Roy Miller's Blog, page 307
January 4, 2017
Amazon Plans Manhattan Bookstore at Time Warner Center for Spring
With Amazon set to open their fourth and fifth bookstores in Chicago and Dedham, MA shortly, the company now says they expect to open a store in New York's Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle this spring. The WSJ reports that the company confirmed plans for 4,000-square-foot store in the…
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Time to See A Shrink
This was a first time for me. Not the first time I’ve consulted an expert—that’s business as usual for a novelist. For my first novel, I interviewed a New York City medical examiner and asked how deep someone would have to bury a body for it not to smell above the surface. (Just several inches, in case you’re curious.) I’ve shadowed talk show producers and change-management specialists (who are brought in during a company restructuring to help keep employees from leaving). But making an appointment to bring my characters to a therapist? That was a surprising development.
It happened after I gave an early draft of my novel Sisters One, Two, Three to a reader who is a former editor. The manuscript was at that rough stage when a writer needs to make sure the story holds together. The reader responded with praise, but she had a question: “By the end, that character doesn’t act like a narcissist at all. How can a narcissist totally change her behavior?”
Wow. This was surprising to hear. To me, the novel was about a family with a secret, mothers and daughters, tragedy and redemption. But a pathological narcissist whose narcissism suddenly disappears?
Now understand, I don’t think a narcissist is a liability in a novel. Narcissists can be fascinating, as long as you don’t have to live with them. But was this character pathological? Was her core behavior inconsistent? Was the reader right? I’m sure editors have tons of experience with narcissists, but they’re not trained mental health professionals.
Neither am I, but I do know this: a writer who asks for an opinion on an early draft is a diagnosable fool if she doesn’t listen with an open mind to what the reader says. So as a reasonable and well-therapized writer, I decided to bring my characters to a therapist.
I chose Dr. O., a smart, perceptive psychiatrist who—disclaimer—I’ve seen professionally, on and off over the years, since I belong to the class of people known as the worried well. I proposed a plan to Dr. O: I’d bring my characters in for an evaluation, and since they had no insurance, I’d pay their fee myself. I’d provide a synopsis of the novel they were occupying and a description of their salient psychological features. As for pathology, I would leave all diagnosing to her.
Dr. O agreed, and I began to fret. Novelists write fiction, yes, but within the story flit little bits and pieces of things the novelist has experienced, observed, imagined. This results in occasional awkward moments when a family member reads the novel and recognizes those little bits. How would this work for a therapist who’s been given entry into the deepest part of the writer’s mind? Would Dr. O be analyzing my characters or me?
Once we figured out how this would work, my fretting fell away. Dr. O would relate to me as if I were a psychoanalyst in training under her supervision. This was something she regularly did—worked with trainees, listened to their evaluation of patients, responded to the facts as presented. Bottom line: Dr. O got it. My book was fiction, not memoir, and her task was to pay attention to the workings of the characters’ minds, not the writer’s.
So what happened? I got confirmation that the characters in my novel, though flawed and complex, were not pathologically disturbed. Phew! Was one of the characters a narcissist? Did this character change in a way that was problematic? No and no. Phew, again!
Something else came out of our discussion, though, something important. I was reminded that although writers bring their experiences and observations to the creation of a story, readers do the same. This is why one reader, a smart former editor, say, bringing her life experience to a novel, sees a character as an unlikable erratic narcissist, while another reader, who’s lived a different life, sees the same character as damaged but doing the best she can, and deserving of our sympathy in the end.
It’s funny how stories start out from some combination of a writer’s imagination and experience, but they end up reconstructed out of a new combination, the imagination and experience of a reader. That’s the real magic, that second incarnation, the one between reader and story. My diagnosis? That’s the relationship that matters.
Nancy Star is a film executive turned author whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, Family Circle, and Diversion. Her novel Sisters One, Two, Three will be published by Lake Union in January 2017.
A version of this article appeared in the 10/10/2016 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Time to See A Shrink
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Profits Rose by Double Digits at HBG
In a letter sent to employees Tuesday, Hachette Book Group USA CEO Michael Pietsch said the company had accomplished its primary objective of growing in 2016. The purchase of the publishing division of the Perseus Books Group increased HBG's revenue by about 15% and added to the company's nonfiction and backlist offerings, Pietsch said.
Excluding results from Perseus, Pietsch said revenue was down slightly from 2015 but earnings rose by 25%, which he attributed to costs savings and an increase in the number of bestsellers. When adding Perseus, "our revenues grew and our profits grew even more," Pietsch said. He said that the decline in revenue from HBG's core properties was due to a decline in e-book and paperback sales plus the transition of Yen Press to a joint venture with Kadokawa. Offsetting those trends was an increase in its Orbit publishing programs and the release of the first titles in the jimmy patterson, Goop Press, and Lee Boudreaux imprints.
The company's distribution business had a good year, Piersch said, citing strong years from clients Disney and Abrams. HBG also added PIKids to its distribution list, and Pietsch said the company plans to continue to grow its distribution business.
Much of the integration of Perseus was completed during the year, a process that was marked by some "difficulty," Pietsch said, pointing to the enormous IT efforts that slowed progress on several projects. More changes are coming in the first few months of 2017, as HBG relocates its customer service, claims, and manufacturing functions to Lebanon, Ind. and Boulder, Colo.
