dr_pretentious | The Vortex of Schmooze

The conference went beautifully, and my duties are almost done. All the speakers were generous with their time and expertise. The attendees were lively and appreciative. We didn't have a meal plan, but I accidentally fell into organizing large caravans into downtown New Brunswick for meals, which was easier than I would have guessed and worked out surprisingly well. As far as I know, the only thing that went wrong is that the main coordinating volunteer who came in from Seattle couldn't get her airline to deliver her lost luggage. If that's the worst thing that happens at a two day conference involving 30 people, you're doing all right.

The best thing that happened, to me anyway, was that Susan Sizemore liked the opening of my big book so much she offered to blurb it and urged me to write her agent and convey her endorsement. The books she's best known for are really different from the kind of thing I do, but she knows how to write perfect specimens of whatever genre she takes up. I'd met her before in Seattle at the bigger Writer's Weekend events, but we'd never had a whole conversation until I picked her up at the airport on Friday. She's so much better known as a writer of paranormal romance, I didn't realize she'd published straight-up fantasy novels. (They came out while I was in grad school, which was sort of like being in a coma. I missed a lot.) Anyhow, she sells to the same houses I'd like to sell to, just in different lines, and she knows some of the editors I'd like to work with. Today she asked me to read the first five pages of the big book aloud to her. The first thing she said when I was done was, "That's fantastic!" The second thing was, "I figured you'd be good." The third thing was, "I'd be happy to blurb your book. Feel free to say so in your query letters." The fourth thing was, "Please email me the whole manuscript when you get a chance. I'd love to read it, just as a reader. As soon as possible." The first editor who came to her mind as a possibility was the same one who's been at the top of my wish list for the past six months. Even if nothing comes of it, that suggests that I'm at least in the right ballpark when I assess my own work.

Tomorrow I give the first fifty pages of the big book a last proofreading pass before sending them to the agent who asked to see them on Thursday, and I make one last attempt to whip my query letter into shape. It's a little odd that the agent wants a query letter when she's already requested the partial, but apparently the genre conventions of the query make it a useful tool for getting a sense of the book's whole plot arc, or at least a sense of my ability to explain its plot arc. Queries are painful to write, but mostly it's a great relief that she doesn't want a synopsis. Synopses are notorious among writers as sources of agony, and I suspect mine is a poor specimen of its kind. In any case, the need to revise my query because someone wants the partial is a great problem to have. A superb problem, as problems go. I think this particular agent could be a really good fit.

My last duty to the conference is to take Susan Sizemore back to the airport. After that, it's just personal follow-up and thank-you notes, at least until June.