Tag Archives: Agents

4 Soul-Crushing Realities Indie Writers Must Learn to Face

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The Sauron comparison makes sense: I’m about one more rejection letter away from trying to enslave the human race.

I’ve actually been sitting on this article for several months now, but I never published it because it came from a pretty dark place.  This piece was sort of like Sauron’s ring for me.  I was content to let it sit in the shadows and never speak of it and at one point I even considered destroying it.  How did it come into being?  Well, I was pretty damn disheartened when I could not find an agent or publisher for my first book The Notice.  I spent months slaving away on that book and every person who read it told me it was wonderful.  Maybe that was part of the problem.  My mother cried like four times while reading it.  I was 99% certain I had a bestseller in my hands and you can probably guess what happened:  Not one agent wanted to read it.  I could have written the next Crime & Punishment but it was irrelevant—seemingly because it featured ghosts and Eastern European ethnic tension instead of vampires and/or zombies.

I was defeated.  I was dejected.  I thought about giving up.

Instead, I moved on to Naked in Korea and The Last Cup and wrote this article as an outlet for my frustrations.  For the purposes of including it on my website, I’ve cleaned up its content quite a bit.  I’ve humbled my language and padded out the content.  It’s long, but also funny and, well, mostly TRUE.  I wouldn’t be posting this if I didn’t feel like readers could benefit from it and I want you all to take my advice with a grain of salt.  The 4 points I’m about to lay out will not be 100% true for all of you but they ARE all obstacles that every indie writer must be prepared to face.  You’ve been warned.

Now…enjoy.

4 Soul-Crushing Realities Indie Writers Must Learn to Face

January 26th, 2012:  When deciding that you want to become a writer, you’re probably sure of one thing:  All you have to do is actually sit down and write your book and you will be famous in at least a week—two weeks TOPS.  Within a month, you will be playing epic games of squash with a surprisingly spry Stephen King and drinking champagne out of J.K. Rowling’s navel at author parties while Daft Punk spin the turntables.    DAFT PUNK!  You have probably known for years that this is the kind of life that is out there for you; all you have to do is put in the time and wait for your membership card.

“Yep, good ol’ J.R.R. Tolkien… still in his prime, no less!”

So you write your first novel—an epic fantasy tale that ends up totaling 300,000 words spanning 38 chapters of convoluted history and realms so awesome that Tolkien himself visits you in a dream just to high-five you like Maverick from Top Gun (come to think of it…he even looked an awful lot like Tom Cruise, but you’re still almost positive it was Tolkien).

Okay, you may have overshot that first attempt at a novel.  A little too ambitious, right?  No takers?  Fine.  You can scale it back.  You can reel this in.  You broke the book up into two separate novels, cut out tons of fluff and crafted a perfectly good standalone masterpiece that would set up the next great fantasy series for all ages.  You shipped it off to agents and publishers and waited for the letters to come rolling in.  You eagerly imagined clichés like “breath-taking”, “stunning”, and “a landmark achievement” being hurled in your direction in such volume you’d have to swim through the praise like Scrooge McDuck in coins.

But, of course, nothing happened.  Now it’s time to reevaluate your perception of the publishing world with 4 soul-crushing realities.

“We can wait all day if we have to.”

1.  Agents/Publishers Don’t ALWAYS Know Quality When They See It:  First, I see a need to qualify that the definition of “quality” here refers to “this is a best-seller” and not “this is a very well-written book”.  The distinction is important because this piece is about to refer to Stephanie Meyer as a—grimace—“quality writer” and any literary/English scholars who might be reading this are going to s*** a collective brick at that statement.  No, the point is not that literary agents are idiots.  Agents are usually pretty adept at spotting decent writing.  Of course, they’re better at spotting lousy writing.  But the truth is that agents have no choice but to seek the next best-seller despite the fact that, sadly, predicting popular trends when it comes to literature is kind of like guessing which pigeon in a tree is suddenly going to drop a bomb in your convertible.

If you don’t believe that, just ask J.K. Rowling or Stephanie Meyer.  Both women are two of the highest-grossing authors of our time, but both had to shop their books around almost as much as I did before someone finally rolled the dice on a multi-billion-dollar franchise.  It makes you wonder how many other billion-dollar franchises never found that one agent who took a chance on something others considered “risky” or “derivative”.  The problem is not necessarily with the quality of your work; the problem is that, as a result of being hopelessly jaded by the industry, any given agent may be going into your book with a number of ill-conceived assumptions, including that you have an awful idea, your characters are stereotypes, your grammar is horrendous, your story is cliché, and YOU are an imbecile who scribbled half of your chapters on Arby’s napkins.  And (unfortunately) 95% of what they receive probably fits that bill.

I couldn’t find a funny picture for this paragraph, but my pursuit of one led me to some awesome Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan art. You have GOT to click this link, guys.

Even more frustrating is that in this global age of communication—with wealthy foreign markets on the rise and endless volumes of earthshaking ideas constantly at our fingertips—you would think that there ought to be a hungry mass of people out there looking to give almost any topic a chance.  And that is perfectly true—if you’re wealthy.  The fact is that there is a market for everything, because the only thing that needs to happen for a market to be born is for someone like Oprah Winfrey to say “Buy this book.”  Suddenly, a billion people will buy “Mutant Caveman Summer Vacation Attack Squad!” tomorrow and dub you the next J.D. Salinger.  The first time you picked up “The Kite Runner”, was your first thought “Holy crap!  A book about children in Afghanistan?  I’ve been waiting for this novel my whole life!  This book is so marketable.”  Of course not.  Now there’s a movie and probably a prequel in the works: The Kite Maker.

Looking at Michael Crichton is like staring into the cobalt eyes and reassuring smile of an angel. R.I.P., Sir.

2.  “Write What You Know” Isn’t a Free Pass to a Book Deal:  There may be no more “tried and true” cliché in the whole publishing world than this little gem that you will find in exactly 100% of books offering advice on how to write that first great novel.  It seems like sage advice.  If you’re writing some kind of medical thriller, you had damn well better know your science and medicine—just ask Dr. Michael Crichton, author of The Andromeda Strain and Congo and Jurassic Park.  Clearly his medical degree gave him expertise in pissed-off apes, space viruses, and making giant dinosaurs.  He was an expert!

