Lit agents and publishers often release (or make posts to) a Manuscript Wish List. I figure turnabout is fair play, don't you?

Let's start with the notion that we, as authors, are supposed to select the lit agents that we really want to work with, and not just spew query letters at random to anyone who appears to be a lit agent with a pulse.

You go to web sites that aggregate information about lit agents (such as querytracker or agentquery) and they'll tell you that an agent named (let's say) Susan Jones represents general fiction, sci fi, romances, suspense, thrillers, mysteries, other genre fiction, historical nonfiction, popular science nonfiction, memoirs, how-to guides, self-help health and therapy; and is accepting queries, prefers them via email.

You go to individual lit agents' own web sites such as susanjones.com to find out more about this lit agent and you learn that what she's really interested in are books that you can curl up in bed with and lose track of time, books that feature brave heroines or nontraditional heroes in quirky new settings, stories with a modern punchline that adds a new twist to old wisdom, or books that make her think. And she has two poodles and an aging cat and likes lasagna and wears flannel in the wintertime. And by the way, the Susan Jones Literary Agency had the privilege of representing THE CAGE AND THE KEY by Joe Johnson, MY PASSAGE THRU THE UMBILICAL CORD by Terry Truwrite, FIFTY KEY BILLS AND HOW THEY TIED UP THE SENATE by Senator C. D. Politician, RHODESIA SONNET by Jane Goodwriter, and nineteen other titles I haven't read or heard about by authors I haven't read or heard about, although some of these sound like books I should add to my reading list.

So...

Dear Susan Jones,

What I'd really like to know about you and all the other lit agents that would tell me whether I should query you soonest or only later as a last resort:

* Of the books you have taken on, what percent of them got placed with major publishing houses that invested in publicizing the book?

* Please describe the changes that you've requested authors to make to their manuscript. Have you tended to request the addition or subtraction of a character? The addition or subtraction of a major plot element or theme? Have you suggested extensive edits to improve readability and smoothness and continuity? Cleaned up typos, spelling errors, grammar errors, run-on sentences and the like? How often have you ended up in protracted arguments with your authors about the changes you've requested?

* What are the most annoying behaviors you've encountered from the authors you've worked with? Are there any attitudes or habits or tendencies that really drive you up the wall, such that you wish you'd known about them in advance and had avoided those authors? How did you handle it?

* What is your success rate at negotiating the details of the contracts with the publishers to the satisfaction of your authors? Are there things that authors tend to want (e.g. retention of film rights, subsidiary rights, foreign rights) that you've had difficulty obtaining? If so, from which types of publishers?

* How often have you contracted to represent an author and then were unable to place their book for publication for more than 5 years? 8 years? How often have you reverted the rights or rescinded the contractual arrangements due to inability to place the book (or the author's impatience with you doing so)?


—————


My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.


My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.

I have started querying my third book, Within the Box, and I'm still seeking advance readers for reviews and feedback. It is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women's Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir. Contact me if you're interested.






Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.

———————

This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. I was going to start echoing it on Substack as well but we're not off to a good start. Anyway, please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.

————————


Index of all Blog Posts

Thanks to my partner anais aka Cassandra, my synopsis has been whittled down to a tolerable size.

A lot of lit agents request a synopsis, so I needed to have one in order to be ready to begin querying. (Yes I could have deliberately chosen targets who dont' ask for a synopsis, but that would interfere with procrastination!)

And, on that front, folks: I have begun. The first tiny handful of lit agents are now in receipt of my query. I have begun the process of trying to sell my third book.


So...



SYNOPSIS

Prologue:


Derek, a 23 year old nursing student, is suspended for refusing to manipulate patients to take their medicines. Derek's parents worry that he will never finish any course of training. They're convinced that Derek's problem is drugs and alcohol, and they want him to check into a fancy private rehab facility. Derek doesn't believe that he abuses drugs or alcohol, but agrees to go because they also do other types of therapy.


Derek is genderqueer -- or that's what he'd call himself in 2023 -- but it's 1982. Derek thinks he has an important message, but finds it difficult to make people understand. So it's the promise of improving communication skills that lures Derek into trying rehab. He's told it's voluntary and if he doesn't like it, he can leave.


The First Six Days:


Derek goes through an exhausting intake and orientation, with residents and staff praising Elk Meadow Clinical Retreat. He quickly tires of the one-way flow and puts posters on his door defining himself as leader of his treatment team. This offends some residents. Dr. Barnes says Derek is intellectualizing, and a counselor says Derek is in denial. Derek tries to remain open-minded. He participates in psychodrama, and learns about his interaction patterns with his parents.


Dr. Barnes pushes Derek to turn his life over to the pros since he isn't running it well himself, and Derek pushes back by making a nameplate like the one on Dr. Barnes' door, angering Barnes. Derek goes AWOL through an improperly locked door, sees a movie, then drops in on colleagues of his Dad's who live nearby. They call his parents, who aren't pleased. Dr. Barnes calls and apologizes for Elk Meadow failing to meet Derek's needs, and Derek agrees to return.


Days Seven Through Eleven:


In psychodrama, Noelle takes the role of Derek and mimics him sounding intellectual but incoherent; this clears the air and Derek starts making friends with other residents. In group, Dr. Barnes says Derek should remove the materials from his door if he's "serious about a new start." Derek is cynical but complies. His counselor says Derek takes a "certain pride" in not caring what others think, and notes that this hinders others from connecting with him.


The recreational therapist tells Derek he can't go outside anymore because of his escape. On his own, Derek contemplates the link between being a feminine male and his difficulties getting and keeping blue-collar jobs among males. In group, Dr. Barnes baits Derek for acting femme. Derek asks to read his own chart, but is denied. While power-walking in the hallway to get exercise because he's being kept inside, Derek grabs his chart from the nurses' station. He finds he has been diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, and that his father authorized involuntary treatment if necessary.


Days Twelve Through Sixteen:


Gary says Derek should admit he shouldn't have read his chart; but Gary subsequently shows contempt for schizophrenics in a way that residents find inappropriate and offensive. Derek tries to crawl up above the acoustical tiles to escape, but gets caught. His therapist says "You know what you need to do to walk out of this place. Why don't you just do it?" Derek agrees, and asks to be discharged.


