How I got My First Agent; No, It Won’t Work for You

Posted on by johnpbaur

This is the story of how Mark Summers and I – he’s Cap’n Slappy to my Ol’ Chumbucket – got our first agent and our first book deal. It is NOT supposed to go like this. It’s not supposed to be this easy.

And, I’m afraid, it’s not likely to work for anyone else.

Almost 18 years ago the Pirate Guys were unleashed on the world. We had created the ersatz holiday, International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and Nobel Prize winner Dave Barry wrote a column about us. Suddenly we were “a thing.” At first we thought, “Well, that’s cute, there’s our 15 minutes of fame.” But it turned out to have legs. Within weeks we’d been on NPR and radio stations around the world – literally – we’d been interviewed on air in Australia and Ireland.

“What do we do next?” we wondered.

At my wife Tori’s suggestion (and later our friend Gary, but Tori was definitely first) we registered a website, talklikeapirate.com, and started talking about what we’d do with it.

“We ought to write a book,” one or both of us simultaneously said. “‘How to Talk Like a Pirate.’ That’d be funny. Yeah, we ought to write a book.”

We talked about it for several weeks. It always seemed like a great idea, very funny. I think we fully intended to do it, but we never did any actual work towards writing or even deciding what might be in such a book. Just talking about it and laughing.

As you can imagine, Tori was getting a little impatient, waiting for the talking to end and the writing to begin. Finally, she decided it was time to take things into her own hands.

She stealthily, surreptitiously, did a little research – to that point none of us had a clue about how to write or sell a book. She learned about the role agents play, and the importance of a query letter. She wrote such a letter – “I’m John Baur, co-creator of International Talk Like a Pirate Day. We’ve had success way beyond what we expected and have written a humor books about pirates.” Note – she said we HAD written such a book. She pulled together a list of 25 agents and – literally in the dead of night – sent the letter off. And waited.

For 24 of the queries, that was as far as it went. A few wrote back saying our book “did not meet their current needs” (I have a theory about that I’ll discuss some other time) but most did not respond. You’ll find that’s the way it goes.

And then one, a guy named Peter Miller who owned the Peter Miller Literary Agency, wrote back and said, “I’m out of town for a couple of weeks, but when I get back that next Monday, I’d like to read it.”

Tori told me and Mark – “OK guys, you’ve got 10 days to write it.”

You don’t think that’ll light a fire under you? Most of the first draft of what became “Well Blow Me Down” came together in one long weekend involving a LOT of beer and pizza. At the end of the weekend I looked at the legal pad filled with scribbled idea and jokes, then started pulling them together. Another meeting and we actually were able to turn it into something worth showing people. It wasn’t as good as it became, but it worked. We were able to send off a reasonably funny proposal by the deadline.

Well Blow Me Down
Mark and my first book, “Well Blow Me Down.” Writing it seemed like a funny idea. It also came as a big surprise.

It was at least good enough to get Miller to decide he wanted his agency to represent us. He assigned us to one of the agents in his office. That was Scott, who took us under his wing, got us to refine the manuscript, then did his best to sell it.

It didn’t sell after about six months of trying, so his next suggestion was, “Publish it yourself. If you can sell enough copies it’ll get the attention of publishing houses and they’ll be more willing to take a chance on you.”

This was just before the boom in print-on-demand publishing, literally right on the eve of that development. We had to get copies printed and shipped to us, then get out and sell them. We worked out how much money we could afford to lose if we didn’t sell any, and that’s how we ended up with 5,000 copies of “Well Blow Me Down” in the garage.

And it worked. We sold a lot of them, not all 5,000, but, if memory serves, more than 3,000. You’ve gotta hustle. That put Scott in a position where he was able to get us a deal with New American Library.

There’s a lot more to the story, but here we are pushing 900 words, and I have work to do so I’ll leave this here. The point is, we got our first agent in a very odd way and, I’m sorry to say, it probably won’t work for you. Although you’ll never know unless you try.

That’s our family motto: “You’ll never find out if you can fly if you don’t throw yourself off a cliff from time to time.” So knock on the door. If they don’t open it, kick it in.