The trick here is that writing about what you know can only get you so far if part of what you know doesn’t include how to write a freaking marketable novel!  You could be writing your fourth book on a topic in which you have two degrees, years of fairly immersive personal experience, and a prior history of conducted research, and you still may not get a single person in the industry to read a word of what you cranked out.

When it comes to writing a novel, writing about what you know only works if A) you are a vampire or zombie, B) already marginally famous or rich, or C) you lived through something absolutely horrendous and the literary world kind of feels like they owe it to you.  Basically, if your book tells the story of your CPR-certified, firefighting, Vietnam-veteran, Holocaust-survivor uncle who died on 9/11 after plummeting from one of the Trade Centers like Hans Gruber while strangling a terrorist and saving a family of kittens, you are set for life.  Honest, how many of you are thinking back through your family trees right now searching for an obscure relative who nearly fits that bill?  I know I would.  The real problem is that, in writing a book, you may only discover how agonizingly boring you are.

I’m like 99% sure that Aron Ralston deliberately rolled a boulder onto himself and cut half of his arm off just because it was a less painful way of getting published than trying to write a great book and going through the proper channels.

This is what a published author looks like. Yes, it’s okay to start crying hysterically. I would judge you if you didn’t.

3.  Being Professional Is Not a Surefire Way to Get Published:  Another piece of absolutely garbage advice that you’re going to hear from experts who write books about how to get published is that professionalism is the key to getting published.  Okay, that’s being unfair.  Don’t get me wrong; being professional can’t hurt your chances as much as being insanely unprofessional.  But if being professional or respectable were the only way to get published, you wouldn’t have books by Paris Hilton and the Kardashians lining shelves across the country.  The fact is that you can do absolutely everything right and get rejected 30 out of 30 times because your book is not about Justin Bieber or what it’s like having 23 children.

It bears repeating that literary agents ARE NOT IDIOTS, but they can be tremendously unfair and cynical.  I don’t feel like that’s a secret anyone is rushing to cover up.  Deep Throat in a trench coat didn’t whisper that to me between cars in a shadowy parking complex through a haze of cigarette smoke.  Agents are oftentimes overworked, depressing people who are terrified of taking a genuine risk on the high-concept idea of a first-time writer.  That’s bad for us, but probably not bad for business, strictly speaking.  But I once read an advice column from an agent who proudly said he rejected “any book that came with a prologue” and (GRAPHIC VISUAL ALERT) my testicles slammed into each other like the moon colliding with the Earth.  That’s like saying, “I don’t adopt orphans if I know where they come from”.

How dare you, Mr. Indie Author, for having a prologue!  Your audacity ASTOUNDS ME.

This is your best friend. He loves that you wrote a book. He has no intent to actually read it.

4.  “At Least My Friends and Family Will Read It” – If you think this is a given, you should probably go ahead and click this link.  Go on, I promise it’s safe.  This can be a very painful truth but your friends are probably lying to you when they say that the idea for your book sounds “really interesting”.  Your friends are lying to you and maybe even looking you in the eyes while they do it.  Some might even have their hand awkwardly positioned on your inner thigh.  Why?   Because they love you.  That’s right, your friends know how much this means to you and they care enough about the hours you put into your book that they are absolutely scared s***less by the idea of dashing your hope or giving you any gleaming of the reality-check you so desperately need in order to find some semblance of a life and make up for the hundreds of days you may have wasted researching your “masterwork” or “manifesto”.  Ay, caramba!

Of course, another possibility is that your closest friends don’t care at all that you wrote a book because society now takes for granted what were once considered lofty accomplishments.  It used to be considered bragging rights to know someone who had published a book or made a video or recorded a song, but nowadays even your roommate’s little sister is dropping an entire album’s worth of nasally Rhianna covers on her Myspace page.  Thanks to pages like YouTube, every other jackass in your apartment building has probably put out at least one video that scored over a million hits which means your own friends can no longer be held responsible for separating the very real achievements of people they know from the superficial ones of those they don’t.

Besides, your friends and family are the last people on Earth who you’re going to trick into buying your crappy novel.  They’ve read your clumsy Facebook notes about how awesome the new Ke$ha album is.  They’ve seen you mercilessly confuse words like “their”, “there”, and “they’re” in your Facebook statuses or Tweets with such animosity that you could almost be brought before a UN criminal tribunal and accused of war crimes.  Now you expect them to suffer 200 pages of garbage tinged with all the inane banter, political or religious rhetoric, shallow social commentary, and terrible jokes with which you annoy them on a daily basis??  If your closest friend randomly comes up to you tomorrow and punches you as hard as he can in the face, you are obligated to let it go.  You probably earned it.

If you’re reading this, I’m not saying your writing is automatically that awful.  I’m just speaking in hyperbole.  But I guarantee that at least one person who happens across this entry is writing a book his or her friends and family will hate.  If I hurt someone’s feelings with this post, here’s a nice cartoon I found on the Internet to make it all better :)

Sean’s Top 7 Indie Author Annoyances

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A mass of writhing arms and desperate fingers all outstretched and grasping for lifeforce clamors around me.  The lights are blinding and all we can hear is the incessant droning of some pacifying music in the distance.  I hear orders being spouted left and right from the void.  It is impossibly hot in the crowd.  Every surging movement of the horde ripples across me and I feel like I am trapped within the hull of some ancient ship churning on the darkest seas.  Black liquid pours through tubes on the walls across from us and, though I know its foul taste well, I feel drawn to it in my despair.  The world around me is fading.  The black fluid is the only substance that might sustain me…

No, that’s not an excerpt from my upcoming dystopian novel.  I’m just at Starbucks.

Starbucks is one of those places that reminds me why I might have picked the wrong hobby.  There are few things on Earth that I enjoy more than sitting peacefully—usually with my fiancée—enjoying a cup of coffee and just talking for hours on end.  When I’m trying to write, I usually seek the sweet, silent refuge of my local public library, but just for today I ventured over to Starbucks to enjoy a different atmosphere.  Here, everything is loud and tense—a loudness and tenseness ironically soundtracked by the soothing serenade of some laid back indie group I’ve never heard of.  People keep giving me scathing looks because here I am sitting alone in the madness just enjoying a cup of coffee by myself.  Most of these folks who look so annoyed haven’t even purchased anything; they’re just staring at me, laptops in hand, waiting to see if I’ll finally move so that they can have the outlet next to me.  Oh, I’m sorry!  Am I in your office???  Excuse me for drinking coffee…at a Starbucks.

