written, but honestly, by the middle of Act III, don’t you just want to leap onto the stage, shake Hamlet, and tell him to DO SOMETHING, already?

Oh, yeah, right, as if I’m the only one who’s had THAT impulse…

One form that the passive protagonist often takes is the lead who interviews relevant players not by asking questions, but simply by showing up and waiting for the bad guys — or whoever has the necessary information — to divine psychically what the protagonist is after and spill their guts spontaneously. Amazingly enough, they always oblige. (A common corollary is the villain who casually retails background information while the protagonist is at his mercy. Villains are SUCH nice fellows; they are always more than willing to kill a little time while waiting for the protagonist’s rescuers to show up.)

So, for reasons of drama, I apologize for how slowly events have been unfolding in the saga of my memoir’s path to publication. If the saga’s a comedy, it’s moving way too slowly, and if it’s a tragedy, it should have had at least a hint of a happy ending by now. Nine months — yes, the threats against the book really have been coming in for longer than I have been writing this blog — really is far too long for the plot to have paused.

I assure you, behind the scenes, this protagonist really has been taking action. Soon, I hope, the Medusa’s head will be successfully lopped off, and everyone concerned will stop acting as though he has been turned to stone. Because this is an American drama, damn it: we need to move the plot along.

There endeth today’s attempt to derive something from my ambient reality that will help at least some of you in your writing efforts. Okay, so it wasn’t a particularly subtle connection — but hey, I still have a sore throat. Cut me some slack for a minor annoyance.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

Today has been a real learning experience for me, chatting with various experts about my options for defending my memoir. (If you’re just tuning in, check out my post for March 30th for a hypothetical explanation of what’s going on.) It’s beginning to look as though the only way I can stop the people who have held my book in limbo for so many months now by threatening to sue (without ever filing any actual legal paperwork) would be to sue them. I had been hoping to avoid this, for reasons both obvious and not (I had thought for quite some time that these people were my friends, after all), but if you see me holding a bake sale on a street corner, it will be for my legal defense fund.

I wonder: how many blueberry muffins are there in a lawsuit?

I am mentioning this, not just to keep you informed about what is going on in my working life, but for the benefit all of you out there who write about reality, both as memoir and as fiction. The publishing environment has changed radically since the James Frey (A MILLION LITTLE PIECES) scandal; I hope it’s a temporary change, for the sake of writers everywhere, because it has tipped the scale even farther in favor of publishers. Basically, the mood of the industry is pretty hostile to authors right now; this is undoubtedly not the best time to be querying agents with anything based upon real events or people.

To be fair, publishers do unquestionably take risks when they publish fact-based books — after all, anybody can sue anybody for anything, and as I pointed out yesterday, many people, upon seeing their names in print, will automatically assume that they are the protagonists of the story. Few lay readers understand the law well enough to know that a mere difference of opinion about what occurred is not sufficient grounds for a lawsuit; there are many people out there who believe, incorrectly, that hurt feelings are in themselves actionable, and that any mention of oneself in a public forum that is not entirely flattering is slander.

As public relations, most of us accept this without comment. Perhaps it is because we have all grown accustomed to the pro forma protest of the celebrity accused of an affair in a tabloid: the threat to sue has become almost more automatic than the emotion the articles raise. It’s as though the protestors believe that the threat itself were inherent evidence of innocence. It’s not: all it means is that the protesting party can afford a lawyer and/or a publicist.

In the good old days — which, in this context, means anytime before the James Frey story broke — it was a truism of the industry that memoirs inherently generated pre-publication letters of protest, usually from family members. Often, the writers of these angry epistles had not read the book; they just objected to the idea of the family”s proverbial dirty linen being hung out in print. Since so few of these threatening letters ever mutated into actual legal cases, they often were simply shrugged off by publishers.

In the current publishing environment, though, a single protest can be all it takes to derail a book. While this is obviously harmful for everyone who writes, this is very, very bad for memoirists in particular, since the more truthful the author is, generally speaking, the more likely the book is to annoy somebody. With publishing houses now taking seriously threats they would have laughed off five years ago — not because of the prospect of legal expenses, but the possibility of being lambasted in the press, as Random House was over its handling of A MILLION LITTLE PIECES — there is more pressure than ever on authors to make nice.

Unfortunately, making nice and telling the truth are often incompatible. (That’s not just a truism: hypothetically, if I had agreed to an outrageous request to turn the story of my childhood into a rehash of FINDING NEVERLAND, my memoir would have been published a month ago. Hypothetically, I refused.) In the current environment, though, publishers are expecting writers of nonfiction to do both — and in some cases codifying those expectations in contracts that place the legal burdens (and costs) on the people least able to bear them, the writers.

But the fact is, it is the publishers, not the authors, who control how a book is presented to the world — and, generally speaking, it is the presentation, the overall impression the book gives, that engenders protest. Authors don’t write their own marketing copy; the marketing department does, just as the sales department determines how to pitch books to retailers. In my case, I did not even see my book’s title, cover art, or blurb until after all three were already posted on Amazon; I found them accidentally, when I was Googling my own name — in preparation for setting up this blog, in fact.

Imagine my surprise.

The internet, of course, has made reputation making and breaking a very quick thing — something that most publishing houses have been very slow to recognize. More than a century ago, Mark Twain wrote, “A lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get his boots on.” Now, a lie can make it ALL the way around the world before the truth has had a chance to log on. Or, indeed, before the truth is even aware that anyone is speculating about it.

If you have even the vaguest interest in writing a memoir, or indeed, any nonfiction, within the next five years or so, I would HIGHLY urge you to check out the many, many widely divergent opinions currently expressed on the web about my memoir, A FAMILY DARKLY. Now would be an interesting time to Google it, because no one outside my publishing house has actually read the final version of the book. Yet it is reviewed; it is praised; it is condemned. It was a Book People selection last month, and I am told that the main PKD fan forum has some wildly inaccurate speculation about the book’s content and my motivations in writing it. All, I should point out, without (with the exception of a single interviewer) anyone concerned asking me, the author, question one about it.