Next Steps, And Looking for a Relationship

Posted on by johnpbaur

Tori spent Saturday going over the fifth draft of my work in progress with the proverbial “fine tooth comb.” Which would be an issue if I’d used that phrases in the story. My characters are around 12, 13 years old. Would they say “with a fine tooth comb?” Would they even know what that means?

I only ask because there were a couple of similar idiomatic issues in the manuscript, about which I will soon have to make a decision. Because the project is all but finished, The story is good. It’s a matter of tweaking a little punctuation, changing a couple of names, that kind of thing. Nothing involving changes in the actual story.

So while she was doing that (god I love you, Tori! I’m so lucky, and not just because you love me, but because could there possibly be a better in-house editor than a sixth grade English Language Arts teacher? I don’t think so!) I was beginning one of the most tedious and yet inspirational parts of all this. Shopping for an agent.

Because you’ve got to have an agent. You’ve got to. If you don’t have an agent, you’re just begging to be taken advantage of. Or ignored all together. Publisher’s virtually never accept unsolicited manuscripts. The “slush pile” from which the next unknown bestseller is going to be snatched has moved from the publisher’s office to the agent’s.

Among things that my agents have done for me over the years is get them to put more money up front, get money for the German language rights to a book (there never was a German-language edition, but our agent got us a little bit of cash for the rights to it. If they had actually made one, that would have resulted in more money) and holler at the publisher when a check was late – “lost” on some desk at the publishing house. Agents definitely earn their keep.

(And before you ask – if you query an “agent” and the purported agent wants money up front, you’re being conned. A legitimate agent does not get paid until you do. Let me say that again. A LEGITIMATE AGENT DOES NOT GET PAID UNTIL YOU DO. Which gives them an incentive to sell your book.)

So you go through lists of agents and agencies. You want to make sure that you know the rules each agency isnsists on when submitting your work. Some want your first ten pages. Some want the first 25. Some want your query letter written a specific way, and others use an online form. You also want to send your query to agents who actually are looking for the kind of thing you have written, who perhaps have sold things in your genre. You’re looking for the person in each office who seems to best suit your career.

It’s totally random. But for a few moments for each agency, it’s like you’re on Literary Tinder, trying to spark up a relationship. And then on to the next. Swipe left (or right, I have no idea. I’ve never been on Tinder.)

After two afternoons of poring over the website I was using, I had a list of 14 potential agents, 14 potential relationships.

And it’d be nice to think somewhere in that 14 is “the one.” But the reality is, it’s a long slog. My last time, I sent out 71 queries before I found an agent, Eddie. He was worth the effort, extremely positive and hard working. He tried for a year and a half to sell “Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter.” Sadly without success.

He was preceded by Scott, who also seemed blindly optimistic about the odds of selling “Chance,” my first pirate novel, a story he called “Treasure Island for a new generation.” You have to love that kind of enthusiasm, right? He had gotten “Pirattitude” and “The Pirate Life” published, and he got “Chance” to the final meeting of a really big publishing house, REALLY BIG, a meeting after which there would have been contracts and money and a chance for a lot of sales. Sadly, that was the high point of that one. (There’s a funny story about how Scott ended up as my agent. I’ll tell it tomorrow because I’m running out of space here.)

Neither Scott nor Eddie were ultimately successful and they eventually ended our relationship. That happens, too. When you first get signed by an agent, it feels as if they’ve fallen in love with your book. It feels like you’ve been asked to the prom by the captain of the football team. But if, after months and years of putting in effort on your behalf without any recompense, they “fall out of love.” You can’t blame them. They’re in the business to make money. If you aren’t making money, they aren’t. The first thing the publishing business is, is a business.

So both Scott and Eddie fell out of love with my work. Yes, they are on my list to query soon. But I really have no idea whether our past is going to help or hurt. Will hearing from me stir those embers? Or will they not want to go to the prom with “their ex.” Will they feel, “Him again!?! No way! Once burned, fella.” And yeah, it hurts a little. But it’s part of the game, part of the business.

