Why?

Now that it is done, now that Dead in His Tracks is having to fight its way in the marketplace, I have begun to question the wisdom of having written it at all. As I have progressed as a writer, as I have gone from thinking of myself as being a comic writer to thinking of myself as being a serious one, I have also come to question whether this project, conceived in humor and dedicated to the proposition that all things are created absurd, was the best jumping off point for my new incarnation.

Conceived, originally, in a spirit of parody, there are elements of the plot that strike me as being too constructed, too manufactured. It seems too mannered to me. It also occurred to me earlier today that it is harder to go from genre novel, in terms of sales, to general fiction than it is the other way around. The people who represent genre authors and the firms that publish their work want different things from a mystery than what I can give them. They cherish and defend the cliches that I wish to subvert.

Given all my feelings about this, Dead in His Tracks will probably become a #1 international bestseller and then a movie--most likely in 3-D--starring some pretty boy who can't act. Or....

And So, To Market

I finished the latest revision of DEAD IN HIS TRACKS this past Monday. I'm now working on the cover letter and that most dreaded of all marketing items, the synopsis.

I had an interesting run at the end of the rewrite of the novel. I went, very suddenly, from slaving over a single chapter for about a month to knocking out two or three chapters a day. Apparently they had gotten less lousy the further on I had gone.

Which is not to say that there were no changes or corrections. I actually added to the final paragraph, so I can quite truthfully claim to have rewritten it from one end to the other.

And now on to trying to sell it in some realistic manner. Wish me luck.

Chapter 7 Continues

Since my previous post, I have been creating, from whole cloth, a new Chapter 7. The events leading up to this momentous event are as follows: When I started this revision way back in the distant past, I found that I needed to combine what had been Chapters 1 & 2. This meant that Chapter 3 became Chapter 2 and so forth along the line.

That is until I reached Chapter 7.

The new Chapter 6 (which was the old Chapter 7) included the mention of a character that I had not been aware of before then. It seemed reasonable that Drayton would speak with her. In order to do that, a new Chapter 7 would be necessary.

I've been working on this new chapter over the last month or so with some success. It's growing like a weed. Now, I might find that it will need to be taken apart and put back together again once the dust settles, but things are going along nicely thus far.

In a related turn of events, I've decided that it's time for me to maintain this blog a bit more steadily. The progress of this manuscript matters--to me, if not to anyone else--and the record should be noted.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

As I've worked at revising my book, it has taken an increasingly serious turn. What started out as a comic mystery has turned into a literary mystery, and the title Michael Drayton, Detective Guy has become increasingly anachronistic. I'm at a point where I'm starting to sense that the difficult, smash-it-to-pieces-and-put-it-together-again portion of this current revision is coming to its end, and so the imperative to find a new and better title has made itself known.

The new title of the book will be Dead in His Tracks, which I am putting my thumbprint on as of the date of this post. I have a brand new chapter to write and then one more that is going to need a lot of attention. After that, the quality of the work improves dramatically, and the task of revising should get exponentially easier.

I am very excited at the possibility of having a manuscript that I can submit places in the not-too-distant future.

From the Beginning

I've started work on revising Chapter 1 in order to bring it into line, stylistically with the later chapters. Most of the first third of the book will end up undergoing such a revision. To give you an idea of how much it is changing, take a look at this screen shot of the work done so far:




In other words, the work is significant. And necessary. When the manuscript was most recently rejected, I had to face the nagging concern that had been eating at me for quite some time. I was afraid, and now think it was true, that there was too much of the parody left in the early chapters, too many self-consciously bright lines. I had gone through and taken out a load of jokes a couple of years ago, but I hadn't done what really needed to be done, which was thoroughly rewriting that part.

The end result of this process should be a much stronger manuscript.

The Latest but Not Greatest

I heard back from the independent publisher last evening, and Michael Drayton, Detective Guy was rejected yet again. that's life, although they could have chosen another day besides my anniversary to tell me.

Anyway, I am considering at this point the self-publishing option. ("The self-publishing option." Doesn't that sound important and almost dangerous? "mr. President, what shall we do?" "We have no choice. This time it's the self-publishing option.") I've never been very good at playing the game or being a cog in the machine, and maybe now is no time to start. It's worth some investigation, anyway.

If there are any better ideas, I'm open to them.

