THE BIG 5-0

I hit a milestone recently. I sent out my fiftieth query package to an agent on Bad Moon Rising. It's exciting thinking how many "big time" agents have considered my writing, but it's also a bit disappointing to think that fifty agencies have considered my writing. . .and passed on it. There's something about the number fifty that means it's time to reflect, regroup, and rethink.
The main thing is to keep working. I did preliminary work for two novels, and wrote three chapters of another murder mystery and one chapter of a literary novel. I will probably get back to them, but I got a compelling idea for a young adult novel that I just couldn't ignore. I now have close to 70 pages.
The false starts put me behind a little, but the ultimate goal is to practice and to make sure that I don't have to rely solely on Bad Moon Rising. I'm hoping to have two drafts of the YA novel done by the next writers conference in February 2006.
Submissions are interesting. My materials are at work and I get most of the submissions out during breaks in my work day as a high school teacher. At first, I was just sending out a query letter because it was cheaper. Last February, though, at the Southern California Writers Conference (19), writer and presenter Bob Mayer (the Area 51 series) said that he always sends out the same package--a cover letter, a short synopsis, and chapter one. His philosophy:

1. The cover letter says "I have a great idea."
2. The synopsis says "I have a great story."
3. Chapter 1 says "I can write."

Even though it's more expensive than just sending a letter (a little over $2 a submission), I can't argue with that logic.
Mayer said that everyone should get the same package, despite what their submissions guidelines say. I want to follow the rules of submissions, but I like the three step philosophy he outlined above. As he said, no one is (probably) going to reject your submission if they like the writing just because the submission "didn't follow the length guidelines." That said, sending entire unsolicited manuscripts is still a big no-no.
I will continue sending out submission packages (letter, synopsis, chapter one) for Bad Moon Rising, but before long I will have another product to peddle.
If that doesn't work, I'll write another novel.
One of them is bound to sell.

THE MYSTERY NOVEL

In June or July of 1998, only a few months before my first daughter was born, I finished all the preliminary work on a mystery novel called Bad Moon Rising. My plan was to create a series character who solved murders and name the books after classic rock songs, much in the same way Mary Higgins Clark uses snippets of standards in her titles. My lead character, Michael Rossi, was an investigative reporter for the (fictional) San Diego Herald and was asked to investigate the apparent suicide of a girl he was obsessed with in high school. The request came from the girl's mother.
My daughter was born in August and I didn't start writing the book until January of 1999. With breaks to write a self-publish the poetry book for my wife, and to re-type the teaching methods book (my computer had crashed and I only had a hard copy), the first draft of the mystery novel came in at 500 pages and took a whopping three years to write! My fellow teachers and I celebrated the completion of the novel (at that point, even finishing a book, let alone writing a good one seemed like a feat to me) by meeting for drinks at a place called B.J.'s, a local bar and grill. I will always remember that afternoon (primarily because I don't drink much). I am always grateful for the support and encouragement of my friends at work when it comes to my writing. To date, my wife, my mother-in-law, our best friend, three teachers at work, and two agents have read the mystery novel. After a year of subsequent drafts (2 or 3, I think) and some family business, I began querying agents in the Fall of 2003.
In February of 2004, I attended the 18th annual Southern California Writers Conference in San Diego and met in a one-on-one with L.A.-based agent Charlotte Gusay. In a letter attached to my submission package that was returned at the conference, Ms. Gusay agreed to read the entire manuscript.
I was walking on clouds and immediately called my wife from the conference. I had never reached this level in my writing and I wanted to savor it. A "real-live" agent wanted to read my novel. It was a moment I'd fantasized about my entire life. In our one-on-one meeting, I learned a lot from her and asked her if she would mind if I took the time for one more draft before submitting. She agreed.
After three months working on a new draft, I mailed out my first "all manuscript" submission. I was a bit taken aback, though, about the expense involved in duplicating and sending out a book. A few months later the SASE came back with a letter passing on the novel. Among other things, the letter said that I "did well in the mystery genre" but that my characters "need to be more compelling." Still, I decided to be happy that I was allowed to go through that process, saw it as a learning experience, and was excited to get professional feeback on my entire book. The comments I got back came from someone who sold books for a living.
That was invaluable.
A few other agents have requested sample chapters and then passed and one other agent, based simply on a query letter, asked to see the entire manuscript, but then passed on it. I did another draft for that novel and one more since. The novel is now down to a tighter 357 pages. I think that will be its fighting weight for all subsequent requests for the manuscript.
I have, actually, received positive comments on sample chapters I have sent out, which I use as the justification to keep going. If no one said anything positive about the writing that I'm sending out into the world, I might have to rethink my dream. Fortunately, that's not the way it's going. But so far, no takers. The bottom line, then, seems to be that I need perserverance and training. With that, and a little luck, Bad Moon Rising may some day find its way onto the shelves at your local Barnes & Noble.
'Cause I ain't givin' up.