So we will see. I’ve got work to do.

A Good Weekend for aWriter

Posted on by johnpbaur

It was a good weekend,

It started with the news that I have just sold two more signed copies of “Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter.” It’s really nice to know there are still people who appreciate it or want to read it. The setup on Big Cartel makes it easy to personally handle the signed copy sales, and even allows buyers to let me know HOW they want the book to be inscribed. I’ll be down to the post office first thing Monday to get those in the mail.

Last night I finished the fifth draft – and I think it’s the last – of the work in progress. My trusted reader – Tori – had found the usual handful of typos and or missing words. She also identified a couple of spots where the story still needed a little If it passes muster with my trusted reader – Tori – I then start the hard part, trying to attract an agent who can sell the book to a publisher. I’ve already got my query letter ready.

Meanwhile, I can’t slow down. I have a pirate stage musical I”m working on with a friend, and a couple of stories that – although I thought they were done – still need something. I’d like to figure out that something in the next month so I can make it available for International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

And the story I just finished (fifth draft) is going to be one of a series, so at the very least I ought to be able to give a potential publisher an idea of what I have in mind for the series.

So that’s a lot of work and I can’t take time to bask. But it was still a good weekend.

And hey! You can always pick up an autographed copy of “Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter.” Just follow the link on the right side of the page!

Give an Adventure this Christmas

Posted on by johnpbaur

Give the gift of adventure this holiday season. If your list contains someone who lovea a good sea yarn it’s not too late to order my young-adult swashbuckling novel “Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter.” It’s the story of a young girl who disguises herself as a boy and runs away to sea to find and rescue her father, who has been captured by pirates.

You can order it through all the usual places, from Amazon to your local bookstore. Or if you want an autographed copy, go through my site at Big Cartel, and I’ll get one in the mail to you the next day.

Readers have said of “Chrissie” –

“If you like reading adventure tales, wry humor, or just books, chart a swift course for Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter. … John Baur’s first stab at young-adult fiction features top-notch characterization, breathtaking battle scenes, and as much plot as your favorite Rafael Sabatini and Hunger Games novels — combined.”

“Just finished Chrissie Warren! Wow what a journey! I laughed, I cried, and I can’t say I could enjoy anything more. This has to be among the top in my favorite pirate books. I’m so glad this amazing piece of literature found its was onto my bookshelf!”

“Fabulous. … I enjoyed it tremendously!”

For the autographed volumes go to the Big Cartel link here – http://tinyurl.com/nu5ajsz. And make sure when you check out that you use the “Notes to Seller” tab on the checkout page to tell me who you want the autograph made out to. Otherwise I’ll put a generic signature. The “Notes to Seller” tab is at the end of the payment section – not where I’d have put it, but they didn’t ask me.

And have a M-aaarrrrrr-y Christmas!

Writing, Sharpening, and Preparing My Query

Posted on by johnpbaur

Three things accomplished.

1) Finished the second draft of the WIP. Beefed it up a little, added a couple of things the story needed and did so in a way that advances the plot a little quicker.

2) Performed one of the most pleasurable things an author can do. Wrote the first draft of the query letter, the letter where you’re trying to get an agent excited at the prospect of representing your book to publishers.

It’s a very specialized kind of writing, with a very specific audience. All you’re trying to do in it is get an agent to request you send the full manuscript. It’s gotta be short, sharp, and give enough of the story that the prospective agent will “get it,” and be interested enough to want to read it.

If you don’t know how to write a query or what “the rules” are, but have a manuscript you’re ready to pitch, I strongly recommend you visit the Query Shark, a service provided by literary agent Janet Reid. At query shark she evaluates queries and provides feedback for why one works or doesn’t. Just reading through the archives will prepare you to write your own.

Why should you follow some arbitrary set of rules? Because you’re trying to attract an agent, who will (with luck) sell your book to a publisher. You can’t ignore it when an agent says “this is what I want you to supply so I can decide whether I want to represent you.”