Dr. Barnes says he's preparing the discharge paperwork, but has orderlies restrain Derek in seclusion. Derek expresses his fears and vulnerability to the supportive night nurse, but the morning nurse treats him as a diagnosed psychotic. A mental hygiene attorney explains Derek's options and files a 72-hour letter of intent to leave, which Barnes says he'll challege in court. Dr. Barnes warns Derek that he plays golf with the judge. He tells Derek to cancel the 72-hour letter and take psychotropic drugs or Derek will never be outside of a mental hospital again. Derek agrees to take the medicine. He wakes up under the effect of the drugs, and decides he has to break out now. Derek escapes, walks all night in the rain, and eventually collapses crying.


Aftermath:


Derek hitches to his sister Jan's college. Jan offers him a bed for the night but calls their parents, who tell Derek to go back to Elk Meadow. He hangs up on them. Next morning he hitches to his girlfriend's home and she welcomes him.

—————


My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.


My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.

My third book is deep in tertiary drafts, and I'm seeking more beta readers for feedback. It is provisionally titled Within the Box and is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women's Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir. Contact me if you're interested.






Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.

———————

This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.

————————


Index of all Blog Posts

Derek is genderqueer, or nonbinary -- or rather that's likely what Derek would call himself in 2023 -- but it's 1982, and 23-year-old Derek is finding it a challenge to explain to people. He views himself as needing help becoming a better communicator. His parents view him as having a drug and alcohol problem.

They reach a compromise: he'll check himself into a very modern upscale facility that promises to help people work on all their issues. It's strictly voluntary. “But we’d want you to give it a real try”, his Dad says. “Don’t stalk out the first time you think there’s some policy or some person that isn’t perfect. You won’t get anything out of it unless you go in intending to get something out of it.”

Dr. Barnes and his staff think Derek is in denial about his situation. He insists he doesn't have a drug or alcohol problem, but he's never been able to keep a job or complete any projects, including two attempts at college and a more recent attempt to complete nurse's training. And he's constantly deflecting, bringing in social issues and political theories. “You can’t go out and fix the world and solve its problems when you haven’t dealt with the mess in your own life”, Barnes tells him. “I think you’re just afraid to confront your own worst enemy, because unfortunately he isn’t out there with expectations and roles, he’s right there where you are.”

But Derek is finding the facility heavy-handed and coercive. They've gotten off to a bad start -- nobody asks his reasons for coming there or what he hopes to get out of the program. He thinks being a heterosexual femme is relevant to why he's had difficulties fitting in socially and doing well. That and the resulting isolation which have left him deprived of the easy interactive social skill-set that most people have. He wants to work on that, but the institutional staff seem bent on working on him in ways he isn't consenting to.

The other patients in the program don't warm to him immediately; he's disrupting the program and they're also being judged by the staff on how appropriately they react when someone behaves disruptively. Derek watches and observes. “Therapy here is all about residents proving that they can be an obedient part of Dr. Barnes’ echo chamber. Anyone who doesn’t echo doesn’t advance to the higher levels”, he says.

Within the Box is a psychological suspense tale. Derek can't be sure they aren't right; maybe he seized on this weird notion about gender because he so badly wanted an answer other than "horrible unlikeable person with a hideous personality and atrocious social skills" for why he's been reviled and hated, and it's really a defense mechanism, like they say. And the reader is invited along to wonder who is right, and whether the institution is benign or awful, whether Derek is arrogant and stubborn or bravely resistant.

Arching over all of this ambivalence is the issue of safety: if, indeed, the institution is unduly coercive, and Derek is openly resistant to them, is he being paranoid about worrying about what they might do in response, or is he on safe grounds because, as Dr. Barnes himself said, “You all know you can leave any time you want"?

Within the Box. 72,000 words, nonfiction, a personal account (memoir) rendered in the style of entertainment fiction.

—————


My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.


My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.

My third book is deep in tertiary drafts, and I'm seeking more beta readers for feedback. It is provisionally titled Within the Box and is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women's Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir. Contact me if you're interested.






Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.

———————

This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.

————————


Index of all Blog Posts

I've started sending out my pitch to get my second book published.

Here is my standard query letter, and below that, the parts of the formal proposal that spell out in more detail what the book is about.


Query Letter:

"When you're a fish out of water you look for the nearest ocean" — Anthony T. Hincks

THAT GUY IN OUR WOMEN'S STUDIES CLASS is a nonfiction memoir about a genderqueer sissy male, Derek, who decided that women's studies in college would be a good place to engage people in discussions about gender.

This narrative tale follows Derek down Oklahoma highways and into heroin dens in Harlem and then into the homeless shelters of 1980s New York City, as the determined but not always practical Derek pursues his dream.

Along the way, the story delves into the complexities of privilege and social identity in ways that challenge assumptions about power and marginalization—not in primary-color simplicity but by exploring privilege and deprivation along a number of different dimensions and showing it in all of its native complexity, all while still respecting a concern for empowering the voice of those left out.

"Hunter's prose explores the delicate tapestry of privilege and power... this is a deployment of 'show, not tell' I've rarely seen done... narrative social theory" — An early reader

Length: 95,962 words


From the Formal Proposal:


Elevator Statement —


In 1980, I came out as a sissy. I was reclaiming the term the same way that proud lesbians referred to themselves as "dykes" or the way that gay folks were reclaiming "queer". "Sissy" comes from the word "sister" and so it seemed like the right word: a sisterlike, i.e., feminine or girlish, male person.

We had gay rights activists back then. We even had trans activists. A lot of people didn't understand why I was using a new and different term. But I wasn't gay or trans. It was something else.

Trans women, both back then and today, tend to say "Don't see me as a trans woman. See me as a woman". That wasn't me. I didn't consider myself female. I considered myself femme. I didn't identify with the gay rights movement: my sexuality wasn't same-sex attraction and I saw a need to untangle gender from either physical sex OR sexual orientation.

The activists I identified with the most were feminists. They were the ones who said having a different behavioral standard and polarized social roles for the sexes was sexist.

So I headed off to the university to major in women's studies.



That Guy in our Women's Studies Class is a rare thing in the world of memoirs: a sequel. In March 2020, my book GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, was published by Sunstone Press (Santa Fe NM).

GenderQueer told the coming-of-age and coming-out story of realizing I had a different gender identity and of giving it a name. At the end of it, I vow to confront the world about how sissy males are treated. In That Guy in our Women's Studies Class, I set out to do exactly that, choosing the world of academic women's studies as my platform.

