That’s how many listings I pulled out of the Guide to Literary Agents as prospects. Now I’m going through the list to do more research on each one, checking websites, that sort of thing. Once that is done, I’ll rank the different agencies, and start contacting those where I think I have the best chance to get someone to actually look at the novel. High on my priority list will be agencies which handle submissions via email – in this day and age, there’s no reason not to do such things this way, and I must admit to a certain bias in thinking that any agency which doesn’t do this is either so behind the times (I’ve been using email for regular correspondence in my business for over a decade, and almost 15 years of private correspondence) or so stuck in old ways of doing business that I would have to wonder how well suited they are to finding a publisher for my book.
Besides, submitting work via email is a lot faster and more efficient. I can embed some text with the cover letter, add links directly to the Communion site, et cetera. Save a tree and postage, also. Not that I have any illusions about what matters to most agents; convenience and efficiency for me is low on their list of priorities. In fact, there may be something to the idea of submitting hardcopies via snail-mail, if only for the fact that fewer people are probably doing that these days. Hmm…
Jim Downey
Gah. Spent yesterday pretty much crippled with a migraine. I suspect it was due entirely to getting into the Guide to Literary Agents and reading one phrase again and again under the individual listings for agents:
“Does not want to receive screenplays, science fiction, or romance.”
Welcome to the publishing ghetto.
Jim Downey
In this thread on Daily Kos, someone who had read the first few chapters of the novel had some criticism to offer (go down a bit from where that discussion starts). He said that the first few chapters are too information-dense, and that the reader really doesn’t need to know how everything works.
Now, the issue about presentation – how the information is conveyed – is a legitimate one to criticize. He’s the first person to specifically mention this, but over-loading the reader with too much technical exposition is a real danger when writing science fiction, and I do worry whether I pulled it off as smoothly as I could. You have to keep the reader reading, not getting bogged down in explanations of how and why things are the way they are – but you also have to establish the set and setting of the novel’s reality. It is a tough line to walk, and I’m sure that there will be others who don’t feel that I succeeded.
However, the point the critic made about the information being superflous is dead wrong. As I say on the homepage for the novel, this is classic science fiction, in that a scientific breakthrough leads to a new way (literally in my case) of seeing the universe and what it means to be “human”. I don’t wish to reveal any spoilers here, but suffice it to say that the information I provide in the first three chapters is the key to the entire story arc, and only with that information in hand can the whole book be understood. There is nothing gratuitous about any of it. In fact, I worked very hard to make sure that all the necessary components were in place appropriately, so that no one would think I pulled a deus ex machina at the end.
I think that this points up both a general observation about fiction, and a specific issue about reading a book in this medium. The specific point is easy to deal with first: without a book jacket, and the ‘approval’ conveyed by being conventionally published, a reader will approach an e-book by an unknown author with certain assumptions (that the book isn’t *really* finished, that the writer needs improvement, et cetera). ‘Nuff said.
The general issue is that we live in an era of instant gratification. If the book is too hard, if it demands too much work from the reader without immediate satisfaction, then it will be set aside. Whatever your opinion of this is, it is a fact. Many publishers only want to see the first three chapters of a book for this very reason – on the idea that if you haven’t convinced the reader to keep going at that point, the book will not sell. As a matter of fact, it’s even worse than that: most books on writing stress the importance of the first page of text – how if you don’t get the reader in that short moment of disbelief, you’ve lost.
I like to think that I’ve done a reasonably good job with these issues, but I know some readers will not have the faith necessary to get into the book far enough to make a final determination. We’ll see.
Jim Downey
I just got some more nice comments in this post from someone who finished reading the book, and who mentioned that he wants to see more.
That’s a rush. But it is difficult for me just right now to be able to do much fiction writing, at least on the scope of a novel, though I do a fair amount of posting on various blogs. Why? Because at present I’m a full-time care-giver for someone with Alzheimer’s (my mother-in-law), and not only does that suck up a lot of time and energy, it means that every other night I don’t really get to sleep much. My wife and I take turns being “on-call” to help her each night, and we have to listen to a baby monitor all night in order to make sure that she’s safe, et cetera. It’s simply exhausting. And while I can do many things at present, being able to juggle the necessary components for a full-size novel just seems to be beyond me.
We’re trying to make arrangements to have someone in to help care for MMIL a few nights a week. If this works out I hope my energy level rises, and my ability to concentrate improves sufficiently such that I can get back to the new book (which is a prequel to Communion). We’ll see.
Jim Downey
Let’s talk art. I was a gallery owner for 8 years, after all. And an arts columnist for the local paper for a couple of years following that.
The image at the top of this page, and on the Communion website, is titled “Burr Oak at Twilight”, by Columbia, MO artist Peter Haigh. That’s pronounced “Haig”, by the way.
I sold photographs for Peter at my gallery for pretty much the entire time we were there, and that image of the champion Burr Oak for MO (and perhaps the nation) was always a big seller for us. The tree, known locally as the “Williamson Oak”, is about a dozen miles south of Columbia on the Katy Trail, is about 350 years old and has a circumference of about 300 inches, and stands some 85 feet tall.
Anyway, I always enjoyed looking at that photo. And over time, in the many hours I spent working at the gallery, it slowly became associated in my mind with images from my novel. Because I spent probably three or four years just thinking through the storyline, the tech, the history, before I started really writing the book (which took about two years). In a very real way, I grew to equate the image with my novel.
It’s funny what inspires an author, or an artist. Seldom is there a direct one-to-one correlation between a work and the source of inspiration, based on my own experience and from discussion with countless artists I represented over the years. Usually, you’re responding to a comment, an image, an experience, but it is filtered through dozens of other thoughts and leaps of creative faith. But in this one instance, I can honestly say that when I describe the tree in the book, I am talking about this image of this spectacular tree, with all the associated baggage.
Anyway, I am thankful that Peter has allowed me to use this image, and would encourage you to go look at all of his other stunning landscape photography. I know people who own a dozen of his prints, and when you see his stuff you’ll understand why.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 