Why do you need an agent? I don’t have time for this discussion right now. Just suffice to say – YOU NEED AN AGENT. If you don’t think you do, good luck to you but you’ve reduced your likelihood of getting published from slim to virtually non-existent.

Oh, and this is very important, a legitimate agent will NEVER require payment up front. An agent gets paid when you get paid, as a small percentage of your royalty. Good agents are worth every penny of their commission. If they ask for money up front, they ARE NOT a legitimate agent. As seductive as it is to hear someone say, “I really like your book and think I’ll be able to sell it,” if they ask for money up front, they are not legitimate. Run, don’t walk, for the exit.

Moving on …

3) Began the less fun but equally important task of compiling a list of agents to whom I will submit my query. It’s not as easy as just compiling a list of every literary agency in New York (they’re almost all in New York, and there are hundreds of them.) You’ve got to go through each firm’s list of agents finding the one that represents what you’ve written – contemporary fiction, romance, adventure, middle school, young adult, whatever – and is currently looking for submissions. I’ve been at it all Saturday afternoon and have come up with ten so far.

With my last novel, “Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter,” I eventually ended up sending out 82 queries. The one that ended up deciding to represent me was the 77th I sent out.

And just to cut to the question you’re already asking, no, that agent no longer represents me. Technically, he never represented ME, he represented the book. It’s sort of like a high school romance. At first the agent is hot in love with your book, and is convinced he’ll be able to sell it and make a little money for both of you. But it’s a long process and a lot of work and at some point, if there’s no pay off, the agent “falls out of love” with you and your book. So after a year and a half of trying to sell Chrissie, the agent waved the white flag on both the effort and the book. You part ways, and he/she goes on to fall in love with other authors and other books, leaving you to sit up late at night eating a tub of Ben & Jerry’s finest while weepily watching old rom-com movies. Or whatever the literary equivalent is.

And that agent was actually my second. A different agent had fallen in love with the book of pirate humor I had written with Cap’n Slappy – “Pirattitude!” – and was able to get it published, along with a sequel that wasn’t as good and didn’t do nearly as well. Then he was in love with my first novel, “Chance: A Tale of Caribbean Buccaneers,” which he called “‘Treasure Island’ for a new generation.” But a year and a half later, after he’d almost gotten it sold to a very big publishing house (seriously, I would have pissed my pants if he’d placed it with them), he fell out of love with both me and “Chance” and it was another breakup.

Both of those agents are on the list of ten I’ve come up with this afternoon. Because you never know, and at least we have that old relationship to fall back on. It’s like going to the prom with your old girlfriend. Maybe not your first choice, but at least you’re at the prom!

Anyway, I have a lot more names to add to the list. I’m using a spreadsheet with columns for the agent’s name, the agency, the address, any special instructions for submission, and a column to check off when I sent and if I ever heard back. You’d be surprised, only about a quarter even write back to say “no thanks, not what I”m looking for.” And I don’t blame them, they probably get hundreds of queries a week. They can’t spend a lot of time on things that don’t have potential.

I am NOT sending them out yet. I suspect the WIP will need at least one more pass before I think it’s agent-worthy. I just want to be ready.

What My Work in Progress Isn’t

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I’ve been sitting down the last few days with a printed copy of the work in progress, reading and taking notes and getting ready to get to work on the second draft. I’m even using several different colored markers, although truth be told the different colors don’t actiually mean anything other than “this is the pen that was at hand when I had this idea or spotted that typo.”

I haven’t mentioned anything about what the story’s is about, or even the title, which would give the whole thing away. And I’m not ready to yet except in the most general way. I wouldn’t say it’s a “bad luck” thing to talk about it before it’s ready, but it sure doesn’t feel right. So I’ll keep my lips sealed about that, for now.

But I will discuss what it is not, and why.

It’s not a pirate story. Not because I don’t like pirate stories or have abandoned the pirate community, or have no new ideas for pirate stories. Far from it. I have one all but finished, as a matter of fact. I thought I’d have it out for Talk Like a Pirate Day last year, But there’s a problem wth the story and I haven’t figure out yet how to solve it. Something doesn’t quite work. Otherwise it’s a good story. One day I’ll pull it out, look it over, and the answer to the problem will be so blindingly obvious that I’ll rush it out. So I’m not out of the pirate game at all. (See below.)