 
Elaborating on the Concept —



"When you're a fish out of water you look for the nearest ocean" — Anthony T. Hincks

As a male person very focused on the unfairness of gender expectations, I headed for the largest metropolitan center I could easily get to—New York City—figuring that even if my identity made me an exception to the exception to the rule, I'd be able to find people who were like me. And I pinned my hopes and dreams to women's studies, because the material I wanted to discuss with people would overlap with the material we'd be focusing on in the classroom.


That Guy in our Women's Studies Class illustrates the complexities of intersectionality, the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender and so forth. The main character is male, the privileged sex in the patriarchal context. Within the first few pages of the book, he has reason to worry that he's invading women's space by attending women's studies classes. At the same time, he's a minority within that space, and, as a gender-nonconforming sissy in the 1980s, a person with a gender identity that wasn't acknowledged and recognized yet, he's been somewhat marginalized by gender himself.

That's the presenting surface of a larger and even more intricate situation. To get to New York and attempt to get into college, he hitchhikes across the country and becomes a homeless person on the New York streets, eventually trading in on a history of psychiatric incarceration (he'd been placed on a locked ward shortly after coming out) to get into the better-funded assistance programs, which were earmarked for the "homeless mentally ill". A person with a psychiatric diagnosis was thus both privileged among the homeless and at the same time often stripped of basic rights because of that same status. And we follow along as the main character commutes every day from the grounds of Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital to SUNY college campus, where most of the other students are middle class suburban commuters with the advantages and privileges of that existence.

There is also the dynamic of race: although the SUNY campus is not as disproportionately black as an historically black college such as Grambling, there is a high proportion of inner city black students living in the dorms as residential students, and there's a tension between the mostly-white commuters and the majority-black resident students. The book's main character is commuting from a different majority-minority environment, the world of formerly homeless halfway-house residents. In his second year he moves into the dormitories to live among the resident students and get away from the oppressive environment of the psychiatric facility. Over and over again, he finds his attention diverted from matters of gender identity to questions of race and racial oppression.

Meanwhile, in his academic studies, he gets increasingly immersed in studying the complex tapestry of power itself, and the larger question of its desirability, which feminist theory examines as part of the patriarchal value structure.


That Guy in our Women's Studies Class is a narrative story, with characters and conversations and a compelling storyline. While real life doesn't often resemble the trajectory of a fictional novel's plot, this particular slice of life tells that kind of tale. It's an entertaining book, one that does not read like an educational treatise. It's the story of a young out-of-town person from a small village making a go of it in the big city, of a survivor coping with life on the streets while seeking employment and a place to stay, and of a fervent activist looking for his 'people', finding a place in the world, and finding a political voice.




The people and events described in this memoir were all quite real, but to streamline and optimize the narrative flow, I sometimes combined several characters into one composite character, so as to not have to develop so many characters; and on occasions I also condensed multiple similar events and described them as single events.


The names have all been changed—including my own, for consistency. As I did in GenderQueer, I refer to myself as Derek Turner throughout.


———————

You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!

My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.


Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page

———————

This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.

————————


Index of all Blog Posts

I was going to send out some query letters but Optimum Online was having an outage, so I thought I'd compose a blog post about the querying process instead.

The core piece of the process is the pitch or query letter, which is going to be the leadoff part of nearly every query that gets sent out. Authors interested in getting their books published are encouraged to work long and hard on their query letters, honing them and perfecting them in order to hook the interest of the literary agents or publishers who will be reading them. They're supposed to be short, they need to grab the reader from the first sentence, they should make the reader want to hear more. On the more mechanical and utilitarian level, the query letter is supposed to provide the title of the book, the genre it fits into, its length in words, and a sense of what the core conflicts or plot trajectory or story line is about.

Obviously, given those requirements, the crafting of a query letter requires a skill, it's an art. I often wonder why having the ability to write what amounts to effective ad copy should be used as a measure of one's ability to write good-quality novel-length tomes. I mean, it's not the same process and doesn't necessarily involve the same skills, although it's reasonable to suppose there'd be some overlap. It's a bit like requiring that composers of symphonies submit a 90 second commercial jingle if they want to have the orchestra consider performing their work, and deciding on the basis of the jingle whether to look at the symphony itself. But that's how the game is played.

Some lit agents don't want anything except the query letter--just send that and if we're interested in seeing more, we'll ask. But more often, they want auxiliary accompanying documents.

The writing sample, an excerpt from the book that's being pitched, is commonly requested. The length of the excerpt varies all over the map, with some people wanting to see your first three pages and others asking you to provide your first four chapters. The most common specific requests that I've encountered are the first three pages, first five pages, first ten pages, first fifteen pages, first twenty pages, first twenty five, and first fifty; first chapter, first two chapters, first three, and first four. Given the possible variations of what constitutes chapter length, these requests are often expressed in hybrid form: "Paste the first three chapters or fifty pages", or "Send me 25 pages or first two chapters", or "Please provide your first three chapters (not to exceed 35 pages)".

You'll notice a word recurrently repeated in all of those variations. However much of it they wish to see, they nearly always want that much of the start of your book. That puts a pressure on authors to frontload their book so that things are happening rapidly on the first pages. It works against an author who prefers to set the stage and develop the characters before springing the book's primary situation on the reader, and perhaps explains Dan Brown. I suppose I do see the point to this: if a person picks up a book and it doesn't hold their attention in the early portions, they won't keep reading long enough to get to whatever may be in the book farther in. I do have my doubts about what anyone can tell about a book from reading the first five pages though, aside from "yes this writer can string sentences together in a tolerably pleasant style".

The synopsis is another thing that people often ask for. A synopsis is more or less what we used to think of as a "book report" back when we were in fourth grade. It's a summary of what happens in the book, in the order that it occurs in the book, often chapter by chapter. For fiction and memoirs and other narrative forms that have storylines, the synopsis is a description of the plot. A synopsis is usually a single page's worth, and unlike the query letter is not supposed to be a teaser but instead should reveal what's in the story, to the extent that that can be summarized in a page's worth of description.

It is also common for the description for how to submit to include a blurb about the author, providing a list of any prior books or other publications that the author has to their name, giving the author's credentials or otherwise explaining why this author is a good person to have written this tale, and giving any additional background. A request for some information about the author is particular prevalent for nonfiction titles, and often specifically includes questions about the authors platform, the existing audience of people who are already paying attention to what this authors says and writes, the folks who already follow this author on Twitter or subscribe to the author's YouTube channel and so forth.

