Getting That Magic Phone Call

The call comes at 5.01 pm. You know it's a magic phone call because you have Caller ID, and because agents don't call to say Gee, I didn't like your book as much as I'd hoped.

And in a very short period of time, your world changes.

This agent gets your book. He gets the characters. He even gets the obscure literary parallel you worked in that no one else has seen. He loves the intricacy of the plot and the complexity of the main character. He knows which of your characters sprang from your fingers of their own volition. He understands that you can sell books in Canada because you went to university there and that Canadians will be happy to claim you as one of their own. He agrees you can spin off certain characters into their own sequels. He says all the magic words, like hardback and movie and review attention. He sees the parts that drag a bit but says I kept turning the pages anyway and this could go out as it is.

You couldn't have scripted this call better yourself.

And you wake up the next morning knowing that you are the same, but not the same. For the first time in a very long time, you can relax. You can just be, for a while. Because now you know that your dreams weren't absurd and that you haven't just spent much of the last year of your life working on a novel that was going to go back to languishing in a drawer.

And you wish like hell your dad was alive, so you could tell him.

FREE Registration to Backspace Writers Conference This Friday-Saturday

Yep, you read that right. Turns out that just too much is popping here for me to make it to the conference, so I'm giving away my ticket to the Backspace Writers Conference this coming Friday and Saturday, May 29-30, in NYC. Yep, this is a $355 value, but apparently they don't give refunds (if they change their minds, this post will promptly disappear!).

So my loss = your gain. This conference includes some cool seminars and guest speakers, a fancy reception, and lots and lots of agents. Roaming about freely, ripe to be accosted by writers seeing representation.

If you don't have friends to crash with in New York, bypass the group rate and go right to the Radisson Martinique page where you can find rooms for less than $200.

Precedence goes to my friends and readers! Email me if you want to go.

And Today I Give Thanks

I thank SO, who endured a late-night, last-minute phone call when I rattled off an outline of the chapters that were troubling me and helped me pinpoint what was off, so I could work until midnight and fix it.

I thank Cat Connor, a friend in New Zealand whom I know through blogs and email and Twitter, who dropped her own manuscript and shuffled the demands of life with seven children on a day that included a long trip to the ER, to read my manuscript and give valuable feedback. (You can buy her recently released thriller Killerbyte on Mobipocket or on Amazon, for the Kindle. Please do.)

I thank Carole, whose full name I won't give until she finishes her own incredible work-of-genius book, who responded to my panicky CAN YOU POSSIBLY READ NOW email and leapt on my manuscript Monday as soon as she met her own deadline, finishing late yesterday morning, giving me stupendous feedback along the way, and ending with a wonderful, delirious phone call.

I thank my dear friend Story, who, when I was felled by nasty flu/cold/allergy, fetched a Priority Mail envelope from the post office and waited while I stuffed the envelope and attached postage, because I was too sick to navigate the very steep driveway to the mailbox.

And I thank my host here, who has provided me time and space to write - my own little writer's retreat.

Things happen that you don't plan. I didn't expect to get sick and get stranded out of town. I didn't expect to have manuscript requests arrive as quickly as they did (hey, agents, didn't you know you are supposed to take weeks to respond?). But what a wonderful feeling to have these people in my life, here for me when I need them.

And, last but not least, I thank the ancient Epson EPL-5700i laser printer that somehow produced 400 crisply legible pages yesterday without blowing up despite having a cartridge very nearly out of laser dust. And for the post office, for having flat rate Priority Mail mailing boxes large enough to stuff an entire manuscript inside. And stamps.com, for having a program that lets me print postage wherever I am in the States.

And now we rest.

No, oops, now we load up the four dogs and drive 1,000 miles home.

Printer, Don't Give Out on Me Now

You are creaking and groaning, and you are almost out of ink. And you are so old that I would have to special order an ink cartridge for you, and I'm leaving as soon as this manuscript is in the mail. And in fact have delayed my trip a day to get it printed and mailed.

Please, please, please keep printing. Even though you have been claiming to be almost out of ink for the last 200 pages, and even though you are making noises I have never heard a printer make.

Why, oh, why, would an agent want an entire manuscript printed? I thought most of them had lovely Kindles or, well, fast printers in their own offices that would be easier than forcing the postal carrier to lug heavy parcels to them. And obviously - the folks who asked for the manuscript via email are getting it a whole lot faster.

Creak creak groan groan. It's still working!

Seeing Dad Again

Last night I dreamed about my dad.

He pops up in my dreams periodically, although he's been dead 17 years. These are great dreams - it's wonderful to see him. In my dreams he's walking around, not bed-ridden and gaunt as he was at the end, and I always think with a sense of great happiness (and that wonderful illogic of dreams) Wow, you're not dead after all.