But the work in progress is not a pirate story. It’s a contemporary story about three kids – two boys in middle school, troublemakers, and the high school sister of one of the boys who is grudgingly along for the ride (since she has a driver’s license and they don’t.) They’re in a very, very bad situation and the fate of the world rests on their shoulders. I’m aiming at a very specific market and the reaction I’ve gotten from reading the chapters to Tori’s sixth grade class tell me I’m on the right track.

It’s an idea that has been floating around our house since 2010, and where it came from I’ll discuss when I’m ready to reveal the book. But first I have to finish it, and that means a second draft, and a third. You just never know.

There’s a very real, very practical reason for doing this, for writing an adventure story that’s not in the pirate vein. First, it has the potential for being a series of books, and I like the idea of a steady stream of income. Second, I would very much like to sell my book to a publisher.

I had an agent who tried for a year and a half to sell my first young adult pirate adventure, “Chance.” Nobody said there was anything wrong with “Chance,” it was well written, a good story, great charactes. A friend – a retired college professor – read it for me and said he’d expected it to take about a week but he was done in two days because “I just couldn’t put it down.”

Chance made it to the last pre-publishing meeting at one of the very big houses. I would have been thrilled to be picked up by that publisher. Any writer would have.

But –

“No one is interested in pirate stories,” they said. “No one’s buying pirate stories.”

And other houses gave similar responses. “Good book, but we’re not looking for pirate stories.”

When I finished “Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter,” it was even better than “Chance,” and “Chance” was good. Not “pretty good.” Good. A new agent was very excited about it, and tried for another year and a half before telling me, “No one wants a pirate story. It’s not the writing, it’s the pirates.”

So I decided to prove them wrong and self-publish “Chrissie.” I had a sales number in mind that I was pretty sure I could hit, and it would show the “know it alls” at those publishing houses that they were wrong. That people DID want pirate stories.

And you know what? The publishers were right. I have received a lot of great feedback on “Chrissie,” and sold a lot of copies, but nowhere near what I’d hoped, nothing like a number that would convince a publisher to take another look.

So I thought I’d give a try crafting a story I want to tell in a genre publishers think will sell. I’m having fun with the story and the reaction from Tori’s kids tels me it works. They laughed where I’d hoped, even showed me places where it was funnier than I knew, prompting me to double down on those bits. And they really get into the peril.

More importantly, by their reaction (or lack thereof) the kids pointed me to places where it needs work. I have a bunch of notes for the second draft based on their reactions.

But first I took April off for two other projects. Both of a pirate nature.

One is a podcast idea Tori and I had a year ago that will amuse us, even if no one ever listens to it. And yes, it’s a pirate story, of a sort. The other is a proposal from a friend in the pirate community to collaborate on a couple of projects that are exciting and different for both of us, and I was only too happy to take him up on it. They’re both his ideas, so I don’t want to get too far ahead. I got a good start on it during April.

I’m still in the pirate game. But the work in progress has taken me in a different direction, and it’s a good book. It’s a book that has a good chance of being published. I’ll be back with a pirate story sooner than you think.

First Draft of WIP Is Done

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reading to Tori's class 04252019Finished reading the work in progress to Tori’s class today (spring break got in the way) and it was great. The ending is really good, cliffhangers and payoffs and heroic sacrifices and laughs and everything. All in three chapters, a space of a few thousand words.

I had their attention, and I kept it.

End of next week I embark on the rewrites. Maybe a lot. But I don’t think it’ll be too bad. The ending is really good. The beginning is good, needs a few tweaks, not much more than that. The middle is perhaps the most problematic, I’ve got to come up with a few more “events,” close calls and peril and a bit more humor. Nothing in the middle is “bad,” there just needs to be a bit more going on, and it has to drive harder towards the conclusion.