A memoir is nonfiction and unfortunately that means authors of memoirs are expected to have a platform in a way that authors of novels are not. I wish more lit agents and publishers were inclined to recognize that memoirs have more in common with fiction than they do with How To Make Your Fortune By Investing Shrewdly in the Stock Market or The Making of the Governor: Gubernatorial Politics in the Instagram Era or Authentic Spectacular Creole Recipes For a Limited Budget.

Speaking of nonfiction, a lot of times the instructions on "how to submit" specify that people who are pitching nonfiction manuscripts should include a proposal. A proposal is a complex multi-part document designed to make the case for why this nonfiction book should be published; it typically kicks off with an extended argument for the need for such a book, then delves into the qualifications of the author to write it (this part being more or less interchangeable with the about the author piece described above), a description of the market for the book (who will be likely to consider reading it if they're made aware of it, and why), a list of comparable titles and how this book is different from what's already out there, a chapter by chapter breakdown of the material that the book will cover (this part, for a memoir, is loosely identical to a synopsis; for The Making of the Governor and other more conventional nonfiction books, it would be more like an outline of topics and subtopics that the book will address and how those topics are organized), and, finally, a marketing plan, a proposed course of action for publicizing the book and bringing it to the attention of people likely to purchase it.

Oh, and proposals will typically contain sample chapters. For once, though, the tendency is not to concentrate on the material most direct adjacent to the front cover. In a proposal, a sample chapter may be from any part of the book. Some proposals may contain two or three sample chapters, and in keeping with that, the instructions for submitting material may specify that one should send a proposal with a specified number of sample chapters.

Less commonly, lit agents and publishers may request a list and/or discussion of comparable titles as a standalone alternative to a formal proposal, or may request a discussion of the likely market for the book.



In the United States (although not so much in the UK), literary agents typically do not want to mess with file attachments, at least at the initial-query stage, and so all of the above components are to be pasted into the body of the email. More often than not, submission procedures will specifically say that no file attachments will be opened or even that no emails containing file attachments will be read.

Email has limited capacities for text formatting; despite the occasional instruction from a literary agent to include everything in the body of the email and yet to "be sure to indent every paragraph, use one inch margins on all sides, and set the text to double spaced throughout", email doesn't handle indentation of a paragraph's first lines, doesn't do double spacing, and can't be relied upon to format the text in a specific font or point size. Even italics and boldface are pretty iffy. I've found it useful to maintain separate text copies of all of these query components, one with an extra line of white space to offset divisions between paragraphs so that it works reliably as part of an email body.


I have a querying engine that lets me quickly assemble an outbound email:



As you can see from the dropdown menu, I can append a synopsis, a full fledged proposal, writing samples of various sizes, an about-the-author blurb, and other components of a query to the current email body and then send it in that format. (I can also send any one of those pieces as a file attachment for the occasional agent or publisher who wants to receive the proposal or sample chapters as a Word or PDF document instead).


You may be thinking that this doesn't seem very personalized, and indeed some lit agents' instructions say we should "please tell me why you selected me as the agent that you want on this project" and indicate that they prefer to receive letters that don't make them feel like they're receiving spam that has gone out to all the other lit agents out there. I do sometimes customize my query letters, editing them with an additional note to say "I thought this would be of particular appeal to you because of what you said in your 2017 interview with Writer's World about wanting more LGBTQ material written in our own voices" or whatever. But writers' workshops on crafting and perfecting the ideal query letter abound, as do online forums such as "Query Letter Hell" on Absolute Write, all of which are oriented around the notion that one hones and polishes a query letter and then sends it out to the various people that one wishes to query, not that one starts from scratch writing a query letter with one individual recipient in mind. And in my situation in particular, there are seldom a lot of legitimately good reasons to query this lit agent instead of that lit agent. It's not like any of them have a track record of representing genderqueer coming-out and coming-of-age stories and therefore would be a good choice for representing mine as well. There are those who have indicated an interest in handling "lesbian/gay" material and there are those who say that they represent memoirs or narrative nonfiction, but very few who have any kind of track record with coming-out stories or anything else that readily compares to what I wrote. So the honest answer in most cases to "why did you decide to query me on this project?" is along the lines of "you are in the business and open to queries and you are alive and breathe air".



As of today, I have sent 1,424 queries out to literary agents and an additional 64 to small publishers that allow authors to query them directly. From the lit agents I have received 1,292 rejections; 132 queries are currently outstanding. On five or six occasions, lit agents have requested more material before ultimately saying they were not interested in representing my book, but none have ever offered me a business arrangement. From the publishers, I twice had signed contracts to have my book published, once with a publisher that went bankrupt and once with a publisher who assigned an editor to me who wanted to discard the first 33% of the book, which I was unwilling to do; I've had 62 rejections and none are currently outstanding because I was complying with a publisher's policy of exclusivity, and only got the rejection letter the other day.


———————

This LiveJournal blog is echoed on DreamWidth, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.

————————

Index of all Blog Posts

The #MeToo movement has revealed a cognitive disconnect in our society between people who think sexually predatory behavior is inherently and inexcusably wrong and people who think it is only wrong when it crosses certain thresholds or boundaries.

In the latter camp are people who say that if we aren't careful, we're going to make it illegal and reprehensible and socially unacceptable to be a sexual male.

Why male? Because saying predatory male sexual aggression is mostly about as necessary and useful as specifying female menstrual supplies when discussing tampons. Because sexually aggressive predatory behavior is generally assumed to be as naturally a part of maleness and male sexuality as having periods is inherently a part of being female.

Feminist theorists have pretty much always said that this isn't so. That the connection of males to this behavior is a part of institutionalized heterosexuality, that it's not biologically built-in that way. This simultaneously means that it can't be excused on the grounds that it is inevitable and inherent in males and also that it is sexist to project this behavior onto males as if it were automatically a component of their character.

But if it isn't biologically built-in, if it is indeed a social construct, what happens when someone who thinks of himself as one of the girls ends up being attracted to them as well?



Me. On the most fundamental level, I'm what happens. It's the core of my story. Certainly there are other aspects of the tale, other areas of tension between the gendered expectations that people assumed about me and who I actually was--from interest in an ongoing connected relationship as differentiated from interest only in casual sex opportunities on down to things like how I move and sit, and so on. But if there's a central axis around which the greatest tension lies, it's around the behaviors that get called things like "sexual initiative", "sexually aggressive behavior", "putting the moves on", "making your play", "seducing" and, yes, "being sexually predatory".