The Next One

Ever since I finished Michael Drayton, Detective Guy, I've been thinking about what sort of follow-up that book should have. It's not that I lack for ideas for stories--I have several of those--it's that Drayton doesn't seem to lend himself easily to the longer form of the novel. And his adventures are too complicated for short stories. He's a novella kind of guy. And I hate the idea of padding something out just to make it a more publishable length.

So, this morning, I had the thought that I might try pitching a follow-up that was a collection of three novellas rather than one novel. That way, I can just tell the three stories I have in mind and let them each spin out as they will without having to worry about reaching somebody else's idea of a publishable length. Had I had this idea a couple of years ago, I probably would have just written a Drayton omnibus that would tell all the stories I have to relay for him in one fat volume. Maybe some day I will.

No word yet from the independent publisher. Ten months today. That's fine. I'd rather that they took their time and accepted it than rushed and rejected it. I'm just fine with being patient.

For Their Consideration

Well, I went and done it. I have submitted the entire manuscript of Michael Drayton, Detective Guy to an independent publisher. Since they wisely give no guidelines on how long it takes them to get through the slush pile, I have no true idea how long I'll have to wait to hear back. And that's fine.

Now I can put it aside in my mind and let the Fates take up the load.

In the meantime, I will be concentrating on my non-Drayton novel, Such Is Life. And I've started seriously thinking about the second Drayton tome. As pertinent thoughts occur to me about that, I'll post them here.

And now we wait.

Retrenching

I wrote yesterday's post in the midst of many strains, including work on a chapter of Drayton that, while working well in some regards, didn't have the right feel. What bothered me about the revised Chapter One wasn't that the work was bad as much as that it wasn't fitting in with the existing book as well as I had hoped. It was becoming apparent that, in order to make this one chapter work, the whole book would have to be revised extensively, and I was not yet comfortable with that notion.

It's not that the book as a whole doesn't needed revision. I'm sure it does. It's just that, whatever its value, whatever its weaknesses and strengths, it does not, I think, need to become an entirely different book. Any revisions should further explore the thing that it is, should iron out as many of the bumps and creases as my talent will allow, should shine light in the corners that are now dark.

And so, mostly on instinct, I have put that revision on hold.

However, I do have a new plan in place. I will continue to market the manuscript as it is, only I will stop sending it to agents and start sending it to independent publishers. The aspects of Drayton that turn off agents--the mixture of literary with genre fiction, the length, the humor--might actually turn out to be strengths when being read by an editor. The only way to find out for sure is to try.

And it is not the end of the fragment recently written. It strikes me that, with a few amendations, it would work as part of the second Drayton novel. That story will intertwine investigations that Drayton performs for a wealthy, reclusive eccentric, a certain C.F. Dudley, with work he performs for a local TV news vixen who is concerned about a stalker.

I think these are the right moves to make, although I have been wrong many times in the past, may be now, and most certainly will be again in the future. All you can do is stumble forward as best you can.

Blocked

I've gotten stuck in the rewriting of Drayton, and I find myself lost. I have no idea what I'm doing or why. I suspect that I should hold off again, step back, and reconsider. Put it aside for a year or more and let it fester. See how it comes out once I've forgotten it.

I think I should almost certainly start over and rethink and refine every aspect of the book, every page, every paragraph, every sentence, every word.

But we'll see. Currently, I'm feeling pretty low and frustrated generally. that's not the proper time to make these sorts of decisions. However, I think I will put the project on hold while I sort myself out. That's only fair to the work. It's better to do nothing than to do it an injury.

The Beginning Is Begun

For the first four days, the new version dragged. I had a couple of hundred words that I was fiddling with, but little real progress. And then, yesterday, the sluice opened. words started coming out in groups. You never know how long a good period like this will last, but I don't feel dry this morning. In fact, I've already added a couple of more word groups.

My current goal is to get through about 50 pages, which is the sample length most often requested by agents. I don't have a deadline in mind, other than getting it done as quickly as I can while doing a decent job of it. Once I have a big enough chunk to market the manuscript with, I can resume my sales effort. But we'll see what happens between now and when I get there.

A New Beginning

There has been something nagging at me ever since I finished the current draft of Michael Drayton, Detective Guy. As the previous rewrite proceeded, I abandoned any pretense of trying to write a funny novel and started just writing a regular novel. And as I crept along, I discovered that the book I was writing was developing in literary terms, and while still readable as simply a story, it had also become a serious novel.