And, before you say anything, yes I realize that I’m obviously writing this on my own laptop and, yes, I’m still at Starbucks.  I’m not that clueless.  I actually did give up my original spot so that someone could have the outlet.  I’m now typing in one of the cushy chairs by myself.  The point is I BOUGHT COFFEE.  Also, it would appear that everyone’s just looking for an outlet.  That’s kind of profound, right?

But since I’m at Starbucks and since I’m quite annoyed by the vibe here, I thought I’d weigh in on a few of my indie author annoyances and see what others have to say.  This list could (and probably should) go on and on and on.  Tell me your annoyances in the comments!  I’ll bet I share most of them :)

1.  Facebook – Facebook has probably cost me more time as a writer than any other force on the planet.  Why?  Because every single author my age does this:  Sit down, prepare to write, pause, check Facebook just one last time, keep checking Facebook, Facebook stalk, play random Facebook game, make note to write tomorrow, go to work.  Okay, I’m not that bad.  But you know why Shakespeare was so damn prolific?  Because he didn’t have to worry about Facebook!  As writers, we have to learn to resist that temptation to check our email or Facebook “one last time” before we start writing. I say, reverse your state of mind.  “Today, I think I’ll write just one more page before I check Facebook”.

“AGENTS, WHY YOU NO GIVE ME HONESTY?”

2.  Form Rejections – We all receive rejection letters.  If you aren’t enduring rejection, you’re doing something wrong.  Rejection is not failure; it is only a divot on the road to success.  That might sound pretty contrived but I actually just thought of it and I stand by my statement.  Believe me, I get the need for rejection letters from agents.  I even understand the need for form rejection letters.  No one is more sympathetic to the amount of work that falls into agencies’ laps every day than I am.

It’s the lack of accountability and bulls*** that irritates me in form rejection letters.  I only want to hear one thing from an agent who doesn’t want my book and doesn’t have time to tell me why:  “No.”  I’ll be annoyed by that, too, believe me, but I’ll understand and respect the agent’s terseness.  It’s the following statements that I hate hearing from agencies:  “It’s just not a good fit for us.” “It’s not right for us at this time.” “Our rejection should not be taken as an indictment of your work or ability.”  That last one always gets me.  Oh, I’m sorry for interpreting your rejection as rejection.  And what is “not a good fit for us” supposed to mean?  “We aren’t currently accepting good writing”?  I would rather receive a form rejection telling me my book is “absolutely terrible”.  At least that would tell me to regroup and start from scratch instead of leaving me to tread water because an agency could not afford to take accountability for its own dismissal of my book.  Finally, that brings us to “not a good fit for us at this time”, which implies to me that an agency is basically telling me “We could conceive of a future or parallel universe where perhaps your work would be considered publishable.  We advise you to seek out a time machine or the device from Sliders.”  I’ll get right on that, agents.

Four shots of espresso and I start talking like him, too.

3.  This Chick’s Voice at Starbucks:  This wasn’t originally going to be on this list but in the twenty minutes now that I’ve been writing this entry, her voice has climbed to #3.  This barista’s voice is somewhere between Bill Cosby, Gollum, and Rosanne, I s*** you not.  It would almost be impressive if it weren’t so damn grating.  And for some reason she keeps shouting German and giggling.  Thank you, Starbucks, for hiring only America’s finest.   On the bright side, sitting at Starbucks actually reminds me of a funny thing a friend of mine said a few months ago.  I told her one of my friends was studying to become a “barrister”.  My friend pauses for a second and looks me square in the eye before saying, “She’s studying to work at Starbucks?” (rimshot)

4.  Writer’s Block – It had to be on the list somewhere, right?  I did a whole entry on WB a few weeks ago so I’m not going to dwell on it all over again.  One thing is certain:  There is nothing more annoying than being in the middle of penning a great novel and suddenly not knowing what happens next.  When you have two really exciting scenes, but you don’t know how to connect them, your instinct might be to just throw up a bridge and hope for the best.  If you’re like me, though, doing this is usually what brings your narrative to a screeching halt because the bridge is built on a solid foundation of boring.  Never settle for a rickety wooden bridge when your mind is capable of The Golden Gate Bridge.  Sometimes all you need is patience, but the experience itself can be quite annoying for sure.

BRAIN, WHY YOU NO WORK WHEN I NEEDS YOU NOW???

5.  Forgetting to Write Down a Great Idea – I think this is the twentieth time I’ve mentioned on this blog that I get most of my really good ideas just as I’m laying down to sleep, which is terrible for sleep, but great for productivity.  A few years ago, when I was just embarking on my first attempt at writing a novel, I used to just let those ideas sit until morning.  Usually, I would remember the really great ideas and forget some of the smaller detail stuff at about 65% success.  But let’s just say I forgot to write down five great ideas in my lifetime.  Well, that’s FIVE great ideas that I’ll never get to see blossom.  That could be FIVE opportunities that I missed—FIVE books I failed to publish.  Nobody likes to linger on the one that got away, but the best way to keep those ideas from falling into that oblivion where you keep “that one guy’s name from high school”, “the place with that awesome cheeseburger”, and “the name of that one movie…you know which one I’m talking about…it had the guy doing the thing,” is to WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING.  Here, I’ll get you a pen.  You should probably write that down.

6.  Cardigans – Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.

7.  Other Indie Authors – Oh, don’t get indignant.  We’re supposed to be laughing WITH each other.  There is no question that this article would not be complete without us.  If you’re following me on Twitter, you’ve probably been annoyed by the like 180 comments that my Tweet Bot posts every day.  Trust me, I wouldn’t be insulted if you told me that.  I’m annoyed that I have to do that to you folks, but it’s the only way I know to consistently promote this website and my books and make money.  I’m 26 years old and I have bills to pay.  I know for a fact that I annoy some people.  It can also be annoying for some of us to receive constant questions from other writers regarding fairly mundane things like “how do I format an e-book?” or “what’s the best way to get published?” There are HUNDREDS of books and websites on both of these EXTREMELY COMPLICATED issues and, as for the second one, I pretty much devote a whole freaking website to it so WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME DIRECTLY???  I love aspiring writers and I love sharing battle stories and lessons, but I do get annoyed by people who act like they expect me to do their homework for them.  Fortunately, 98% of you don’t meet that description.  Why?  Because 75% of you are awesome (!!!)…and the other 23% of you are spambots trying to sell me hair products.

