Voodoo Childe, I Have Slightly Returned
Coming into the weekend, I am very, very glad it's here. It's
been a rather long week, between illness, drama, painful sneezes (which
will apparently go on for another two months or so) and trying to get
and maintain the house in order... man, I am whacked. I wanted to
give you a wonderfully original post today to make up for not doing
anything good recently, but this was not meant to be. Awful sorry
about that.
So, let's dive head-first down the stairs to the archives. Fun fun fun!
Why You Should Read This: if nothing else, the timing for this piece is too perfect considering I submitted Crossroads about two weeks ago. This is the absolutely true, absolutely horrible story of me and my first agent, and why I hope he dies slowly from intestinal cancer in a part of the world where morphine has not yet been discovered. This is also a very, very long essay and since it's a sure bet that most people won't update their journals this weekend, this gives you loads of material to enjoy. With a lead-in like that, how can you not give it a whirl?
About halfway through writing my novel Nightfall, I hooked up with a literary agent who we will refer to in this document as “Donkey Ass.” Legally, I don’t think I can refer to him by his true name as it would be slander, so we’ll just use this appellation that reflects his initials and attitude just perfectly, okay?
I met Donkey Ass through AOL, where he was running a chat room dedicated to the idea of finding ten writers who had publishable-quality material to offer the world. Being desirous of finding publication and possibly making a few bucks to boot, I jumped on board. The critics say that hindsight is 20/20, and I’m very sorry to report that this was one of those cases. They also say that a fool and his money is soon parted, which is another A-1 assessment of this situation. A long time ago, I also said that anyone who gets into the writing business for money would be well-advised to spend their cash on a shrink instead, and after this situation, that saying was truer than ever.
Here’s what happened: having corresponded with Donkey Ass via IM’s and e-mail, and having found him to be receptive to the idea of reading my work, I boxed up the half-completed Nightfall, two screenplays called Passion & Warfare and Love & Rockets, and three short stories (“The Job,” “The Penitents,” and “So Sad To Say”) for prompt shipping to Greenville, North Carolina, whereupon they would be immediately read. . . and hopefully accepted. I had no illusions about the publishing industry; I knew that without an agent, my chances of getting published were the same as a Beatles reunion tour, and this guy seemed to be enthusiastic about reviewing my stuff.
About two weeks later, I got a message from Donkey Ass telling me to hurry up and finish Nightfall so he could decided whether he would rep it or not. . . oh, and by the way, he loved it! I finished the novel in the first part of April 1999, sent it off, and went up to Chico for a lovely weekend with a girl who I had planned on marrying at the time I originally wrote this essay. You’d think the stars were in my favor, wouldn’t you?
Well, they were. For a while. Donkey Ass raved about Nightfall, how good it was, how this was going to be the important first step in my eventually sure-to-be career as a best-selling author. He said that when my third novel came out, people would definitely be going back to check out the first one, and it would have a great shelf life. He knew that Nightfall was going to be one for the ages, and who cared if nobody gave it a second thought at first. . .
My smile faltered a little bit at the edges. Well. . . okay, I knew that I wasn’t going to take the world by storm with my first novel -- something it took me years to get out of the habit of thinking -- and I was more realistic now, yes, but damn, man, where was the enthusiasm? No pro sportsman worth his salt has ever gone into a contest thinking, “Yeah, I’ll get chewed like hell the first couple rounds, but just you see, I’ll bounce back.” None who have done that and won, at any rate. Authors are no different; we think that everything we write (at least, at that moment) is great and people won’t be able to help themselves from buying it. If you start thinking that everything you write is crap, you’ve gone a long way toward psyching yourself out of the business before the word go. Some may call it ego, but in this business, it’s called survival instinct.
Well, whatever. He agreed to represent Nightfall, sent me a contract which I dutifully inked and sent back, and we were in business together. To cover the fees associated with copying, sending mail and the like, I sent fifty bucks to cover those charges. I initially balked at this part of the contract, because it seemed pretty lame to send money to a guy who hadn’t done anything for me yet and besides, I am a New England Yankee when it comes to money. However, I realized that if I didn’t send him this money, I would end up spending the money to do mailings and the like anyway, only it would be my dumb ass that would be sending them out to publishers instead of Donkey Ass, and if that was the way it was going to be, I might as well just stick a fork in my ear now.
