Month: February 2004

A few words about Editor person

Writer guy

I’ve blogged a lot about Editor person in the last few weeks, and I want to take a moment to thank them for all their efforts. I lack the eye and stomach for surgical grammar attacks. But without some focus on grammar, I’ll be blogging to myself for the rest of my life. And the wife won’t like that very much since she wants mini-sam’s running around the house.

Editor person: You know every time I read one of your crappy sentences, an alarm bell goes off in my head?
sam: That’s why you’re a good editor.
Editor person: I have a headache now, from all the ringing.
sam: Do you want an aspirin?
Editor person: I want you to stop writing while you are asleep.
sam: Right. I’ll up the coffee intake in the morning.
Editor person: What are you going to do 30 books from now when I’m dead?

I panicked. Could there be an end to Editor person?

sam: No problem. I’ll have you cloned.

Blog schmog

Writer guy

The wife is off work this weekend, so we’re going to do the marriage thing for a few days. I haven’t seen much of the wife lately. I haven’t’ seen much of anyone lately come to think of it.

I had a panic attack early in the week about the second book, Velocity. Regardless of what’s going on with the search for representation, I had some trouble gaining traction with the writing schedule. The tone of the book was pretty rough to take even for me, which is saying something. One of the things I’ve long been guilty of is projecting scenarios out to the 19th degree. Sure, it’s neat to visualize something to an extreme, but dealing with the volume turned up that high makes for difficult reading. That’s when my writing and editor person butt heads.

We had a few discussions about it, one of them that gave us both a nasty headache. But, with editor person’s last round of suggestions, the novel is now framed right. Now I can build outwards based on a more solid foundation. For anyone keeping score, I’ve got nearly 70 pages.

One step closer to yes

Writer guy

Now we’re up 2 rejections for the Ridge Runner in two days. I’ve been quite surprised at how fast the turnaround has been. In the days of brute force submissions, it might take several months between answers. Thanks to the digital age, the response time is short. There’s a plus I guess.

Rogue Lackey put this all in perspective last night for me. He told me the story of Harlan Sanders, yes, the KFC Colonel guy. Around his 62nd birthday the state built a new highway that diverted all the traffic from his restaurants. He sold the place and was left with nothing more than 162 bucks a month from Social Security. So the Colonel decided to hawk his secret chicken recipe. His idea was, sell other restaurants a license to his formula.

He jumped into his car and drove across the south making pitch after pitch for his 11 herbs and spices. 1065 restaurants later, he got his first yes. Shortly afterwards he met Dave Thomas (yep the Wendy’s guy – this was before Wendy’s), and they launched the first food franchise.

Now, I just gotta do better than that before getting my yes. After all, there’s barely more than 1065 literary agents in business.

The most wonderful news – or is it?

Writer guy

So I got my first rejection letter for the Ridge Runner and I’m kinda happy, because it meant someone read my pitch! Huzzah! Also it’s about the nicest rejection letter I’ve ever seen. Well, it’s the first rejection letter I’ve ever seen with my name on it. But if it was any nicer, I’d think they wanted to represent me. To the agent who rejected my pitch – I mean that in a nice way. You give good rejection is all I’m saying.

As cool as the rejection was, a yes would be cooler. Well, that’s life in the fast lane. And after all, a rejection is a rejection is a rejection.

Anyway, I gotta go send out another query letter and update my spreadsheet of agents to contact.

UPDATE: I sent an email back to the prospective agent who rejected my query, thanking them for their time. At samhilliard.com we are nothing if not gracious.