Sean Quote:  “Landing a literary agent is not about catching the biggest fish; it’s about making sure your paddle is big enough to knock out whatever you happen to reel in.”

 

More Novel Query Letter Do’s and Don’t Do’s

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It’s been several weeks since I visited the rather sensitive issue that is “Query Letters”.  Every aspiring writer wants to know, “What’s the secret?”  Every aspiring writer, at one point or another, thinks that there must be some secret to query letters or some secret code.  Maybe you’re supposed to say the word “sassafras” or “kerfuffle” or something at some point in your letter, and that will be the point when the agent reading your letter says, “He knows the code… send him a book deal.”  I don’t know.  If you want me to be honest, the key to what makes a perfect query letter is #3 behind The Da Vinci Code and the whereabouts of The Holy Grail on the list of the world’s greatest mysteries.  How mysterious is it?  I have a strange feeling that Indiana Jones will be trying to find the perfect query letter if they ever make a fifth one of those movies:  Indiana Jones and the Query Letter of Providence!

I just hope they bring back Shia Labeouf.  What’s that, Microsoft Word?  Red squiggly lines under “Shia” and “Labeouf”??  That’s because his name is like something out of a Canadian Dr. Seuss book.

In all likelihood, though—as much as it pains me to say this—the possibility of there being a “perfect query letter” is about as remote as the likelihood that Eddie Murphy will ever star in anything watchable again.  There is no perfect query letter because there are no perfect agents.  The querying process is a give and take, and your letter is going to be subject to an impossible range of factors over which you have absolutely zero control.  An agent might pass on your project because the story of your book just happens to be close to something the agency has already taken.  Your project might be passed up because Agent #17 just spilled hot coffee on herself, she’s pissed off, and, frankly, she’s taking it out on your book because what does she care?  Your project might be passed up because it’s 2:00 in the morning in New York and Agent #31 just decided to browse your letter on her I-Phone while enjoying drinks at a bar with some girlfriends and “Party Rock” is playing for the fifth damn time and, while she really, really LOVED your idea, in her drunken stupor she accidentally hit delete and was too intoxicated to notice.  That could happen!

Or your project could be terrible.  Like really, really terrible.  Like if your book were a movie, even Eddie Murphy wouldn’t star in it.  Yes—that’s TWO Eddie Murphy slams in one post and you know what’s strange?  I love Eddie Murphy.  That’s just the way the wind is blowing today, my friends.

I think I had too much coffee this morning.

Anyway, there are some strategies you can adopt to help hedge your bets when it comes to query letters.  And for this letter, I’m not going to waste time telling you the obvious stuff that you should already know.  You should already know that a query letter should never be longer than one page.  Some agents will tell you a letter shouldn’t be longer than 250 words, although I try to keep mine between 250 and 400.  If an agent is too busy to give my project more than 250 words, I would suspect that agent is too busy to stick his or her neck out for me anyway, even I suspected I’d written the next To Kill a Mockingbird.    I shouldn’t have to tell you to research any agent you query and make sure that agent represents books in your genre and I shouldn’t have to tell you to edit the crap out of your query letter.  You should reread that bad boy no less than 10 times.  So, with all the basic stuff out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff.

Find New Agents:  I don’t divulge all of my secrets.  The point of this blog is not for me to do all the research for you but rather to point you in the right direction.  Rosters of new agents give you information about young, hip, and eager agents who have just entered the game and their appeal should be obvious to you.  New agents are probably in the process of building client lists, which means they’ll be taking on more projects.  If you’re young, there’s probably a better chance that your interests overlap with new agents.  I find that younger agents, for example, are far more likely to embrace sci-fi, dystopian fiction, urban fantasy, etc. than some of their elder counterparts because our generation has always embraced those genres.  It could be easier for you to get your foot in the door with a young agent than with someone who already has a client list chock full of prolific, skilled authors who are already established names.  I won’t tell you where these listings are, but they shouldn’t be too difficult to find.

Don’t Spend Too Much Time Selling Yourself:  This can be a surprisingly contentious issue.  I have met some agents who say you shouldn’t feel obligated to say anything about yourself in your query letter and I have met agents who say, “Well, of course, we need to know something about you!”  What I can say is that I have seen no discernible benefits from listing all my degrees, my background in journalism, my work as an English teacher, my extensive international traveling, blah, blah, blah.  You’re trying to sell your book and, assuming you’ve written a good query, that should be the highlight of your query.  Biographical information is just sort of the icing on the cake.  My advice?  See if the agency you’re considering has anything really specific to say about query letter specs.  If they tell you they want an absurdly short query letter (250 words), then your biographical info is what you put on the chopping block first.  Several agencies will specifically request that you write something about your background and credentials.  In that case, go for it, but keep it short—I’d say three sentences, unless you live a really dynamic and exciting life—and don’t mention anything that isn’t relevant to your book or your writing.

Ixnay on Ebut-Day:  Pig Latin?  Some experts claim that you should never mention that you’re a debut writer or that you’ve never been published.  I agree with most of this.  With regard to the first part, use your own discretion on whether you mention a book is your debut attempt.  My instinct is to say don’t mention it at all, because the fact that you’re a debut writer shouldn’t have any bearing on the quality of your book.  However, some agents have a soft-spot for first-time writers and, in those rare situations, mentioning that you’re young and just starting out might make them nostalgic enough to give you a chance.  If you’re uncertain how an agent feels about debut writers, don’t mention it.  As I said, the fact that you’re a debut writer isn’t terribly relevant and does seem far more likely to work against you.  You may not be a professional yet, but that doesn’t mean you should sell yourself as an amateur.

As for mentioning that you’ve never been published, failure in the industry should not be seen as an indictment against your abilities.  Who cares that you’ve never been published?  That doesn’t mean you’re out of the game.  Take my first book, The Notice, for example:  I still believe that I wrote a fantastic book and reviewers on Amazon seemed to agree, giving it 20 five-star reviews and 5 four-star reviews out of 25, however, I will admit that a ghost story set during The Bosnian War may not have been the most marketable book I could have written.  In that respect, I understand why agencies may not have wanted to take a risk on it.  However, why should I put myself on the line by referencing the books I failed to get published in any query letter regarding a new project I’m pitching?  How could that possibly help me?  Trying to get published is the process of continually looking forward.  Never put all your cards on the table and always keep your query letter focused specifically on the book you’re trying to sell now.