Pietsch also pointed to the changes coming at Grand Central Publishing following the departure of president and publisher Jamie Raab. He said he expects to name a replacement for Raab soon.
Looking ahead, Pietsch said that HBG's leadership teams are working on a number of "major strategic initiatives" in such areas as author partnership, cost control, risk management, consumer marketing, backlist sales, and content development.
Commenting on recent current events, Pietsch said HBG will continue to publish books that contribute to the national discussion on politics from authors on all sides of the political spectrum. Those books, Pietsch noted, will uphold HBG's "culture of respect, openness, diversity, and fairness."
With free speech more important than ever, Pietsch noted that until the end of February, HBG will pay half the cost of any full-time employee who joins PEN. Penguin Random House made a similar offer late last year.
Pietsch said he was excited about the many opportunities that HBG has ahead in 2017, led by a rich array of books it plans to publish in the year.
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Craft Query Letters and a Submission Package That Gets Noticed — Here’s How
When your submission materials – a query letter, synopsis, manuscript, or book proposal – arrive in an agent’s inbox, they land among hundreds of others. At that point, one of two things will happen. Either the agent (or the agent’s assistant) will like the submission and request more materials, or they will reply with a rejection.
Authors who get rejected tend to fall in one of two categories when submitting materials: they try too hard, or not enough. This Writer’s Digest Boot Camp is designed to help you streamline your submission materials to stand out in a good way. It starts on Jan. 17, 2017, and is called “Agent One-on-One Boot Camp: How to Craft Query Letters & Other Submission Materials That Get Noticed.” You get instruction and critiques from the Kimberley Cameron & Associates literary agency.
Attendees will learn how to write a dynamite query letter, tackle a one-page synopsis (for fiction) and a book proposal (for nonfiction). The instructing literary agents will also explain the importance of author platform in addition to basic etiquette in dealing with an agent and manuscript basics.
Lastly, all attendees will have an opportunity to interact one-on-one with an agent and submit ten double-spaced pages of materials (in any combination–query, synopsis, book proposal, first pages of your manuscript) for valuable feedback provided by successful literary agents.
AGENDA:
Tuesday, January 17: Online Tutorials
Wednesday, January 18: Agent Q&A 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM (ET)
Thursday, January 19: Agent Q&A 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM (ET)
Friday, January 20: Writers Submit Materials
Friday, February 10: Agent Critiques Due
Here’s How It Works:
On January 17, you will gain access to a special 60-minute online tutorial presented by literary agents Kimberley Cameron and Elizabeth Kracht. This tutorial will provide nuts & bolts advice on how to help you streamline your submission materials—including the query letter, novel synopsis, nonfiction book proposal, and first pages.
After listening to the presentation, attendees will spend the next two days revising materials as necessary. Following the tutorial, writers will have two days in which to log onto the discussion boards and ask your assigned agent critiquer questions related to revising your materials. The agents will be available for a discussion session from 4-6 p.m. (ET) on both Wednesday, January 18 and Thursday, January 19. By end of day (11:59 p.m., ET) on Friday, January 20, attendees will submit up to 10 double-spaced pages for review to their assigned agents. These pages can include any combination of double-spaced query, synopsis, book proposal, or pages of their manuscript.
The agents will spend three to four weeks reviewing all assigned pages, provide relevant feedback and offer suggestions to help attendees improve upon them. The agents reserve the right to request more materials if they feel a strong connection to the work and want to read more.
In addition to feedback from agents, attendees will also have access to “Everything You Need to Know About Literary Agents,” an on-demand webinar by WD editor Chuck Sambuchino.
While we accept requests to work with a specific agent, there are no guarantees that attendees will be matched with their requested agent.
All agents are able to provide critiques for all genres. Sign up for the Jan. 2017 boot camp here.
ABOUT THE AGENTS:
KIMBERLEY CAMERON
Kimberley was educated at Marlborough School for Girls in Los Angeles, Humboldt State University, and Mount St. Mary’s College. She began her literary career as an agent trainee at the Marjel de Lauer Agency in association with Jay Garon in New York and worked for several years at MGM developing books for motion pictures. She was the co-founder of Knightsbridge Publishing Company with offices in New York and Los Angeles.
In 1993 Kimberley became partners with Dorris Halsey of The Reece Halsey Agency, founded in 1957. Among its clients have been Aldous Huxley, William Faulkner, Upton Sinclair, and Henry Miller. She opened Reece Halsey North in 1995 and Reece Halsey Paris in 2006. In 2009 the agency became Kimberley Cameron & Associates.
Kimberley resides and works from Tiburon, California and Paris, France, with many visits to New York to make the rounds of editorial offices. She is looking for exceptional writing in any field, particularly writing that touches the heart, and makes us feel something. She’s been successful with many different genres, and especially loves the thrill of securing representation for debut authors. She represents both fiction and nonfiction manuscripts, with the exception of romance, children’s books and screenplays.
ELIZABETH KRACHT
Note: While Elizabeth is on the presentation, she is not taking on any students for this boot camp.