Of course he's dead. I know he's dead. I took care of him his last month of life, and found him the morning after life left his body, and yes, it's pretty much as awful as you can imagine, only worse. It's like everything you ever knew in life before that point was just play-acting.

But in my dreams he is alive and healthy and happy, and we are more open than we ever were and talked more than we ever did. And I am happy.

And all you people reading this who have a dad who is alive, please go hug him or tell him you love him (even if he's the gruff kind of dad who seems not to want to hear it) or send him a nice note remembering something great he did for you. Do it for me.

Because I can't - except in my dreams.

This is Someone's Dream Agency

I look up an agent who recently sold an interesting-sounding crime novel (an all-around category that can encompass many books - yes, a crime occurs in my book - actually, several). The link opens on the page with all the agents, and their photos start to load.

The first is a blonde woman. The second is a blonde woman. The third is a blonde woman. Yikes, I am thinking, Do they only hire blonde women?

And just when I am beginning to wonder if I should be offended or if I should be in awe at someone managing to have such specific hiring practices - I realize the agency is in Sweden. Where, presumably, many blonde women live.

And they're actually not all blonde - some are rather brunettish.

I Love My Epson 5700i Laser Printer

Didn't know Epson made laser printers, did ya? They don't now, but they used to. It was one of the first printers with USB connectors, so you could use it on either Macs or PCs.

I'm not crazy about Epson now - I had an inkjet that failed 13 months after purchase, and when I took it apart learned a nasty little truth: Inkjet printers waste a huge amount of ink. There's a pad in the bottom of the printer, like a huge tampon, soaking up that extra ink. (Never mind the issue of the chip that tells you the cartridge is empty when it isn't.)

And learned that if you complain mildly to Epson, you're out of luck. If you complain specifically and say "I understand you're replacing these printers even if they are not under warranty" - you get a new refurbished printer. So I got a replacement, and Pinecone didn't (hers failed two weeks before mine, which I discovered when I offered her my useless cartridges).

I had retired the Epson laser when it started groaning loudly, and got a cheap Dell laser. I left the Epson in a closet down South, and pull it out when I'm visiting.

But I do love this old Epson. It's slow by today's standards, but it cranks mightily. In the last few weeks, it's printed more than 1,000 pages (yes, I've been editing a lot). Sure beats using a borrowed inkjet, with all that wasted ink and those insanely expensive cartridges.

"Girls Need Things Fixed"?

I just read the children's book I'M GLAD I'M A BOY! I'M GLAD I'M A GIRL, reproduced over on Emily's blog. (Thank you, Moonrat, for pointing it out.)

I can't be outraged, because I'm laughing so hard, although this is an astounding piece of propaganda (please tell me people never really believed all this stuff).

Apparently my folks never read the entry that says

Boys fix things.
Girls need things fixed.

Or I wouldn't have gotten that toolbox filled with tools from my dad for my 12th birthday. (To be fair, he also gave me a sewing kit, and showed me how to knit - my mom couldn't knit worth a darn. No pun intended.)

It also says things like

Boys are policemen.
Girls are metermaids.

And

Boys invent things.
Girls use what boys invent.

Guess they never heard of Madame Curie, eh?

And my personal favorite:

Boys eat.
Girls cook.

Ah, just go read it. It's short. What's horrifying is that it was published in 1970 - not in 1950.

I do love the drawings, and the rather mean look on the girl's face when she's giving that parking ticket and when the policeman is stopping her from crossing the street. And the beleaguered look on the boy's face when he's pushing the pram.

"Fatal Error - Memory Dump"

Not words you want to see on your computer screen early on a Sunday morning. Or any time.

It means you must to try to reboot, then frantically back up before the damn hard drive fails. Because fail it will. I've never experienced a memory dump without a hard drive failure following within a few weeks, at most.

At least this computer is only a five months old, so not so much to back up. The tricky part is backing up all the emails. I still haven't managed to import all my Sent emails from the last hard drive failure.

Yes, they are Dells. Yes, when I sell my novel I'll buy a Mac. As soon as the ink on the contract is dry. Maybe before.

Yes, I Know the Answers to the New Garth Stein Quiz

I have a secret way of solving it very fast.

But I'm not posting the answers, because you guys are smart enough to Google them and now the winner isn't the first right answer, but the right answer pulled from a hat. (I'm still hoping for a signed book.)

I'm in the May Garth Stein newsletter, because I solved the puzzle first last month:

The winner of last month's challenge was Sara J. Henry, who lives in Vermont with her four canine friends Monty, Bridget, Emma, and Lucy. Sara also keeps a regular blog journal about the amusing events of living, writing, and raising dogs in Vermont. She even has some special comments on Garth on her blog at Sara in Vermont--Why I Hate Garth Stein.