Know What an Agent Does:  Okay, I might be treading into “Obvious” territory here, but I still hear tons of stories from agents who receive letters from folks who are unclear what a literary agent does, and I am sympathetic to their plight.  Nowhere in your query letter should you ever make a request for an agent to give you feedback on your project.  You should not ask for advice or criticism.  That is not what an agent does.  You should not mention your payment expectations (probably not a good idea at any point in the publishing process) and you should not ask for advice on the promotion or marketing end.  The first step in the game is for YOU to make your manuscript and query letter as pristine as possible, then you contact an agent strictly to attract their interest in hopes that he or she will help you pitch your project to a publisher.  Leave all the business jargon and catchphrases out of your query letter.  Keep it focused on your book, first, and then your credentials, if applicable.

Raise your hand if a part of you dies every time you see a Calvin & Hobbes comic and you remember how awesome they were.

 

Coping with Rejection: Tips for Turning a “No” into a “Possibly, Maybe”

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Judging by that doozy of a title, you can guess that I’m probably not about to tell you anything earth-shattering regarding rejection, but it is something that every single writer must deal with from time to time and is therefore worth acknowledging.  Rejection sucks.  There’s no way around it.  I could go on and on about the things about rejection that annoy me as a writer.  Not being taken seriously as a writer because I chose to pen a book about Bosnia.  Receiving rejection letters within one hour of sending a query letter (wow, I bet you really gave my letter your serious consideration, Mr. Agent).  This kind of treatment makes you really wonder why you even bothered, right?

Personally, the most annoying comment I receive from agents is that my book “is not what we’re looking for at this time.”  Oh, I’m sorry—you aren’t looking for GOOD books at the moment?  You aren’t interested in a book that has received nothing but 4 and 5-star reviews from folks on Amazon?  You’re only looking for crap at the moment?  Damn, forgive me, I didn’t get the memo.  All joking and sarcasm aside, form replies or no replies at all are an injustice suffered by us writers but we all suffer them and, more importantly, we suffer them together.  Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and even that guy who wrote the Pride & Prejudice & Zombies books ALL have received rejection letters.  Even though most agents do us a disservice by giving us bulls*** run-around answers, that doesn’t mean that we can’t hedge our bets by learning to read between the lines.  Two wrongs don’t make a right, but 30 rejection letters should make YOU write.

Chin up, everyone.  Everything’s going to be okay.  Or perhaps you’ll just live a long, stressful life punctuated by shameful periods of disappointment and rejection that culminates with an early death in a gutter full of garbage, urban rain runoff, and decades of unfulfilled ambition.  Either way, um…Um…I forgot where I was going with that.

Ah, yes, so what can we take away from rejection?  Well, there are a few things:

1.  Consider re-writes.  I know, I know, I know.  It’s what every writer knows is coming and still doesn’t want to hear.  I’ll be honest, when I finished The Notice I pretty much jumped up from my computer, chest-bumped my fiancée, ran a victory lap around my apartment building, and then went streaking through downtown Lexington, Kentucky.  Nailed it!  …Or so I thought.  I was so convinced that I hit all the right notes and written the perfect novel with nothing but dead-on emotional cues.  It amounted to a literary “whole” that as beautiful and moving read backwards as forwards.  Yeah, I overshot it a little bit.  What I actually discovered is that my book had a fatal flaw among literary agents—the first chapter was a bit of a slog.  All that awesome buildup in the middle chapters of the book and the gripping climax and satisfying conclusion didn’t amount to SQUAT because agents weren’t giving my book the time of day.  I have since revamped all of that and now I’m taking a swing at it again.

Just a thought, I know I refer back to my own projects quite a bit on this blog.  I swear I’m not just trying to shamelessly promote myself, it’s just obviously I have more insight into my own books than any other books that are out there.  I could write volumes about my own writing failures (as evidence by the existence of this website).  I’m just hoping you’ll take my advice about The Notice and Naked in Korea and whatever else I talk about and apply it to your own projects so that you can take away the useful messages I’m trying to offer.

2.  Consider your platform.  Platform is another huge trick I’ve been having with The Notice.  I’m guessing.  Since no agent to date has ever given me anything remotely helpful to go by when rejecting my book, I’m guessing that their reasons for rejection boil down to A) the subdued nature of my first chapter and B) uncertainty about how to market a book about Bosnia.  There are movies out there about Bosnia but people don’t watch them.  Rachel Weisz and Angelina Jolie both found that out in 2011 with The Whistleblower and In the Land of Blood and Honey.  Even though The Bosnian War, to me, is one of the most fascinating historical conflicts of the last several centuries, 99.9% of people in the United States don’t know that, including 99.9% of agents, I’m guessing.  An obscure platform can be a monumentally difficult thing to sell and I would not recommend starting with Bosnia for your first book.  Try something more mainstream like zombies/vampires or romance, which is by far the top selling commercial genre.

On the other hand, I haven’t ruled out (since I have no information to go by) that just MAYBE…JUST MAYBE…agents are afraid to release my book to the public for fear that its awesomeness might cause the rest of the literary community to just give up and prompt the entire publishing industry of the United States to just collapse overnight.  It would be devastating.  There’s a chance right?

…Right?

Blah, blah, blah, I already stopped listening.

3.  Consider your voice and style.  At the risk of sounding like every single conceited writer in the world today, I’ll go out on a limb and say that voice and style are less likely to be the elements holding me back.  Of course, I would never know because no one in the industry has ever commented on it.  Thanks for nothing, industry!  All I know is that the people who have read The Notice had nothing but positive things to say about it.  Now, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m naïve enough to think that my voice and style couldn’t be refined—this is a process that lasts a writer’s whole life.  I’m always endeavoring to improve myself and grow as a writer, but I at least believe I have my own writing style and that it translates well to the stories that I tell.  But maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe we’re all wrong.  If agents aren’t taking the bait, then maybe we really need to read up a bit more on our genre and see what established authors are doing.  Look for inspiration in your field and try to build on that.  I try not to write a single page until I’ve read one good page by a great writer in my genre, just to kind of get me going.