Elizabeth Kracht represents both literary and commercial fiction as well as nonfiction, and brings to the agency experience as a former acquisitions editor, freelance publicist and writer.
Elizabeth’s career in publishing took root in Puerto Rico where she completed her BA in English and worked as a copyeditor for an English-language newspaper. When she returned to the mainland she found her “vein of gold” in book publishing. She thrives on working closely with authors and researching the potential market for new books.
Elizabeth’s eclectic life experience drives her interests. She appreciates writing that has depth, an introspective voice or that offers wisdom for contemporary living. Having lived in cities such as New York, San Francisco and San Juan, Puerto Rico, she is compelled by urban and multicultural themes and loves settings that are characters unto themselves.
In fiction, she represents literary, commercial, women’s, thrillers, mysteries, and YA with crossover appeal. She is intrigued by untrustworthy narrators, tragic tales of class and circumstance, and identifies with flawed yet sterling characters. In nonfiction, she particularly loves memoir and other narrative nonfiction projects that contribute to the well-being of the self or others in addition to niche projects that fill holes in the market, offer a fresh approach, or make her laugh. She also has a soft spot for nonfiction heroic pet stories.
MARY C. MOORE
Mary started her career in publishing as a writer. She graduated from Mills College with an MFA in Creative Writing. After freelancing for two years as an editor and writer in non-literary sectors, she began an internship with Kimberley Cameron & Associates with the desire to learn more about the literary business for her own writing. During the internship she discovered a passion for helping others develop their manuscripts. Now she balances three jobs: writer, editor, and agent, and finds that the experience in each helps and supports the other. She is looking for unusual fantasy, grounded science-fiction, and atypical romance. Strong female characters and unique cultures especially catch her eye. Although she will not consider most non-fiction, stories about traditional dance or pagan culture may interest her. Above all, she is looking for writing that sweeps her away.
NO: Nonfiction
YES: Fantasy! Science Fiction, Mysteries, Thrillers, Historical, Women’s
DOUGLAS LEE
Douglas came to Kimberley Cameron as a writer in 2014 with the purpose of learning what hid behind the curtain of publishing. While completing his MFA, he found that he loved the work both behind and ahead of the typewriter. At this time, his sole focus is representing science fiction and fantasy that stimulates the imagination.
As an agent he is looking for SFF manuscripts that utilize the craft elements of literary fiction and the best parts of imaginative genre. He is seeking novels with writing just as enticing as the story. Subtle and deft world-building techniques capture his attention; as do characters with raw magnetism and confused moral compasses.
Douglas welcomes all SFF sub-genres. He has a soft spot for Cyberpunk, Weird Fiction in the flavor of China Mieville, Steampunk and noir influenced voices. He seeks writers who write against genre and bend preconceptions. LGBTQ based manuscripts are welcome, as are unconventional SFF protagonists with marginalized voices in their world.
NO: YA
YES: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative, Horror and Literary Fiction
LISA ABELLERA
Lisa Abellera joined Kimberley Cameron and Associates in 2013 with a background in management, marketing, and finance. She has studied creative writing, design and business, earning her B.A. in Strategic Management from Dominican University of CA and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from University of San Francisco.
She is actively building her client list with both debut and established authors. She is looking to form long-term, collaborative relationships with writers who are committed to putting forth their best work.
YES: Upmarket Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery/Suspense, Speculative or Medical Science Thrillers, Science Fiction, Fantasy, NA, YA and Middle Grade.
AMY CLOUGHLEY
Amy came to Kimberley Cameron & Associates in 2012 with a background in editing, writing, and marketing. She seeks authors with unique, clear voices who put forth smart, tightly-written prose. She is actively building her client list with both debut and veteran writers.
Amy has studied creative writing, journalism, and literature and holds a B.S. in magazine journalism. She worked in editorial and marketing roles in magazine publishing and corporate business before shifting her professional focus to her lifelong love of books. She leverages her background in both words and business to benefit her clients.
Amy is interested in narrative nonfiction when the plot and characters are immersed in a culture, lifestyle, discipline, or industry. She will also consider a travel or adventure memoir.
Amy enjoys literary and upmarket fiction of all types in addition to commercial—including well-researched historical and well-told women’s fiction. She also loves a page-turning mystery or suspense with sharp wit and unexpected twists and turns. She has a soft spot for distinctive, strong, contemporary characters set in small towns. Amy always looks for an unexpected story arc, a suitable pace, and a compelling protagonist.
She is not currently focusing on military/government thrillers, fantasy, or YA projects.
Sign up for the Jan 2017 boot camp.
You might also like:
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More January Picks – Publishers Lunch
Adding to the monthly recommendations, iBooks has listed their top 5 books across four categories -- adding to the consensus on Shanthi Sekaran's novel, which you can sample now in our January Buzz Books alongside Stephanie Garber's Caraval -- including: Fiction Lucky Boy, Shanthi Sekaran Transit, Rachel Cusk 4 3 2…
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Who Will Save Us From Our Screens?
