fiction

Getting an agent rejection, and feeling relief?

An agent rejected me this morning. I saw the QueryTracker address in my inbox, felt the sense of doom that usually rears its head whenever I open a QT verdict from an agent, and then noticed something.

It was personalized! There was even a typo in it! Nothing major, and I don’t call it out to cast any aspersions on the agent–it was an open ( without a close. Any writer has had typos slip into his or her work; it’s a fact! Get over it. It doesn’t make them bad!

Simply put, the agent took the time to write some thoughts, specific ones!

Here’s what stood out: the agent said that I was a good writer based on my opening pages.

NEVER have I gotten a rejection that commented specifically on my writing. Speaking for myself, that’s the one thing I worry about above all else when an agent renders judgment: Is my writing any good? Is it up to snuff? I’d like to think I can string coherent sentences together without dreaded to-be verbs and go easy on adverbs/adjectives.

But until someone tells you, you don’t know.

The agent explained why the book might not be the best fit for the market, and that’s what gave pause.

Fine. I’m a big boy. I get how this business works. But I felt relief, in a sense. Not that I’m suddenly Faulkner or anything silly like that, but that I might have a puncher’s chance. Or not. It’s a brutal business, but I’ll navigate it with a little more confidence now.

And, no, I’m not naming the agent. So don’t ask!

Did you create your own author website? Asking for a friend …

Every author needs a website. I’ve had one since 2014, and based on what people I contacted on Reedsy said, it apparently dates back to the Stone Age.

So, new book or not, I need to update my site. The lady I hired more than 13 years ago was nice as can be. She built the website from scratch and it’s currently hosted on HostGator. And when I go to review the code, I see things like this:

HTML <<44 smfjoeodm xxxxx fdsoirms.fne>>

<tm> PL ^##skjed <crush> uuz # TML.

And there are HUNDREDS of those rows! I have no idea what any of that is, as I’ve never learned to code. And I hope I never have to. I could go back to the designer, but that would cost more. That’s fine. Or, I could hire someone to build a new website. I’ve gotten quotes on Reedsy ranging from $750 to $800, which I find reasonable. And I’ve gotten ones for thousands of dollars.

If you get to Squarespace, it’s quite intuitive. Meaning, in theory, I could build my own website without knowing any code.

I’ll have to renew HostGator in March, which will cost money. Or I could sign up with Squarespace and take the plunge (and still spend money, but it’s far less than $800).

I don’t need anything fancy. I just want something functional that looks nice and professional. I don’t need animations with dragons swooping across the screen. And if you’ve ever thought about going indie, you’ll need not just a good book cover, but a great one. That will cost over $1,000, likely more. (I got a quote for $10,000!) I won’t spend that much, but I will certainly invest in a great book cover because, let’s face it, some indie book covers look unprofessional. And this isn’t a knock on any author or artist. People choose what they can reasonably afford and what they think looks good on them. Heck, I had small presses (that are no longer in business) make excellent covers and, frankly, cringy ones. It’s the way it is.

But if you’re going indie, you want the most professional-looking product possible, both inside and out. That will cost thousands of dollars. Can it be cheaper? Sure. But it won’t look good. You and I both know it.

So, if creating my own website can save me money that can go toward a cover (I’ve already had it professionally edited, and that was pricey but worth it), I figure, why not try it? If I screw up, I can always go back to the professionals I originally contacted and see if they’ll take me on.

So, I’m curious. Did you build your own site?

Alex Honnold gets paid $500,000 for not falling to his death …

Just when you thought The Running Man would never become real television–because watching hunters murder human game show contestants might be unseemly–Netflix screams, “Not so fast!”

Now, the streaming giant didn’t greenlight a dystopian, murderous gameshow that, if you added snow, might resemble present-day Minneapolis, but it managed to pay Alex Honnold, a professional mountain climber, $500,000 to scale a tall tower in Taipei.

The catch: Honnold won’t wear any climbing or safety gear. He falls, he dies.