The “Gallagher Technique” to Writing Your Book

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Hello again,

I promised you all that I would comment on some of my frustrations with the publishing industry, so today I thought I’d comment on my least favorite:  The first chapter hook.  Now, I’m not saying that a first chapter hook is always a bad thing.  Quite the contrary.  If your book has a natural hook that can open your story and simultaneously pave the way for everything that follows, you should absolutely start there.  If you’re writing the next great horror novel, that first chapter should bleed…literally and figuratively.

However, if you’re writing the sort of book that demands exposition for the sake of a greater story that gradually unfolds as the reader takes the journey you have planned, well…most agents won’t give you the time of day.  This has been my experience.  I have every confidence in my first book, “The Notice”,  but I know that the book takes about three chapters to get going because I have to introduce historical context for readers who know nothing about the Bosnian War and, well, frankly, I just felt like giving my story some read to breathe.  No one who has read my book has had any problem with the decision.  Agents, on the other hand, seem to act as though my story is fatally flawed.

This leaves me extremely disillusioned with the art of agent finding.  Agents seem to want nothing but murder, sex, vampires, or all of the above on that very first page or else your book is obviously a dud.  The only people who seem capable of getting past this are established writers, who can take all the liberties they want with their narrative.  In my book, a young girl witnesses a brutal crime against an elderly woman in her neighborhood.  Some agents have insisted I should start with the murder in the first chapter, but I’ve been under the impression that the scene will hold more meaning if the audience knows the girl and the woman first.  Starting with the murder, to me, just feels…cheap.

Let’s look at some of the classics and how they stack up.  In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov spends seven chapters sulking around before he finally kills someone.   In The Fellowship of the Ring, the main characters sit around smoking pipes and saying borderline incomprehensible gibberish for about the first 80 pages.  In Wuthering Heights, the heights are not wuthered until…I forget, somewhere towards the end.  Confession time:  I’ve not read the book since I was like 14. The point is that it seems like a tremendous double standard that indie writers have to resort to gimmicks to impress agents who aren’t willing to invest the time to identify quality.

As a result, you would think that more and more novels are being written to agents than to one’s reader or audience.  It is just assumed that the agent speaks on behalf of the audience.  I’m not sure this is a always good thing.  On a personal level, I’ve never been concerned with whether an agent comes across my query letter and decides to take a thirty minute leap of faith that ultimately tosses my novel aside after twenty pages.  I want casual readers to take a chance on my book and ultimately fall in love with the story I’ve decided to tell.  As a whole.  I can’t tell you how many books I’ve read that were relatively painful experiences for roughly the first sixty or seventy pages, but which I ultimately ended up revering because of the full picture.  Who says that when you look at The Mona Lisa you have to start with the smile?

I call the first page murder the “Gallagher Technique” to writing.  Whip out your sledgehammer and explode that story right in the reader’s face.  It implies that the reader is not patient or intelligent enough to absorb the story as it unfolds and makes me feel like I’m Michael Bay trying to tell a subtle coming of age story in a foreign land.  Imagine “The Secret Garden” by way of John Woo.  Let’s face it, sometimes you have to read a few chapters in before random doves start flying out.

ACTION! Too bad the second chapter is a snoozefest now…

All the Small Things: 4 Little Details That Can Make or Break Your Query Letter…and 1 HUGE THING!

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I’ve been told that I’m overhyping the query thing this week.  To anyone who feels that way, I believe that you can’t overhype the, um, unoverhypable.   If you have a poor query, Joe Agent will never read your book.  In that respect, the query is more important than your novel.  I’ve submitted probably a hundred queries to date and I’ve never heard a word of criticism against my writing; I have, however, heard problems that agents have had with various minute aspects of my query letters.  On those points, I have learned more in the past week than I probably have in the past year.  Here are some thoughts I wanted to share.

1.  Where you put your contact information.  You’ve probably heard the old saying, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”  Well, that isn’t the case with writing query letters.  Here, the small stuff is precisely the sort of content that could be driving agents away from taking your book seriously.  I know—it sucks.  In a perfect world, your book would sell itself according to its own virtues.  There are so many double standards and hypocrisies against independent writers, that I couldn’t possibly comment on them all in this post, although I will address some of them soon.

What’s important is that your contact information should come BELOW YOUR NAME at the end of your query.  Forget everything that you know about business letter format.  Agents can be a little, ahem, dickish about you putting their contact information and yours’ at the top of your letter.  Their rebuttal will be “I know my own address” and the underlying point is that any agent is only interested in your story, so get to the damn point!  If they want to get in touch with you, they WILL look for your contact information at the end.  The best comment I’ve heard on where you put your contact information is that every time you put information at the top of your letter, you are increasing the need for an agent to scroll down your page (in an email or on a smart phone) and you’re also increasing the likelihood that he or she won’t.

2.  The subject line of your email – The subject line of your email can be the kiss of death if you try to get inventive.  If you try any mischief like “Urgent! Please Read!”, you are only making your query letter look and smell like SPAM, and if it walks like a duck and squawks like a duck, you can bet what any agent will do.  Your subject line should only ever say “Query:” , followed by the name of your book.  Many agents will resent or just ignore anything outside of this standard.

The only time when it is ever okay to bend the rules is when you’re John McClane. When you are not John McClane, you must follow them to the tiniest detail. I was John McClane once. It was a Tuesday. I went 13 words over the word limit and the agent actually sent me a thank you letter. It was powerful.

3.  Don’t try to negotiate the rules. – Agent and famed query letter obliterator Janet Reid summed it up best on her blog when she said “The only thing about your query letter or writing that should be ‘exceptional’ is the writing itself”.  Never, under any circumstances, think that your writing deserves to step outside of the submission guidelines listed by any agency or publisher.  If 250 words is the limit for your query letter, don’t even think about doing 251.  Agents who are accustomed to what 250 words looks like, for example, will spot a 300 word query instantly and probably throw it to the sharks.  Furthermore, if an agent asks for 3-5 pages of your book, never send him or her an entire 8-page chapter.  I can personally tell you that following the rules may not get you anywhere—it probably won’t—but believe when I say you got farther than you would have breaking them.

4.  How you describe your protagonist – One interesting thought that I came across in researching little things that detract from query letters is how people describe their protagonists.  The agent commented that descriptions about things like race, age, and (my favorite) “chest size” ultimately made him or her believe that the protagonist was not interesting enough to transcend those basic labels.  There’s something to be said for that.  If you have to describe your character as a “black femme fatale with an impeccable rack”, what real definition is there for your protagonist?  If your heroine is little more than a walking skin color with a great figure and no personality, background, inner conflict, or decisions to be made,  why would any agent want to follow your character from page 1 to 150?  Basic physical descriptions are for the novel itself; in a query letter, agents need about one sentence that describes precisely who your main character is and what makes him or her tick.