Earlier this summer, Publishers Weekly reported on the surprising decline of e-book sales and on whether this signaled the first pangs of digital fatigue. Certainly, we all seem to be getting digitally exhausted these days. There are emails to check, Facebook posts to like, Instagram photos to upload, Tinder and Grinder profiles to swipe, emojis to learn, and endless text messages. We spend our days navigating tangled links of spam and clickbait to finally return to our beds at night—where we unwind by spending hours scrolling through social media posts.
Digital fatigue isn’t a new phenomenon; it’s simply our immune system responding to a decade of hyperconnectivity. And yet it doesn’t look like we’re at a place of total exhaustion. If anything, we seem to be growing increasingly addicted to our devices. I find myself checking my phone five times a day—or 20, or 30. Before bed I check one last time, and upon waking, I log in to see what messages I’ve missed.
I’d like to think I’m the sole addict to the electronic drug that is my data plan, but looking around, I’m not alone. At stoplights, I see other drivers sending off one more message before the light turns green. Along the streets, people of all ages are holding their devices as if caring for an exceptionally dear child. Next to us in the restaurant is a family eating dinner in silence as they individually play with their smartphones. And at bus stops, grown men and women are playing tiny games on their screens like children. If we’re approaching an age of total digital addiction, we’re presently in the binge-drinking phase before our final recovery.
Though it’s tempting to think the next generation is turning away from the seduction of cyberspace, the drop-off in e-readers may have less to do with a wish to return to books than a general lack of desire to read at all. Perhaps I’m jaundiced from a decade of teaching, but I hear the daily complaints of millennials when I assign an essay longer than five pages. The 20-plus-page stories of Baldwin, Chekhov, and Kafka are skimmed, and my creative-writing classes have to be weaned from producing stories based on television plots. When I ask students about their reading habits, they mention having a couple of tabs open at a time—the assigned PDF class reading in one, the latest episode of Game of Thrones playing on low volume in another.
In my short story “The Cartographers,” a character named Cynthia enjoys reading actual books. Her techie boyfriend can’t understand why she’d spend endless hours reading, when memory sticks would let her memorize novels in minutes. As much as I’d like to think we’ll never want the fictional technologies I write about, I’m certain many of my students would gladly download novels directly to their memories if that option were available; they’re already digitally multitasking while skimming the great literature of the world.
I understand the urge to skim these days. How many more Facebook articles can I actually read? How many more emails? Though I want to pigeonhole millennials as tech addicted, it’s often my 13-year-old who tells me to stop using my phone as I attempt to send one last email—and then one more.
Perhaps the selfie stick is our flag of surrender. There’s something disheartening about the autonomy it provides: the solo smiles later posted to an anonymous online community, the collection of phones extended among masses of individual tourists who once asked one another for favors. The selfie stick is the perfect symbol of the coming era of digital fatigue: it captures our profiles all the better so we can finally witness our solitude. Perhaps, like the digital natives who wish to feel paper between their fingers again, we’re beginning a departure from an obsessive dependence on a globally interconnected technology that leaves us increasingly isolated.
Or, as the new predictions are showing, it might be all of us—the millennials, X and Y generations, and baby boomers—who will need younger generations to teach us how to disconnect. Decades from now, our grandchildren will visit us at nursing homes, where we’ll be eternally crushing candy and launching birds. “Grandpa, it’s time to put the virtual reality away,” they’ll say, placing their hands over our eye-screens. “Grandma,” they’ll whisper, before covering our devices with their palms, “it’s sunny outside.”
Alexander Weinstein is the director of the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. His debut novel, Children of the New World, was published by Picador in September.
A version of this article appeared in the 10/17/2016 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Digital Fatigue
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A Sinner and Nearly A Saint
Dorothy Day is, perhaps, one of the most controversial and fascinating figures in American Catholicism. Called everything from a communist to a “great American” (the latter by Pope Francis), the writer and activist abandoned her bohemian literary lifestyle and in 1933 co-founded the Catholic Worker newspaper and movement—a movement that continues to advocate for the poor. Day was also a woman and a mother, and it is this woman-behind-the-saint that her youngest granddaughter focuses on in her book, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved By Beauty (Scribner, Jan.).
This book is as much a story of your mother and your mother’s relationship with Dorothy as it is a biography of Dorothy. Why did you choose to write the book this way?
There is no way I could have written a book about my grandmother without including my mother. Not only are they inextricably linked in my mind, but this is also one aspect of Dorothy’s life that I am able to provide that other biographers cannot—a portrait of her as a mother, which, after all, was the initial catalyst that put her on the path of conversion.
How did your understanding of Dorothy change as you researched and wrote the book?
When my mother died it became clear to me that if I did not write this story, an essential element of Dorothy’s life—the story of her daughter and their relationship—would forever be, if not lost, then severely limited. I knew this was going to be personally difficult, because I was still grieving the loss of my mother and there was much about the relationship between Dorothy and my mother that I didn’t understand and struggled with. As I researched, I found myself falling in love with the two of them, their difficult relationship, their inexplicable choices, and their lives. With this deepening sense of love came greater understanding, not only of them as individuals but of their impact on me.
Did you worry about including what some might call sins, such as her abortion?
For me, there was never any point in writing a standard hagiography. That wouldn’t represent the complex and paradoxical grandmother I knew. Often people who didn’t know Dorothy would oversimplify her and her life, irritating my mother to no end. Separating Dorothy from her sins or her shortcomings does her, and us all, a disservice. These are essential elements of her life that helped make her who she was. Her formidable strengths came out of her failures and weaknesses.
