On My Own Again ...

So I spoke with my agent just now ... and she's now my former agent. I made the decision, said I wouldn't make further changes to the manuscript (for the reasons mentioned earlier). The decision is bittersweet. She's a lovely lady (as was my other agent), but well, ... She was funny and kind, actually. And like, my first agent, I'd recommend her to anyone seeking representation. But I'm ready, willing and able to go out on my own! YES!!!!!!!

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Cross Over

OK, here it goes again. You don't realize this, of course, 'cause you can't see it, but I just wrote this really, really long entry to this blog and I was so darn proud of myself -- and then I looked at it in preview and darn if I didn't press the wrong button, but it suddenly evaporated and now here I'm left with trying to come up with the whole thing again.

First, let me try to remember what I was saying .... Oh, yeah.

Generally, I try to keep my life as a real estate agent and as a writer separate. I don't know why -- yeah, I do actually. I think I'm ashamed that I haven't succeeded in earning enough as a writer and have to work as a real estate agent. (Never mind, that I didn't earn enough as a real estate agent and so now, in ADDITION to selling real estate, I'm working in a law office -- madness -- but I'm getting away from my story...) Anyway, I'm usually pretty successful at keeping these two sets of identities separate, but every now and then, someone discovers my secret.

Last week, I showed this beautiful townhouse on Strivers' Row -- an incredible, historic section of central Harlem -- to an agent and his little crowd of customers. After they left, I locked up and thought no more about it. They were appreciative, but they didn't give off vibes of interest (which is a shame 'cause the house is fantastic, and well-priced to boot!).

But a couple of days later, my cell phone rings and it's this lady -- one of the people the agent brought over. She said she'd picked up one of my little personal brochures (personal as in it's about me, as opposed to one of the bigger, prettier brochures about the house) and she'd read in it that I was a writer and the author of Harlem Redux. (Yes, I do mention the fact that I'm a writer in the brochure, but that's about the only place I ever mention it.) Anyway, she said she'd read the book. "I absolutely loved it," she said. "And I told all my friends about it." Words to warm a writer's heart. If only my agent could hear her, I thought, she'd see, she'd realize that there's someone somewhere out there, just waiting to read me again ...

But then she had to go and ask the 64-million-dollar question: "Are you working on anything now? When's your next one coming out?"

Ouch!

So you know what I did? I can't believe I did it, but I must've cause I've still got the evidence: a sheet from a yellow memo pad with this lady's address. What I did was this: I cleared my throat and then took a step out of my body, while I heard this strange woman using my cell phone say: "Well, actually I am working on something. Only my agent is having a problem with it. Would you be interested in reading it -- and giving me some feedback?"

The question stunned her -- as evidenced by her silence.

"Hey, your name might even appear in the acknowledgments," I said.

That did it. She agreed.

In for a penny, in for a pound. I'm now putting together a list of people to whom I intend to forward my manuscript. Regular people.

Meanwhile, I'm going batty with my regular author's website. I thought to take advantage of the new Blogger beta's offer to have this blog appear under my "custom" domain name (i.e. my name), but after a week of noodling (i.e. struggling) with DNS and CNAME and Google taking my site off and error messages, I give up. For now, this site's gonna have to stay under the less than prosaic but perfectly good URL it has: persiawalker.blogspot.com. I'm thinking about resuming the site I had under the Author's Guild. I dropped it because I was bored, bored, bored with the AG's site builder. The AG says it'll be announcing a new sitebuilder this week. I can hardly wait. If it isn't up to snuff, though, then I'll go with GoDaddy. That's the registrar for my URL. It's affordable and it probably makes sense to host with the registrar. That way I don't have to worrying about forwarding, masking, transferring or losing my emails. Yup ... but I really wanna see what the AG's gonna offer.

Writing -- or rewriting -- one The Palmer Affair, my sequel to Harlem Redux -- has slowed down considerably. I've reached that point when I'm bored with the story and am thinking about totally revamping it. But when an author is bored with the story, it could be because he or she has reread it so many times that it no longer has any surprises -- and the boredom stems from the rereading, not from any lack in the story itself. Too bad. I think I'll revamp it.

Meanwhile, check out two new blogs I discovered: The Lipstick Chronicles and Poe's Daughters.

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Frustration ...