5.  TALK ABOUT YOUR STORY! – This is the big enchilada!  The hat tamale!  The…enormous Mexican-food-themed cliché describing something’s enormousness.  Great, now I’m hungry again.  Anyway, if there’s one thing all agents can agree on, it’s that your query letter needs to talk about your plot.  Now, I’ve made a mistake on query letters of talking about the story…and NOT the plot.  If you’re like me, you may not understand the difference, so let me wax poetic (I’m not really waxing poetic, but it’s a phrase I adore and one I rarely get to use, so there you go).  Your “plot” as relayed in your query letter needs to address exactly what the primary conflict will be that is endured by your protagonist throughout your novel.  What difficult decision will your protagonist have to make?  How will it affect your character?  What is the ultimate journey that your character must undertake to address said conflict?  Believe me, it’s not easy—especially if you submit to the “Keep Your Query Under 250 Words” Art of Query Writing.

Hope this was helpful, Guys.  I really appreciate the feedback and support I have received so far on this site.  Your comments have been really inspiring.  I may not have found an agency yet, but I really admire the positivity and brotherhood that encapsulates independent writing.  I hope my observations might help someone else succeed where I have so far been unsuccessful.  I’ll get there someday.  It may not be with “The Notice”, but one of these days…

“Querious George”: 5 Tips for Polishing Your Query Letter

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Ah, my dream agent…

Okay, that headline makes it sound like Curious George just decided to start exploring his sexuality.  My mistake.  What I’m really trying to say is that an author’s query letter might be more important than the book he or she has just finished writing.  First things first (um, this is not part of the 5 Tips), don’t even think of submitting a query letter for fiction until you’ve actually finished your book.  Now let’s go one step further:  Don’t even think of submitting your letter until you have edited your book at least twice—preferably THREE times.  While an agent might appreciate your enthusiasm if you have that query letter ready to go the exact moment you type the final word of your book and complete your first draft, the odds are almost astronomically against the possibility that you nailed every aspect of your story on the first run through.

Now, assuming that your book is ready to go, let’s look at the letter itself.

1.  Explain your market – There is an old saying that you catch more flies with honey and if you’re trying to sell honey, you should probably have some idea of where the flies are.  Where your book’s market lies may not be as obvious to Joe Agent as you might think.  This is something I ran into with my first string of submissions for The Notice.  I expected those to whom I sent my book to automatically see the wider applications of my novel.  I thought it would be understood that my novel transcended its categorical historical fiction genre.  Only when I explained the significance of The Bosnian War, the number of refugees living in the United States, and the book’s similarity to other popular world novels like The Kite Runner did I start to hear back from interested agents.  At least one brief paragraph should state specifically to whom you are trying to sell your book and what evidence you have that such a market exists in the first place.

2.  Who are you again? – Give yourself a little more credit.  I went the humble route on my first line of submissions for The Notice.   I mentioned that I was a teacher and that I had obtained two degrees in international relations and, of course, this was information that I found relevant while pitching The Notice—a book of international themes.  While I received a slew of nice automated-form rejection letters, I came up empty-handed from every single agency to which I applied.  On the second string of queries, I identified myself specially as a private school English teacher (writing cred!) and as an international affairs “expert” (hey, why not?  I’m on my way to a PHD in it…).  Lo and behold, I received an interested reply about a week later.  DO NOT make up credentials that you can’t support—you will eventually be exposed—but do make it clear for agents why you have a “right to write”.

3.  Work on your Hook – This is the most difficult part of writing your query letter and, because of that, most people will never perfect the art of the hook.  If you have a hook before you ever start writing your book, FAN-TAS-TIC.  It makes the process that much easier and probably shows that your idea is a solid one.  Most of us won’t be that lucky, however, and will need to come up with something to draw in an agent after the writing process.  You must zero in on the one aspect of your work that distinguishes it.  For instance, my book The Notice (wow, I hawk my novel way too much in this blog), is “a coming of age story that revolves around a young girl making sense of a terrifying war in her homeland by sharing conversations with the ghost of an elderly Muslim woman who was murdered in her neighborhood.”  That’s not exactly the same hook I’ve been using—I paraphrased it just so I could crank this out fast enough to get back to watching “House”—but it does have the core elements of my book, without giving too much away.  Once you’ve dispensed with the hook, you can get down to divulging a bit more about the plot in the second paragraph of your letter.

4.  Research Your Agent – Nothing works against you more than not researching your prospective agent’s catalog prior to sending your letter.  Any self-respecting agency’s website will have a page that details the interests and publishing history of any given agent.  It goes without saying that you should only submit YA horror to an agent who lists YA fiction and, ideally, horror in their bio as personal interests.  Some agents seem to be open to anything, which might make it seem like your job just got that much easier.  Don’t settle for that, friends!  Find out whether or not any of the books that agent has previously helped publish match or parallel your own novel.  If Joe Agent claims to take any and all fiction but shows a clear bias towards legal thrillers or vampire sagas, then maybe your dystopian story is not for him.

5.  “The 4:1 Rule” – This is just a neurotic, safety-first rule that applies to my own query letter editing process.  The Sean Chandler rule of thumb is to edit your query letter FOUR times for every draft of your book.  If you edited your novel three times, be ready to go over your query a whopping twelve times!  It might seem like overkill, but it underscores the significance of preparing the best letter possible.  It’s better to err on the side of caution than submit a query letter that accidentally prevents an agent from reading your book.  You might as well just email said agent a video of you drunkenly singing “Don’t Stop Believin’” in your underwear; both approaches will undoubtedly prove equally successful in selling your novel.

For more information on query letters, please consult the book “Your First Novel” available here: http://www.amazon.com/Your-First-Novel-Achieving-ebook/dp/B0033ZAVX0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1338405702&sr=8-2 It contains by far the most helpful and detailed analysis of good query letters that I’ve seen so far.  It’s also a pretty cheap purchase. If you’re young and aspiring like me, it’s definitely worth your coin!