Does writing about Dorothy as a mother complicate our understanding of her or of sainthood in general?
After years of listening to academics, theologians, clergy, and biographers speak of Dorothy, I have come to believe that one of the greatest impediments to understanding her is this desire to define her in ways that make us feel more at ease with her—to make her less complicated and less complex, whether in order to revile or to praise her. If perfection were a requirement of sainthood, there would be no saints, and the same goes for motherhood. Our understanding of sainthood needs to be challenged.
What do you think the impact of your grandmother’s canonization would be on the Catholic world?
It would certainly break the stereotype of traditional saints, and be controversial for many, not so much for her bohemian youth but for her radical views and activist life. Getting arrested, for example, is not normally considered saint-like behavior. Also, while Dorothy considered herself an obedient daughter of the Church in regards to Church teachings, she was not above chastising the Church on the behavior of its clergy. This distinction is sometimes difficult for people to understand, even though it is a trait to be found in many saints. However, for those who are inspired by her and try to follow her example, I think her canonization would be a tremendously hopeful gesture. She would be a saint for our time, a laywoman, and a mother in whom many, Catholic or not, could find paradoxically both comfort and provocation for change.
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Literary Agent Interview: Elise Capron of Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency
This is an interview with Elise Capron of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. A graduate of Emerson College, Elise holds a BFA in writing, literature and publishing. She has been with the Dijkstra Agency since late 2003.
She is looking for adult literary fiction, multicultural fiction, debut novels, story collections, and, on the nonfiction side, trade-friendly cultural and/or environmental history.
How did you become an agent?
I had always been interested in publishing and writing, and I did several internships during my college years (including at the Dijkstra Agency). I was particularly interested in the agenting side of things because I enjoyed working with a small team and being able to do a lot of creative work directly with writers. I was lucky enough to get a position at SDLA right as I was graduating college and have been here ever since!
What’s something you’ve sold that comes out now/soon that you’re excited about?
I’m particularly fond of one of my nonfiction books that has just published: Meera Subramanian’s A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis, from the Barren Cliffs of Rajasthan to the Farmlands of Karnataka, published by PublicAffairs. Meera is a brilliant journalist and brings her storytelling and investigative talents together with fascinating environmental science and personal stories in this gorgeous and important book.
One of your recent sales, Tiphanie Yanique’s Land of Love and Drowning, received a lot of positive buzz in 2014. What’s that like to see a project of your client’s be met with such positive reviews?
It’s thrilling! The best thing one can hope for is to see your client’s book get the attention it deserves, and, then, to continue to build on that success over a long, rewarding career.
Besides “good writing,” what are you looking for right now and not getting? What do you pray for when tackling the slush pile?
Really compelling, fresh ideas. I latch onto a proposal or manuscript immediately when I feel like the writer is doing something truly new.
Literary fiction is one of your specialties. What makes a work literary to you and what are some recent titles in the genre that you love and wish you could have represented?
“Literary” fiction generally means that the narrative arc is driven more by character than plot. There is plenty of crossover out there, of course!
Some recent literary novels I’ve enjoyed (but didn’t represent) include The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters; Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese; The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty (published in 2012); Threats by Amelia Gray; and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. I’ve also been revisiting some literary classics lately, such as Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, which is such a brilliant and moving novel.
What makes a manuscript stand out on a first read?
A distinctive and confident narrative voice. I want to feel myself sink into that voice and the novel’s world in the first five pages.
What misconceptions do you think people have about agents?
That we spend our office time reading! Most agents only get to read manuscripts on their evenings and weekends. During the work days, we’re busy taking care of all the other business that goes into managing our authors’ careers.
What’s something about you that writers would be surprised to hear?
I am often asked whether I still enjoy personal reading when I read so many manuscripts. Of course I do! After editing manuscripts on a Saturday, there’s little I enjoy more than immediately picking up a published novel and diving into that world. Working on a manuscript and reading a finished book are very different experiences and take different kinds of thinking. And by keeping up with enjoyable personal reading, I can also stay in tune with what’s working in the commercial market.
Will you be at any upcoming writers conferences where writers can meet and pitch you?
My next conference will be Words & Music in New Orleans, taking place over Halloween weekend this year! After that, I’ll be at my home town’s conference, the SDSU Writers Conference held in San Diego in January.
Best piece of advice we haven’t talked about yet?
Spend time educating yourself on where you fit in in the publishing world: Define your genre, your audience, your identity as a writer. The more confidence you can convey on this front, the better.
This interview conducted by Gail Werner, a freelance writer
and committee member of the Midwest Writers Workshop.
You can visit her website or follow her on Twitter.