It’s all rumor, at this point. Yet it definitely affects my book’s publishing prospects.

In fact, I’m just going to go ahead and apologize right now to all of you for any negative shadows that the controversy over my book is having or will have on good writers querying my agent, editor, or publisher. I would imagine that at the moment, all of them positively cringe when they see a memoir query. I’m really, really sorry about that.

Which leads me to another piece of advice for those of you aspiring to write about true events and people: be aware that right now is, practically speaking, one of the worst times in human history to be pitching a truth-based book to a North American agent or editor. Actually, from what I hear on the writers’ grapevine, editors and publishers are so nervous that it’s not a particularly good time to be trying to pitch any book at all.

This does not mean that you should give up on submitting your work; far from it. But take any rejections you get over the next few months as temporary; you might well get an entirely opposite response from the same agents and editors a year from now.

As a fringe benefit, though, since so many authors have been getting together lately and moaning over the current distrust-the-writer sentiment, it would be a TERRIFIC time to submit a controversial memoir to a writing contest. There are a whole lot of writers-turned-judges out there who would just LOVE to reward a genuinely risk-taking manuscript right about now. Go ahead and enter bravely.

And do, for the sake of your own reputation, when you query, include some indication in your synopsis (or even in your cover letter) of how you can back up any claims you make, if at all possible. This is the time to play up your respectable credentials, if you have them; this is the time to emphasize how much time you spent on background research; this is the time to mention that you have consulted the three best-respected researchers in your field.

Yes, I know: this all seems silly, to those of us who write memoirs. After all, who could possibly be a better authority, or a more credible one, on one’s own life than oneself?

A year ago, I could have answered that question with confidence: no one. However, now that my motivations are evidently the subject of internet-based speculation by people who have never read my work… well, I guess all of us who would publish our own stories are public figures now, available for praise and censure. I suppose I can’t object to that. It just would have been nice to have told my own story my own way first.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

I’ve been trying very hard indeed to glean as much information from my memoir’s current trauma (for hypothetical details, see the post before last; it’s a serious crisis) as I can to pass on to you. Regardless of whether the book is ultimately published or not, I want to make sure that we can all learn something from the experience. Otherwise, it’s just Anne’s Little Problem, and the next nonfiction writer among us who finds herself sued will come to this situation as innocent as I did. So here are a few lessons I have learned in the past eight months:

1. Never, ever show a memoir to anyone mentioned in it.

Actually, other writers had been telling me this for years, but silly me, I didn’t listen. The people currently taking umbrage at my book were friends of mine, I thought, and they asked very pointedly to read it before I sent it to my editor. They also swore up and down that they did not want to censor my work in any way (that’s a quote from an e-mail, incidentally), and said that they were genuinely eager to hear my point of view.

As it turns out, they weren’t.

The lesson to learn from this: people’s stated reasons for wanting to read your book may not be their actual reasons. I was naïve. You are never under any legal obligation to show a draft of your work to anyone mentioned in it; in fact, most publishers would actively prefer that you did not.

2. A mentioned person’s perception of how important a character she is in the book is very seldom accurate. Even a barely-visible character may see herself as the protagonist.

This is particularly stark in the case of my memoir, as it is legally impossible to either slander or libel a dead person, and most of the major characters in my book are no longer living. Therefore, any objection must be based solely upon my representation of those still above ground.

The funny thing is, the objectors hardly appear in the book at all. The people who are suing me’s names appeared in a grand total of 3 chapters in a 14-chapter draft; nevertheless, they perceive themselves, apparently, to be central to the book. When one of them objected, I took her out of the book entirely (and told her so), but judging from her subsequent response, she still feels that her spirit pervades the book. I minimized the presence of the sisters who are suing as thoroughly as I could without actually misrepresenting occasions when they were present. I present it all as my point of view, and point that fact out repeatedly. Heck, I even tell my readers not to trust ANY single account of Philip K. Dick’s life.

And yet this was not enough.

The lesson to be learned here: everyone is the protagonist in her own life; not everyone has sufficient perspective to realize that her personal point of view is not the only possible one. Be careful to show your version of the truth as one man’s opinion, rather than Truth Everlasting.

3. Telling the truth will not necessarily protect you.

This is completely counterintuitive, I know, because truth is an absolute defense against slander and libel. However, as I pointed out yesterday, in human interactions, almost everything is subject to differing opinions.

Once a lawsuit gets to court, of course, both sides can provide evidence, and actually, I have so much documentary evidence to support my contentions that I would be rather pleased if this suit DID go to court. (Hypothetically, I have e-mails from one of the suing parties that confirm the truth of many of the book’s assertions that are now being challenged.) However, while many, if not most, memoirs are subject to howling protests from someone affiliated with the book, it is quite rare that any of them actually make it to court. The burden of proof is upon the complainer, you see, and while most of us are pretty sure that our own points of view are correct, few of us have thought over the years to rack up documentation to prove it.

Think about it: let’s say two people you know very well are having a conversation about a situation that affects all three of you. You are in another time zone when the conversation takes place. If you were not present, how do you know what was said?

The lesson to glean from this: obviously, the vast majority of most people’s lives are undocumented, so it is vitally important when you write about living people to document wherever you can. If you interview them, tape-record it (and it’s prudent to use two tape recorders, in case one of them malfunctions. If you have verbal conversations, write down what was said. If you want to be ultra-careful, ask follow-up questions in writing. E-mail is terrific for this, as long as you keep copies of positively EVERYTHING.

Fortunately for me and my publishers, I am a pack rat. I never throw an e-mail away; I even categorize them by sender. This is a situation where it really helps to be just a touch compulsive.