YOU'RE A TEACHER. . .SO ACT LIKE ONE!

Just after getting married, I decided that if I was seriously going to be a writer, I needed to write a full-length book. I was a drama major in college and had become an English teacher and had always said that teaching was like doing five shows a day: there was a performer (teacher), a stage (classroom), an audience (students) and, usually, a script (lesson plan). I'd thought about running workshops that taught teachers how to use the performance techniques that actors use to be better presenters in the classroom, but ultimately I decided just to write it as a book. I really wanted to write a novel, but that was too daunting (my previous attempt was a narrative non-fiction manuscript about my first year of teaching called Confessions of a Rookie Teacher. That book was simply an exercise in practicing scene structure and seeing how much I could write. It is currently residing, justifiably, in a trunk in my garage).
In a year or so I had cranked out thirty three essays on how to use costumes, character voices, lighting, and mulit-media in the classroom. There were also entries on acting techniques like concentration, physical and vocal warm-ups, and trust. At the end, I was pleased with the result. A colleague in the English department read and critiqued it, and then I was set to start sending it out.
That's where the real education began.
I had to create a non-fiction book proposal including a cover letter, chapter outline, market analysis of existing books on the same theme, author bio, and sample chapters. It was a ton of work and not nearly as fun as writing the book itself. Eventually, I finished and began sending it out.
After it was rejected by four literary agencies (form letters kept saying things like "innovative project," "well-written," "interesting"), I was ready to send it out again when my neighbor told me she heard about a way writers could their books published.
After years of fielding all kinds of suggestions, most of which involved vanity presses where you paid seventy-five to a hundred dollars for a book with your poem in 8 point font and that only you and your family members would see (if they paid, too), I was politely reluctant to hear what she had to say. But she gave me a creative arts trade journal with an article all about iUniverse, a print-on-demand company that was half-owned by Barnes & Noble. I read the article, looked at their website, researched their printed books at my local Barnes & Noble, and requested their information packet.
I kept looking for the catch, but I couldn't find one. Sure, I had to do all the marketing, but the books had good production value, would be listed in Books in Print, Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble website, and all for $99 (at the time; now it's about $499). I realized that this was the way I should go with my teaching book. I did one more draft of You're a Teacher. . .So Act Like One! Improving Your Stage Presence in the Classroom.
First, though, to test the print-on-demand waters (and pursue another life time dream),
I wrote a book of poetry for my wife (Thawing the Glacier) and sent it in to iUniverse. The day the book came in the mail--my first published book!--I was shaking and could barely open the package. An entire published book, written by ME. It was almost too much to comprehend.
I gave the poetry book to my wife for Christmas and her aunt bought five or six copies. A few friends bought another two or three and I bought another copy for myself. To this day, those are the only copies of that book that have been sold.
Pleased with my print-on-demand experience, I sent off the teaching book, and although they had raised their prices to $159 by then, I still thought it was a bargain. The book would be marketed to teachers around the nation and my only real goal was to recoup my initial investment and say I was "author of. . ."
The book looked great when it came out and exceeded my expectations. A colleague of mine from school who had moved on to teaching the teacher candidates in the UCSD education program asked me to give two presentations to his classes based on the book. He paid me $100 and I sold a book or two on those nights.
Due to family obligations, health issues, and my reignited desire to write fiction, I didn't spend a lot of time marketing You're A Teacher. . .So Act Like One! I see it now as a grand experiment. I learned a lot about the publishing business, learned I can write a competent book length manuscript, and learned that the little black notebook I bought to keep track of all the income from the teaching book was a waste of two dollars. National University's teacher ed program has thought--off and on--about using it as a textbook (at least in San Diego) and I could pursue other avenues of marketing for the book, but I really switched gears back into fiction and have to budget my writing/marketing time.
I felt I needed to focus on what I most wanted from my writing.
In short, the teaching book died on the vine. And while part of that is disappointing, I know it's where I should be right now.
After all, I have a mystery novel to sell.

