Month: February 2004

50 First Dates

Writer guy

There’s a horde of romantic comedies descending on the scene running loose in the theaters right now, and this flick is one of them. And thats a good thing. It’s pretty decent concept. The man who can’t commit meets the one girl he wants to commit to only to discover she can’t possibly reciprocate because of an isolated and very localized tramatic brain injury that affects short term memory. You know, a simple little tale.

Drew, if I weren’t married, I’d stalking you. Oh, was that my outside voice? Ahem. Kudos to Drew Barrymore’s performance, she’s believable and cute at the same time. I think it’s cool to see how far she’s come in the last decade. Just think, ten years ago we were suffering through projects like the Amy Fisher story and Doppleganger. By Drew’s own account it’s better to poke your eyes out than watch Doppleganger.

Adamn Sandler is also a hero of mine, because he plays that regular guy who woke up in the center of comedy stardoom so well. He’s a regular guy it seems. Coolness. His timing is superb and so is his flair for the jokes. He keeps both rolling here.

I liked this film, you can’t go wrong watching it, so go see it. It was number one two weeks in a row for a reason.

In Tyler we trust

Writer guy

At last I settled on a title for book number two. I gave this new title a lot of thought, avoiding commitment at all costs. However since I thought the existence of a second book in progress was worth mentioning in the query letter, I had to decide.

Here’s the original working title of book number two: 23 Seconds. Why? Two reasons – I like the number 23 and I was going for a sense of urgency, like a clock running down. Editor person saw through my ruse from the start and told me so with the grace of a diplomat.

Editor person: I hate the new title. Hate it.
sam: But it ties into the plot.
Editor person: Picture the review – Sam Hilliard – 23 Seconds – about how long you want to read this book. 23 Seconds – how long his career will last.
sam: It seemed like a good idea before.
Editor person: You get good ideas sometimes. This is not one of them.

So, in the sense of conveying the idea of momentum and progress, I settled on….

You didn’t think I was going to make it that easy, did you? Check back next Wednesday and the secret will be revealed. 🙂

UPDATE 3/7/2004: Editor person objected at the use of the word ain’t that I attributed to them in a previous version of this blog. Apologies to Editor person. This has been removed.

I’d like to fight my boss

Writer guy

There’s another dead tree today and the blood is on my hands, because I printed out a few copies of the book for copyright purposes. I’m not sure why the copyright office shuns electronic submissions. But I guess that’s what the 30 dollar fee they charge covers.

Being in possesion of the brand new hardcopy leads me to the second problem; ever try to find an envelope big enough to hold hundreds of loose pages? If so, have you tried to seal that envelope after inserting those same pages, Form TX and a check for 30 dollars? Really seal it, now, so it doesn’t rip open.

Yeah, me neither. I’m ready for the emergency room thanks to all the papercuts. Also, my cat refuses to speak to me now because he mistook the envelope for a skateboard and tried to use his 21 pound body to scoot it across the glass top coffee table. Let’s just say, the coffee table won and there are fresh claw marks in my leg.

Somebody call a medic

Writer guy

Well, I may have flubbed my afternoon deadline, but here we go…

I spent some time with Editor person over the phone discussing the query letter. They liked one half of my pitch, hated the other. More of a concern was that their least favorite half was the first two paragraphs. So we went back and forth like usual. It’s still not 100 percent there, but it’s close. My guess is the query letter is about 90 percent on and by Tuesday it will be 100 percent. Since I’m an unknown quantity with zero references in publishing I have to make the query custom fit for each agent I query.

In between revisions I’ve been looking for prospective agents. Using Jeff Herman’s book, I developed my first round short list of three agents who specialize in the genre my book best fits within. All three have negotiated film deals, six figure advances and world rights in the past 12 months for clients. Then I googled my a** off looking for any interviews or other insights into each of the three agents as individuals. Cause basically, I’m looking for a very specific personality type in an agent. I’m not a looking for another friend, I’m looking for my champion. I’m also looking for some kind of commonality between their back story and mine. One thing I can say is there are a lot of agents with very impressive credentials, so if round one doesn’t work out, there’s plenty to choose from in round two.