I shall keep posting new rules of thumb as they occur to me. Even though I walked into this experience with a decade’s worth of publishing background, I am still learning more every day. Rules change, and so do norms. I’ll keep you posted.

Yesterday, I was discussing Point-of-View Nazis (POVNs). It is important that you know about them, regardless of your own POV preferences, because they turn up in agencies, as contest judges, as editors, and as critics. When your work is attacked with phrases like, “well, it’s more or less impossible to pull off an omniscient narrator,” resist the temptation to throw the entire Great Books fiction shelf at the speaker. Recognize that you are dealing with a POVN, and take everything he says with a massive grain of salt.

You can’t convince a true believer; you’ll only wear yourself out with trying. Cut your losses and move on.

As I mentioned yesterday, personally, I don’t believe that a single POV does most characters or situations justice, so I tend toward a broader narrative view, particularly for comedy. As a reader, I like to hear the thoughts of multiple players in a scene, to capture the various subtleties of interpretation. If I want to hear a single POV, I reach for a first-person narrative. Call me wacky.

These are merely my personal preferences, however; I am perfectly willing to listen to those who disagree with me. And there I differ from the average POVN, who wishes to impose his views upon everyone within the sound of his voice, or reach of his editorial pen.

To be fair, too-frequent POV switches can be perplexing for the reader to follow — and therein lies the POVN’s primary justification for dismissing all multiple POV narratives as poor writing. One of the more common first-novel problems is POV switching in mid-paragraph, or even mid-sentence. But heck, that’s what the RETURN key is for, to clear up that sort of confusion. When in doubt, give each perspective its own paragraph.

It won’t protect you from a POVN’s rage, of course, but it will make your scene easier for your reader to follow.

If you are involved with a writing teacher, writing group compatriot, agent, or editor who is a POVN, you need to recognize his preference as early in your relationship as possible, in order to protect your own POV choices. Otherwise, you may end up radically edited, and some characterization may be lost. Take, for example, this paragraph from PRIDE AND PREJUDICE:

“Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry; but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody; and Darcy had never been so bewitched by a woman as he was by her. He really believed, were it not for the inferiority of her connections, he should be in some danger.”

I might quibble about Austen’s use of semicolons here, but it’s not too difficult to figure out whose perspective is whose here, right? Yet, as a POVN would be the first to point out, there are actually THREE perspectives in this single brief paragraph, although there are only two people involved:

Elizabeth’s POV: “Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry…”

The POV of an external observer: “but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody.”

And Darcy’s POV: :Darcy had never been so bewitched by a woman as he was by her…”

A POVN in Aunt Jane’s writing group would undoubtedly urge her to pick a perspective and stick to it consistently throughout the book; a POVN agent would probably reject PRIDE AND PREJUDICE outright, and a POVN editor would pick a perspective and edit accordingly. The resultant passage would necessarily be significantly different from Jane’s original intention, probably ending up reading rather like this:

“Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry; but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody. Darcy remained silent.”

At this rate, the reader is not going to know how Darcy feels until Elizabeth learns it herself, many chapters later. Yet observe how easily a single stroke of a space bar in this example clears up even the most remote possibility of confusion about who is thinking what:

“Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry; but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody.

Darcy had never been so bewitched by a woman as he was by her. He really believed, were it not for the inferiority of her connections, he should be in some danger.”

The moral here, my friends, is that you should examine writerly truisms very carefully before you accept them as invariably true. Grab that gift horse and stare into its mouth for a good, long while. You may find, after serious consideration, that you want to embrace being a POVN, at least for the duration of a particular project; there are many scenes and books where the rigidity of this treatment works beautifully. But for the sake of your own growth as a writer, make sure that the choice is your own, and not imposed upon you by the beliefs of others.

To paraphrase the late Mae West, if you copy other people’s style, you’re one of a crowd, but if you are an honest-to-goodness original, no one will ever mistake you for a copy.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

Well, I’m a bit calmer today, after the hypothetical furor of last week. (See my last post, if this statement seems cryptic to you; I’m really too tired to go through it all again today. Suffice it to say: lawyers are having brisk conversations about my memoir even as I write this.) Many thanks to all of you who sent greetings and support; I appreciate it. Thanks, too, to those who took the time to check out the controversy about my book on the fan forums and post comments.

In a battle of opinions, especially one where the right to tell one’s own life story is at stake, every raised voice helps. I am told that the conversation on the fansite and other chatrooms has been pretty pointed over the last few days, which is both exciting and maddening: I am not allowed to visit the site to see for myself. (Since postings on that fan forum, matters that only the Dick estate could have known or had any interest in mentioning in public, may be evidence in an eventual slander suit, the lawyers want to keep me far, far away from it.) Thus, my information on the subject is courtesy of Dame Rumor, but it is comforting to know that people out there care if my work is censored.

Enough about my problems. Back to work.

A few weeks back, intelligent and curious reader Bob wrote in to report that he’d been having problems tracking down an earlier post of mine, on the dreaded Point-of-View Nazis. There was a good reason for this: my posts for October, November, December, and part of January disappeared into the ether when the PNWA switched servers early this year. Our fabulous webmaster tells me that these backlogs will indeed be available for perusal soon.

In the meantime, however, I would like to revisit the topic of Point-of-View Nazis, for the benefit of Bob and other intrepid backlog-searchers like him.

A Point-of-View Nazi (POVN) is a reader — often a teacher, critic, agent, editor, contest judge, or other person with authority over writers — who believes firmly that the ONLY way to write third-person-narrated fiction is to pick a single character in the book or scene (generally the protagonist) and report ONLY his or her thoughts and sensations throughout the piece. Like first-person narration, this type of narrative conveys only the internal experience of a single character, rather than several or all of the characters in the scene or book.

Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this kind of narration, inherently: it combines the advantages of a dispassionate narrator with the plotting and pacing plusses of a single perspective. It permits the author to sink deeply (or not) into the consciousness of a chosen character without losing the emotional distance of an omniscient narrator. Since no one else’s POV is depicted, it renders the later actions of other characters more surprising to the reader.

It is not, however, the only third-person narrative possibility — a fact that drives your garden-variety POVN wild.

All of us have our own particular favorite narrative styles, and many of us have been known to lobby for their use, particularly in writing groups. What distinguishes a POVN from a mere POV enthusiast is his active campaign to dissuade all other writers from EVER considering the inclusion of more than one POV in a third-person narrative.

He would like multiple-consciousness narratives to be wiped from the face of the earth, if you please. He has been known to tell his students — or members of his writing group, or his clients, or the writers whom he edits or represents — that multiple POV narration in the third person is, to put it politely, bad writing. It should be stamped out, by statute, if necessary.

So much for Jane Austen and most of the illustrious third-person narrative-writers of the 18th and 19th centuries, who used multiple perspectives to great effect.

I bring up our forebears advisedly, because one of the reasons that POVNs are so common is that in the post-World War II era, the prose stylings of the 18th and 19th centuries tended to be rejected as old-fashioned (and therefore bad) by writing teachers. “Downright Dickensian,” many a POVN said, covering her students’ first forays into fiction with gallons of red ink. “How can we possibly follow the story, with so many characters’ perspectives?”

I should stop here and make a distinction between the POVN and a good reader or editor who objects when a narrative that HAS been sticking to a single POV suddenly wanders into another character’s head. That can be genuinely confusing to any reader, regardless of preexisting belief systems. If a book has been looking out of the protagonist’s eyes, so to speak, for 147 pages, it is a little jarring for the reader to be abruptly introduced to another character’s thoughts. The implication is that the protagonist has magically become psychic, and should be benefiting, along with the reader, from hearing the thoughts of others.

A POVN, however, is not merely the kind of well-meaning soul who will point out this type of slip to authors. No, a POVN will jump upon ANY instance of multiple perspective, castigating it as inherently terrible writing — and will rather smugly inform the author that she has broken an ironclad writing rule by doing it. They believe it, too. Many of today’s more adamant POVNs are merely transmitting the lessons they were taught in their first good writing classes: for years, many English professors set it down as a general rule that multiple POVs were inherently distracting in a third-person narrative.

Now, I have to admit something: I am not a big fan of this species of sweeping rule. I like to read an author’s work and consider whether her individual writing choices serve her story well, rather than rejecting it outright because of a preconceived notion of what is possible. Call me nutty, but I believe that — apart from the rigors of standard format, which actually are inflexible — very little is forbidden in the hands of a truly talented writer.

In fact, I have a special affection for authors whose talent is so vast that they can pull off breaking a major writing commandment from time to time. Alice Walker’s use of punctuation alone in THE COLOR PURPLE would have caused many rigid rule-huggers to dismiss her writing utterly, but the result is, I think, brilliant. I had always been told that it is a serious mistake to let a protagonist feel sorry for himself for very long, as self-pity quickly becomes boring for the reader, but Annie Proulx showed us both a protagonist AND a love interest who feel sorry for themselves for virtually the entirety of THE SHIPPING NEWS, with great success.

And so on. I love to discover a writer so skilled at her craft that she can afford to bend a rule or two. Heaven forfend that every writer’s voice should start to sound alike — or that writing should all start to sound as though it dropped from a single pen.

Which is precisely what hard-and-fast rules of narrative tend to produce, across a writing population. One effect of the reign of the POVNs — whose views go through periods of being very popular indeed, then fall into disuse, only to rise anew — has been the production of vast quantities of stories and novels where the protagonist’s POV and the narrator’s are astonishingly similar. Why write in the third person at all, if there is no authorial voice over and above the protagonist’s?

The POVNs have also given us a whole slew of books where the other characters are exactly as they appear to the protagonist: no more, no less. (The rise of television and movies, where the camera is usually an impersonal narrator of the visibly obvious, has also contributed to this kind of “What you see is what you get” characterization, if you’ll forgive my quoting the late great Flip Wilson in this context.) Often, I find myself asking, “Why wasn’t this book just written in the first person, if we’re not going to gain any significant insight into the other characters?”

I suspect that I am not the only reader who addresses such questions to an unhearing universe in the dead of night, but for a POVN, the answers are very simple. The piece in question focused upon a single POV because there IS no other way to write a third-person scene.

Philosophically, I find this troubling. In my experience, there are very few real-life situations where everyone in the room absolutely agrees upon what occurred, and even fewer conversations where all parties would report identically upon every nuance. (Watch a few randomly-chosen days’ worth of Court TV, if you doubt this.) I think that interpretive disagreement is the norm amongst human beings, not the exception.

I also believe that there are very, very few people who appear to be exactly the same from the POV of everyone who knows them. Most people act, speak, and even think rather differently around their children than around their adult friends, just as they often have slightly (or even wildly) different personalities at home and at work. If anyone can find me a real, live person who acts exactly the same in front of his three-year-old daughter, his boss’ boss, the President of the United States, and a stripper at a bachelor party, I would be quite surprised.

I would also suggest that either the person in question has serious social adjustment problems (on the order of Forrest Gump’s), or that perhaps the person who THINKS this guy is always the same in every context is lacking in imagination. Or simply doesn’t know the guy very well. My point is, almost nobody can be completely portrayed from only a single point of view — which is why sometimes narratives that permit the protagonist to be seen from the POV of other characters can be most illuminating.

Oops — once again, I have strayed back to my own dilemma. Hypothetically, I am being accused of committing the cardinal sin of suggesting that a rather well-known neurotic might have acted differently around his long-term friends than he did around, say, his own seldom-seen children or interviewers he barely knew. Why, the next thing you know, the POVNs huff, writers like me might start implying that people act differently when they’re on drugs than when they’re sober! Or that perhaps celebrities and their press agents do not always tell the absolute truth when promoting their work!