THE SECOND PHASE

One day in the late eighties, I was on the phone with the bookstore at the mall, asking if they had copies of Poet's Market, as I was finally ready to buy one of my own and start submitting. While I was on hold, my sister brought in the mail. A submission had been returned and I when I read the response, I almost jumped out of my skin. A small journal called Proof Rock had accepted a poem of mine called "My Ears." The editor had rejected it once, but said she liked it, so I sent other poems to her and re-included "My Ears." The poem used the length of my hair as a symbol to document and comment on the issues of the 70s and early eighties. I wasn't going to put any of the major poets out of business, but I had finally been accepted. When the clerk at the bookstore came back on the line to say they had a copy and would hold one for me if I liked, I told the clerk that I'd just had my first poem accepted.
To this day, I'm sure she thinks I'm insane.
When I received my contributor copy and flipped through it with shaking hands, scanning for my very distinctive last name, I could have died and gone to heaven a happy man. It was a modest volume, with a cardstock cover and xeroxed pages, but to me it might as well have been the Dead Sea Scrolls. I was a published poet.
I had realized a lifelong dream.
After college, and a stint in Los Angeles pursuing acting (including one line on General Hospital), I moved back home to San Diego and began writing and submitting in earnest. This meant mostly poetry, but I occasionally submitted a short story. An early one entitled "Brian's Bride" I began submitting in 1988. This story snagged me a hand-written note from the highly-respected journal Antaeus ("An interesting and well-written story. Just not right for Antaeus"). It may not be apparent, but I can still quote that note from memory. I was thrilled to get that note and knew that maybe, just maybe I was on to something. That story has been to nearly 30 journals since 1988 and still has not been accepted; however, I have added many more personal and hand-written notes to its history about how editors liked it. . .just not enough to publish.
In the last 18 years I have had nearly 20 poems published, a few of them in moderately reputable journals (Exquisite Corpse, Mudfish, Main Street Rag, et. al). I have also garnered a number of personal and hand-written notes about my stories from incredibly reputable magazines (Zoetrope, Boulevard, The Missouri Review), but so far no editor has been willing to take a chance on my prose.
Even though I have yet to place a piece of short fiction, I have written two screenplays, four sitcom episodes, one teaching methods text, a mystery novel, and about a zillion poems. I have also been married, had two children, and established my teaching career. Throughout, I tried to give my writing the time and attention it demanded (and deserved), but writers never seem to write as much or as well as they hoped.
Eventually, I also had to realize that as much as the poetry was for my spiritual health and well-being, it was never going to pay and, spiritual guy that I am, I wanted to make some money for my writing. Something about a family and a mortgage (and, I'm sure the dread of turning 40 didn't help) forced me to get serious.
So a few months before my daughter was born in 1998, I began work on my first novel. But first there was the teaching book. . .

IN THE BEGINNING. . .

I started writing when I was five and half or six, dictating song lyrics to my father, who copied them down at the kitchen table. In some ways, he was my first blog. I wrote song lyrics, poetry (usually for girls I had crushes on), short stories, and nearly didn't pass 6th grade because I was working on my "book."
In 8th grade, based on an assignment from our Language Arts teacher, I began a daily journal. I kept that journal until my first year of college when "real life" caught up and made it difficult to contiunue. Fortunately or unfortunately, that means that my entire high school education is documented on paper in four blue notebooks that now sit in the back of my bedroom closet.
In some ways, that was my second blog.
My first "official" submission was in 1977 when, at the age of 13, I typed three poems on my best friend's mother's typewriter and, having seen my first copy of Poet's Market, sent them off to Modern Bride magazine.
Needless to say, I have always been extraordinarily secure in my masculinity to pull of a stunt like that during junior high school.
When the inevitable rejection slip came back a few months later, I'd almost forgotten about it, but the thrill of knowing that my three poems had been read--and considered--by a big time editor thrilled me. I'd been bitten by the writing/publishing bug. . .and good.
For some reason, I didn't start sending out regularly until I was in college (a high school and college stint as a journalist took care of my desire to write and publish), but toward the end of college, I was writing--and reading--more poems and wanted to get mine out there.
I went to the local library and wrote down some addresses from the previous year's Poet's Market and sent out three submissions. After a few months, I got back two rejections and a long letter on yellow legal paper from the editor of the third journal, The Yellow Butterfly, that told me to keep submitting and that he might have actually published one of the poems I'd submitted, if his magazine hadn't just folded.
It was all the encourgement I needed. That was in 1988.
I've been submitting ever since.