5 Things Agents Say Turn Them Off in Chapter 1

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So, just how little time does one’s masterwork get to spend before the eyes of an agent?  In truth, many manuscripts fall apart in the first chapter.  You can agree or disagree with their methods or reasoning, but the simple fact is that agents want that instant gratification I mentioned in a previous post.  Who wants to sit and suffer while waiting for a book to get good, right?  Agents want action and story right off the bat.  They want to see that bestselling blockbuster from Page 1. 

Here are a few things agents say turn them off in the first chapter:

1.  “Avoid descriptions of the weather.” Because even though approximately 50% of books ever written start with some sort of expository weather description, evidently we’re not allowed to mention it’s raining.  In all seriousness, though, what does a “stormy night” really add to the story we’re trying to tell?

2.  “If it’s not essential to the story then it doesn’t need to be in the first chapter or any other chapters.” This is absolutely true and I think this is something with which many fledgling writers struggle in the beginning.  The first instinct might be to write down anything that pops into one’s head.  Read: Anything.  Keep your story focused at all times.  Have your characters do relevant things and don’t mention peripheral items that serve no purpose.  We don’t need to know a female character keeps a purple hairbrush that belonged to her long-deceased grandmother unless granny’s coming back as a hellspawn to kick some ass and reclaim that brush that was rightfully hers in the next chapter.

3.  “We don’t like grocery list character descriptions.  Eyes, nose, weight, height, age, etc.”

The sign of a good writer is being able to show description instead of telling it.  Although I’m not exactly sure how to “show” a reader that a character’s eyes are blue, for example, perhaps the reader doesn’t need to know that a protagonist’s eyes are blue in the first place.  It’s quite okay to let a reader paint them himself or herself.  If a character is neurotic, obsessive compulsive, vain, insecure, etc., those features are much easier to show without flat-out saying it.  I still prefer some fairly clear-cut physical descriptions, myself, but the point is to not linger.  Dispense with the basic looks in a brief, well-written paragraph and then move on!

4.  “We hate prologues.” 

These agents can straight suck it.  Not that I love prologues.  I’m just saying that a prologue, in my eyes, should not automatically break a whole book.  I’m appalled by the idea of an agent dismissing a book just because it has a prologue.  That’s laziness on their parts.  There are great books that have well-written, necessary prologues.  I’m sure there are some awful books, too.  I’m sure there are even some awful books with prologues that still got published!  My own book, The Notice, for example, once had a prologue that explained four pages of essential background historical information about Yugoslavia.  I ultimately removed it, but I don’t think having the prologue was ultimately detrimental to the story I sought to tell.  Some books have prologues, agents—buck up and read them.  The one favor a prospective authors asks is that you at least give us the benefit of the doubt.

5.  “Avoid clichés wherever possible.”

It speaks for itself.  You may not even know a cliché as you’re writing it, but if you find yourself penning something just because you really liked it in that other book or movie, well it’s probably cliché.  I wish there were a better index on the Internet of clichés, but this site has some decent ones: http://www.joe-ks.com/phrases/phrases.htm

Once again, you may agree or disagree with these entries and that is your prerogative, but these 5 rules are widely reflected throughout the publishing community.  And whether you like them or not, the point should be to have an agent someday finish your entire book.  In order to do this, we have to sell our books to them using only our writing and story-crafting.  We are disposable.  The trick is learning how to put a fresh peel on a stale banana.

…Not sure where I was going with that.  Now it’s all I can think about.  I think I’m hungry.  I’m going to get a banana.

Getting Past Disillusionment with the Publishing Industry in 5 Easy…

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Ah, Hell, there’s nothing easy about it.  It sucks.  The only silver lining is that 100,000 other struggling authors are right there with you.

Now, right off the bat, I want to say that my entries are not meant to unfairly and accusingly point fingers at every agent, editor, and publisher who are probably doing their best.  I’m just trying to lighten the mood for those of us who are frustrated, and let’s face it, there are enough of us that we could easily break off and form our own sovereign nation—Rejectistan.  Kind of rolls off the tongue, right?  Maybe Rejectopia?  The world doesn’t really need another “Stan”.

The first thing we have to come to terms with as writers is that for all the time and work and research we invest, our masterpieces will ultimately be pushed aside by some agent somewhere just because the illiterates from “Jersey Shore” suddenly gave him or her a manuscript for a “Snooki Cookbook” (a “Snookbook”?).  C’est la vie.  We can’t stop agents from going after something they know will give them instant gratification; all we can do is try to make our ideas more marketable—no easy task.

When my first book, “The Notice”, didn’t find an agent right off the bat, I assumed it was because the market had become abruptly inundated by 26-year-old foreign policy scholars looking to introduce the world to Bosnia & Herzegovina.  Well, Bosnia hasn’t exactly become as vogue as I was anticipating.  This leads me to another conclusion:  Either A) 99% of those agents never read a word of what I sent them—the fastest automated rejection letter I ever received was 5 minutes after emailing an agent—or B) My book didn’t sound marketable or profitable enough at a glance.

At first I thought I must be doing something wrong with my query letters.  I bought all the books documenting how to write a proper one—most of which contradicted each other, naturally—and  honed my art with Holmsian (Sherlockian?) attention to detail.  I wrote a dozen or so letters the way one book told me to write them.  I wrote another dozen letters the way a second book told me to write them.  I wrote dozens of long, detailed letters.  I wrote dozens of short, humble, honest letters.  All were met with rejection.  I was never given a single reason why my book was repeatedly ignored, only painfully polite form rejection letter after form rejection letter.

Remarkably, I never even grew the least bit bitter…heh, heh. (Menacingly shakes fist at “How to Write a Great Query Letter” books)  However, the process did give me time to read up on agents and search for what they truly look for in a project.  There are ways to make your book marketable even if you’re idea, at a glance, may not sound like a bestseller.  Find books out there similar to your own and find the agents who sold them.  It takes hours of sleuthing, but ultimately it may yield the only payoff you’ll get outside of distributing your life’s work for 99 cents on Amazon. 

In the end, my book ended up benefiting tremendously from the rejection cycle.  It gave me time to get more feedback, move around some elements, rework some chapters I wasn’t 100% happy with, and now I have the book I think I was always meant to write.  But I didn’t do it the first time.  Or the second.  Or the third.  I had to grow and learn in order to get there.

UPDATE:  Talk about irony.  The day after I wrote this post, I received my first response from an agency regarding “The Notice”.  No good may come of it, but who knows—this may be the beginning of the end to my complaining ;)