Basically I'm not. It's not behavior that comes to me automatically, and since it is perceived as selfish and pushy and exploitative of women (and certainly not feminine), well, as someone who always thought of himself as one of the girls, I wasn't at all happy to be perceived this way and recoiled away from it. So that's what happens.



But that's not the only thing that happens. People like me get seen as examples of what happens when a male is not taking the initiative to put the moves on sexually attractive female people. And what doesn't happen is any kind of simple fluid coming together and connection, any discernable heterosexual success rate that makes our behavior look like a good strategy. People see that, observe that, and incorporate that into how they understand the world, that's what happens.

And there is social hostility and marginalization of feminine males, girlish males, as we all know, but more specifically to the point there is condescension and a disparaging attitude towards the prospect of us as heterosexual participants. We are pitied. The female people who might become involved with us, however briefly, are also pitied. Our sexuality is perceived as pathetic.

#MeToo voices seldom speak at any great length about males whose sexual behavior is not invasive and geared towards making sex happen, initiating sex. Their focus is on the problematic ones who do. When a different set of voices are expressing uncomplimentary opinions about nonvirile effeminate men who are unsexy for failure to grab and take, they seldom go on to discuss sexual assault and sexual harassment and rape and such things. It's almost as if no one can see both sides of the coin at the same time, or remember what's on the side opposite of what they're currently facing.



Not all male people who consider themselves atypical of the male gender or consider themselves femme or otherwise not part of the masculine construct, are opposed to taking sexual initiative. Some are quite emphatic about saying that being feminine does not mean they are sexually passive or strictly reactive to someone else's overtures. Indeed, I suppose the grab-bag of supposedly feminine traits contains enough material for someone to claim several aspects without selecting that specific one. I have to admit that I'd be interested in sitting down with other femmy males who are sexually aggressive and trying to get a better understanding of how and why this is compatible with thinking of themselves as feminine, how they handle the perception of this, how it all fits together for them. But yeah, I haven't been nominated to speak for all the sissy femme guys, and I don't. But for some of us it is not only a part of the picture but rather central to it, the behavior and the nuances of feeling and attitude towards sexuality and towards other people, the economics of sexual supply and demand and questions of self-worth and dignity, the role of tenderness and responsiveness in sexuality and the concomitant avoidance of the belligerent and the offensive crude.



Recently I have had the opportunity to pitch my book to feminist publishers who wanted a shorter and more concise query letter than what I usually use, and in the process of honing a new tighter letter that gets to the point quickly, I found myself pitching my book as a what-if: what happens when someone who thought of himself during childhood as one of the girls grows up and ends up being attracted to them as well?

———————

This LiveJournal blog is echoed on DreamWidth, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.

————————

Index of all Blog Posts

Yes, I'm officially being published by NineStar Press, with a release date of November 27 of this year. The final editing has yet to occur (I'm waiting to receive the first set of change requests from the editor assigned to me) but they're already ramping up in various ways, including creating an author's page for me on their site.


I'm doing some of my own ramping up, preparing a centralized mailing list for LGBTQetc centers, women's studies / gender studies programs at colleges, and independent and/or LGBT-centric book stores. My publicist will be back from vacation late this week and will help me craft a set of emails to pitch to them the idea of having me come speak and/or consider my book (to sell, in the case of bookstores; to have a copy or two on shelf in the case of LGBTQIA centers; to use as assigned reading in the case of gender studies / women's studies classes).

Meanwhile, I thought I'd celebrate the end of querying by posting some of my favorite rejection letters from lit agents and publishing house editors!


Most rejection letters are, of course, boring and have little to offer in the way of entertainment value. There are the genuine non-form-letter variety, which tend to be succinct and blunt little things:

Not for me-thanks anyway.

Paul S. Levine

-------

This is not for me, but thank you for the look.

Caitlin Blasdell

--------


... then there are the impersonal form letters which tend to have some generic reassurances (it's all subjective, keep querying other agents, etc) to all those authors like me who fill up the agents' slush piles:



Thank you for your query. Having considered it carefully, we have decided that LMQ is not the right fit for your project, and so we are going to pass at this time.

Tastes and specializations vary widely from agent to agent, and another agency may well feel differently. Thank you for thinking of our agency, and we wish you the best of luck in your search for representation.

Sincerely,

Lippincott Massie McQuilkin


-------

Dear Author,

I greatly appreciate the opportunity to consider your query—thanks for sending it.

Unfortunately, the query didn't appeal quite enough to my own tastes to inspire me to offer representation or further consideration of your project. I wish I had the time to respond to everyone with constructive criticism, but it would be overwhelming, hence this form response. 

This business is highly subjective; many people whose work I haven't connected with have gone on to critical and commercial success. So, keep after it.


I am grateful that you have afforded me this opportunity to find out about you and your project, and wish you the best of success with your current and future creative work.

All best wishes,
Eddie Schneider


One variety of more personal rejection letter that would come in from time to time was where the agent said they couldn't take on my book because it was too much like one they already had in their lineup. That was always encouraging to read after getting so many generic rejections that I started to worry that the concept or topic just wasn't regarded as worthy of publication:



Dear Allan,

Strange as this may seem, I currently represent a project that is directly competitive with yours. In good conscience, I can't take on a project that competes with the property I am now pitching. I wish you well, but have to pass on this. Best, Maryann Karinch

=======

Hi Allan,

Thanks for thinking of us!  I'm afraid, however, it is a little too close to something we have forthcoming and potentially forthcoming on our list, so I have to decline. I wish you the very best of luck.

Best,

Lauren MacLeod


=======

Allan: Thanks but I already did a similar book, BOTH SIDES NOW with Dylan
Khosla and my list is too small for another....Best of luck.

Sharlene Martin

=======



Then there were the "platform" rejection letters — the ones that basically said my writing was good and it sounded like a good story but that they'd have a hard time hooking me up with a mainstream commercial publisher because I wasn't a household name, a writer with a following, a celebrity, etc.

Incidentally, I ultimately ended up doing as Alice Speilburg suggests below — putting my energy into querying small independent publishers instead of querying literary agents — but it made sense to try the lit agents first, since many of them don't want to take on a manuscript that's already been seen by a bunch of publishers.