I know this because I have the kids’ reactions (and sometimes lack of reactions) to tell me so. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I don’t see how anyone can write a book for middle school aged kids without having a classroom full of them to bounce the story off of. The kids in Tori’s classes were, as always, invaluable.

I am not starting the second draft until May 1, because I’m in the middle of a project that is a real change of pace for me, and a lot of fun. But that draft is almost finished and then it’s back to the novel. I think I can have something to show agents by summer – when everything in the publishing industry sort of goes on hiatus. Oh well, it is what it is. I warned the kids that it could be a year or more before I know if there’s any hope of the book getting published by a traditional house.

It was funny, I talked a little about the whole publishing process and the kids were aghast. Why would anyone intentionally go into a business as dicey as that, where everything takes so long and your fate is in the hands of other people?

As I told them, sometimes you just can’t help it. You write, because writing is what you do. You’re a writer.

Another Classy Morning

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Just spent another invigorating morning with Tori’s sixth-grade ELA students. I honestly think I get more out of it than they do.

I started by telling them what author James Scott Bell had to say about story. Sometimes writers fall in love with their characters. They don’t want them to have any dark spots, any flaws. They don’t want anything bad to happen to them. And that’s boring. As somebody or other said, “No one is going to go to a movie about ‘Another perfect day in the village of happy people.'” Story, Bell tells us, is taking some characters and getting them stuck in a tree with hungry wolves circling below them Then you throw rocks at the characters. Then you set the tree on fire. Then you let them figure out how to get out of the tree.

In our story, the one I am reading to them a couple of chapters at a time, we just got the characters up the tree, I told the kids. Now we’re starting to throw rocks at them, and pretty soon the tree will be on fire.

As I read the next two chapters, I could see them react when something I’d set up earlier suddenly “paid off,” To me that meant they were getting it, not just the narrative of the story, but the technique.

But the real fun part came after I was done reading the two chapters. Tori had them get out paper and write for 10 minutes. They were supposed to write dialogue with the characters from the story. What might happen next? What are they going to do?

It wasn’t about them guessing what I have in mind, wasn’t about them “getingt it right.” I kept telling them, “This isn’t a test. It’s the first draft, it doesn’t have to be great or even good. It just has to be done.” It was just about them writing for 10 minutes and exploring what THEY would do, and usinng the conventions. They struggled a bit at first, but suddenly you could almost read by the light of all the bulbs going off over their heads. At the 10-minute mark, many of them were eager to read what they’d done, and others we coaxed. It wasn’t bad at all. And I played on my bad hearing. Made them read out, they got stronger as they went along.

And a couple of them DID get what I plan to happen next. Not the way it’s going to happen, of course, but the general idea.

Towards the end one girl asked me the classic – “Where do you get ideas and how do you put them together for a story?” (Apprently she’s hooked on the writing thing!) I went to the back shelf and pulled a couple of books from the class library.

“Where did Judy Blume get the idea for this one? Where did Dav Pilkey get the idea for “Captain Underpants?” Just an idea, a thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if … ? That’s really all it takes to start. J.K. Rowling wondered, ‘What if a boy who thought he was normal went to wizard school?’ Just ideas. ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if?’ ‘You know what really scares me?’ ‘What if a middle school student ran for president?’ What interests you? Your ideas are just as good as theirs. Even as good as J.K. Rowling’s. That’s where ideas come from. You just have to learn how to take that ‘what if,’ and then the next one and the next one until you have a story.”

I guess this is all good for them, good for them to see the process, to get excited and to practice writing and to learn the conventions of how to write dialogue. But in all honesty, I think I get much more out of it than they do. Their excitement is contagious and I’ll be coasting on it for another week. And there were one or two little things they wrote that I very well might steal. (I mean, be “inspired” by, of course.)

So back to work, got two chapters to write before next Thursday.

Why I Threw the Book

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Had to throw a book across the room the other day. Had to.

It was not something I did lightly or without thought. I love books and respect the effort required to write them, even when they let the reader down. This was only the second time I have ever done it.

But boy, this book deserved it, and it felt good.