Probably it's more accurate to say that Lucy, Emma, Bridget, and Monty are in the newsletter. I am the prop upon which they sit and lean. You can see that Bridget, in my lap, was rather bored with the whole thing.

Oh, yeah. Garth Stein is the author of THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN. If you haven't bought it yet, do so.

How Do People with Small Children Function?

Another thunderstorm, another bad night for Lucy. Which means another bad night for me. At least this one didn't start until 4.30 am or so, so I did get at least four hours of sleep. (Apparently watching Survivor last night excited me so much I couldn't get to sleep afterward. Yay for nerds! - Stephen who could barely manage to balance on the beam but memorized a long mathematical sequence by converting the symbols to numbers and memorizing the numbers.)

But now I feel like dirt.

If I'd had to get up and go to a 9 to 5 job, I'd have been inhaling coffee or Red Bull and still faking functionality most of the day. Since I work at home, it's a lost morning, which I'll have to make up later today or this weekend.

Hats off to every parent who manages to go to work the day after being up with a sick or nightmarish child. Don't know how you do it.

Why I Must Be Very Careful Today

Because on this day last year, 1,000 miles from home, I broke my foot. And had surgery the next day.

On SO's birthday.

And therein ensued a mad race to recover and get myself and my car back to Vermont with Bridget (who SO was going to keep, Monty being stashed elsewhere in a place with a high fence) in time to hop a plane to Australia three weeks later.

It was not a pretty sight.

So I am under strict orders to be very careful today - and not to break another bone.

Note: Made it through the day safe and sound. Whew.

On Waking Up at 2.41 AM

I'm a good sleeper. I've perfected the art of the middle-of-the-night bathroom shuffle, so I can visit the bathroom without quite waking up. But if something truly wakes me up, say around 3 AM or later, I can't go back to sleep.

And at 2.41 AM, you can't get up and start things like cleaning closets without disturbing other canines or humans. And you aren't quite awake enough to do actual editing or writing work.

So you turn on your computer. You catch up on blogs in Google Reader. You read everything interesting in the New York Times. And then you do the things you'd never admit to doing in the broad light of day, such as visit aol.com and msn.com. And you learn about Melissa's wardrobe mishap, and you see the emails she and Jason exchanged. You learn that Jon is stepping out on Kate, and that Hasslehoff was admitted to a hospital with a .39 blood alcohol content, and look at a collage of photos of him through the years. You see a tape of a much younger Susan Boyle singing and think about her still singing, 26 years later, and finally getting close to her dream.

You see photos of a woman whose entire face was shot off by her husband (who is serving seven years - seven years!?!), who has the grace and courage to go out in public and when overhearing a child who thinks she's a monster, show him her old drivers license photo and explain that she isn't a monster, just someone who was shot. And to see her proudly wearing the new, albeit still droopy face that has been transplanted onto her, and to learn that she can now breathe on her own and eat solid food and taste and smell for the first time since the shooting. (And now feel extraordinarily petty about your own small aches and pains and the unkindness of some people that has been bothering you.)

But you still can't sleep, so you pick up the only book that is near: At the Mercy of the Mountains: True Stories of Survival and Tragedy in New York's Adirondacks (where you used to live) and finally fall asleep and dream of avalanches and flash floods and struggling for survival.

And wake up late and groggy, but with a markedly better attitude toward life.

Ah, Damn, Another One

Inspiration for the week:



If it won't play, go here.

There's even more to it: Jamie Pugh lost his wife a decade ago to a brain tumor. I'm humbled.

Author's Guide to Facebook, Lesson 1

What a famous author should not do after accepting a Friend request (from someone in the same business, at that) : Have your assistant post for you.

Names have been changed.

And Now We Wait ...

This is the hard part - waiting to hear back from an agent.

It's somewhat like, I suspect, medical students waiting to hear what residency program they've been selected for. Want a dermatology residency? Oops, sorry, not enough slots. Those medical students will end up as doctors regardless of what residency program they get, but the journey will be a very different one. As will their careers.

And so it is with a literary agent. Another agent can sell your novel, but it won't be the same journey.

So you wait. And compile the list of the agents to query next, in case this agent doesn't fall in love with your manuscript.

Lucy Has an Affliction

It's called thunderstorms.

Something about the change in barometric pressure upsets her immensely, and a good half hour before it starts to rain, she gets upset. She shakes and wants to crawl under me (this is a dog who generally would never sleep with you - she likes her privacy).

And Tennessee, where we are for a few more days, has amazing thunderstorms - ones where you awaken and wonder if a tree limb is going to come crashing through the house, and you make sure you know where your emergency bag is so you can grab it if you have to shelter in the basement because a tornado's on the way.

So we had a very rough night. I hauled her up in bed for a while, and then put my pillow and a blanket on the wood floor and slept in front of her open crate.