And, boy, did people watch, with 6.2 million views of “Skyscraper Live.” I wasn’t one of them. I find it ghoulish watching what is ostensibly entertainment, knowing full well the star entertainer might plummet 1,667 feet to his death. Netflix had the dignity to put a 10-second delay on the program in case that happened.

Can you imagine if it did? Now, I’m thrilled it didn’t. But I envision Alex somewhere on the tower, and then all of a sudden, you cut to an image reading, “Technical Difficulties.” They would not have broadcast Alex falling and then cut away before the splat. Netflix is classy that way.

First, if you don’t know who Alex Honnold is, watch Free Solo immediately. It documents how Honnold climbed the 3,000-foot-tall El Capitan at Yosemite National Park in 2018 without a rope. Or anything. It was him, some sturdy shoes, and a bag of chalk for his hands.

Second, Alex Honnold, 40, is a lunatic. He’s mentally sound in almost every way, except that this married father with two kids climbs tall things for a living without anything to prevent him from dying should he fall. It’s called Free Soloing. And climbers absolutely have died in this manner.

If you think you’ve ever had a bad day at the office, like, some typos wound up in your boss’s PowerPoint presentation, just imagine what Alex’s bad day might look like. You’d need a human-sized spatula.

Alex Honnold is the best at what he does, no doubt. He’s freakishly strong and controls fear in ways I cannot comprehend. But all it takes is one crumbling rock, one spooked bird darting from a mountain crevice, and that’s the ball game. I imagine his life insurance policy has some hefty premiums, and his family will be well compensated should the unthinkable happen. But to inflict that on your children and wife strikes me as cruel. Just hang it up, man. Or wear ropes! It’s no longer all about you.

There was a minor kerfuffle over Honnold receiving “only” $500,000 to scale that tower. This is silly. Nobody forced Honnold to accept half a million dollars in exchange for the possibility of him splattering on the pavement. Maybe hire Scott Boras, of baseball agenting fame, to represent you. He’ll net you a fortune.

But this presents the ghoulish prospect of a bidding war to get Honnold to climb something else incredibly tall and dangerous to entertain the masses. Chances are, that’s already in the works because of Honnold’s success in Taipei, and because there’s an audience for it. But I’m not in it. For the sake of decency, I hope I’m not the only one.

End of a Star Wars Error …

Imagine purchasing one of the most profitable and beloved franchises in history, and then making every bad decision possible to ruin it.

That’s what Kathleen Kennedy when she was handed Star Wars after Disney purchased is more than a decade ago.

Mercifully, she’s leaving.

The Force Awakens, the fist new SW flick in a decade released in 2015, and it was fine for what it was (almost an exact replica of the original Star Wars). Then things slid downhill.

New (and uninteresting and uninspiring) characters were added. Beloved characters killed off. Millions of childhoods died in the process.

I liked The Mandolorian, and will see the movie involving him this year. But most of the other SW offerings (The Acolyte especially, but also Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, the Book of Boba Fett) lacked. Poor writing, unlikeable characters, and, frankly, too much of it doomed the franchise.

What always made Star Wars special to me was its rarity. Growing up in the 80s, we couldn’t wait for Return of the Jedi! It has been an eternity (3 years is an eternity to a 7-year-old) since Empire. And we got Jabba and all those creatures. It’s still my favorite for that reason.

Then 16 years passed to 1999 and The Phantom Menace. And it was bad. But bad Star Wars is like bad pizza. You’ll still eat it. George wasn’t at his best then, and the subsequent 2 films at least explained things leading to the beginning of A New Hope. We got some animated SW after that, but no more movies. Until the sale. Then awful movies and many cringe-worthy shows. We were saturated with Star Wars shows and movies not worthy of carrying that name.

It’s to the point where new SW shows arrive on Disney+ and I don’t bother watching. It’s not that it’s not the same as the original trilogy, it’s now mass-marketed junk. The original movies had groundbreaking special effects. Everything now is blue screen and motion capture. The magic’s gone.