Check Out These Great Upcoming Writers Conferences:
Feb. 11, 2017: Writers Conference of Minnesota (St. Paul, MN)
Feb. 16–19, 2017: San Francisco Writers Conference (San Francisco, CA)
Feb. 24, 2017: The Alabama Writers Conference (Birmingham, AL)
Feb. 25, 2017: Atlanta Writing Workshop (Atlanta, GA)
March 25, 2017: Michigan Writers Conference (Detroit, MI)
March 25, 2017: Kansas City Writing Workshop (Kansas City, MO)
April 8, 2017: Philadelphia Writing Workshop (Philadelphia, PA)
April 22, 2017: Get Published in Kentucky Conference (Louisville, KY)
April 22, 2017: New Orleans Writers Conference (New Orleans, LA)
May 6, 2017: Seattle Writers Conference (Seattle, WA)
May 19–21, 2017: PennWriters Conference (Pittsburgh, PA)
June 24, 2017: The Writing Workshop of Chicago (Chicago, IL)
Aug. 18–20, 2017: Writer’s Digest Conference (New York, NY)
Other writing/publishing articles and links for you:
Your new complete and updated instructional guide
to finding an agent is finally here: The 2015 book
GET A LITERARY AGENT shares advice from more
than 110 literary agents who share advice on querying,
craft, the submission process, researching agents, and
much more. Filled with all the advice you’ll ever need to
find an agent, this resource makes a great partner book to
the agent database, Guide to Literary Agents.
You might also like:
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January 3, 2017
Letters from an Invented Writer
Will you settle for “a semi-addled blastomere”?
Next point: Dammit, where did you find a story in which there are “chicken-people who did in the Earth ambassador by having him seduced by the maid”? Jealousy twinges my old bones; I think you spent the afternoon writing letters to six people who sent you their books—there, that’s done!—and got mine mixed. There is not, I swear, a chicken, an ambassador or a maid in mine.
What there is, Joanna, is a batch of very early Tiptree-with-Meccano-set first stories, mixed with a couple from later on. (I started all at once bang in ’67, and stunned myself because everything sold. I do NOT know how to write.) That “alien giantess” one was ’68, I’d just been reading Koestler’s THIEVES IN THE NIGHT, remember—if I have the title right—the psychically scarred girl? Probably a male fantasy, although I swear I’ve met something close. Similar to people of any sex who’ve been stomped by gangs.
Anyway, I was running through a lot of stereotypes. I blush. I’ve counted up, intending to mention it to Vonda McIntyre, who occasionally educates me. Of those 15 tales, only one has a female hero, and she’s dependent on a male mutant dog. (But she is only 15 and is armless.) There’s also an aged female explorer who is now crazy (Mother), one race-track steward, two assistant girl revolutionaries and a nurse. The rest of them range from flat-out sex-objects, “kittens,” spear-carriers and off-stage noises to total absence. (Oh, I forgot the raped polyglot who learns to love.)
Joanna, when I realised this it struck me quite serious. I then looked at my other, later stuff. Not much better, Joanna. Not much better. Oh, there’s a giant arthropod mother who is forgetting intelligent speech, and a girl who tries to have sexual congress with the Earth, etc. etc. I do have one coming out in MFSF [The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction] where two women are so fed up that they man- age to leave with aliens, told from the point of view of a semi-macho male who misunderstands the whole thing, maybe that’s better—or maybe it’ll just be embarrassing, like whites writing about blacks.
We all know how that works.
What to do, Joanna? This is serious, you know. It obviously can’t be solved by just changing all the hes into shes. Vonda or Quinn gave me a blast on Heinlein’s female jocks, who are just men writing in skirts.
I suspect what you’d say is, look about you. That’s the trouble, I do. The women—most of them—aren’t born yet, I think. I have just finished hours of conferences with the phalanx of women caring for Mother. Most of them strike me as aging little girls, locked in farm wives’ bodies. (Most men are the same, I hasten to say; the trouble is, I’m in my body and I can’t get the same understanding of theirs.) (No; what I really mean is I’m in my experience.)
I don’t know Golda Meir. I don’t know Indira Gandhi. I guess I don’t know any self-actualised women, although I’ve met and worked with some damn competent ones. I know they weren’t adequately recognised. And I sensed the thing Quinn or was it Vonda told me, the terrible scars in their self confidence. A man with their abilities would have had the world by the ears.
But the inner voice asks, is it my bias that makes me see them as their abilities, that is, their competence in male-type jobs? This is male-type people-seeing. And the view of an old, old male person at that. I know there’s something out there, something that will tip the landscape into a whole other dimension if it gets born—if it gets seen.
But what the hell IS IT?
Do you wonder I read your stories?
Well. This has been unconscionable.
Excuse me while I go write a story about a male grizzly bear who is trapped all alone in a space capsule headed out of the galaxy . . .
Reverently as ever,
Truly best.
Tip
P.S. I’m usually called Tip. Are you ever called Jo?
James Tiptree Jr.
P. O. Box 315 McLean VA.
22101 S.F.W.A.
14 Oct 76
Hello Jo dear,
It’s 4 AM, and I’m up early to try to get some (writing) thinking done . . . but all that comes is an imaginary dialog with you. I chuck- led, puzzled, laughed, sighed, over your last letter—which you have doubtless forgotten in the passing maelstrom of your mind. (I don’t mean your mind is chaotic, although it is, a bit—just that so much goes on, and also, you’re writing.)
You mention the break-up of your c.r. group, which is what caused the chuckling. You see, I visualise you and them from the outside, while you only experience it from their intimidated and furtive escape from you.