I can only refer you to your own experience interacting with other human beings for the most probable answers to these troubling questions. I only ask — and it’s a little request; it won’t hurt anybody — that those who believe that there is only a single way of looking at any person, situation, or institution occasionally admit the possibility that the whole complex, wonderful world is not reducible to a single point of view. Or at least, that they would not try to silence those who do not see the world as merely a reflection of their own minds.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

One of the great luxuries of being a writer, as opposed to any other kind of artist, is that a competitive market doesn’t mean that it pays to be nasty to others. We have our readers to thank for that, to a very great extent: bless their warm and fuzzy hearts, few of them walk into a bookstore so determined to buy only ONE book that they won’t at least LOOK at the rest. (Unlike, say, an art gallery, where the patrons tend to zero in on just one piece.) If another writer is super-successful, why, we should be grateful — s/he is pulling potential buyers for our books into the bookstore.

I, personally, am hugely grateful to Anchee Min, Lydia Minatoya, and Susan Minot, the authors whose books would most closely border mine on the average, alphabetically-arranged bookstore fiction shelf. These fine writers have already trained aficionados of good fiction to keep checking the mid-range Ms every time they wander into a bookstore. Thank you very much!

If you have not already taken up the delightfully furtive habit of checking where your future books will fall on bookstore shelves, I highly encourage you to start indulging in it as soon as possible. As daydreaming exercises go, it’s rather practical: after a few dozen bookstores, you will start to get a sense of the specialized problems of your part of the shelf and your section of the bookstore.

Authors whose last names begin with Z, for example, often find their books on floor-level shelves, due to the tyranny of the alphabet, whereas in a big bookstore, the A authors might well discover that their books are shelved above the average reader’s eye level.

Ideally, you would like to have your books displayed at eye level or just below. Flat on a prominently-placed table or face-out on a shelf is even better, of course, but in major bookstore chains, that display space is bought by the major presses, to display their current offerings. (Disillusioning, isn’t it?) In a smaller bookstore, or in a bookstore with well-read staff, good display space goes to the books they like, as well as the bestsellers.

Remember my mentioning yesterday how easy it is for a writer to get a poor reputation by being rude to readers and/or people who work in bookstores? One of the tangible ways in which dislike manifests is through misshelved books. This may seem on its face like a trivial gesture, but people who spend a lot of time in bookstores know better: even if a book is a bestseller, if it isn’t where it’s supposed to be on the shelf, readers aren’t going to be able to buy it.

The flip side of this is the relative ease of moving books that deserve greater visibility into more prominent locations. Bookstore employees read a lot, and most of them are glad to promote the work of authors whose work they like — or are particularly nice to them at readings. (Hint: bring cookies.) Even the lowest-rung employee has the power to, say, slip an underrated book onto the bestseller table for an afternoon.

Store this nugget for when you’ve got a book out: buying a copy of your own book in a bookstore, signing it, and handing it to the clerk as a present is a stylish and effective method of enlisting unofficial behind-the-counter help. Even if the clerk doesn’t instantly fall in love with your writing, everyone in the store will be talking about the incident for weeks.

Bookstore employees are not the only ones who can perform subtle marketing for a book. Why, any private citizen can help make a book more appealing to buyers, although you didn’t hear that from me. Turning a volume face out on the shelf rather than spine out, for instance. Or moving a Z book up a few shelves, perhaps into the middle of a shelf crammed with the bestseller of the day, such as THE DA VINCI CODE. One could even conceivably pick up a book, walk around with it for awhile, then set it down on one of those display tables near the front of the store while you’re leafing through something there.

If you forgot the first book on the table, who could blame you?

This form of guerilla marketing takes practice, and you will want to be really good at it by the time you have a book out. Pick a couple of favorite authors and appoint yourself publicity agent for their books now, to get a head start. Don’t get yourself in trouble by moving armfuls of volumes; one or two per bookstore will do. Just enough to make a small but palpable difference in what bookstore patrons see first when they scan the shelves.

Don’t just confine yourself to minor rearrangement of bookstore shelves, either: get into the habit of logging onto Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com and writing glowing reviews of books you like. Set up a list on Amazon. Gush in a chat room. Start a book club and introduce people to your favorite underappreciated authors’ work. These small efforts really do add up in the long run — and just think of all of the good writerly karma you’ll be racking up on the cosmic registers!

Yes, turning a book face out on the shelf is a little thing, but every book sale counts. The writer who first tipped me off about how much better face-out books sell than their spine-out counterparts is now a major international bestselling author. For whom kith and kin still turn volumes face out every time they walk into a bookstore. Heck, I do, too.

This is another reason to cultivate other writers as friends: we make great salespeople for one another’s work. Who loves good writing more than we do? Well, okay, librarians, but who else?

I’m a notoriously shameless promoter of writing I admire; the staffs of my local bookstores stopped bothering to follow me around to replace books on the shelves years back, once they figured out that I had good taste. I’m always chatting with other browsing patrons, soliciting recommendations and pushing mine. (While I’m at it: Bharti Kirchner’s incomparable PASTRIES has one of the best-written endings I have ever read — and I’ve read MADAME BOVARY in the original French.)

Why expend so much energy in promoting other people’s work? Because it’s an economical and effective way to fight back against a publishing industry that is emotionally hard on writers. If you can tip the scales just a tiny bit, even for a moment, in our direction, you are not powerless. Your opinion is not going unheard today. And in a writing life, feeling empowered is one of the best ways of staving off battle fatigue.

Quoth Alice Walker: resistance is the secret of joy.

Seem a trifle silly? Don’t underestimate how important it is to blow off steam, if you want to stay in the writing biz for the long haul. We writers spend so much time being obedient — adhering to the rigors of standard format, sending agents exactly what they have asked to see and no more, enclosing SASEs, so we may pay the postage on the rejection letters we receive — that the occasional act of resistance is healthy, perhaps even necessary, to maintaining one’s equilibrium.