Maybe Kennedy’s replacement will manage to right the ship, but it’s a tall order. Time will tell. And we’ll get our first glimpse this summer with the new Mandolorian movie.

Until then, the original trilogy’s on bluray and the magic’s still there.

Scott Adams, dead at 68; If only he had …

Cartoonist Scott Adams died today after a long battle with prostate cancer.

That’s the first thing he’ll be remembered for. He cartooned Dilbert for roughly three decades until he said something completely stupid–the second thing for which he’ll be remembered. And he has nobody to blame but himself. A few years ago, he discussed on his podcast the results of a poll in which, according to the New York Times, only 53 percent of Black Americans agreed with the statement, “It’s OK to be white.”

“If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with white people — according to this poll, not according to me, according to the poll — that’s a hate group, and I don’t want to have anything to do with them,” he said on the podcast episode. “And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give white people is to get the hell away from Black people.”

Yikes! There’s really no way for that one to be taken out of context. We have the full context in which he said it. And by the numbers, more than half of the polling sample isn’t racist. There’s no way around the ugliness of what he said.

Now, do I believe that Scott Adams ran around with a white hood, the way former Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WV, did once upon a time, and attended cross-burnings? No. Then again, I don’t know Adams. I never listened to his podcast, and I never particularly enjoyed Dilbert. I’m sure it was fine in its day, but I wasn’t a cubicle worker then and didn’t appreciate the humor. Same thing with Doonesbury. Give me 1980s Bloom County, The Far Side, and Calvin & Hobbes, please.

You will likely hear in the days ahead people complaining about the media maligning a dead guy who can’t defend himself anymore by bringing up his previous awful comments.

Sadly, Adams, a grown man in his 60s at the time, was in control of his words and spoke them. This wasn’t some off-hand Tweet he posted in his teens. It was in 2023. It’s the way it is.

He said one of the last things he did in life was convert to Christianity. Good for him! I’d like to think that he’ll make it to heaven and chat with Robert Byrd about what and what not to say around Jesus Christ. (Byrd denounced his former beliefs and served for decades in the Senate.)

I hope Adams rests in peace and is remembered more for the good things he did in life and for the joy he brought to pencil-pushing bean counters.

Meeting the mob crew (an inspiration) …

Goodfellas is almost out of my system, but I couldn’t resist the following, based on this scene and after reading Nicholas Pileggi’s Wise Guy:

We were wise guys, yes, but gods among men otherwise. It all started when I met Jimmy “The Irishman” O’Houlihan, one of the best hijackers in Queens, who took me under his wing when I was a kid.

“You ever rat me out and I’ll cut your throat from ear to ear,” Jimmy told me when he shook my 10-year-old hand. “Now, drive that semi-truck of stolen cigarettes to Sheepshead Bay so we can unload them.”

“I can’t drive,” I said. “My feet don’t even reach the brakes.”

“Fuckin’ mutt,” Jimmy said in the most endearing way possible. “Let me find some blocks to tie to the brake and gas pedals.”

That’s how it started. A 10-year-old boy steering a multi-ton death machine across the city. Jimmy would’ve been so proud of me had a rival crew not hijacked me and stolen the cigarettes.

Jimmy found out who did it, whacked ’em, and recovered the cigarettes.

“Next time I’ll give you a gun,” Jimmy said. “Now, go inside and watch Sesame Street.”

I was the toughest kid in the mob daycare center. The other kids’ parents gave them extra lunch money so they could buy something to eat after I shook them down. I always kicked some dough back up to Jimmy. The other families knew who I was with and never said a word.

I made book on who’d win the spelling bee, and would beat up anyone who wouldn’t misspell ‘dog’ when I told them to. I organized Uno games, and God help the kid who tried marking the Wild cards. The daycare administrator once asked Joe “The Piano Player” Moscone why all ten of his fingers were broken. He kept his mouth shut and never played Bach the same way again.