Which is all well and fine, except that this evolution of the book took place gradually. And that means that the first part of the book is written completely differently than the rest of it. The opening four or five chapters were still rooted in parody and comedy while the succeeding chapters, while occasionally amusing, were far more straight forward and real.

Therefore, I've started work on Drayton 4.0. the first paragraph of the first chapter came off the assembly line yesterday. I'm uncertain as to whether I'll continue marketing it while I rewrite or whether I'll just advise any agents I contact that it is receiving further revisions. I think I read somewhere that you can do that.

Anyway, this is a complete reimagining of the beginning. So much will be changed that it might not even seem to be the beginning of the same book. However, these new chapters will lead up to and link with the existing more serious chapters of the book, which also get a brush up over time. I am not expecting them to change this radically, though.

Some day I hope to be finished writing this book, but you never know until you get there.

High Notes

So far, Drayton has been rejected by a handful of agents. That's not a big deal. All you can do is to keep shopping it until you find the agent or publisher who's on the right wave length, something which, I suspect, involves some level of luck. The right person has to come across it on the right day. And the more that you send your proposal out, the better the chances are that you'll come across the right person.

There's something to that "making your own luck" stuff.

Now, not all rejections are equal. Sometimes you get a form, if you mailed your submission, or some copy-and-pasted standard text, if you submitted electronically. And that's fine. That sort of rejection is not especially meaningful in any direction. You wrote something and they didn't want it. Fair enough.

On occasion--and it's an occasion that's becoming more and more frequent in my case--the rejection comes in the form of a personal note. This is a step up, first of all because you know that your stuff got some serious level of consideration. There had to be at least one glittering moment when the person evaluating the work thought "This might have possibilities." And, if you can get somebody to go that far, you just might be able to get the next person to go further.

At the least, it is encouraging.

I received just such a rejection from an agent this past weekend, and I took a chance and emailed him to thank him for his consideration and to ask him a couple of questions so that I could properly approach the rewrite I had started to realize was in order. In his response to that--and I really have to thank this guy some day--he noted "that the tone wasn't really hitting the high notes" in his opinion. Now, I had only sent him the first five chapters, and the high notes don't really start cropping up until Chapter Six.

I've thought it over, and three things occur to me. First, the opening chapters need a major rewrite in order to bring the tone in line with the rest of the manuscript. Second, while I'm at it, I might as well brush up the whole thing. And third, I have to approach this as being more than just a mystery. I need to turn Michael Drayton, Detective Guy into a great book.

Louis Armstrong used to get into challenges with other trumpeters at jam sessions, and he would rip off 200 high Cs in a row. I can do the same thing and need to.

What's holding this book back are the remnants of parody left from the early versions of the story. It's time to bury those for good. Right now, I'm ruminating. I'm hoping to start writing by the end of the week.

It's Out

Well, yesterday, I put my new and improved proposal into the mail to an agent who specializes in crime fiction. I am cautiously optimistic.

It's a strange thing, sending manuscripts out. It's this endless, elongated version of qualifying for a loan. You make your presentation, try to beef up your qualifications as best you can, and wait for some stranger to pass judgment on your worth to society. If the answer is rejection, you try again elsewhere. Eventually, you just go to a relative to see if they have an extra twenty.

Not this time, though. I've been quietly accumulating more credits. The manuscript--the collateral, if you will--is in the best shape its been. My cover letter and synopsis are light years better than they were. And this is all you can do: hone. Small credits are better than no credits. They build into medium sized ones that become humongo ones if you have talent and luck.

I've also learned something about myself in recent months, recognized a flaw in my character. It is an old one, deeply embedded, and it has hindered me in many areas of my life over the years. My problem is this: I have a tendency to try too hard. It used to hold me back when I tried to woo women, and I only was able to lasso my dear sweet wife because I had pretty much given up on finding someone and because we got to know each other over a period of a few months without the pressure of possible romance impinging itself on us.

Well, getting ahead in a career such as writing is a lot like starting a romance, and I think that I was always the guy who tried too hard, who made too many grand gestures, who forgot how to relax and be himself. I was always trying to write The Greatest Cover Letter of All Time, riddled with jokes that I had tried too hard to think up. In fact, the desire to insert jokes by force when necessary held back the quality of my work as well. I wasn't writing to my true potential because I would spend entire days trying to come up with a single funny line. And the work always showed, I'm afraid.