Listen, love, you’ll get a lot fewer mysterious tiptoeings-around in life if you face a couple of things:
You are egotistical. I am [as] certain that you talk too much as I am that the earth turns. I imagine that when you are consciously not “talking too much” you sit there like a smoldering basilisk with ever-larger gouts of smoke coming out of your ears until your “silence” dominates all the talk in the room . . . Or like when the ocean suddenly recedes for miles, leaving the bottom of the bay bare, and people venture forward into the strange, unaware that the odd line on the horizon is a five-mile-high wall of pent-up words rushing down on them with the speed of light. I can just see it.
And of course you intimidate people. You intimidate the hell out of people. When you’re being carefully gentle and non-intimidating I imagine it’s like being gently dandled from paw to paw by a Kodiak bear. Your natural way is to intimidate everything and everybody in the environment, simply by being in there faster and more complexly and volubly and positively and generally like a loose live wire thrashing about.
You are also crazy as a coot.
All this has nothing whatever to do with your being or not being a Lesbian, the best-balanced friend I have is one. So is the second-best- balanced, at least when last seen.
The reason you are crazy, intimidating and egotistically garrulous is because you are some kind of a genius, or part of one, or one part of the time. You are just so full of you and life. I can just see the picture, when you have that feeling you’re among friends, someone who officially “shares” with you, a woman or a Lesbian or a writer— and you feel you can be yourself, or talk honestly to the point—and out comes this incredible flood of (a), (b), B1, B2, etc, which reminds you of (parenthesis) C, which leads on to E and F, which subsumes general principle G, having the subcorollaries H-prime illustrated by example VII, and what happened to me last week suggests that maybe we should turn the whole existential point on its head, which would lead to thoughts J, K, L—and what the hell have you crawled under the rug for when I was just agreeing with you and having a nice conversation?
Honey, other people, Lesbians, women, men, aardvarks—take a long time to go from A to maybe A-and-a-half, not to mention B, and when you open the curtains and invite people to share worlds, the other person is very apt to crawl under the rug or leap out the fire- escape—because they HAVEN’T GOT any such torrential inner world to share back.
While you’re left feeling like you’ve been shouting down a well and why in christ’s name didn’t they respond, share back, even interrupt with their own views? . . . They didn’t because they couldn’t. They haven’t any.
The lonely steam-roller.
And subconsciously you’re so used to this, so used to being too fast and too much and seeing more and so forth, that you really don’t take seriously any humble daisies offered to you. Other people have been stupid and wrong for too long.
Your doom is partial comradeship; any group will offer you companionship on only a portion of your perimeter, or heart. And you are going to have to learn to think with your mouth shut in those perilous moments when lesser mortals sidle up with a flower.
Further, you have to recognise that you are not, never, going to be “among your peers,” part of a real “sacred band.” You have to find your peers in this or that facet—as you really do—making a network of part-sharings serve the lonely need for a group of true fellows. It’s the fate of the over-intellectualised even on the barricades. In action you’re a Lenin, but your fate may be more like Trotsky’s.
Now that is all I know about that.
But I should add that crazy egotistical rampantly talkative Joanna is also perfectly sane, kindly, just, luminously compassionate, and I would have no hesitation in exposing my deepest soul-quandaries to you. Please emphasize this paragraph—I was so amused—being, you know, older and having seen geniuses trying to make out in a world of trained poodles—that I went on and on. I know the bull-dozer aspect for what it is, and I don’t for a minute confuse it with the core of you. I ache for you, Jo.
. . . The only real danger of your position is, like I said, that having had to learn to dismiss so much stupidity you get into the automatic habit of rejection.
Which brings up Ursula . . . I do think you reject too much there. You worry her work like a frantic puppy, and some of the pieces flying off the bones are real pieces. Of marrow, if we may carry this metaphor a bit unhappily longer. She’s writing mostly about good and evil and death, you know. Motives which are as yet peripheral in your own writings, your good and evil are incidental to the life, life, life in your stuff. She’s fundamentally an abstract thinker dressed in the characters of fiction—witness OMELAS. And then she had this biological idea—LEFT HAND. She has a few genuine images, dragons and ice-fields and forests and mad kings in drafty scrubby keeps. But her most personal, odd, writerly thing was LATHE OF HEAVEN, where her characters started to run themselves. Truly, Doctor Haber in that is a real, real villain. And the strange upwelling of quietist hope showed up, the thing she tried to do more with in ATLANTIS. In LATHE it’s a rather absurd but lovable salvation-through-aliens, and sea-images.
It is perfectly OK for a writer to be preoccupied with the neutral themes of mortality and virtues—only thing is, it makes for pallid writing unless one is an ecstatic . . . I kind of love her, as a baby philosophe more than fictioneer. [. . .]
Now sweetie go out and intimidate the world, suffer & study & convulse and talk, talk, talk, cook your week’s stew, may the sun shine in your weighted curtains—above all may the writing go well. And may the world offer you some much-needed security.
Love,
Tip
James Tiptree Jr.
P. O. Box 315 McLean VA.
22101 S.F.W.A.
4 Dec 76
Dear Joanna,
To say that this is a hard letter to write would be the understatement of some time.
