Michael Thomas Perone's Blog, page 15

My Publishing Journey in Miniature

cat detective masterpiece

I wrote the first draft of Danger Peak in four months, from November 2018 to March 2019 (contrary to popular opinion, I didn’t write the bulk of the book during quarantine), though it’s been revised many, many times since. Once I was finished and read it over, I had no idea what to do next to get it published. This may sound strange coming from a Senior Editor in Manhattan, but working in the world of technical publishing is still a galaxy far, far away from the world of fiction. I didn’t even know what a query letter was. I felt like I had to go back to school to learn all about getting published, so I did what anyone else would do. I Googled. A lot. That’s where I found a sample query letter and the proper way to format your manuscript. (I was way off, in both respects.) I learned other things as well, such as the fact agents and publishers want a word count, not a page count, since the page number will differ depending on the book’s format, which you won’t know until right before publishing. Also, you don’t simply get a word count by using your MS Word “Word Count” tool. There’s actually a formula. Want to know what it is? Google it!

I also read a lot: over half a dozen books on writing and publishing (not to mention countless online articles), including one that’s over 500 pages. At this point, I was doing a lot more reading than writing on my publishing journey, which is not ideal for readers like myself who cringe if a book passes the 350-paged mark.

After I researched various agencies and publishing houses and started submitting my manuscript, the rejection letters started to arrive in my email inbox. Although they of course stung, I also felt like it was a necessary rite of passage. I told myself, “Hey, even Stephen King got rejection letters.” Incidentally, it still amazes me that he received a single rejection letter, let alone enough to hold a spike into his bedroom wall, which eventually fell off because there were too many rejection letters.

Most rejection letters were vague, which makes sense since they were form letters. I noticed the ones that weren’t, though, had a similar theme: they all thought my “writing was interesting” and my “idea was very original,” but it “just wasn’t for” them. I kept thinking, “If you like both my writing and idea, then why isn’t my book for you? Take a chance, people!”

Perhaps my favorite rejection letter was exactly all of three words: “Not for me.” That was it. No explanation. No apology. Just “Not for me.” Thanks, guy! I’ll incorporate that constructive feedback into turning my manuscript into an irresistible masterpiece!

Then at last I got a bite, from Writers House (the agency of the legendary Neil Gaiman!). An agent there loved my pitch, query letter, and two-page story synopsis and requested my full manuscript. I have to say I was floating on Cloud 9 for a week after I submitted my baby. Then a week turned into two weeks. Then a month. Then two. I was back down to earth again. When he finally got back to me, he said it was a very close call, but he could only take on a certain number of new clients each year, and while he liked my story a lot, it just wasn’t enough to push him over the edge.

If I had to guess as to the exact reason why he passed (as well as all the other agents), I would have to say that the ‘80s timeline is a hard sell, especially for a middle-grade/young-adult book. A former agent once told me, “Kids don’t want to read about the past. They want to read about either the present or the future,” hence why there are so many dystopian books set in the future in the young-adult world (the Hunger Games, anyone?).

Also, I have a sinking suspicion that this agent looked me up online (as well as the other agents who passed) and was disillusioned to see that I have absolutely no social media presence whatsoever. In this digital age, it’s all about selling online to your hopefully large and devoted audience, and, cards on the table (and technophobic as I am), I have none. I’m barely on Facebook. I didn’t even have a Twitter account. (I do now, but it’s only to promote the book and not under my name.) Of the dozens of applications I filled out online when seeking an agent, all of them wanted to know what my Twitter handle was (not if I had a Twitter handle, what it was). I’m sure they weren’t thrilled when my response was basically, “Twitter? What’s that??”

At around this time, I started flirting with the idea of self-publishing, though, a bit snobby, I used to turn my nose up at the idea. “Hey,” I told myself, “I’ve written for The Baltimore Sun! Yahoo! used to pay me for my articles! I’m a published writer! I’m on Wikipedia! And even these agents who aren’t taking me on admit they like my writing and book idea!” But my close call with Writers House opened my eyes as to how difficult this process had been. It was starting to take its toll. Even after publishing Danger Peak, I’m not sure I’d like to write and publish another book because the experience was so harrowing. (I do have one more good idea for a book; maybe I’ll write it during my retirement when I don’t have a million other things going on.)

Then four things happened that made me change my mind about self-publishing:

After researching about how to write and publish a book (remember, over six books and numerous online articles), I learned that only about 1% of manuscript submissions to agents and major publishing houses get selected for publication, and even if you’re lucky enough to get picked, unless your name is Stephen King or John Grisham, the publishing house is not going to spend much time or money on marketing your book, especially for a debut novel from an unknown author. The author is still the primary mover and shaker for selling the book. I thought to myself, “If I’d have to be the main marketer of my book at a big publishing house anyway, I may as well do it myself. I can publish my book set in the ‘80s right now, or I can continue trying to get a traditional publisher until I’m literally in my 80s and no one on earth remembers that decade.” (And who’s to say I’m even going to live that long? I can die tomorrow from a freak accident.) In other words, I can finally just get my book out there to the public, and if it bombs, it bombs, but at least it bombs on my own terms.My cousin, whom I greatly admire (is it “whom”? I should know now being an “author”), self-published her book and had a good experience with it. Since I look up to her (she’s older but not that much older), I figured if she can do it, so can I.I learned that John Swartzwelder, the most prolific writer of “The Simpsons,” my favorite show of all time, self-publishes his novels, including the brilliant and hilarious The Time Machine Did It. I found an article explaining his publishing exploits, and he told the interviewer that he basically got tired of waiting for an acceptance letter after trying for a few months to get an agent. I thought to myself that this man wrote 61 episodes, more than any other writer, of “The Simpsons” — and during their classic years, no less, not the lame, limping-to-the-barn, nearly unwatchable episodes of the past decade. (We’re talking classics like “Bart the General,” a segment from the very first “Treehouse of Horror,” “Homer at the Bat,” “Bart’s Comet,” “Homer vs. the 18th Amendment,” and “Krusty Gets Kancelled.”) If this man had trouble finding a literary agent, what chance do I have?This last reason is the one that tipped the balance for me. In the summer before Sixth Grade, I read a book called The Big Scratch: A Manx McCatty Adventure by Christopher Reed (not Reeve, the Superman of the ‘70s and ‘80s). It was a detective story starring a feline private eye, which I thought was a great idea. I even loved the cover, which looked like the poster to a never-made Disney noir. I was proud for reading the whole book by myself when it wasn’t assigned to me for school, and I wanted to read more. Luckily for me, at the end of the book, the author teased its sequel, The Black Claw. I couldn’t wait to read it, so my Mom and I went from small bookstore to small bookstore (remember those?) across Long Island asking where we could buy The Black Claw. All of the shopkeepers had no idea what we were talking about. Most had never even heard of Christopher Reed. (Again, they thought I was talking about the actor.) After a few months of looking, school started, and I was in the swing of things reading books to get good grades, not necessarily for pleasure, so I abandoned my search. Cut to three decades later: I’m cleaning out my attic and find The Big Scratch in a giant, plastic bin of old books from my childhood. Happily filled with nostalgia, I turn through its pages and once again mourn the broken promise of the never published sequel mentioned at the close of the novel. Then I realize, “Hey, this is the year 2021. I don’t need to go from store to store with my Mom again. I can just fire up the Internet and look online, mainly Amazon.” So I do exactly that, and to my utter surprise and delight, the book does indeed exist, and guess when it was finally released? 2018. Only a few years before the one I was looking it up. And here’s the kicker: It was self-published. This author who I worshipped as a kid and waited with baited breath for the follow-up to his cat detective masterpiece tried to get his book published for three decades and then finally self-published it! I’m not doing that to myself. I’m not waiting decades. My book deserves to come out now.

I decided that if I was going to self-publish, I was going to do it right, so I went with the hybrid publisher/self-publisher Wheatmark. One benefit is that they do almost all the work for you, including cover design, getting your book a Library of Congress Catalog Card Number, registering your copyright, full proofreading, and setting up your ebook format, so you have more time to promote your book, like I’m doing on this website right now. Also, according to The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published (that was the book I read that was over 500 pages), “If you’re looking for the finest in author services companies…there are some excellent options to choose from. The problem is, they also have to choose you. Companies like Wheatmark…are different from the majority of publishing services providers, which will publish anything (for a price) without regard to its editorial content and quality or an understanding of its intended audience.”

I submitted my manuscript to Wheatmark on a Thursday and was told I would hear back from them on Monday. Monday came and went. So did Tuesday. By the time Friday rolled around, I figured, “Well, I guess they didn’t like it.” Turns out the person reviewing the book ended up reading the entire thing, even though he was only supposed to do a cursory review, because he enjoyed it so much. Hopefully, you will, too.

At over 2,000 words, this is my longest post so far, so I realize the irony of titling it, “My Publishing Journey in Miniature,” but believe it or not, this is a brief summary of what I went through in the past nearly 4 years, not a blow-by-blow account, even if it felt like it.

MTP

P.S.: I realize I must sound like a broken record by now, but let me sing it once more since it seems some people still haven’t heard the tune. There have been a few more followers of my blog since my last post, and again, I greatly appreciate that, but you guys haven’t technically opted in to get the free book. To do so, you need to enter your email address at the bottom of the Blog/FREE Book page, and click “Sign Up.” Once you do that, you’ll be automatically sent an email to confirm your email address (and make sure someone didn’t sign you up for this blog as a prank). After you confirm it, you’ll be sent a free PDF of Lists, Life, and Other Unimportant Details, an over 270-paged collection of my best blogs and published articles over the past 25 years. Once again, if I don’t have your email address, I can’t send you the book. Thanks!

P.S.S.: Next week’s blog: How the Series Finale of the New “Muppet Babies” Almost Destroyed Me

How to Write a Novel in Seven Easy Steps

courtesy Paramount Pictures

Full disclosure: I realize the Internet is suffocating with similar step-by-step listicles about how to write a book, but this is my version. As I wrote last week, my blog, my rules.

1. Come Up With an Idea

This step may seem obvious to most, but when I was a kid, I would usually just start writing a story without having any semblance of what it would be about. This type of flee-flowing, stream-of-consciousness writing can be interesting if you’re a well-practiced writer but not so much when you’re 10 years old. As I wrote in a previous blog, it helps to “tap into the Source” to glean ideas, but truthfully, ideas can come from anywhere: movies or T.V. shows you’ve watched, conversations you’ve had with friends, or even other books you’ve read. As for me, the basic kernel of the idea for Danger Peak came from a videogame I played when I was a kid, the old-school, 8-bit Nintendo game “ExciteBike.” In the game, you can create any kind of course you want (this was one of the esteemed “programmable” games for the original NES), including building large jumps and ramps. I tried creating one ramp that went all the way to the sky, like a mountain, and I wondered what would be at the top of such a strange, mysterious mountain. Voila. The idea for Danger Peak came to me.

2. Outline the Plot

Despite my teachers’ protestations, I hated writing outlines to my stories in grade school and usually avoided them altogether. Big mistake. It’s incredibly difficult writing a solid story from beginning to end without any basic plot outline. Again, if you’re an experienced writer and want to surprise yourself, this may be the way to go, but for the majority of us, most readers will likely be bored if they don’t know where you’re taking them. Even after all these years, I tried writing the full-length novel version of Danger Peak without a beat-for-beat breakdown of the story structure but quickly abandoned this task when I got stuck. Having the list of chapters and short summaries at my side made the writing so much easier; I always knew where I was in the story and mostly where I wanted to go. (Picture a filmmaker with Post-It notes on his wall scrambling the scenes around trying to piece his movie together.) Even if you don’t know precisely where the story is heading (again, you might want to surprise yourself), it greatly helps to even have a general idea of what your endgame is. As many writers attest, the ending is everything. You can have lackluster writing but a killer ending, and you will still have a very decent story worth reading again and again.

3. Create a Character Sheet

After the plot outline, it helps to know the people you’re going to populate it with. Luckily for me, I only have about seven main characters in my book. (I’ll never be one of those genius writers who will pen a War and Peace-sized masterpiece with over a thousand characters.) Give your characters quirks and personality traits. For example, Dr. Howard, the eccentric technology teacher in my book who unintentionally helps my teen heroes build their super-powered motorbike, gets upset whenever someone calls him “Mister” instead of “Doctor.” This is based on a real teacher I had in high school, and you can and should mine your own life for character inspirations as well. The world is full of crazy characters out there, and it’s better to have interesting people to play with in your novels than your average, run-of-the-mill guy next door. After all, you don’t want to bore your readers. To paraphrase the late, great David Foster Wallace, “If you want your characters to be funny and interesting, have them say and do funny and interesting things.” One final note: Make sure your characters are different enough from each other, so try to fill in their backstories and personality traits as much as reasonably possible (without distracting too much from the main plot). You don’t want readers to have trouble telling your characters apart.

4. Start Writing!

This goes without saying, but now that you have the great idea, the basic plot outline, and your characters, get to writing! Probably the best advice I received from one of my writing teachers in college is to not edit yourself when you write your first draft. There’ll be plenty of time later to don your editing cap, but for now, just write without restrictions or fear. If you happen to suffer from writer’s block, don’t panic. Go for a walk. Read a book. Watch a movie. Listen to a CD. (Do people still do that?) Whatever works for you and gets your creative juices flowing is the correct method. And remember, if you get stuck, you can always rely on your outline. (You didn’t skip step 2, right?)

5. Take a Break and Then Read What You Wrote

It’s tempting after writing your magnum opus to want to quickly enjoy the fruits of your labor and turn (or scroll) all the way back to page 1, but you’re still too close to your baby. Get some breathing room first for at least a few days to a week, maybe even more. Then, when your mind is settled, and you’ve almost forgotten exactly what you’ve written, you can immerse yourself back into the fantasy world you created with fresh eyes and an even fresher perspective. You won’t be totally objective (it is your book, after all), but you won’t be as defensive to leave in dreary writing, place or character descriptions that don’t really do the job, or irrelevant passages that don’t add anything to the story. Edit with precision and extreme prejudice!

6. “Beta Readers” Aren’t Members of a Greek Fraternity Book Club

This is another mistake I originally made. I started submitting my book to agents and publishing houses before anyone besides myself read it. Oops. Don’t mimic my error and do this yourself. I’ll repeat for emphasis: Do not do this! Grab a circle of friends you trust to tell you the truth to review your work and give feedback. Hopefully, they’ll give constructive criticism and not simply, “This sucks!” but if it’s the latter, you’ll at least know who your true friends are. This step in the process was real eye-opening for me. They pointed out plot holes I missed, which is understandable because I was too close to the material, as almost all writers are. The little world I created was all in my head, but it wasn’t necessarily on the page. (I won’t claim it’s all there now, but it’s a lot closer than it originally was.) One brief example is that I thought it was obvious that there was something supernatural waiting for my main character at the top of Danger Peak since I mentioned several times that the mountain is magical, but one reader felt it wasn’t stressed enough, so I went back to the Prologue to write a few paragraphs to let the readers know that yes, something spectacular is at the top of the mountain, and that increased the urgency of the story and suspense/excitement of the reader.

7. Incorporate Feedback and Read What You Wrote Again

Once you gather the feedback (again, constructive feedback!), you can incorporate what you think makes sense into the body of your story (and toss the rest). Then read it all over again from start to finish and make further edits. (You’ll notice you’ll need to read your book many, many times throughout this process.) One trick I learned from Stephen King’s brilliant On Writing is to eliminate as many adverbs as you can, since they don’t really add much to the description of a scene. King suggests writers replace the combo of an adverb and weak verb with simply a strong verb, so, for example, in my book, I replaced “forcibly remove the blanket” to “whisk the blanket.” Finally, if you think your manuscript is up to snuff, now’s the time to start sending it out to agents and prospective publishers or self-publish it if that’s your thing.

That’s all, folks! Enjoy your writing journey, and once you’re done, you can do it all over again following these seven “easy” steps.

MTP

P.S.: If you enjoyed this blog, please sign up for blog updates to get a free book! Enter your email address and click “Sign Up” in the opt-in box at the bottom of the Blog/FREE Book page, and once you confirm your email address in an automatically generated email, you’ll be sent a free PDF copy of Lists, Life, and Other Unimportant Details, an over 270-paged collection of my best blogs and published articles of the past 25 years.

P.P.S.: I’m taking a break next week for my birthday, so I’ll be back in 2 weeks with My Publishing Journey in Miniature