Dot on the Horizon

A small piece of non-progress on the agent front. Having heard nothing since 16th November, I dropped off a message to M to ask if they'd received it all, and they did indeed reply. It seems that they have so many unsolicited submissions to go through that their turnround time will be about three months.

I suppose it's useful writing time for book 2...

The Waiting Game

Firstly, in case all you benighted Sassenachs out there didn't know, the 30th of November was St Andrew's Day (I didn't until I heard it on the radio). Why do people make a fuss over St Paddock's and even St Gorge's Days, but neglect St Android's? Perhaps it's because we Scots are a quiet, unassuming, self-effacing race of people.

Hedgehog waits patiently for agent M to respond: it's now Saturday, and a considerable number of days after the submission of sample chapters and other details. Did it ever get there? Has it been summarily junked on receipt? Is it just at the bottom of a large pile somewhere?

If I write again, asking what's happened, will it be too son? If I don't, how long should I wait before assuming it's down the tubes? Hmm.

On some other fronts, Christmas and all its attendant tasks is approaching like a steam train. Is there time to get all the presents, send the cards, and redecorate the hall, stairs and landing? (More of the decoration saga anon)

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!

Roman Holiday

Today the hedgehog visited a Roman town. To those of you in other parts of the world, this may or may not sound exciting, but in Yorkshire (the place of the hedgehog's present burrow), it's joost plain daft, as they say here. I'd like to say that it was the old Roman Town of Olicana, which it was, but it's now called Ilkley, which is a lot more prosaic.

There were no Roman soldiers marching up the streets, since I was about two thousand years too late, but once a year there is a Roman day, where people wear cardboard armour covered with tinfoil, and stonk about like a mass formation of wallies. Fortunately, this was not the Roman day, either.

Instead, Hedgehog and Hedgehogette visited several charity shops in succession, bought little or nothing, swithered about cuppas in a tearoom, did nothing again, and came home.

If it weren't for the wild excitement of life, I don't know what I'd do.

The novel and agents situation remains the same. I'm still looking for a nice, kind, good, reliable, enthusiastic literary agent for my crime/detective thriller number 1, while I try to write number 2. You heard about it here first.

I'm also waiting for the news that I haven't won the Arvon poetry competion again, but that will fail to drop through my letterbox later on, sometime in Novemeber.

As they say, "Nil carborundum illegitimi"

October Blues

How on earth did we get to October, 2006? Hedgehog must have drifted off into some kind of aestivation since the last blog.
How is the novel marketing getting on? It isn't. After a few feeble attempts to approach agents, Hedgehog succumbed to the pressures of domestic crises and Open University marking (which is what he's employed at part-time now). Novel1 is no closer to getting to the world, and Novel 2 stagnates at about one page so far.

What your spiny correspondent needs is a good hoof up the prickly rear, which he ought to administer himself. It may happen.

Meanwhile, we trundle through the warmest October that can be remembered. (No frost yet). Just in case you were wondering, the oct part in October means 8, as in the 8th month, just as September means 7th and November 9th. The anomaly is due to Julius and Augustus Caesar (try spelling that as Cesar, my transatlantic friends), who were ruthless, all-powerful rulers who suffered badly from meglomania (so no difference there from today, then).

More rambling nonsense later (perhaps).