How will you react when I tell you that the person you have been corresponding with as Traptroop is really Raccoona Sheldon, aka Alli Sheldon, aka Dr. Alice B. Sheldon—the doctorate being merely in a behavioural science, not the kind that does anybody any good?
The thing is, the last thing poor Mother did was blow Tiptree out of the water, I had no idea her obituaries would be splashed around. So Jeff Smith wrote me that Harlan had latched on to one, or something, giving me as sole survivor, and was busy telling the fans. So Jeff looked it up for himself and wrote me the question direct.
I don’t lie, except for the signature—which has grown, over the years, into just another nickname—so I had to tell him yes. (That was good, actually, because I had always promised him he would be the first to know. I left a letter telling the truth in Bob Mill’s safe, to be opened if Tiptree i.e., me, died; but I’m morally sure he hasn’t opened it.)
The letter says that James Tiptree Jr. was born in late 1967 in the Import Food section of Giant, when I was looking for a name that editors would forget rejecting. It never occurred to me that everything would sell. So then everything just snowballed from there. I love the sf world, and I couldn’t resist Jeff Smith’s request for an interview—figured I could skip over the bio details quickly without lying, because my curriculum vitae does sound male—and start waving Hello to all the people I’ve loved and admired for so long.
But then the epistolary friendships grew—especially with women; if you noticed Raccoona you understand I am deeply committed to women, and I thought in my innocence that this prank could help. (There are anthologists who have sharp inquiries from Tiptree as to why no women contributors.) But the friendships got real. But I never wrote calculated stuff or lies, what I’ve written you—or anyone—is true, true true. All of it.
So now it is time for me to stop being a brand of marmalade and painfully write those of you who have befriended Tiptree what the facts really are: A 61-yr-old retired woman—past adventures, I guess, life said to be “exciting” and “glamorous,” but it just seemed like a lot of work at the time—6 ft 8 1/2, wt. 135, hair brownish going grey- streak, incurable open childish stare, lumpy writer’s face, as I said, once said to be good-looking but really only animated; mostly wears jeans and cords, and worried sick that my much more aged husband of 30 years is going blind.
Jo, can you take it? God, the number of times I’ve wanted to cry out, dear Sister, how well I know, how well I know what you mean. But I am different, by reason of age and time of upbringing, from the feminists today. Maybe more pessimistic, more aware of the male power structure in which I’ve struggled for long years. (With their Queen Bees.)
Have I done anything evil? It didn’t feel evil, it was just a prank that dreamed its way into reality. I think you were beginning to “see through,” too.
Can I ask you to hold this “secret” a while longer, at least until Ballantine’s stop sitting on that damn novel and decide to publish? I don’t think they want an ersatz Tiptree . . . I had planned to establish Raccoona better and then kind of slide over, but with my low production and this damn novel I’ve only been able to give her minor stories. Funny though; editors screaming for Tiptree stuff return Raccoona with beer-can stains on the pages—not really that bad but almost.
(If you take this in the true spirit it happened in, there are quite a few laughs to share.)
The funny thing is, Tiptree has taken on a kind of weird reality; I’m beginning to believe something was awaiting incarnation in the gourmet food section. Tiptree for instance insisted [on] “Tip,” would not be called “Jim.” And he has shown himself a spiritual uncle to quite a few depressed people, mostly fellow pros. Alli Sheldon almost had to give up teaching for the same reason—all the outsiders, green monkeys, tearful young girls spotted me at once and made me into a kind of crying-shoulder or hot-line for troubles. I can’t resist. I know too well how things hurt.
For your information, in addition to Jeff Smith, I wrote Ursula at once because of our long friendship, and then Quinn and Vonda because of ditto. Since we met later, I waited two nights to write you; it takes a sleepless night to write this. So you are the only ones who know, pace Harlan.
How I admire you who have made it openly as women.
I think I would have if I’d thought it through, but I was finishing my PhD orals at the time I wrote my first 4, and I wasn’t thinking anything through except the evidence for and against rat learning— I’m a behavioural or “rat” psychologist. So I just tagged on the first male name that came handy and let it go. And then was stuck. You see, I am extremely shy and recessive.
I guess that’s all the brute facts. If I should have put in more, let me know, if you’re still speaking to your friend
Tip
Alli
Raccoona
P.S. [O]ne thing I noticed, Tip was going to write you about. Have you noticed that we have always discussed writers not as technicians or the “art of writing”—but as their ethical, moral, political messages? Fascinating. Of course maybe you didn’t want to discuss writerly points with me because neither Tip nor I really know how to write.
P.S.S. Another point; all of Tiptree is me; Ting (my husband) is a non-reader, hasn’t a clue what I really do. An old friend, really; at 61 and 75 that becomes more important than gender.
Oh, Joanna, will I have any friends left?
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January Bookseller Picks – Publishers Lunch
Amazon made Douglas Preston's new book their spotlight pick for January, with the Indie Next No. 1 debut novel from Emily Fridlund as their featured debut. (Our new spinoff free sampler January Buzz Books features read-it-now excerpts from Fridlund and another Amazon pick from Shanthi Sekaran's Lucky Boy, plus three others…
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