Our Monopoly games involved real money. I forced the players to pay protection on their houses and hotels. And if they didn’t, they’d get melted green and red blobs on Boardwalk and Park Place. Anyone who went directly to jail got a black eye for being sloppy.

But those were the guys I grew up with. When we became old enough to drink, which was 18 back then, we met at Paul “the Arsonist” Giglione’s new pub after his old one burned down.

There was Frankie “the Wop” Bugliati, Vinny “the Daigo” Vincense, and Bobby “the Dignified Italian” Pucinni who despised Frankie’s and Vinny’s nicknames.

Tommy “the Snitch” Genovese was a regular until recently. I have no idea why he suddenly disappeared.

Haruki “The Blowfish Poisoner” Ishigawa sought to establish the Yakuza in Queens, but he was the only Japanese gangster in town, so he hung with us. Marco “the Insult Master” Francesa once called Ishigawa “the nipster.” I thought it was kinda lazy, but Ishi took it in stride, chuckled, and asked Marco if he’d ever tried fugu and if he would like to. I’m not sure if Marco enjoyed it. I haven’t had the chance to ask him because he’s been in the hospital for six months.

I don’t think I ever paid for a drink in my life. Paul “Pope Beneficent” Gagliardi took care of me. I always made it a point to go to church for him. Then I’d meet my mistress right afterward at the track.

Nobody ever walked up behind Billy “the Paranoid Schizophrenic” Batty when he was sitting at the bar. The last guy who tapped him on the shoulder ended up with his face chewed off while Billy screamed in between chomps, “The voices! Why are the bunny rabbits so loud!” Yeah, we avoided Billy at all costs.

We always busted “Fat” Andy Ciccio’s balls because he was morbidly obese and practically sweated butter. Then he went and lost 300 pounds, and we started calling him Andy “the Bulimic who Ruined His Teeth” Ciccio. I liked “Fat” Andy better.

We ate chicken parmesan until buttons popped off our shirts and teased the old-school capo Vito “the Wordsmith” Bossonaro, who sipped anisette while doing his crossword puzzle. His days of pounding whiskey ended when he broke too many wooden barrels. We bought him a punching bag soon after.

It was the mafia’s golden age, before the bad times, before mob boss Anthony “the Neocon” Porchetta started a war against the Toscano Crime Family because its boss, Luciano, didn’t pay his Monopoly protection money to me on time. The thing is, he did. I was hungover and forgot to give it to Anthony.

Hey, wait, you’re not recording any of this, are you?

Good or bad idea? Attending a book signing to ask an author for a blurb

The following post started as a draft more than a decade ago, when I was actively promoting my books. I’ve not asked another author for a blurb in years, but I likely will start that process in the next few months.

I know of a writer who has blindly asked a book signing’s featured author to endorse the writer’s work, resulting in the author agreeing to look at the manuscript. I would imagine this is done after the event concludes and the aspiring writer gets a moment of the author’s time to make the pitch. Maybe they hit it off? If that works, who am I to say don’t do it?

But I take the approach that you don’t want to put an author on the spot to say yes or no. Think about it: when someone asks you out of the blue to do something that takes up your time and that you weren’t expecting, how do you feel? More often than not, you feel put-upon, but you say yes out of a sense of obligation.

I want an established author to read my work because he or she wants to, not because of undue pressure.

That’s why writing a professional pitch (yes, another damned query letter), to me, is more desirable. It allows the recipient author to sit back, ruminate, and make an informed decision. I emailed a blurb request to a New York Times-bestselling author of numerous books. I didn’t expect to even hear back from the author. Not only did I hear back, but the author specifically stated it was my professionalism (and the premise of my book) that initiated the reply. The author told me to check back in a few months to see if there was an opening in the author’s schedule.

(I’m trying not to be gender specific because I don’t want the author to be hit with requests that he/she might not want.)