Dear Allan,

Thanks so much for sending your heartfelt memoir. The big issue standing in the way of my taking you on is not editorial, since you write cleanly and smoothly. It's a matter of platform, that built-in audience who knows the author through some form of media. With the comparisons you gave, it's the authors and their reach beyond the book world that distinguishes them. Feinberg has long been a rights advocate in the spotlight, Boyle had a successful writing career as a man, and the Scholinkski was a case that got media coverage that led to a book deal, not the other way around. Publishing is an industry that can ride a wave but is not so great at making them. It's a shame that a good book is no longer enough, but I see a tough road ahead without a really impressive platform. I appreciate the chance, though, and wish you luck connecting with an agent who doesn't share my reservations.

Christopher Schelling

=======

Dear Allan,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to consider The Story of Q. I do like the subject here, but I'm not convinced that you have the platform for this to reach a mainstream audience in the current market. Your background lends itself better to a university press, and if you want to go a more consumer/trade route, it would have to be through a niche publisher like Seal Press. I'm afraid it's not right for me, but please keep in mind that mine is a subjective opinion and others will feel differently. I wish you the best in finding a good home for your work.

Sincerely,

Alice Speilburg




Finally —— and these are my real favorites —— there were the rejections where the lit agent or publisher didn't feel that they could place it with a publisher but fundamentally liked my idea for the book and mostly liked my writing. Many of them made observations about my story arc or my character development that reassured me that readers will probably "get it"; and several told me that they wanted me to know that I had something fundamentally good here, which would serve a purpose, that the world needed more such books:


Dear Mr. Hunter,

Thank you for your query. It sounds like you have quite a story to tell. I'm afraid I will not be able to take you on as I work predominantly with our agency's existing clients taking care of all their subsidiary rights matters. I wish you luck with your publishing endeavors and thank you for taking the time to write me.

Sincerely,

Joan Rosen

=======

Hi Allan
Thank you for your submission. As a gay man myself (who grew up in the
70s/80s!!) I read it with a great deal of interest. Unfortunately I didn’t
love it enough to take it on. I don’t have any constructive criticism
because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your writing. I think
it’s just a matter of finding the right agent who will work with you to
present to the best editorial team. Given your theme and writing skills I
don’t doubt that you’ll find him or her. Thank you for thinking of me and
giving me a shot at it.
Best,

Kevin O'Connor

=======

Dear Mr. Hunter,

I wanted to commend you for your story and personal fortitude. It takes great strength for an individual to dare to be different. Unfortunately, we are not sure that Ross Yoon is the right match for you. As a four-person operation, we must limit ourselves to a very small client list, accepting a fraction of 1% of the manuscripts we review every year. In this ever-tightening market, the list of publishers we work with increasingly demands authors with broad, national media outreach and international bestselling potential, and I'm we afraid we don't see any of them biting on this.

This is by no means a final judgment on your work. The Supreme Court decision two weeks ago indicates that we are experiencing a different social climate in which LGBTQ issues no longer fall on deaf ears. Your memoir may find traction as we progress towards greater social change. I encourage you to look through recent deal listings on www.publishersmarketplace.com to find the agent that’s perfect for you.



Thank you again, and best of luck to you.


Elizabeth Smith

=======

Dear Allan,

Thank you for sending me your memoir "The Story of Q," and my apologies for not getting back to you sooner. I found much to admire, particularly the depth of character you convey and your clear and engaging writing. This memoir shines a unique light on how sexuality and gender develop and evolve, and the narrative you've crafted uses a more subtle approach that doesn't hit you in the face with the narrator's sexuality, just as a person's sexuality doesn't necessarily hit them in the face at any one moment.

Ultimately, however, while the story has the potential for exposing a truly unique perspective, the memoir is overloaded with extraneous development that makes it difficult to pick out what bits are going to be the most important when piecing together the whole. Given these reservations, I'm afraid I must decline offering representation.

Thank you for the opportunity to read your work and we wish you all the best in your writing endeavors.

Yours,

Serene Hakim

=======


Hi Allen

Thanks for the submission. While I totally get what you're doing, I just don't think I'm the right agent for it, so for that reason I'll be stepping aside.

I wish you much luck with the book and in your search for representation.

Best,

Renée C. Fountain

=======

Thank you for querying. I do very much believe you have the kind of story that should be heard, but I'm going to have to pass on this. Publishing is a subjective business, though, and I'm sure you'll hear many different opinions during the querying process.

Best of luck in your agent search,




Rachel Kory


=======

Dear Allan Hunter,

Thank you so much for sending us the query for your memoir The Story of Q, which we have read with interest. The narrative is compelling but we are taking very few new clients on at this time and therefore we must pass.

One of the challenges with writing memoir is keeping the story in scenes so that it flows narratively rather than as a series of told incidents (and then this, and then this). I wonder if you might find ways to write more scenes, like in the opening with the boys who are violent. I really connected with you (the character) in that scene.

I hope this is not too discouraging, as the writing is strong and we wish you all the best with your submissions and in securing representation for this project.

Thank you so much for sending this our way.

I hesitate to use the word "brave" when describing your story, because I know that word can be offensive to some in the LGBTQ(xyz) community, but please know you have all the love and support in the world and that the publishing industry is starting to open its eyes to the need for these kinds of stories.

I'm personally a huge fan of Caitlin Kiernan (though she writes sci-fi/fantasy) and I can't wait to see more diversity in literature.

All my very best, and please make sure you keep submitting, as I know this agent stuff can be slow and disheartening!


brandie coonis

=======


Oh, and here's how my statistics finally play out:


The Story of Q -- total queries to Lit Agents = 974
Rejections: 966
Outstanding: 8


The Story of Q -- total queries to Publishers = 24
Rejections: 16
Outstanding: 7
Publisher Went out of Business after Making Offer: 1
Accepted for Publication (current): 1


(presumably those remaining 8 "outstanding" queries to lit agents and 7 to publishers will eventually be added to "rejections". I age them out as rejections at 3 months without a response if I don't get an explicit rejection letter)

I didn't quite make it to 1000 queries, but damn I came close!


————————

I am now echoed on DreamWidth, like many other LJ folks. My DW acct is here. Please friend/link me on DW if you are a DreamWidth user.

————————

Index of all Blog Posts

"What do you people mean when you say you're 'really women inside', anyway?", she posted, challenging us. "You folks apparently want us to believe that your minds, or hearts or whatever, are like those of us who were born female. But you've never been female, so how do you know whether who you are on the inside is like who we are on the inside? Frankly, it's pretentious and arrogant! You're appropriating women's experiences and women's identity!"