I mailed off the money, waited a couple weeks for confirmation, then asked who the first person our “hit list” was going to be.
“Where would you like to get published?” he asked, via IM’s.
“Vintage!” I responded immediately. “Or Penguin. I love their stuff.”
“Well, we might have a problem with that because. . .” and Donkey Ass launched into a diatribe about how Vintage and Penguin were currently being bought out by German companies and were now run by Krauts who really didn’t have an interest in American things. He then pointed out that the company was likely to be in a turmoil as various Aryan-type people were shipped in to replace the hard-working literary citizens that had turned Penguin and Vintage into the powerhouses that they were, and nothing was likely to be read for a while. He finished it up by saying it was pretty cheesy that now Germans were going to dictate the direction of American culture in the publishing world, and. . .
. . . and, having grown up with my parents, I know a good hippie rant when I hear one and decided to cut it off at the knees. I quickly changed the subject by suggesting Doubleday, because they were big and did everything in-house, which cuts down on expenditures. Donkey Ass said their load of backreading that needed to be done was about a year long for submitted material; could I try again?
At this point, I began to feel a bit funny. Unless my mommy (or Writer’s Market) had mislead me horribly during my formative years, I knew that agents were supposed to suggest directions for their clients that will benefit them, thereby giving them a bigger slice of the pie. Also, agents were supposed to know more about the business than their clients. Me Money Man Tarzan, you Creative Jane and all that. I quickly suggested half a dozen more places such as Viking, Simon & Schuster, and Dell, to be rebuffed with a lengthy technical explanation each time.
Now I was beginning to have a familiar bad feeling in my gut, the same one I used to get in college trigonometry class every time the professor opened his mouth. So far, all Donkey Ass had done was to say that none of these places were going to be an option for us, which wasn’t so bad because I had been living with that reality on my own for about eight years. It wasn’t until you began considering the fact that he hadn’t suggested any companies in response that things began to look peculiar.
Here’s the way the model is supposed to work: when I suggest House A, you come back by saying that House A isn’t really that great of a deal. . . but if you’re really looking for what House A can offer, House B will match that and then some. I know I’m smart; that’s what you pay me fifteen percent for. Bet you didn’t think of that, did you Mister Smart Author Guy? Me Tarzan, you Jane. Get back there and write some more, and leave the business side to the professionals.
“Well,” I said finally (via IM), “what would you suggest we do? What’s a good direction for us?”
After all the lengthy wordiness was pared out, Donkey Ass’ idea was that we should go with a small house. Jesus wept. Yeah, sure, the publishing industry is filled with stories about plucky little houses and their equally plucky authors. . . but I had considered this idea a few years ago and turned it down. No money, no exposure, no pluck. Okay, so I’m a greedy capitalist bastard. But the thing was, the idea is to go into a bookstore and see your book on the shelf, and see it with a real cover, not something in the “Local Author” bin that looks like it was made by a talented high school student with a pirated copy of Adobe Page Maker. I mean, Christ, if I was really that hard-up to see print, I could always plunk down the cash and pay to have it published myself, right? Sure, I could do that. I can always also plunge a barbecue fork into my own leg, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to.
Shortly thereafter, however, Donkey Ass changed his tune. It was imperative, he said, that we get with a large house, and as quickly as possible, so that we could start getting the word out on this great new talent in the making. Besides, as it turned out, he medical bills to pay. Now, when I say medical bills, I don’t mean the kind where your dumb butt got drunk, tripped, and fell in the shower requiring some stitches; these were apparently of the variety where you begin toting up your life’s possessions and start figuring how much you can get for great-grandma’s ornate vase that was a possession of Napoleon. Whatever his reason, I didn’t really mind because now it meant that things were going to happen quickly. . .
. . . but they didn’t of, course. Here’s one of the reasons; these medical problems were enough to keep Donkey Ass virtually bed-ridden, a prisoner in his own apartment. He was in the habit of getting nasty cysts in some extremely uncomfortable places -- I’ll let your own imagination decide where they were concentrated -- and sometimes, said cysts would pop like a party favor, spewing out all kinds of gross body fluids and requiring him to go to the hospital. The total of ducats owed to the Medical Gods would go up, and Donkey Ass would begin to panic some more. Not to mention tell me about it, at length.