When I last wrote on this blog, I believe I was waiting to hear back fromy my agent concerning the latest rewrite of Black Pearls. I ended up phoning her again. Apparently, she'd been sick for nearly two weeks and naturally fell behind in reading. At any rate, she promised to reread the manuscript herself (up until then, only her assistant had read it -- and I'd gotten to the point at which I REFUSED to make any more changes based upon what the assistant was saying). The agent promised to get back to me -- in a week. Well, she didn't. I gave her a week and a day, and then I called her myself. She told me that having read the manuscript, she 'believed' I'd done the research to show that people in 1926 in Harlem had personal telephones (one of the items that came into question), but that she had parts of the story. Parts of the manuscript were wonderful, she said. Other parts were boring, if not "dead." She couldn't understand why the writing was so "uneven," she said.

I could've told her: It was hard to write "evenly" when one has two full-time jobs and two kids and ... well, need I say more? Actually, I didn't say anything. I simply told her that I would not go back into the manuscript and do any further rewrites without more specific feedback. Privately, of course, I was thinking that some of the best-selling books I've ever read had pages and pages of dead space that I would've gladly cut if I'd had a blue pencil. But I didn't say that. Instead, I reminded her that I've had the experience of changing something to make an agent happy, only to have an editor reject a manuscript and mention that very 'something' as a reason for his/her decision. So I've learned to be very leery of agent "suggestions." She was kind enough to agree that manuscript evaluation is a subjective affair. However, she still felt that parts of the story just didn't do it for her.

I asked her for examples. "Did you put tick marks on the margins of the manuscript maybe? You know, mark scenes that bothered you?"

She hesitated, then said, no, she hadn't.

I just couldn't understand it. How in the world can you give a writer such vague criticism and expect them to do anything constructive with it? From the writer's point of view, it's like battling shadows.

She said that in order to give me any more specific criticism, she'd have to sit down and take the book apart. I thought, duh ... She said she'd get back to me this week.

I don't know. I like her very much as a person, but her constant hesitations are killing my enthusiasm.

I have already decided that this is the last manuscript I will put with an agent. The whole system of agents vetting for publishers works -- for some people. Indeed, it even worked for me. However, for many writers, it's a monumental waste of time. And time after time, agents and editors have shown that they too, are just human, and do make mistakes -- sometimes costly ones. It's hard to get excited about writing when I know I'm going to have to run this gamut every single time. God, I'm so sick of these people.

I've decided to set up on my own small press -- and publish my own work. I've bought my own ISBN numbers and will design my own book covers. Writing will be fun again -- not the miserable torturous exercise it has become.

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A Writer Put On Hold

So my agent did answer, but I couldn't answer the phone, so she left a very kind message. Basically, she's doing a reread of the rewrite. Toward the end of the week, she'll deliver her decision: Is she going to proceed with marketing the book (finally) or will she say, "Hmmm ... I don't think so." I've already told her that there will be no more rewrites at this point. Her assistant made some suggestions that were ... well, let's say they were unacceptable, for various reasons. So let's see what she says.

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A Message Waiting to Be Answered

Am having a bit of stress with my agent, so I called her yesterday to see what was up. Was told that she was 'just leavng.' Left a message. No phone call back. Not yet. We'll see.

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Response to a Query Sent Long Ago

The other day, I checked my email on Hotmail and found an invitation from an agent to submit the first 50 pages from Black Pearls. It was a very nice invitation -- ok, maybe it was from a 'template.' -- but it was a nice template. The thing is, I sent this guy a query nearly a year ago. I was astounded. On the one hand, it stunned me that it would take an agent nearly a year to respond. On the other, it knocked me out that any agent would be so diligent as to still be trolling queries that he received so long ago. Wow!

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The Amazing Miss Snark

I'm sure the WORLD knows about this blog, but I'm just discovered it this evening and I'm delighted by it. If you're one of those folks who're already "in the know," then just ignore this entry, but if you aren't, well then read on ...

I was surfing for ideas on query letters (I always start new ones) when I came across this web site that mentioned Miss Snark. Being ever curious for new ways to procrastinate, I checked it out. Miss Snark turns out to be a literary agent who takes savage delight in ripping apart literary submissions. The thing is, she's hilarious at doing it -- and very insightful. Most unfortunate for her, however, is that she can't hide the fact that beneath all that snarkiness, she's a softee. Please, check her blog out -- and enjoy! Her blog is listed under links.

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