Okay, time for some full disclosure... which should maybe the title of this post.
I've been reluctant to tell the story of my first novel on this blog. This has been out of desire to always remain professional, and not tell tales out of school, as my mother use to say (or maybe I heard that on an old episode of the Andy Griffith show - I get that program and my life confused some days. And yes, my barber's name is Floyd.)
I digress. Not for the first time, or last.
But I feel like I need to tell the tale of getting so very close to a great book deal with my first novel, Correction Line. I want to write about whart happened to encourage other writers, but maybe also share in the misery that so many of us know when we get so very damn close.
I started writing Correction Line, maybe 15 years ago. It makes me feel ancient to write that. I learned a lot about writing, and eventual about publishing and agents in the process. And the process was a long one. Some writers keep writing new novels when they get rejected - I kept rewriting the same novel. Again, and again. I guess I always believed in it, and thought it could find a readership. Or maybe I was just really stubborn.
I'll jump over all the rewrites, my father's death (when I stopped writing for 2 years), and my foray into short fiction (which also taught me a lot about writing). After some dumb rookie attempts at queries, I actually got a request from a well-known Canadian agent. It went like this:
Query sent on a Friday.
1 hour later: partial request
2-3 hours later: full request
Later that evening: request for exclusive.
This had never happened before. Not even close. I can't recall how early this was in the process, but this was one of my earliest queries, among the first. I shook with anticipation. This is not an exaggeration.
Monday morn: agent passed (a nice way of saying REJECTION)
The first of many swords pierced my gut.
I'll jump ahead in time some more.
After 7 years of writing, rewriting, querying, and jumping back into short fiction again, I was ready to give up. Whatever agents wanted, I didn't have. Even though, readers of my work all seemed to like what I was doing. Oh, I forgot to add that I took courses through Gotham in New York (highly recommend this school). During my time at Gotham, both students and instructors praised the work. Okay, so was everyone lying? This was a question I would come back to... a lot.
So after all this time, a query went out to an agent I didn't know much about, but seemed promising. I found him through Query Tracker (a site I highly recommend). This agent was slow in the requests, but they came. Partial, full... then wait, wait, and wait. Until finally a request came to call him. On the actual phone. Now this had never ever happened before. This was New York calling. This was time to freak out (which I kinda did).
Michael (Mickey) Choate of the Choate agency (in the actual NY, NY) talked to me for more than a half hour, and in the end said that if I rewrote the novel based on his suggestions he would be willing to look at it again. Okay, so he wasn't offering, but holy crap, this was something. This was really something. (I'd eventually learn this rewrite and resubmit was known as RandR, and it happened often to writers, but it didn't necessarily mean shit.)
I spent two or three months on the rewrite - carefully considering all that Mickey said. And then finally sent it off to him. And waited, and waited some more. Again, I can't remember how long, but he asked that I call him again to talk about it. I told my wife before she went to work that he wanted to talk. But I need to stress, as excited as I was, I was almost completely certain that he would reject it – just like everyone else for the last seven years.
Mickey and I talked. For a long time. And when my wife came home later that day, I have to admit, there were tears in my eyes. She misunderstood, hugged me, and told me she was sorry. I choked out the words,
"He said yes."
I now had a New York agent. And for those of you who know Mickey's story, he was very well placed (that's my own industry lingo, well-placed). He ran a small agency, with some notable bestsellers notable one Joe Hill (or as many came to know him, Joe Hill King, as in Stephen's son, Horns, Heart-Shaped Box, etc.) So in other words, he had lunch with the best... with the Big 6.
So... I found myself writing bios for Mickey, and tidying up the manuscript - though, it didn't need much. After all, I'd rewritten this thing a billion times. And my novel finally went out on submission. And it was going out to what I came to know as the Big 6 (which I think are now known as the Big 5... maybe soon to be 4 or less, who knows). Basically, the publishers that mattered - now, I hate writing that, because I do love indy and small press. But if you want a big fat book deal, which I did, these were the dudes.
This was, all clichés aside, the big time. One of the first editors that looked at the manuscript was from William Morrow (Harper Collins imprint), and happened to edit a guy by the name of Neil Gaiman. Okay, every time I say that, I do kinda lose my shit. My novel, was being read by Neil Fucking Gaiman's editor.
At this point, I'd like to give you some hope that this story turns out well. It doesn't.
Mickey let me know that when things happened with editors, they happened fast. This was one of the many things he taught me in the time I knew him. So one by one the "passes" came in, all fairly quickly. I've learned that the U.S. publishers move a lot faster than the Canadian counterparts. And these were different than query rejections, this was a novel on submission - somehow they simultaneously hurt more, and in a weird way, less.
Some of the passes were absolutely glowing. They praised the writing, the ideas, the style - and how I was "ahead of the curve". (I quote from the one J. Shoenfelder gave me over on the right side of the blog.) This pass was from Mulholland Press when they were just getting started. I thought Correction Line would fit beautifully in there, especially since they had picked up Joe Lansdale, and readers have pointed out similarities in our work. Maybe not so much anymore, but for sure with Correction Line.
Anyway, Shoenfelder even said he would come to reject his decision when my name became known. (It hasn't.) He moved onto making, or maybe producing, movies – probably making buckets of money somewhere.
If you are a writer, and you've had a novel on submission, and got this kind of feedback, you know the range of emotions this puts you through. In one sense, you are being (strangely) accepted. Your work is good enough to get a NY agent, to be read by the top editors, who praise it - but ultimately reject for whatever reason.
Correction Line was a tale of how close I came. It told me that maybe the work did have a chance. Eventually after Mickey exhausted the big publishers, he tried some smaller, independent presses - though small, still bigger than what we think of as the small press in Canada. I got more and more depressed. Seeing that the novel just would not find a home. I still believed in it, but sadly, it seems no one else did.
In the meantime, I had worked on another novel. Jump forward a couple of years, and another long tale, and eventually Mickey and I decided to part ways. I want to stress this was done very amicably. I think he wanted me to write books that I wasn't interested in writing. Still, in the next couple of years, I still sent him the odd email, letting him know what I had been doing (even pitched him another book) - and notably that I had decided to self-publish Correction Line.
Mickey was always generous, and professional. He wished me luck, and that I would sell some copies. I did sell some, and I gave away a helluva lot - that story should be probably be another blog post or two: what I learned from self-publishing, and the behemoth known as Amazon.
Still, Correction Line was well reviewed, and read by people, total strangers even, that told me they liked it. This is still happening, people discover it, or get it on a promo deal (gotta admit, I still don't sell that many... full disclosure, remember). But I think at last count, there were more than 6000 copies given away. And the list of people on Goodreads that "plan to read it" continues to grow. Really, why don't you just read it? (Sorry, not wanting to get snarky to my potential readers. I love you, I do.)
To end this part of the tale, sadly Mickey Choate died this past Feb. I was deeply saddened by it. He was much too young (my age). I'd only had a few conversations with him over the years, and lots of emails back and forth - but I owed him a lot. He was the first agent to really take a shot at selling my work. I can barely say how important that has been to me. Writers forever work under the cloud of crippling self-doubt. So when someone says, yeah, I'll take a shot (Mickey's actual words, way back when, that produced tears and hugs) - well, man, that meant a lot. And it continues to mean a lot.
So there you have it.
If you visit this blog, you might be currently reading my detective who is really not a detective novel right now - or if you are agent, you might be reading my new novel (in query-mode) - so that is to say, I am still writing, and still kicking. I am currently without an agent... but my hope,and perseverance is pretty epic (or delusion, hard to say).
More story (stories) to come.
Thanks for reading.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015 at 11:52PM 