Now, I am not a completely heartless meanie, and I understand that this sort of situation is enough to make even the stoutest of hearts tremble when it comes kabaloom time. Having had a couple of staph infections myself, I know exactly what that sort of scene is all about. However, there were three things about this situation that really irked me. First, I felt as if I had been lied to, or at the very least, given a very rosy and optimistic -- yet completely untrue -- picture of my agent’s capabilities. He had never told me that he was suffering from some sort of bizarre leprosy. Never even alluded to it, in fact, until after the contract was signed. From some of the letters and e-mails I got from him later on, I got the picture of a guy lying a dirty bed drenched in festering bodily discharges, moaning in pain and hardly able to see across the dimly-lit room. . . more of the scene from a particularly gruesome low-rent episode of ER than of somebody you want to have being your co-pilot for your career.
Now, this in itself would not be considered the end of the road; after all, with the gods of technology smiling upon us, the only real reason you have to leave your house is to get groceries, and even that can be delivered by calling or pointing and clicking. I figured all that was really necessary in that situation was somebody to come over and get the mail, then drop it off in the post box for Donkey Ass. You don’t have to actually be in New York to make your presence felt there, I reasoned. Just drop a nice postcard to your favorite editor who you’re chummy with, and all is good, right?
Wrong. Donkey Ass didn’t have any favorite editors. In fact, he had no editors. When it came to contacts in the publishing industry, Donkey Ass was just as much out in the cold as I was, as true a case of the blind leading the blind as I’ve ever heard of. I found this out when he started talking -- via e-mail -- about how we needed to make new contacts within the publishing industry. I responded by saying, jokingly, “What’s wrong with the old contacts?” and he told me that sorry Charlie, ha-ha, we were on our own. He didn’t know anybody. No young brash editor’s phone number in his Rolodex, no college drinking buddy who had climbed the ivory tower of publishing, no ex-lover who still gave him the time of day, someone that would take a chance and read something he sent her based on the merit of their bed sessions in their early thirties. Nobody. Essentially, we were no better off than when I had been a college student armed with a copy of Writer’s Market, saving beer money to send off manuscripts.
Possibility three was that Donkey Ass was lying. Always a possibility, I guess.
TO BE CONTINUED!
So, let's dive head-first down the stairs to the archives. Fun fun fun!
Why You Should Read This: if nothing else, the timing for this piece is too perfect considering I submitted Crossroads about two weeks ago. This is the absolutely true, absolutely horrible story of me and my first agent, and why I hope he dies slowly from intestinal cancer in a part of the world where morphine has not yet been discovered. This is also a very, very long essay and since it's a sure bet that most people won't update their journals this weekend, this gives you loads of material to enjoy. With a lead-in like that, how can you not give it a whirl?
About halfway through writing my novel Nightfall, I hooked up with a literary agent who we will refer to in this document as “Donkey Ass.” Legally, I don’t think I can refer to him by his true name as it would be slander, so we’ll just use this appellation that reflects his initials and attitude just perfectly, okay?
I met Donkey Ass through AOL, where he was running a chat room dedicated to the idea of finding ten writers who had publishable-quality material to offer the world. Being desirous of finding publication and possibly making a few bucks to boot, I jumped on board. The critics say that hindsight is 20/20, and I’m very sorry to report that this was one of those cases. They also say that a fool and his money is soon parted, which is another A-1 assessment of this situation. A long time ago, I also said that anyone who gets into the writing business for money would be well-advised to spend their cash on a shrink instead, and after this situation, that saying was truer than ever.
Here’s what happened: having corresponded with Donkey Ass via IM’s and e-mail, and having found him to be receptive to the idea of reading my work, I boxed up the half-completed Nightfall, two screenplays called Passion & Warfare and Love & Rockets, and three short stories (“The Job,” “The Penitents,” and “So Sad To Say”) for prompt shipping to Greenville, North Carolina, whereupon they would be immediately read. . . and hopefully accepted. I had no illusions about the publishing industry; I knew that without an agent, my chances of getting published were the same as a Beatles reunion tour, and this guy seemed to be enthusiastic about reviewing my stuff.
