Odd Connection, Excellent Rejection

[dr_pretentious]

I'm just back from the annual family reunion in the Adirondacks, the right and true part of the world where the air smells like air and hummingbirds outnumber cars.

For a few years now, one my cousins has been dating the daughter of a Famous Memoirist. Until recently, they were seeing each other in a casual, non-exclusive sort of way, and at reunions past Cousin T would have some other girlfriend with him for the weekend the whole time he was telling me about how he thought he could get the Famous Memoirist to read my manuscript. And I would imagine how well that would go over with me, if I were in the Famous Memoirist's shoes: my daughter's hippie boyfriend, who in any given season is also sleeping with three to five other women, asks me to read his cousin's manuscript, which is 900 pages long and in a genre I neither read nor write, while at home I have a huge pile of fan mail and manuscripts from thousands of other people who also want a little piece of me. What would I say? Something non-committal and polite. And what would I do? Spend my time on my own writing, once the young man had gone home.

But something has shifted, and now T and M (the Famous Memoirist's daughter) are talking about marriage, and seem to be seeing each other exclusively. They may be moving to California together. M came to our family reunion for the first time and wanted to hear all our old family stories. She and I really hit it off, and she wanted to know all about my writing--even after I told her what it was. When she asked if I had a manuscript with me, I handed her "Closing Arguments" (the Bob novella), and she said if she thought her father might like it, she'd pass it on to him. I don't expect anything to happen on this front, but it would be nice to be surprised.

When I got home, a very encouraging rejection from Agent/Bachelorette #3--whom you may remember from this post--was waiting in my email. She's just moved to a new agency and won't be able to spend as much time helping writers revise as she thinks I would need with this book, but she likes the Big Book, urges me not to give up on it, and says there are other agents who would be in a position to take it on as is. Okay. Considering that she'd have been entirely within her rights to send a form rejection saying it didn't meet her needs at this time, I'm very pleased. It's tempting to translate this rejection as saying, If I hadn't just changed jobs, I'd have said yes. She comes very close to saying that. And she's totally right about the pacing problem. If I still don't have an agent yet when the Little Book is ready to be shopped around, I'll be querying her again.

Comments

[jasminewind.livejournal.com]

Congrats on the positive feedback, even if it was in the form of a rejection. Good for you for taking it as something good...ish!

I don't think I've read "Closing Arguments" (I can see that as a title for another Rugosa story that I've read, but I think you called that one "Shopping toward Shambala".

Any way I can read it?

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Same one. "Shopping toward Shambala" had too much of a chick-lit vibe to it. Still working on the next Rugosa story.

[jasminewind.livejournal.com]

I'm impressed that you were able to come up with two great titles (Bob & the Black Head of Atho was also good!). I like "Closing Arguments" as a title. Too bad, tho' I was looking forward to reading another Rugosa story! You know to keep me on the short list of readers for the one you're working on!

When will you hear about the grail story submission?

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

The Pagan Fiction Award site doesn't mention an anticipated response time. They had a June 24 deadline, and three months would be on the fast side of normal for this kind of thing. So I'm thinking Mabon is probably the soonest I can hope for an answer, unless they look at the disclosure in the cover letter and decide that a personal blog counts as previous publication. They wanted nothing that had been previously published, and stated that online publications counted, but it wasn't clear where a personal website or blog would fall, so I sent the story anyway and told them where it had been. If the story's disqualified, they'll probably want to get that out of the way right off. I guess we'll see.