EclectEcon

Use Your Amazon Gift Cards for These Novels -- or Give The Novels as Gifts!

Susan's Story and 2605 are companion novels about what happens when Fred Young is missing and presumed dead after the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001.

In 2605, Fred Young, a successful mortgage-bond specialist, is late for his meeting with Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Centre on 9-11. He had fantasized about getting away from it all for a few years and used the opportunity, letting everyone think he was killed in the terrorist attacks. He changed his appearance, his name, and began searching for a new life.

In Susan's Story, Fred's wife and teen-aged children are devastated by the news that Fred is missing and presumed dead after the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Because of their insurance and the government programs, Susan is wealthy beyond her wildest dreams. How she handles her grief, her new fortune, and her life as a sudden single mother of teenagers impresses everyone so much, she's a shoo-in, elected senator. The life of being a politician and a single mother of teens was not entirely easy.

Murder at the Office Christmas Party and Shrink-Wrapped Murder are classic murder mysteries focusing primarily on the personalities and lives of the victims and suspects but also involving a homicide team headed by Lieutenant Randall.

Murder at the Office Christmas Party describes life in a small but rapidly growing firm led by a an aggressive, no-nonsense woman. As time goes on, she makes many enemies, several of whom would benefit from her death. She is killed when the lights are out during a tree-lighting ceremony at the company's Christmas Party, and it's up to Lieutenant Randall and his homicide squad to solve the crime.

Shrink-Wrapped Murder takes place at the Midwest meeting of ASP, the Association of Sex Psychologists. Dr. James Melrose was over-the-hill, a bully, a manipulator, and a predator. Ten minutes after he leaves the room, he staggers back in and dies. Only four other people left the room while he was out. Lieutenant Randall and his team must rely on interviews, forensics, and the medical examiner to figure out who did it.

Any of the books would make a great gift, especially for people who may have to isolate some more during the next few months and will be happy to have some more books to read. And if you received Amazon gift cards for Christmas, you might want to use some of the money on them to buy one or more of these books.

Information Costs, Search Costs, Shopping, and Anxiety

I've done lots of shopping and search in my lifetime, and I'm often bothered by questions about will I or did I find the right product, service, reference, date, job, theatrical agent, acting gigs, etc. Most of the time, search and shopping don't create much, if any, anxiety for me; I actually enjoy the process. Other times...

In the late 1960s when I was actively looking for a job as an economist for the first time, I just wrote cover letters to schools I thought I might be interested in, essentially saying "here's my curriculum vitae. Are you interested in someone like me?" Those schools that were interested set up interviews with me at massive conventions.

Later, with the introduction of JOE [Job Opportunities for Economists], schools advertised what fields of economics they were most interested in, and that cut down on my letter writing (i.e. made my search more efficient and less costly). It seems like a decently effective system. Let's hear it for intermediation and increased search efficiency!

Let me tell you, those searches were nothing like the search for literary agent.

Now that I have self-published three novels and written a fourth that is ready to go, and now that I've received some favourable reviews on Amazon and Goodreads (including many unsolicited reviews from people I don't know!), along with encouragement from some friends, I'm thinking perhaps I should try to find a literary agent to help get my novels published by a publishing house that will promote and distribute them. So I ordered the 2020 Guide to Literary Agents.

Hah!

• There are thousands of agents listed. Thousands. How do I choose which one(s) to write to?
• While the listings tell, roughly, what genres the agents are interested in, that information is pretty vague.
• The listings sometimes also say whether the agents are accepting new "queries", apparently the industry jargon for inquiries about representation. But that information is often out-of-date.
• There's a section of twenty agents seeking new clients, but most of them aren't anymore.
• The listings provide some guidance as to which agencies handle which types of fiction, but when you go an the agency's website, you get a much better idea, along with more nearly up-to-date information about which agents within a given agency might be looking for clients who write novels like the ones I write.
• So the guide is of some use, but I feel I'll have to visit tonnes of websites for accurate and up-to-date information. This looks like a daunting task.

Anyway, knowing what I know at this point, my search strategy now (subject to change as I learn more) is

• begin looking through the guide somewhat systematically; in my case from back to front.
• find agencies that might be interested in my novels. The problem is that I have two mystery novels and two novels that are more like contemporary, mainstream adult fiction, so I need to identify both types of agencies.
• Go to the websites of agencies that might be interested in my books.
• Look through their agent list to see if they have any agents listed who might be interested in any of my novels.The general rule seems to be that I can submit only one novel to any given agent. I can't submit all three or four novels to one agent.
• Enter the agent's name and info into a spreadsheet.
• Identify which novel is most likely to appeal to each agent.
• Look at their submission details and enter those in the spreadsheet as well. The submission guidelines are roughly similar but slightly different for every agency.
• Just keep looking and trying; be persistent.

