Godot Part II

Well, it's now a sharp, crisp November morning, and there's no refusal back yet from the current agents (whom we'll call M, in the best tradition of Bond films).

This, of course, may simply be because M has not yet had the time to dig my contribution out of the slush pile, and generate the standard refusal. However, one day, somebody may actually like it.

It does tend to be rather depressing for the budding author to pop up, bright eyed and bushy tailed, get whacked over the head with a club, and then repeat the performance time after time. Having an ego the consistency of boiled leather probably helps.

Outside, the birds are twittering dutifully, and the cat is snoozing in the best cat-manual approved manner beside me on the table as I type.

They also serve who only stand and wait.

Waiting for Godot

If not Godot, then an agent. I've tried now perhaps 5 agents, and have received a polite no from each. Some of the submissions have been conventional post submissions, and others have been by email, which some of them will now accept. The fastest refusal time so far has been 2 minutes, from a email submission where the agent replied to say that their books were full at the moment, and that they weren't accepting any more people.

Once again, an email with CV (not much use, since I want an agent because I don't have a writing background in the first place), a synopsis and the first 3 chapters has been sent off once again, and we wait in hope.

The Novel Continued

Your hedgehog has got his spiny little bottom into gear again, I'm glad to say. In between finishing one load of Open University marking, and starting another (soon), he's picked up on the creative writing again.

Once again, the crime novel Destroying Angel is being sent off to an agent, in the hope that they'll like it. The variation in agent requirements is both astonishing and strange. Some will be happy with a chapter or two and a short letter, whereas others demand chapters, a synopsis, a covering letter and an author cv. If I were an established author already I could see the point of the cv, but why my other job is important to them is a puzzle.

My own suspicion is that it's simply a way of filtering down the applications to a manageable quantitity: if they can't be bothered to send all of this in, then we we'll just read the work of the ones who can. Who knows---if agents feel really swamped, we'll have to compose an intoductory symphony for novels, and send in a video clip of us juggling lighted chainsaws.

The good news is that novel 2 (provisionally The Killer Section) is now getting off the ground and is getting written. Plots, subplots and characters are even now brewing and bubbling in the hedgehog's little cauldron of a brain. Cave lector!