A New Player In The Field

Here's something interesting.

I realised, looking at my spreadsheet of agents, that I don't really know anything about any of them. They are just names - I don't know much about what they like to read or anything.

I did find an interview on a Website with one agent at an agency I submitted to, and she sounds very nice and I get the sense that 'Todd Garcia, Boy Archaeologist' might be something that would appeal to her, but of course, I don't know that she'd read it. It's a big agency after all, and their rules say you just send material to 'Submissions'.

So anyway. I thought - I'll spend a day really searching hard for an agent who I can be pretty sure will enjoy the story. I did. I turned up a guy who I later realised was actually the first agent I ever submitted anything to (he was the first agent to be sent 'VIP'). His agency has changed names since then. I notice that it happened round about when I sent him the submission which he ignored. Maybe there was too much going on?

I found him via a press release he'd posted on the Rights Noticeboard at The Bookseller. It was a terrifically well-written press release, oozing enthusiasm for his client's book. Damn, I thought, this is the guy I need to represent my writing. When I saw his agency profile at Publisher's Marketplace I was even more convinced.

But he has track record as a Submission Ignorer. So, I had to grab his attention in an email subject line, or he'd probably delete the email again. More research, this time into his authors, revealed an intriguing link between one of his successful children's authors and myself - we both read biochemistry at Oxford. So I wrote him: Would you like to represent another Oxford biochemist?

Guess what...he responded the next day, read the submission within half an hour and wrote back: "I won't offer to represent this as it stands, but I'd be happy to talk to you about it."

So, we are going to talk tomorrow. I've no idea what he's going to suggest but it beats the formal rejection hands down...

Waiting for the WOW Factor

Novel number 2 was finished a few months back, just in time for summer reading by Josie and her friends, who have reported that they enjoyed it. Josie herself actually stayed in whilst we were on holiday in Mallorca, she found it that gripping. Yay for Josie's loyalty!

I've been waiting to hear from a publisher in Oxford who requested the full manuscript, also an agent in Oxford to whom I took a partial a few months ago. Mainly though, I'm waiting for news from the WOW Factor contest organised by Faber and Waterstones, to which I submitted the first three chapters of "Todd Garcia, Boy Archaeologist".

The tension. Is.Unbearable.

Nah. It isn't really. I've been writing my screenplay to help take my mind off things. Screenwriting is fun! Amazingly technically demanding, lots and lots of structure.This guy is my guru: Robert McKee. (The guy who is sent up in Charlie Kaufman's 'Adaptation'. Btw one's reaction to the word 'adaptation' must surely be an excellent differentiator for biologists vs writers. Like the word 'unionized', which strikes at the inner chemist in all chemistry graduates. I'm obviously not a proper writer yet. I still see the word 'adaptation' and assume it's some evolutionary thing, as opposed to a screenplay-of-a-book.)

On Writing

The idea of actually getting a material reward for something I enjoy doing so much seems increasingly fantastic. Yet, the money to be earned is a necessary driver, since in many ways it's a measure of a story's success. If a story is good and well-written, it will engage and entertain. And it will earn.

Well hey, that's what I tell myself to stay motivated!

However, in the months I've been trying to behave as a full-time writer, i.e. writing, editing or researching almost daily, I've discovered some surprising things. And they've been kind of delightful.

1. Writing novels is fun, and technically challenging enough to be seriously entertaining to me.
2. Writing a screenplay is likely to be even more technically difficult, just mastering the craft will be a task of itself.
3. I don't find it hard to face the blank page. I thought I would, but I don't. Maybe it's because I haven't made any money from it yet. So, it's just pure learning and entertainment. Or maybe it's because I didn't let myself write anything fun all these years. (I wrote about science and the information industry, but that wasn't much fun.)
4. My respect for successful storytellers has always been high. But I fell into the snobbery of thinking that literary talent was more worthy. I'm changing my mind about that. It's all about story.
5. Since I was a little kid, I knew someday I'd do this. Unusually for me, I didn't even formulate a plan. I just knew, one day, I'd be ready, somehow. Well, this is the time.

I'm truly blessed that I have the circumstances which allow me to do this.

One Novel Down, One In The Oven

Progress report on the leg: it's healing pretty much to plan. Yesterday I walked (hobbled) around the house and actually did a small amount of housework.

Meanwhile, the enforced rest did allow me to do what I surely couldn't have done otherwise, i.e. finish a novel. It's done, revised 8 times following advice from my beta readers Reba, Magda and Juan Fernando.

A sample of the novel is now with 5 literary agents, and another 4 have rejected it (2 didn't even want to read a sample). Amongst the copious advice given to writers is that to distract yourself from the misery of rejection, you should immediately start on the next project. So I'm doing that, writing a pretty ambitious kids book about a boy archaeologist. Ambitious because there's a lot of education being thrown in along the way.

Shhhhh, don't tell.

Half-way Through The Novel! Now Read The Blurb...

Did I mention that I'm finally writing my thriller novel?

Well, 12 weeks without walking; it was too good a chance to miss.

I passed the half-way mark yesterday. VIP: Vial In Pocket is now half-finished!

Here's a possible jacket blurb:

Molecular biologist, Jackson Brady flies into Mexico City illegally carrying biological samples. Astonished when the colleague he’s carrying the samples for is led away by the authorities, only to disappear, Brady finds that he has been passed a final, coded message.

Brady and an alluring Mexican archaeologist, Mary Carmen Martinez, must now solve a puzzle which begins with an enigmatic DNA code and ends with a secret underground burial chamber in Iraq. But their nemesis, the mysterious Hans Runig has people all over the world looking for them.This novel takes the reader on a journey through the mysteries of modern biotechnology, the World Wide Web, Mesopotamian culture and to a secret so ancient that the memory of it exists only in the human genome.