This search process is SO time-consuming, scary, intimidating, iffy, low-probability, you name it. I know most authors' submissions are rejected at this stage, so I know I'll have to craft a good intro letter, synopsis, etc.

I also know I'll have to be prepared for rejection. I think I'll be okay with that. As I've said in the past, I've had tonnes of rejections when dating, applying for jobs, and submitting articles for publication in academic journals. Also my hit rate as a professional actor going to auditions was at best one-in-twenty. I'm used to rejection. I think.

So if any of you have bought and read any of my novels and happen to know an agent who might be interested in promoting it to a publisher, please let me know. Thanks!

2605

Susan's Story

Murder at the Office Christmas Party

 

 

The Decision to Self-Publish My Novels

I have self-published my novels 2605, Susan's Story, and Murder at the Office Christmas Party on Amazon. Why did I self-publish them instead of finding an agent and publisher? After all, the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads are, for the most part, pretty darned good.

The short answer: I'm old, and I wanted to see them in print before I die.

Getting a agent isn't easy (see the long quote below), and if you get one, then dealing with all the revisions and changes 'recommended' by an agent and then by an editor takes a lot of time and can change the heart and soul of my work (I once had a director recommend such substantial changes to the plot of a play I'd written, that I decided not to have it produced!), and then the publisher will want changes and will dither, too. I foresaw years of agony that I wasn't willing to go through, with a reasonable probability that my manuscripts would, after all that time and work, just languish on my computer hard drive.

But the novels are written now, and three of them are published (that's three more than I ever imagined myself writing four years ago). I will perhaps begin the search for an agent soon; I feel as if I now have the time to consider everything that's involved with the process. I've accomplished the immediate goal: see my books in print before I die, and get some positive (and other, helpful) feedback; now I can maybe consider some longer-range goals.

So at this stage, the time delays are less serious; also I'm used to rejection (academic journal articles, past dating life, etc. gave me lots of experience), and so that won't bother me much; but the editing (if it gets that far) concerns me. I tell myself that it shouldn't concern me -- I've had excellent editors for some of my past academic writings, but still I worry.

Anyway, I need to let "Shrink-Wrapped Murder" sit for a bit before I re-edit it for publication. So maybe in a few days I'll begin the arduous process of trying to find an agent.

Arduous? You bet. Here's a recent Facebook post by the daughter of a friend:

BUCKLE UP, PALS. I HAVE A STORY.

As many of you know, I write novels. A few years ago, having written a couple and not knowing what to do with them, I learned something from an author I admire: in order to submit to a big publishing house, you gotta have an agent. Pretty much every popular author you can think of will have an agent. OK, EASY, I thought. I’m a good writer. I can get one of those.

(This marks the occasion of my MOST WRONG assumption about publishing. THAT SHIT IS SO NOT EASY.)

I had no idea what I was doing, but I submitted to a bunch of agencies. I was rejected. A LOOOOTTT. Whew, I think that was the first time my ego really took a hit.

So I wrote a new book. I got up two hours earlier than necessary almost every day for 3 years just to write. I came home from school/work and wrote.

Edward James

put up with my single-minded fervour. I researched and made a list of good agencies. I didn’t want to settle for anyone I didn’t think could actually sell my book. But agencies get thousands and thousands of submissions. I got rejected again. A LOT MORE. If I’m being honest, I considered settling for a less qualified agency.

Alas, I wrote another book. Then another. Then another. Then another. One in particular got tons of interest. I was chosen for a program where an agented writer helped me edit and query. It went really well. Big agents asked to read it, then asked me to do big revisions. I did them. It took months. AND THEN......rejected.

Dude, I could paper my whole bedroom with rejections. One agent in particular really liked it, but wanted EVEN MORE revisions. I was bummed, cause I could see myself working with her - great agency, great sales, her wishlist said she liked “dark, edgy and weird” (my brand, tbh). But by now I was tired of that book, dammit. So I wrote.... you guessed it! Another book. I wrote and revised it FAST during quarantine. This time I sent it out to only a small handful of agents, including the one mentioned above.

Anyway, 11 days later (this is SUPER CRAZY FAST in publishing time), she emailed me saying she loved it and asked for a phone call. I screeched.

And if you read this far, I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I’m now officially represented by Claire Friedman of Inkwell Management in New York.

If you want to talk about my work, you must now go through her.

JK. But seriously, I’m psyched.