Most nights I read to Tori when we go to bed. It’s relaxing. The only problem is that my voice is apparently so soothing, my dulcet tones so soporific, that she’s usually asleep within a couple of pages. On occasion we’ll make it through a whole chapter, but she’s more likely to fall asleep within a few paragraphs. It took us something like six months to get through Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book” that way, and “Good Omens” took us almost a year.

Maybe a mystery, I thought. That might keep her interest piqued enough to battle off Morpheus for a chapter or two. So I brought home from the library what is referred to as “a cozy,” a subgenre of the mystery field in which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community.

This one had “beignet” in the title and I figured it must be set in New Orleans, since beignets are a particularly New Orleans thing. But no, it turns out the story is set in Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico. So strike one.

There’s a smugness to the cozy style. They apparently tend to feature amateur sleuths who work in quirky, trendy jobs. The kind of jobs that people in Hallmark Channel movies seem to flock to. In this one, the woman had just gone through a divorce and had opened a beignet and coffee shop in a small town. Because small towns deserve beignets too, I guess.

The author, who has apparently quite a lot of success in the “cozy” genre, has a peculiar style. If you or I were writing dialogue, we might choose to write it in a coherent, chronological fashion. He said this. I said that. He asked me a question. I answered it. You know, a conversation.

Not in this book. In this book, someone would enter the shop, approach the counter and say something, often just one or two words. Then there’d be two paragraphs of exposition and/or a completely irrelevant digression, then the other person would answer with one or two words and you’d have to go back because you couldn’t remember what the question was.

For me, the crowning example was when the a character walked in and asked, “Am I too late?” What followed was FOUR PARAGRAPHS about the javelina, a pig-like animal that runs wild in the American southwest. Four paragraphs. 223 words. On javelinas. There was also a bit about a local artist, but it was mostly about javelinas. Then the main character asks, “Too late for what?” and I have to flip back a page to remember who was talking. For my money, the ONLY way this makes sense is, after the murder eventually takes place, it turns out that the crime was committed by a pack of javelinas. Or the mystery is solved by them. Or something.

One of Elmore Leonards’ “rules” for writing novels is, “Try to leave out all the parts readers skip.” By that standard, this book is a failure by page 11.

Tori was more taken with this passage, when the dreamboat of a local, unmarried sheriff walks in. “His brown suit and tie were dull, but his M&M brown eyes were as scrumptious-looking as the candy-coated chocolate morsels.” Seriously. At least Tori wasn’t sleeping. The ridiculousness of the book had her attention. (And I have to point out, scrumptious looking should not have been hyphenated because it’s not used as a compound modifier. If the author had written “his scrumptious-looking eyes,” yes, that would have been correct. So the author is both ridiculous and not quite as smart as he thinks he is.)

But neither of those were what prompted the launch of the volume across our small bedroom. It was two pages later. The hunky sheriff says he’s going to some Halloween party with a woman who appears to be the arch rival of the book’s hero. She and the sheriff are doing some kind of matching Victorian costuming. The following ensues.

“‘Like Lady Audley?’ I quipped,” … (Seriously? “Quipped?” Just say the line and let the reader determine if it’s a quip or just more useless information. But I digress.) … “in reference to a Victorian-era novel called Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. I had read the sensationalistic story in my downtime between clients while working as a hairstylist over in Phoenix. The lurid novel had made an impression on me.” Apparently so, since the next paragraph – 42 words – offers a precis of the plot and why it would be a good comparison to the sheriff’s date.

There really is such a book, I looked it up. It was published in 1862 and it’s impossible to see how this presents any information that will be helpful later when the murder occurs. But I’ll never know, because that’s when I snorted and threw the book across the room. Tori applauded. It was the most entertainment we’d gotten since we’d cracked the damn thing open.

I have to keep in mind that this author is very successful. Lot of titles in several different series. That doesn’t excuse such a – there’s only one word for it – ridiculous book. It’s kind of maddening.