Well, she's got a point. None of us who were not born female know from first-hand experience what it is like, "inside", to be one of the people who were born female, and yet it is to them that we are comparing ourselves, and with whom we are identifying ourselves, when we say our gender is woman despite having been born male.

But although it's not as obvious at first glance, she's in the same situation.

She identifies as a woman. She considers herself to have elements and aspects of herself that are things she has in common with other women. But she's never been any other women, she's only been herself. Her only firsthand experience is of herself, and therefore if she limits herself to firsthand experience, she can't know how much of who she is represents what she has in common with other women, and how much is specific to herself as an individual. The only way she can extrapolate a sense of a shared identity as "woman" is by external observation and recognizing, from the outside, patterns and commonalities.

Which is what we're doing, too.

Notice that, like most everything else involving gender, it is a process of generalization. We observe women and generalize about our observations. We observe our own selves and generalize there, too, in identifying traits and tendencies, whether we do it consciously or unconsciously.

For quite some time now, I have described myself as a male-bodied person who is a girl or woman. That's an identity, it's a conclusion, and it's a political statement. But it's also a generalization when you get right down to it.

Not too long ago on Facebook, in response to a post about whether other genderqueer folks in the group have moments of self-doubt and a sense of being an imposter who doesn't really (always) feel the way they've described themself, I posted that I've been all over the map between "I'm sure all males experience themselves as inaccurately & inadequately described by the sexist reductionistic descriptions, I'm just more vocal about it" through "I am definitely more like a girl than I am like the other boys, so that's one more difference in addition to being left-handed and having eyes of two different colors" all the way to "I am a girl; this is a really fundamental part of my identity and explains my life far better than any other thing, I am Different with a capital D and this is the Difference".

Ever since I posted that, it's been sort of echoing in my head. Hmm, why don't I have a stronger tendency to think of myself as one of the guys who feels very badly defined by the sexist ideas of what it means to be a man?

I certainly have gone through periods in my life when I thought of myself in those terms. In the timeframe from about a year after I came out at UNM in 1980 — let's say 1981 or 1982 — until I finally withdrew as a graduate student from SUNY / Stony Brook in 1996, I put aside my sense of myself as fundamentally different from (other) guys. I wrote about that somewhat in 2015 in a post about repositioning
.


Essentially, I spent those years not only trying to "join up" with the feminist movement but also expecting to be in the vanguard of males with a serious personal grudge against the whole "being a man" thing in our society, expecting to meet other such people and then I would connect, feel far less alien among male-bodied people. My alienation would be towards the patriarchal sexist idea of what it means to be male, and I would not be alone in that.

And I wrote, and I spoke, and I went to the library and sought out books and magazine articles, and I went online and joined email-based groups. But I didn't find them.

Here's what I found instead:

• Warren Farrel's The Liberated Man, and sensitive new age guys, and articles about how bad it is that we male folks aren't allowed to cry or wear pink ties. Gimme a break.

• Men's rights groups of angry divorced men who want custody of their children or freedom from sexist alimony considerations, but who weren't considering themselves to be at all on the same team as feminist women, just using "sexual equality" as a tool towards making their argument

• "Profeminist" men's groups in which the tone was mostly abject self-abasement, shame and apology for how our male jackboots have been on the throats of women and how our positions of privilege benefit us unfairly. All of which is true but there was a severe lack of any profound emotional connection to wanting things to be different for any personal reason, any personal benefit to things changing. A mild consideration for the situation of gay guys but no sense of having found others like me.

• John Bly and Sam Keen and their drums and male-bonding, reinventing or rediscovering what it might and could mean to be a man. No strong sentiment of being angry about the whole "being a man" thing being imposed on us, or of feeling "that ain't me", though. Kind of reminded me of Boy Scouts.

... and as time went on, I had reason to question my standoffish disinclination to identify with any of these movements or groups of guys: What, do I have a need to be the most radical of anti-patriarchal males and therefore a need to see any and all other males as less so, or something like that?

What I realized, especially after I'd been drummed out of academia, was that I'd suppressed the sense of being personally different in order to emphasize this as a social movement against a social system. But in my original burst of self-understanding, I had specifically seen myself as a person who was like one of the girls instead of being like one of the boys, despite being male.


In other Facebook post, I made an off-the-cuff comment in passing about genderfluid people being the ones who have "girl days" and "boy days", and some genderfluid people replied to correct me: "Hey, I am never a 'boy'... I am fluid between being agender and being on the feminine spectrum"; "I float somewhere between being a demiboy and being a man, I hate it when I get misgendered and people say 'she' or 'maam'.."

"GENDERFLUID", in other words, refers to a wider and more general notion of a gender identity that shifts from time to time or context to context. Not the limited "oscillates between the two conventional genders" model I tend to associate with it.

So as it turns out, I guess I do fall into the description. My description of myself as a "male girl" (et al) is a generalization. And a choice in how to present, how to describe.


So far, I have sent out inquiry letters to women's studies / gender studies / sexuality studies departments and programs at universities in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. (Or, more specifically, my publicist sent them out — the emails went out from him and replies to the emails go back to him).

Two programs have made replies asking when I'm available and how much I charge including travel and room and board charges. Nothing definite but it's exciting. One is in Vermont and one is in Virginia.

Meanwhile I've gone back to querying lit agents (even if it's mostly a waste of time), and I have a query in front of a publisher. Today I sent a follow-up letter to a publisher to whom I sent a query back in April, because they'd indicated that I would hear from them within a few weeks. If their policy was "we will only contact you if we're interested", which isn't uncommon, that would be a different thing, but in this situation I decided to nudge them.


Current Stats:


Total queries to lit agents: 822
Rejections: 805
Outstanding: 17

As Nonfiction: 601
Rejections: 584
Outstanding: 17

As Fiction: 221
Rejections: 221
Outstanding: 0

Total queries to publishers: 14
Rejections: 9
Outstanding: 1
No Reply 3+ Months: 3
Pub Contract Signed, Then Publisher Went out of Business: 1

————————

Index of all Blog Posts

I had a very good time with the editor Barbara Rogan's author's colloquium, which ended last Thursday. Unlike some of these courses, which often focus on teaching a technique and then leave you to the task of applying what you learned to your actual work on your own time afterwards, this was one that encouraged us to use our work-in-progress as the source of material that we would submit to be examined and critiqued by the editor teaching the class and by the other participating students.

