Carv's Thinky Blog I'm an author with a focus on satirical science fiction.

Right Place, Right Time

Two months ago, I'd never heard of Fear Nought Productions.  Only a handful of writers had, really.  So you can't fault me for not approaching them first.

I wrote my first novel, though I might be ever so slightly exaggerating the word count, when I was eighteen.  It was terrible, and a blatant Star Wars knockoff to boot, but that didn't stop me from sending it to one of the major sci-fi paperback publishers.  It was rejected, of course, as it richly deserved, and I received my first rejection slip plus my crappy little novel back.  One rejection was all it took.  I'm pretty sure I burned my true debut novel.  If I didn't, mere sentiment encouraged me to preserve it; certainly no one else did.  The year was 1986.

Three years later, bored and lonely in my freshman year at ECU, I started writing another sci-fi novel.  I don't even remember what that one was called.  I wrote sixty-five pages, realized they weren't good enough, and aborted the project.

I wrote a full-length novel, The Big House, when I graduated from Southern Illinois in 1997.  That completed novel was fairly decent, in my self-protective memory at least, so I began the arduous, sometimes expensive process of trying to locate an agent to represent it.  I came damn close.  It was finally rejected at the Manos and Associates conference room table, the very last step before acceptance.  I had a few bites from other agencies as well, but ultimately, I couldn't get it off the ground.  My then-girlfriend had it bound for me as a birthday present.  I put my disappointing baby in a drawer and haven't looked at her since.

When I moved back to Ada in 2004 I began a novel called Paranormal.  I'd already done a year of heavy research in L.A., but sure enough, I wrote sixty-five pages, realized they weren't good enough, and shelved the whole project.

My friend Sean Boyd talked me out of a funk by encouraging me to write again.  I resolved to attempt one simple goal:  I wanted to write a good book, the kind I'd be likely to buy myself if I saw it on a shelf at Barnes & Noble.  The result, which occupied the first four months or so of my time in Washington state--plus a full year of polishing and editing--was Salvation (now called something else).  Some of you were kind enough to read it and offer feedback, both positive and negative, during that year.  For over a year now I've been trying to get an agent for this book.  Out of thirty submissions, I had probably two or three serious nibbles and one extremely close call at Neil Gaiman's agent.  One could do a lot worse.  Unfortunately, that opportunity fell through the week before my fortieth birthday.  I was not exactly joyous as a result.

The search wore on.  I felt I'd accomplished what I first set out to do.  The book was good, perhaps even very good.  I was pleased with it and, as you may have noticed above, I'm not overkind to my own work.  But now my goal expanded.  I wanted my book to be published.  And not self-published, not cranked out by a vanity publisher; I wanted a real publisher to value it enough to put it out there.  I wanted a real publisher to pay the upfront costs, believe in it enough to package and market it, and send it out into the market.

I searched for over a year.  Nothing came of it, nothing at all.  I was on the verge of giving up.  Maybe someday, I thought.  Maybe someday I'll have enough money to self-publish, if I decide I even want to.  Or maybe this one will live in a drawer like The Big House, worthless to anyone but me and my immediate circle of friends.

There's a "Buddy" in my book, a mentally retarded character, and an "Amanda," too, an unwed mother.  So it's funny that only four months after I wrote it, I fell in love with an Amanda here in Olympia, and I also grew close to her brother, an easygoing but in no way retarded guy named Buddy.  As I was going through the process of trying to find a buyer for the novel, Buddy took a job as salesman for the Chamber of Commerce, and that's how he met the Beahans. The Beahans own Fear Nought as equal partners with Preston Porter, the killer graphic design artist who made this site and my book cover look as good as they do.  The company was started with the goal of producing a feature film; it's only within the last year that it added a publication wing.  Buddy discovered this and recommended me and my book, despite the fact that he's only read a few dozen pages.

Here's the way it usually works.  You write a book, rewrite the book, re-rewrite the book, edit the book, beg all your friends to read it, take it to writers' groups and ex-professors, and gradually collate all this feedback into a polished (i.e., marketable) draft.  You send out query letters to every agent you can think of, and then wait as rejection slips and maybe, just maybe, rejection letters accrue over months.  Sometimes you get only one.  Sometimes you get two or three.  Those are depressing days, of course, but not as bad as the days you come close.

Maybe finally an agent loves it.  Good news!  Or maybe not.  The agent takes your book into that week's company conference and tries to get the rest of the agency excited.  Usually the agent fails.  But if the agent succeeds, the agent sends you a contract, then it's off to the races--meaning the agent goes through the same grueling process you just did, except now she's trying to get publishers to bite.  If you're incredibly, almost cosmically lucky, one does, but then the publisher asks you to re-re-rewrite the book.  You might get an advance, you'll almost certainly have to change the title, and you might find yourself feeling like you're back at square one.  Assuming you can make the changes the publisher wants, your agent will finally see a profit when your book gets released up to three years in the future.

Except that's not...how it's working...for me.

I have no agent.  Why approach one now?  I'd get one, sure, but why give fifteen percent of my royalties to some Los Angeles agent who rejected me in the first place?  I deal directly with the trinity at Fear Nought, and the only change they requested was the title.  We had that settled in twenty-four hours.  I've already delivered a finished manuscript, less than a week after signing my contract.  We have a cover concept and marketing ideas, which is good, because the book will be out within months.  They want it out for Christmas book buying season, including the audiobook.  My royalty rate is industry standard, even for New York or L.A.  A "first-time" author could do a lot worse.

So this is the culmination of a twenty-three-year quest.  And y'know, I might be giving up way too much of my psychology here, but it's the thing I've wanted most in my life, because it's the thing my mom wanted most.  My mom is the sole reason I made it out of Crowder, Oklahoma in reasonably sane shape, and it's been her dream from the time I was a small child to see me become a published author.  She cried when I told her the news, just as she did when I came so close at the agencies.  I don't mean to say my mom hasn't been proud of me, but I haven't always been proud of myself.  I said on the Fourth of July that I've been a colossal letdown to everyone who ever believed in me, and the more I thought about my little joke, the more I realized how much I thought it was true.  But something changed in me this fall.  I don't believe it anymore.  I believe things are going to be okay.  Fear Nought's already asked me about my second book, and they seem to like the concept.  I'd tell you what it's called, but experience is teaching me that it probably won't be called that.

I told the Beahans my goal for the next five years was simple:  I want to make a living from my writing.  I don't expect to be Jo Rowling or Stephen King.  No sane writer expects that.  I might keep teaching, even if I don't have to.  But wouldn't it be something to shape my imagination on paper, earn a comfortable living in the process, and then have time and money to spend with Amanda?  It's a good dream, a small dream perhaps, but the biggest dream I ever saw fit to indulge in my life.  And finally, at age forty-one, that dream glows on the not-so-distant horizon.