So why haven’t I given the name of the author or the title or anything? Simple. I made a vow a long, long time ago that I would never directly pan a book or attack an author’s work. Life’s too short and karma’s a bitch. I know how hard writing a novel can be, it’s hard bloody work, and I honor the effort that goes into it, even when the result is disappointing, or in this case, ludicrous. And hell, it’s not even the worst book I’ve ever read. That was a pirate novel sent to me by the author to review about a dozen years ago. It featured as nonsensical plot, a main character who was so unpleasant that her best character trait could charitably be called pigheadedness (Pigs? Javelinas?), and significant, almost hilarious historical inaccuracies. And if I never named that one, I’m not going to do that now to this absurd waste of paper and ink.

Just know that it has beignet in the title and it’s set at Halloween in New Mexico. You’re on your own.

One other way you might be able to tell is, if you are looking at the Jefferson Parish Public Library, there might be a slight dent in the spine – where it collided with my dresser.

Back to Class

Posted on by johnpbaur

Great day Thursday. Tori asked me to come in and talk to her her sixth grade English classes about writing, which she wants them to concentrate on this semester. She wants me to come in each Thursday and talk about how I write and read them my latest chapters. Thursday was the first time.

I’d done this before, back on St. Croix. I’d come in every Thursday afternoon with the new chapters and read to them. It let them follow the process of writing a novel and let me gauge their reactions to what eventually would become “Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter.” It was invaluable. I don’t know how anyone can write a story for middle schoolers without having real kids to bounce it off. I assume they got something from it as well.

So I was looking forward to to it, although not without trepidation. The kids on St. Croix were fifth graders, these were sixth graders, and there’s a world of difference between the two. And unlike on St. Croix, where Tori taught one class of 13 motivated kids, she has two classes of about 30 kids each, ranging from bright, polite kids to kids who are, shall we say, less motivated and more difficult. And she doesn’t have the luxury of deciding the day’s schedule, when she’ll teach a subject and for how long, she’s got a firm schedule ruled by bells. I couldn’t just show up in the afternoon. I have to be there to get the last half hour of her second period class, then stay for the first half hour of her third period group.

But it went great. The kids were more curious than anything, but they listened and for the most part they stayed focused. I talked about writing, and the fact that I had been earning a living at it for more than 40 years. I tried to tie my own experience and ideas about writing into things that I knew they’d talked about on other subjects, why writing is important, how shared stories tell us who we are as a society, what we think is important.

And I talked about the magic of writing. It’s not an original ides with me, it may even be a cliche, but books are made of trees that are cut down and pulped then have ink smeared on them and are glued together. And when you look at those ink smears, the voice of the writer is in your head. It could be my voice, if you’re looking at “Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter.” Or the voice of someone who has been dead for hundreds or even thousands of years: Shakespeare, Homer. And that’s sort of magic, isn’t it?

Then I read them the first two chapters of my WIP, a sixth grade story about two friends who always get in trouble but are the world’s only hope in the circumstances of the story. The kids laughed when I hoped they would, seemed interested, and got a big laugh where I hadn’t really expected one. I took note and will be revisiting that issue repeatedly.

Afterwards I asked for feedback and ideas, and many of them had thoughts about what should happen next. (They were wrong, but I wasn’t going to tell them that.) I also talked about how you want to start a story as close to the action as possible, but you also have to set things up – the characters, the kind of world they live in, the circumstances of the story. Plus there are things I’m planting in the first three chapters that will pay off at the end, that will enable our heroes to figure out how to save the day. I told them the ancient Greeks (who they’re learning about in social studies) invented drama as we know it, and sometimes in their plays the situation was doomed, only to be saved at the last minute by an intervention from the gods.

“The Greeks called it deus ex machina, the machine of the gods,” I said. “Today we call it cheating. You’ve got to set up the story so that the solution is always there, but the reader doesn’t necessarily see it until you spring the payoff. Then they go, ‘Aahhhh! Of course!'”

In all, I was pleased. And Tori was even more pleased. And I’m looking forward to next Thursday morning. And working hard so that I’ve got fresh chapters for them.

Note: I haven’t written in a while, obviously. No excuses, but I’m back at it. The more I write, the more I write and that’s a good thing.