One last suggestion on how to keep your spirits up: keep moving. Don’t get so wrapped up in marketing your completed work that you stall on the next. Yes, you need to keep sending your work out, but don’t let that endeavor suck up all of your creative energy. Get to work on your next writing project right away.

And don’t send out only one query letter at a time, unless an agency actually specifies that it will not accept simultaneous queries. One by one, it may take years to go through your top choices; the vast majority of agents understand that, so you do not need to fear their yelling at you down the line if several are interested in it. (Actually, agents’ ears tend to prick up when they learn that they have competition — it can speed up the decision-making process quite a bit.)

Try keep 5-10 queries circulating at any given time (maintaining impeccable records of who has what, of course). Yes, it may mean receiving a couple of rejections on the same day, but it will also mean that your work is being seen by a whole lot of potentially impress-able eyes. Trust me, if you get started on a new query the moment the most recent rejection letter hits the recycling bin, you will feel better than if the rejection letter sits on your desk for a week or two.

Above all, don’t be too hard on yourself for getting depressed occasionally. It’s genuinely hard to find an agent and/or publisher, and rejection really does hurt. Talk about it with people who understand, and keep moving forward.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

Yesterday, I wrote a rather long and impassioned piece on the vital importance of making friends with other aspiring writers. It’s a great way to help keep you from feeling isolated during the long, slow writing process, the often as long and even slower revision process, and the can-I stand-another-day-of-this querying process. When each of us is barricaded in her own studio, revising like mad and mailing out queries, it feels as though each of us is fighting a singular battle. We’re not — there are literally millions of aspiring writers out there, and getting to know a few dozen of them will help you sort out what is genuinely unique to your experience and what is just a trend in the way agents are reading queries this month.

Today, I would like to talk about other means of keeping your spirits up, but most of them will tend toward the same message of yesterday: become part of a community of writers in some manner. Not everyone is an organization-joiner, writers perhaps less than most. We’re a cussedly independent breed, and there’s a certain satisfaction, isn’t there, in starting from a blank page and running all the way to publication alone?

All right, go ahead and finish that chorus of “I Did It My Way” that’s floating in your mind right now. Be my guest. I’ll wait.

Alone is appealing as a concept, but to paraphrase Laurence J. Peter, author of THE PETER PRINCIPLE, push is usually not as effective as pull. Most of us have had the fantasy of meeting a famous author or hotshot editor, being quietly impressive, and having our work lauded by this influential individual. A sort of literary Horatio Alger story — John Irving drops his briefcase in an airport, you pick it up for him, and the rest is literary history, right?

In real life, the writers who are probably going to help you most are not the super-famous ones (they’re too busy, and besides, there are probably throngs of aspiring writers lunging after Mssr. Irving’s every dropped crumb these days), but the ones slightly more experienced than you are at querying. These are the people who can take a quick look at your query letter and point out that you left out your most impressive credential altogether. These are the people who have already gone to the conferences you are thinking about attending, and can tell you which speakers suck and which speakers sing. These are the people who know from experience which agent only speaks to authors under 40, which tends to use conferences primarily as singles bars (yes, it happens), and which will be happy to refer you to other agents, if they are not interested in your work themselves.

I like to think of this blog as providing such an experienced friend’s voice to my readers, but the more friends, the merrier, I always say.

Don’t make the mistake, though, of finding the most important person in the room at a conference and latching onto him as though you are his long-lost dog. For one thing, there are always a lot of people suing for the attention of a conference bigwig, and for another, over-eagerness can make it appear to said bigwig that you are offering something you are not in exchange for a little professional advice, if you catch my drift.

I once made the tactical error of striking up a conversation (about Charles Dickens, as I recall) with the book review editor of a major East Coast newspaper, only to spend the rest of the conference dodging his suggestions that we visit his room for a little in-depth editing. All I did was express an opinion on A TALE OF TWO CITIES, for heaven’s sake! Once I made more experienced friends at that conference, I was able to learn that this well-respected journalist habitually dons his black leather jacket and trolls writing conferences for Sweet Young Things, promising fame and fortune to those too inexperienced to know better. Now, whenever I spot him on the speaker’s list for a conference I’m attending, I make a beeline for the nearest Sweet Young Thing and mention his, um, editorial preferences.

That is what being a good community member means.

Most writers, even well-established ones, are genuinely nice people, interested in others and happy to help those whom they like. I once had a tremendous conversation with Jean Auel (of CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR fame) about guerilla marketing, full of tips I cherish to this day. If you’re polite, there’s no reason not to walk up to a famous writer at a reading and strike up a conversation. However, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.

RIGHT: Hello, I’ve read several of your books, and I love the way you handle dialogue. How did you train your ear so well?

WRONG: Hello, I would like to be as successful as you. Give me tips.

The first is a compliment; the second is a demand, and it’s important to remember which is which. Being specific in your questions helps:

RIGHT: Hello. I’m delighted to meet you, as I am a big fan of your work. (Insert conversation here about why.) I write work similar to yours. If you had to do it over again, would you pick the same agent? Are there other agents specializing in our area whom you would recommend to a writer just starting out?

WRONG: Hello, I’ve written a book, but I can’t seem to find an agent for it. Will you recommend me to yours?

Or, the granddaddy of all wrong approaches:

WRONG: (Pulling 500-page manuscript out of backpack.) Here, I wrote this. Read it and tell me what I should do with it.

Writers tend to err more on the side of shyness than of boldness, in my experience, which is why it is a great idea to get in the habit of going to public readings (which are usually free; check your favorite bookstore or library for calendars), so you can learn how to walk up to an author you admire, stick out your ink-stained hand, and say proudly, “Hi, I’m a great fan of yours. I’m a writer, too.”