Now, this is not to say that I'm not a funny writer. Funny things occur to me spontaneously all the time. And the spontaneous ones are usually better, funnier, and more original than the ones I spend days thinking up. And the non-joke that I put in place of the day-long effort works more fluently and smoothly and allows me to do little tricks with language and with character development and dialog. And by hiding these goodies amidst the humor, I can be literary without highlighting it with neon signs and a bright orange sticker on my forehead.

At least that's the hope.

In the end, I'd be happy just entertaining people. It matters not whether readers find any deeper depths or not. It only matters to me that I work. And that I not try too hard.

The Website Is Up (Officially)

After much tinkering and a quick upgrade of the website to remove all ads, Michael Drayton, Detective Guy is now available as a web presence in your cyber neighborhood.

Let the marketing officially begin!

The Beginning

Now the fun can begin. I just found out that I did not win the Emory Goes Novel contest, which is fine. I was a finalist, which is something. And now the true marketing can start.

I need to create a query letter, and I will do that over the weekend. The website is in development, and I hope to take care of some of the finishing details in the next few days. I even have the following video posted on youtube to show what a slick item I am in person.



This is going to happen. I know it in the still, small place at my core. Remember: You heard it here first.

Some Thoughts

My wife has a concept concerning a certain level of literature that she calls "bridge books." (This comes not from some zany; she is a former battle-hardened bookseller with a degree in English.) Bridge books are not books about bridge or books about bridges, they are books that bridge the perceived gap between popular and literary fiction. They help people who read only crappy but popular books step up to more challenging, and ultimately, more interesting literature. This doesn't mean that reading one book by Jan Karon or Russell Banks will take every reader from Harlequin Romances to Tolstoy, but every little step helps.

Now, I bring all this up because it has occurred to me that Michael Drayton, Detective Guy might just be a fair example of just such a book. It starts in a manner almost lighthearted and ends in a far and distant place from that. However, and I did not plan it this way, it makes that transition slowly and almost imperceptibly throughout the book.

On the one hand, I think that mirrors Drayton's experience throughout the story. The change in mood of the story reflects the change in his mood. There is, however, another way of looking at it, I think. I think it also reflects my personal journey as a writer, that it starts out with me the comedy writer and ends with me the serious author. In that way, it is my own personal bridge book.

We'll see how it seems to the cold cruel world once it gets published though. Readers will take what they want from it, not what I intend for them. That's the game.

The Website Is Up (After a Fashion)

Although it is still in rudimentary form, the website for Michael Drayton, Detective Guy is now open for business.

There is now a sample chapter available, as well as a few other tidbits. Visit often and bring a publishing contract.

Another Step

The other bit of Drayton-related news is that I've acquired the domain name michaeldrayton.com and am in the beginning stages of assembling a website. My dear wife has provided me with a cascade of ideas, and I'm going to use my developing knowledge of web design to give it a try myself.

The website will link here, of course, and there will be a sample as well as a video clip of me reading a selection. I'm not sure what else right at the moment, but I have to start thinking of it from the perspective of the people who might come to visit it, such as agents, publishers, and well wishers.

I will post updates here as they occur.

What's Been Going on During the Silence

The truth is that I've been waiting. At the end of Febraury or the beginning of March, I submitted Michael Drayton, Detective Guy to the Emory Goes Novel contest, which is a new thing that is being sponsored by the Creative Writing Program of Emory University's English Department, where I am employed. The contest is limited to those who are either Emory students, faculty, staff, or are members of the Friends of the Creative Writing Program, and it was supposed to close on February 1st, but that got pushed back a month.

In April, I got notified that Drayton had been selected as one of the 10 finalists and was asked to submit the complete manuscript. Since then, I've been occupying a fine set of tenterhooks that I keep on hand for just such contingencies. I am hoping to keep from going completely out of my mind until some time next week, although I have always been precocious.

Waiting is hell on earth. If there is a physical hell that isn't just everyday life, I would suggest that it is nothing more than the line to go to see God. And when you finally get to the front of the line, He's on his Lunch Break and you get sent back to the end of the line again.

I will post the results of the contest once I know anything, which is when I will start shopping it again. And if you need me for anything in the meantime, just look for the guy on the hooks.