About two weeks later, I got a message from Donkey Ass telling me to hurry up and finish Nightfall so he could decided whether he would rep it or not. . . oh, and by the way, he loved it! I finished the novel in the first part of April 1999, sent it off, and went up to Chico for a lovely weekend with a girl who I had planned on marrying at the time I originally wrote this essay. You’d think the stars were in my favor, wouldn’t you?
Well, they were. For a while. Donkey Ass raved about Nightfall, how good it was, how this was going to be the important first step in my eventually sure-to-be career as a best-selling author. He said that when my third novel came out, people would definitely be going back to check out the first one, and it would have a great shelf life. He knew that Nightfall was going to be one for the ages, and who cared if nobody gave it a second thought at first. . .
My smile faltered a little bit at the edges. Well. . . okay, I knew that I wasn’t going to take the world by storm with my first novel -- something it took me years to get out of the habit of thinking -- and I was more realistic now, yes, but damn, man, where was the enthusiasm? No pro sportsman worth his salt has ever gone into a contest thinking, “Yeah, I’ll get chewed like hell the first couple rounds, but just you see, I’ll bounce back.” None who have done that and won, at any rate. Authors are no different; we think that everything we write (at least, at that moment) is great and people won’t be able to help themselves from buying it. If you start thinking that everything you write is crap, you’ve gone a long way toward psyching yourself out of the business before the word go. Some may call it ego, but in this business, it’s called survival instinct.
Well, whatever. He agreed to represent Nightfall, sent me a contract which I dutifully inked and sent back, and we were in business together. To cover the fees associated with copying, sending mail and the like, I sent fifty bucks to cover those charges. I initially balked at this part of the contract, because it seemed pretty lame to send money to a guy who hadn’t done anything for me yet and besides, I am a New England Yankee when it comes to money. However, I realized that if I didn’t send him this money, I would end up spending the money to do mailings and the like anyway, only it would be my dumb ass that would be sending them out to publishers instead of Donkey Ass, and if that was the way it was going to be, I might as well just stick a fork in my ear now.
I mailed off the money, waited a couple weeks for confirmation, then asked who the first person our “hit list” was going to be.
“Where would you like to get published?” he asked, via IM’s.
“Vintage!” I responded immediately. “Or Penguin. I love their stuff.”
“Well, we might have a problem with that because. . .” and Donkey Ass launched into a diatribe about how Vintage and Penguin were currently being bought out by German companies and were now run by Krauts who really didn’t have an interest in American things. He then pointed out that the company was likely to be in a turmoil as various Aryan-type people were shipped in to replace the hard-working literary citizens that had turned Penguin and Vintage into the powerhouses that they were, and nothing was likely to be read for a while. He finished it up by saying it was pretty cheesy that now Germans were going to dictate the direction of American culture in the publishing world, and. . .
. . . and, having grown up with my parents, I know a good hippie rant when I hear one and decided to cut it off at the knees. I quickly changed the subject by suggesting Doubleday, because they were big and did everything in-house, which cuts down on expenditures. Donkey Ass said their load of backreading that needed to be done was about a year long for submitted material; could I try again?
At this point, I began to feel a bit funny. Unless my mommy (or Writer’s Market) had mislead me horribly during my formative years, I knew that agents were supposed to suggest directions for their clients that will benefit them, thereby giving them a bigger slice of the pie. Also, agents were supposed to know more about the business than their clients. Me Money Man Tarzan, you Creative Jane and all that. I quickly suggested half a dozen more places such as Viking, Simon & Schuster, and Dell, to be rebuffed with a lengthy technical explanation each time.
Now I was beginning to have a familiar bad feeling in my gut, the same one I used to get in college trigonometry class every time the professor opened his mouth. So far, all Donkey Ass had done was to say that none of these places were going to be an option for us, which wasn’t so bad because I had been living with that reality on my own for about eight years. It wasn’t until you began considering the fact that he hadn’t suggested any companies in response that things began to look peculiar.
Here’s the way the model is supposed to work: when I suggest House A, you come back by saying that House A isn’t really that great of a deal. . . but if you’re really looking for what House A can offer, House B will match that and then some. I know I’m smart; that’s what you pay me fifteen percent for. Bet you didn’t think of that, did you Mister Smart Author Guy? Me Tarzan, you Jane. Get back there and write some more, and leave the business side to the professionals.