I just felt a great shudder go through some of you, but trust me, the average author is flattered when people recognize her (yes, even at a book reading, where she will be pretty clearly marked). Every established author I know has a cocktail party story about some wonderful encounter with a fan at a signing, a real tear-jeaker about how some total stranger walked up and said exactly the piece of praise the author had been waiting since the age of 8 to hear.

Go for it. Don’t start out with your favorite authors, if it makes you too nervous — head on down to Elliott Bay Books or Powell’s and listen to a reading by an author whose work you don’t know. Ask an intelligent question about the reading. Heck, if even that seems too threatening, turn out for one of the PNWA’s The Word Is Out events, where members read their work, and get some practice talking to authors after readings that way. Work your way up to when you will really need to be charming; really charming takes practice.

If this sounds too public for you, take Carolyn See’s advice (if you haven’t read her marvelous MAKING A LITERARY LIFE, run, don’t walk to your nearest bookstore or library and nab a copy) and write letters to your favorite authors. Compliment them; tell them a little bit about your work. If you’re nice, they’ll be thrilled — trust me, the vast majority of letters a well-known author receives are a trifle creepy, so a sane, polite missive from an aspiring writer might well make the author’s day, too. A surprisingly high percentage of them will write back — and believe me, the day you find a handwritten postcard from someone you’ve admired for years in your mailbox is sure to be a red-letter day.

If all of this seems a bit pushy to you, well, we’re in a business that rewards  polite pushiness. It’s also a business where established authors are expected to be nice to their fans. When’s the last time you heard about a writer punching a photographer in the face? We almost never even overhear them saying to the last person in line at the bookstore, “I’m sorry, but I’m pooped. Sign your own damned book.” (Hemingway and Mailer don’t count; I have always suspected that they got into barroom brawls with critics primarily as a means of boosting their reputations as he-men.)

In fact, a habitually stand-offish writer will garner a negative reputation at bookstores and conferences with a speed that the Pony Express would have envied. Moral: never, ever be snappish with anyone who works behind the counter at a bookstore where you’re reading. That person might well be a writer — either of books that will one day be successful, or of blistering e-mails sent all around the country. Legends are made this way.

Be kind, be respectful, be polite, and you might just meet a friend with some real pull. However, don’t assume that a nice conversation at a conference or a bookstore means you’re suddenly the best of friends; don’t push for favors unless you actually establish a relationship. And, of course, be sensitive to hints to back off.

Remember that whenever you are around writers, established or aspiring, you are walking through a community. Be a charming addition to the community, not a liability, and other writers will always be glad to see you. Behave yourself, because your reputation now may come back to haunt you later on — or perhaps even sooner. As my good friend Philip K. Dick used to say, never be gratuitously nasty to a living writer. You might end up reincarnated as the villain in the insulted party’s next book. Or as the corpse in her next murder mystery.

Actually, come to think of it, that book critic would make a pretty good character in my current novel…

And, again, try not to become so focused on the famous person at the front of the room that you forget to introduce yourself to the people seated to your left and your right. If one of them is another writer, you may make another useful friend.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers —

Pardon me if I am a trifle giddy today — my good friend Jordan Rosenfeld (whose excellent blog on writing is well worth checking out)has just sold a book on scene writing to Writer’s Digest Books. It’s due out in January, 2007, and I’ll try to blandish her into sharing some of her insights here between now and then. This is definitely a book that deserves to be read, by a writer who genuinely knows her way around a scene.

Hooray for virtue rewarded!

There’s nothing like having writing buddies for mutual support, is there? This is such an isolating craft, and heavy competition makes it feel even more so: for me, keeping in close touch with friends who write has been essential for keeping my chin up for the long haul. Not just as first readers (although I do rely upon my sterling writing friends for that), but as mirrors of my own experience, to help remind me that the path of good writing to publication is seldom smooth. My hopes are multiplied many times over, following my friends’ manuscripts on their travels.

In other words, they help me remember that it’s not just me; the publishing world really is wacky. Talent and luck must go hand-in-hand in order to bring success, along with a healthy dollop of persistence. A sense of humor helps, too.

The more writers you know, the easier it is to keep the process in perspective. Since conference season is coming up, I can’t urge you strongly enough to consider conferences as possibilities not just for meeting agents and editors and taking classes, but also for making friends with other writers. Heck, you could even walk in with the intention of meeting enough new friends to start a critique group.

There will be rooms and rooms of people who share your passion to create — this is no time to sit in a corner and keep to yourself. Seriously, no matter how shy you are, you will already be armed with the best possible opening line for starting a conversation with a stranger: “So, what do you write?”

In addition to building a support group, these conference meetings can lead to a wealth of mutual aid. A few minutes of social effort can bring a lifetime of glowing back jacket blurbs and Amazon reader reviews. In a crowd of eager aspirants to publishing fame, all clamoring for the attention of a few agents and editors, it’s easy to forget that some of your now-unknown writer peers are going to make it, but some undoubtedly will.

You never know who might end up as, say, the resident writer on a major writing association’s website. Talk to the person sitting next to you at the conference.

I am harping on connections today, because I received a wonderful e-mail from talented and insightful reader Janet, asking for my thoughts on how to maintain hope during the long wait for recognition even the best writers face. I say talented not only because she wrote me a lovely missive, but because she mentioned that she has been receiving encouraging feedback from agents, what we in the biz call Rave Rejections. These days, when most agencies use form letter rejections for literally every query they reject (which did not used to be true), the fact that someone at an agency took the time to make an individualized comment is actually a very strong sign that Janet’s work is impressing people.

I know — it’s perverse. But since writers get so little feedback from agents and editors in the query process now, we have to take our comfort and encouragement wherever we can find it.

Rave rejections are a double-edged sword. They are flattering, of course, because they are so rare, but by the same token, they are in fact rejections, and thus depressing.