A few months passed, and I noticed the author was appearing at a book signing not far from where I lived. Rather than simply show up and say, “Hey, remember me?” I again wrote the author, said I knew about the appearance, and that I’d like to attend to officially introduce myself. I heard back almost immediately: attend!

I did. I bought a copy of the author’s book at the appearance, got an autograph, and made a friend (not a buddy-buddy, let’s-drink-beers friend; but I’d like to think a writing friend who couldn’t have been kinder to me). The author said to send the ms. And eventually, I was provided with an excellent blurb. I couldn’t have been happier. The author told me that whatever I was doing, to keep doing it.

Another thing to keep in mind: don’t be a pest. If an author agrees to look at your manuscript, state a deadline for when it would be ideal to receive the blurb, and that you’ll check back at the start of the deadline’s month to see where things stand. (Seeing that my release date was 18 months off at the time of my signing a contract, I had a seven-month window to get blurbs–although there’s always wiggle room, especially if Stephen King manages to get back to you. Dream big, baby!) My point: don’t write the author every month, much less every other week, to see if the author has tackled your manuscript. Just don’t. ###

I wrote that more than 10 years ago and it still makes sense to me, and I’ll be following my own advice soon!

They killed Gramma! (The tortoise)

Facebook feeds offer up some of the most random tidbits. For instance, this morning it notified me that Gramma, the 141-year-old Galapagos Tortoise, died in San Diego. Turns out it happened in November. What struck me was one of the lines regarding her demise: “Her loss has been felt around the world.”

Hold your horses. Kennedy’s assassination was felt around the world. More recently, putting politics aside, Charlie Kirk’s murder was felt across the globe. When Princess Di was killed in that car crash? Absolutely felt around the planet.

Do you remember where you were when you learned Gramma the Tortoise died? Yeah, right here, right now, reading this. So, I did some investigating and here’s what I learned.

Gramma’s exact date of birth is unknown, but “experts” estimated her age at roughly 140 years old, meaning she was born around 1885. Do you know who the US president was in 1885? Neither do I, let me Google it. OK, Grover Cleveland. The San Diego Zoo, where she lived since 1928, stated she lived through 20 US presidents! She lived through two World Wars. A bunch of pandemics. Disco. Pretty much everything good and bad in modern US history.

Yeah, but Gramma doesn’t know any of this. She’s a tortoise. Last I checked, they don’t think about world affairs or domestic politics. They think about “where the hell is my fruit bowl?” and “I haven’t left my enclosure in 75 years.”

Here’s how ABC News reported on her: “Throughout her time in San Diego, Gramma, a ‘quiet and constant presence,’ transformed from a black-and-white photograph to an ‘ever-endearing social media star,’ with countless videos shared of the reptile crunching on her favorite snacks, the zoo said.”

That’s sobering. A dead tortoise has more followers on Twitter than I do.

I’d like to wrap up this story as a bittersweet yet feel-good one. But I can’t because of what the Los Angeles Times reported: Gramma “was euthanized after suffering from increasing bone deterioration because of her advanced age.”

They murdered Gramma! Who the hell made the San Diego Zoo god? Aren’t you supposed to respect your elders? And not put them down because you think it’s time for them to die? Apparently, and unsurprisingly, not in California. “Hey, Gramma, you’re moving slower than normal. Let’s get that lethal drug cocktail ready!”

Gramma had absolutely no say in the matter. A bunch of goons probably lifted her up, and Gramma’s thinking, “Yay, they’re taking me inside! That’s where they keep the cactus fruit that I enjoy nibbling on. Hey, wait a second, why does everybody look so glum? And I don’t see any cactus fruit, just a bunch of bottles with skulls and crossbones on them! And a guy flicking his finger against a syringe! What the hell is this?”

Gramma’s dead. Probably against her will, but at least they didn’t strap her into a chair and electrocute her. May her memory be a blessing. And if you’re elderly and live in the San Diego Zoo, try not to stumble.