“Well,” I said finally (via IM), “what would you suggest we do? What’s a good direction for us?”
After all the lengthy wordiness was pared out, Donkey Ass’ idea was that we should go with a small house. Jesus wept. Yeah, sure, the publishing industry is filled with stories about plucky little houses and their equally plucky authors. . . but I had considered this idea a few years ago and turned it down. No money, no exposure, no pluck. Okay, so I’m a greedy capitalist bastard. But the thing was, the idea is to go into a bookstore and see your book on the shelf, and see it with a real cover, not something in the “Local Author” bin that looks like it was made by a talented high school student with a pirated copy of Adobe Page Maker. I mean, Christ, if I was really that hard-up to see print, I could always plunk down the cash and pay to have it published myself, right? Sure, I could do that. I can always also plunge a barbecue fork into my own leg, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to.
Shortly thereafter, however, Donkey Ass changed his tune. It was imperative, he said, that we get with a large house, and as quickly as possible, so that we could start getting the word out on this great new talent in the making. Besides, as it turned out, he medical bills to pay. Now, when I say medical bills, I don’t mean the kind where your dumb butt got drunk, tripped, and fell in the shower requiring some stitches; these were apparently of the variety where you begin toting up your life’s possessions and start figuring how much you can get for great-grandma’s ornate vase that was a possession of Napoleon. Whatever his reason, I didn’t really mind because now it meant that things were going to happen quickly. . .
. . . but they didn’t of, course. Here’s one of the reasons; these medical problems were enough to keep Donkey Ass virtually bed-ridden, a prisoner in his own apartment. He was in the habit of getting nasty cysts in some extremely uncomfortable places -- I’ll let your own imagination decide where they were concentrated -- and sometimes, said cysts would pop like a party favor, spewing out all kinds of gross body fluids and requiring him to go to the hospital. The total of ducats owed to the Medical Gods would go up, and Donkey Ass would begin to panic some more. Not to mention tell me about it, at length.
Now, I am not a completely heartless meanie, and I understand that this sort of situation is enough to make even the stoutest of hearts tremble when it comes kabaloom time. Having had a couple of staph infections myself, I know exactly what that sort of scene is all about. However, there were three things about this situation that really irked me. First, I felt as if I had been lied to, or at the very least, given a very rosy and optimistic -- yet completely untrue -- picture of my agent’s capabilities. He had never told me that he was suffering from some sort of bizarre leprosy. Never even alluded to it, in fact, until after the contract was signed. From some of the letters and e-mails I got from him later on, I got the picture of a guy lying a dirty bed drenched in festering bodily discharges, moaning in pain and hardly able to see across the dimly-lit room. . . more of the scene from a particularly gruesome low-rent episode of ER than of somebody you want to have being your co-pilot for your career.
Now, this in itself would not be considered the end of the road; after all, with the gods of technology smiling upon us, the only real reason you have to leave your house is to get groceries, and even that can be delivered by calling or pointing and clicking. I figured all that was really necessary in that situation was somebody to come over and get the mail, then drop it off in the post box for Donkey Ass. You don’t have to actually be in New York to make your presence felt there, I reasoned. Just drop a nice postcard to your favorite editor who you’re chummy with, and all is good, right?
Wrong. Donkey Ass didn’t have any favorite editors. In fact, he had no editors. When it came to contacts in the publishing industry, Donkey Ass was just as much out in the cold as I was, as true a case of the blind leading the blind as I’ve ever heard of. I found this out when he started talking -- via e-mail -- about how we needed to make new contacts within the publishing industry. I responded by saying, jokingly, “What’s wrong with the old contacts?” and he told me that sorry Charlie, ha-ha, we were on our own. He didn’t know anybody. No young brash editor’s phone number in his Rolodex, no college drinking buddy who had climbed the ivory tower of publishing, no ex-lover who still gave him the time of day, someone that would take a chance and read something he sent her based on the merit of their bed sessions in their early thirties. Nobody. Essentially, we were no better off than when I had been a college student armed with a copy of Writer’s Market, saving beer money to send off manuscripts.
Possibility three was that Donkey Ass was lying. Always a possibility, I guess.
TO BE CONTINUED!