For many years, I was the queen of the rave rejection: I’ve had agents hand-write, “Hey, this is one of the best query letters I have ever read, but I’ll have to pass!” in the margins of form letter rejections; editorial assistants would praise my work to the skies in long letters of regret. I once had a novel make it all the way to an editorial meeting at a good small publishing house; apparently, there was quite an argument about it. The subsequent rave rejection letter gave the details of that argument, along with a review of my book that was so glowing that it shouldn’t merely have been on the back jacket of the book — it should have been on my tombstone. I’ve heard less glowing eulogies.

And yet it was rejected. Maddening. The editor even sent me a present, another book from the publishing house, as sort of a consolation prize.

It is at times like these that a writer needs her writing buddies. Who but another writer would really be able to sympathize with a near miss — or, indeed, with the quotidian difficulties of keeping one’s chin up throughout the querying process?

Yes, other kith and kin can be helpful, even wonderful, but it may not always be apparent to those unfamiliar with the vagaries of the publishing industry that the book itself may not be at fault. Although, to be fair, my sense of this problem may well be heightened at the moment, as I have just returned from having dinner with my brother-in-law, who is famous for bouncing up to me like a golden retriever on speed every time he sees me and barking, “So — when is your book coming out? What’s going on? Why isn’t it published yet?”

I appreciate his concern, of course, and I certainly understand his confusion — my memoir has now been available for presale on Amazon and B & N for more than 7 months, so I suppose it is only natural for a layperson to expect that the book itself might appear in print sometime in the near future. What he can’t seem to understand, what most of my non-writing friends can’t seem to understand, is that the publication date is, like so much else in the publication process, utterly outside the author’s control, and barking at me about it only makes me feel worse about that.

Other writers, bless them, do understand that salient fact.

Because I am lucky enough know so many writers at all levels of success — and honestly, some of the best writers I know have not yet been able to find the right agent — I know that the problem of the well-meaning but ignorant friend’s badgering is in fact endemic to the writing life. As anyone who has ever sold a book can tell you, starting from the moment you sign with an agent, eager non-writer friends will badger the author about the book’s progress, as though any delays or problems must be the author’s fault. Or as if the only possible reason that a book has not yet been delightedly scooped up and championed by the publishing world is that it isn’t very good.

Poppycock.

As anyone who has spent much time around a group of good writers knows, there are plenty of great books out there that have trouble finding agents and/or editors. And as writers with querying experience, we know that. Other people don’t, and on our bad days, their kindly-meant questions can feel like deliberate cruelty.

Down, boy!

Often, too, our non-writing kith and kin do not understand the publishing world well enough to support us in our triumphs, either. It is far from uncommon — I tremble to report this, but it’s true — for authors over the moon about being signed by a great agent to be deflated by the following exchange with non-writing friends:

Writer: My dream agent just signed me!

Friend: That’s great! When’s your book coming out?

Writer (a little uncomfortable): Well, it doesn’t really work like that. The agent markets the book to editors, you see, and the editors are the ones who actually buy the book.

Friend (disappointed): Oh. So you really aren’t any closer to the book’s being published.

Writer (now sorry that he brought it up at all): No, it’s a necessary step toward being published.

Friend (now utterly confused): Well, let me know when the book comes out.

As someone who has both won a major literary contest AND has a book contract in hand, I can tell you with absolute assurance that well-meaning non-writers will take ANY announcement of a significant step forward in a writer’s career as identical to a book contract. The working writer spends a LOT of time explaining the process to these people, just as the agent-querying writer does. In fact, other than when my work has actually appeared printed on paper (or here in this blog), I’m not sure that my non-writing friends have any idea why my work does not instantly appear on bookshelves across the nation the moment it falls off my fingertips.

In my dark days, before I was getting much recognition, I even had good-hearted friends sit me down, with all of the seriousness of an intervention, and beg me to stop wasting my life in the pursuit of a constantly disappointed dream. They meant well, so I did not throw things at them.

They all mean well; I know that. I fully realize that to someone who has not felt the birth pangs of a manuscript first-hand, or known what it is to rush to the mailbox every day, searching for a positive response to a query, what we writers do can look suspiciously like masochism. Or self-delusion. Or pursuit of a very time-consuming, very demanding hobby.

To quote the very talented, very persistent Louisa May Alcott, who had been working in the writing trenches for a decade and a half before LITTLE WOMEN hit the big time: “I shall make a battering-ram of my head, and make my way through this rough-and-tumble world.”

To a writer, that sounds like a brave and realistic approach to a life entertaining the muse and courting the publishing world. To a non-writer… well, see my earlier remark about masochism.

This is why I highly recommend to anyone who is in the writing business for the long haul to make as many good writing friends as possible. People who speak the same language you do, peers who can sympathize with your trials and cheer your triumphs with clear understanding. Join a writers’ group; go to conferences. Participate in an online forum. Share what you’ve learned, and hear what others have to say.

And, perhaps most importantly for your own sanity and well-being, learn to derive joy from the progress of others. Help them where you can; allow them the pleasure of helping you. It will help sustain you as you push forward.

The more writing friends you have, the higher the probability that on the day when you are feeling most discouraged, you will open your e-mail to find the glad news that a friend has landed a great agent. Or sold a book. Or finished a novel. Or really nailed that short story. Because you are a writer, and one of the many special skills you possess is the ability to understand better than the rest of the population why these interim achievements — the ones the golden retrievers of the world have trouble seeing as anything but delays on the road to success — are in fact very, very worth celebrating.

So here’s to Jordan for putting in all of the years of hard work that lead to this book contract — well done! Here’s to Janet, too, for garnering that hard-to-get encouraging feedback — great job! And here’s to all of you out there who have the courage, tenacity, and faith in your own talent to keep sending out queries, using your words as a battering ram against the slow-opening doors of the industry — good for you!

Let’s help one another keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini