Getting It Out of My System (2)

(Part 1 of this N-part series was here.)

Let’s see, where were we… Oh. Right. I’d just posted excerpts from the Prologue to Crossed Wires, my 1992 mystery, and Chapter 1 from its never-published sequel, Trapdoor. And I said that the differences between those two excerpts sprang from “something” that happened in the roughly one year that elapsed between their two writings — something whose principal result was to relax me.

This isn’t the story of how I came to write Crossed Wires. (A lot of that crosses over into autobiography — not relevant right now.) No, it’s the story of what happened after I wrote it.

Never having written a book from the once-upon-a-time moment through to the “The End,” I wasn’t sure exactly how to proceed. But because I’d been hanging around the CompuServe Literary Forum (or LitForum) for a few years, I knew the general steps. I’d need to write a query, and then I’d need to get the query into the hands of someone in a position to want the book and to help shepherd it to publication.

At that time (winter of 1990-91), and at least among the crowd at LitForum, it was a toss-up whether a new author should query agents or editors first. It seemed to me then that it made more sense to target editors; otherwise, I figured, the book would need to be marketed twice. (Although, true, the hypothetical agent would have responsibility for the second go-round.) And everyone agreed that once an editor expressed interest in your manuscript, getting an agent would be simple — not necessarily the other way ’round.

So I got out my copy of Novelist & Short Story Writer’s Market, and also Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents, and went to work.

Of course, I wanted the query to set its hook hard and fast in Mr./Ms. Editor’s jaw. So before making up the list of potential editors, I took forge and anvil, hammer and tongs to the query letter itself. My resources included the advice of others on LitForum, and of course both books. I don’t remember how long, exactly, I worked on it, but I do remember it felt exponentially more difficult to write than had the book itself.

(After rummaging through my old WordPerfect files, I just located the query I used, timestamped February 1991. (Wow.) I’ve pasted it here, if you’re interested.)

And then I went to work on the list of editors.

My approach here was to come up with a list of, say, 50 publishers. At each publisher, to the extent possible I would try to identify one editor to target with the query letter. (And of course, depending on each publisher’s specific guidelines, I might include sample pages and/or a synopsis.) I rank-ordered the 50 in terms of what I imagined my “preference” was, just by grouping them in two tiers of 25 each: first and second waves.

And then the mail blitz, and the waiting.

I’d finished this “final” draft of Crossed Wires in December-January. But in the meantime I’d already come up with the idea for the “other book, a mainstream novel” which the query mentioned. I’d started doing a ton of reading, and taking notes. I’d started actually writing it.

All of this was still going on during the Crossed Wires marketing-to-editors blitz… because, as everyone knew, it would take six months or a year to sell a first book directly to an editor, and you’d be lucky if it took only that long. And I was damned if I would just sit around waiting for the mailman to arrive.

But you know what happened with this second book? I actually enjoyed writing it — much more than I’d enjoyed writing Crossed Wires. I liked the story. I liked the characters. I liked the general premise. I really honest-to-God loved being unshackled from the constraints of genre. (Maybe with a lot more experience, and/or in a different universe in which I was someone else, I could have played with those shackles a bit — turned the straitjacket into a comfortable bulky sweater. But you play the cards you’re dealt, right?)

Especially, I liked that with this new book — with its main cast of a half-dozen characters — I was writing not just from a single point of view, but from six or seven… in six or seven voices.

Like, who knew? I didn’t know I had it in me. I’d thought I had to Be An Author, see, speaking in this sort of magisterial baritone voice which would not only confirm my Authorness, but at the same time direct the behaviors and responses of both the characters in the story and the readers in their armchairs. I was so concerned with waving the damn baton that I didn’t realize I could just step off the damn podium and go sit in a folding chair to fool around with a guitar, cornet, piano, harp, tuba, or drum kit as the story demanded.

I’d been freed.

So anyhow, all along the self-addressed stamped reply postcards I’d sent out with the queries were coming back. On the back of the postcard were multiple checkboxes saying (not in these words, but approximately), “Thanks but no thanks,” “Not this one, but keep me in mind for the next one,” “Please send me more material: ________,” and “I’m interested. Please send me the whole manuscript.”

In less than two months — not a year, not even six months — five of those first 25 editors wanted to see more material or the whole MS. Whoa, I thought, that’s kind of a lot more than I expected…

And then on March 27, 1991, about six weeks after the mail blitz began, one editor said he wanted to publish the book.

Talk about internal conflict. Of course I was delighted; “flattered” doesn’t even begin to describe the validation that I thought this represented. And excited? Whew. I’m not one to blow my own horn but I couldn’t wait to tell some people. (As it happens, The Future Missus was the first one I called — and I hadn’t even met her then.)

And yet… and yet…

This wasn’t supposed to happen, I told myself. I was supposed to have more time. Crossed Wires was supposed to be the book I wrote, marketed, and then — disappointed, but happy to have had the experience — put away in the proverbial drawer.

And then there was the size of the advance offered: $2,000.

There were all sorts of contexts in which I could think of that amount (aside from the fact that this was in 1991 dollars), ranging from Well, that’s a couple grand more than you’d have otherwise through Jesus Christ, how does anybody live on that kind of money? on up to One of your best online friends sold her first book AS FIRST IN A SERIES for which she was offered a [numerous]-digit advance… It didn’t help that the editor offered the advance within moments of telling me on the phone that he’d loved the book, loved it, was fascinated. And it really, really, really didn’t help that — carried away on the first wave of shock and excitement — I said, “Well, uh, sure!” (I know: duh.)

Eventually I did get an agent. (The agent and I parted ways a couple years later, unhappily for both of us I think, and the agent has since died.) The agent, whom I will call simply X, was a real coup for me — an agenting legend. But not even X could do much of anything after that Sure! (Talk about shackles.)

Now, the editor wasn’t 100% happy with the plot of the book. The protagonist was sympathetic, but there was never any doubt that she’d carry the day. Perhaps, the editor wondered, perhaps I could make her more vulnerable somehow — put her more in jeopardy? I didn’t want to do that; I liked having a fairly young and inexperienced heroine who nonetheless could hold her own. But how about… how about if I gave her responsibility for… for… for a little niece, say? And put the niece in jeopardy? Excellent, he said, and could I do this in the next N months?

Another of those Uhhhh… moments followed, with another weak acquiescence at the end.

And then X got involved. You name your villain right upfront, X said, accurately. The first rule of mysteries is, you never reveal who the killer is right away. You save that for the end.

You can probably see where this is going. Right: I caved on that point, too. (Never thinking to point out that the Columbo TV series had long ago put to rest the “never reveal the killer” chestnut.)

By now, the agreed N months had passed and I’d submitted the final-final version. Within a few more months, I’d have the cover in hand and I could start the full-on real marketing blitz I had in mind, the one to bookstores. And then all the readings. The presentations to schools. The signings. The reviews. The royalties.

By then, too, the editor had confirmed what he’d said at the start: perhaps the advance seemed small, but in the world of mysteries building readership via a series was important. That’s where the real money would be. So… how about a sequel? He couldn’t talk about an advance yet, but perhaps if I showed him the first few chapters…?

Throughout, I’d continued to work — with growing distraction and growing frustration — on the “other, mainstream book.” I’d finished the first draft, begun a second (which I likewise eventually finished). And then… I put it aside.

Because here’s what was going on: Crossed Wires was published in hardback in August, 1992. I had scheduled a handul of signings and “meet the author” things on my own, from North Florida to Virginia to DC and on up to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. My family threw me a publication party. The reviews had started to come in, and were — politely — mixed. Unsold copies of Crossed Wires began to be returned to the publisher from bookstores. Royalties never materialized. No second printing was coming. No paperback edition.

And I was running out of money.

In short, I had to put the “big book” aside. Because I desperately needed another advance check, especially the bigger one I could expect now that I had a real series going on.

But damn, I really really didn’t want to work on another Crossed Wires. I wanted to get back to the other book, that big one. So maybe… maybe I could…

Another long story short: ultimately depressed by the CW saga, worried about money and numerous personal and family crises, I was going to do Trapdoor my way. I was going to write a book that I enjoyed writing, and the hell with whether it fit what I thought An Author (especially The Author of my first book) would write.

The source of my relaxation, then? I was sufficiently p!ssed off and scared, that all the trappings of capital-A Authorhood had been seared off the surface. I didn’t care anymore about my success as a mystery author (even a lowercase one). Nobody (other than family and friends, and bless them for it) seemed to give a hoot about Crossed Wires or its author. Well, screw ’em. Trapdoor was going to be written by the author of that other book.

By me, in short — in my characters’ voices. And under the circumstances, how could I not relax?

(Postscript: The editor offered me exactly the same $2,000 advance for Trapdoor, citing the lack of response to Crossed Wires. And by this point it was obvious X wasn’t going to be much help to me, either, although X and I did hang on for another few months before cutting the strings. All of which confirmed for me that the whole Crossed Wires adventure had been an exciting one, yes, one which very few writers would get to go on — I know how lucky I was — but ultimately, exactly the wrong adventure for me.)