So I very much took it as an opportunity to put my book in the shop for some body work and a facelift. Several of the scenes I submitted were scenes I'd been thinking of punching up, and did so before submitting them and then modified them after getting feedback. Then I continued with other scenes from my book that were never submitted to the class, drawing on ideas and the energy percolating from all the sharing.

Here's an overview of the modifications to the manuscript:

• Early in the book there is a short overview of childhood in which it is established that as a child I identified with the girls and my friends were girls up until around 4th grade when it fell apart; the main body of the book begins with me in 8th grade, starting in a new school. Clarified brief internal-monologue in 8th grade in which I'm musing that 3rd grade, when I had girl friends, was a long time ago, if I'm going to have friends at all "I needed to learn how to be around boys… and stop thinking of boys as them."

because it needed emphasis; story line parses better when it is understood that I've put that "one of the girls" understanding of myself behind me as kid's stuff.


• Inserted new gym class locker room scene in which the other boys throw my underwear in the toilet while I'm showering, + replaced a bland narrative with a full-dialog scene in the guidance counselor's office in which I demand that those boys be expelled, counselor says "not gonna happen, you didn't see them do it", says "you need to pick your battles", and warns me he can bring them in but they're more likely to retaliate & what are my goals here?

first, because I needed a more fully fleshed-out "being bullied" scene and second, because many readers of my book kept saying "I want to see your character react more, all this bad stuff happens and he doesn't get all freaked out and angry and scared". So I realized I needed to establish more clearly that when he (i.e., me) HAD reacted he had been taught in various ways that no one was going to help & that not letting this stuff get to him is necessary and important. (And, as I said in class, "I think if the MC reacted with disbelief and outrage, anger and fear at each of these occurrences, it would be exhausting and tiresome and would take away from the gut-punch moments where the things that happen really shred him pretty awful.")

Those were in the first long chunk of the book. The balance of the changes were towards the end, in the last major chunk, where things come to a climax and resolution. I had been feeling for some time now that I needed this section to be a more vivid burst of triumph and joy—after my readers have borne with me through all the difficult and unpleasant trials leading up to it, too damn much of my "success story" portion was abstract and intellectual, and the parts that contained actual action were too often told as summary narrative and I needed stuff to pop a lot more here.

• There's a party scene where my character (i.e., me) is frustrated that going to these parties over the years hasn't resulted in connecting with any girls and having either sex or sexual relationship as an outcome. Original scene had him musing sourly to himself that maybe he ought to try acting like other boys and coming on blatantly to girls and not caring if THEY want sex etc, -- classic "Nice Boys™" sour angry stuff -- and he tries it cynically and bloody hell it works! Or he enough of it working to startle him. Redid it as a full dialog scene with named characters and body language and the smell of smoke and the music being played, etc

• Turning point scene is where character is listening to Pink Floyd's "The Wall" for the first time while tripping and feels outed by the music. Also redone as full dialog scene with named characters and more interaction, less summary. Also stripped out all but the most central line from the music itself (copyright issues).

• Figuring-stuff-out scene shortly afterwards, Christmas vacation with friend from college, parent's home front porch, redone with the friend used as a foil to have an out-loud conversation, replacing inside-the-head internal monologue summary stuff. Let the other guy be devil's advocate and argue against some of what I'm putting forth, to let me elaborate and clarify in my responses.

• Inserted new scene, coming out to my parents. Actually happened more awkwardly and earlier when I knew less, but helps to flesh out relationship with parents and clarifies how they reacted & felt about me being different "in this way".

Because reviewers have periodically said they wanted to see more about family interactions. Mostly missing in action because there wasn't much to write about: like the dog who didn't bark, my parents were parent who didn't say and do homophobic / sissyphobic things; it's hard to incorporate the absence of a behavior into a story; this is one of the rare opportunities to show their attitude including both their lack of judgmental disapproval and the limits of their interest in discussing or listening to me talk about it.

• Two post coming-out scene in the Siren Coffeehouse (feminist coffeehouse) were punched up with more dialog and more evocative descriptions of the people I interacted with, because I was flirting as well as seeking political-social allies, and my character (me) flirting and feeling sexually confident is a triumphant thing and needed more pop and color

• The last "trauma" of the book is one of those late-in-plot teases, a reappearance of Bad Shit after things have finally started going the character's way etc — in this case, university folks find his behavior disturbing and ask him to be checked out by the psychiatrist "just to alleviate concerns" and his agreeement is treated as a self-commitment to locked ward. Rewrote the arrival scene where he's first brought in, first discovers that he didn't merely consent to a conversation with the school shrink but is being held there, first interaction with the others on the locked ward: redid with full dialog, more solidly fleshed-out characters (the attendant, etc) again to make it pop

• Inserted new scene with dialog with two male gay activist types after a Human Sexuality class in which my character and those two folks presented to the class.

• Inserted new scene of conversation with a transsexual woman in which they discuss transsexuality and my character's own peculiar sense of gender identity, after he is introduced to her by one of the gay guys in the previous scene.

Those two events did not happen in real life at that time, or at all precisely as described, but similar conversations took place about 4 years later. Greatly add to continuity, action, excitement, fleshing out of issues, use of contrast and compare to more fully explain my character's gender / sexuality identity.

• scrapped overly long postlogue in favor of highly condensed flash-forward to give more of a sense of a successful gender-activist life. Previous version tried to do a fast-forward summary of life from approximately the end of the previous chapter to current era; blah and boring and overly long and tedious. New version starts in present era, crisply identified with the closing of a web browser window in sentence 1, main character off to do a presentation on gender issues and genderqueer as a specific category of gender identity. That along with short conversation with girlfriend (and a later "oh and her, well this is how me met" snippet) and a passing reference to a published article do a much better job of "and he lived happily ever after" as well as being much more concise and streamlined.


I am INDEED doing a presentation about being genderqueer, two of them in fact, one later on in April down at Baltimore Playhouse on the 29th and then again at the EPIC Conference in Pennsylvania May 12-16. I need to review my notes and subject anais_pf to listening to me rehearse! But I'm very much looking forward to it.

I'm querying again. Modified my query letter slightly, modified my synopsis a bit (some agents want a synopsis), and of course sample chapters all reflect the above changes. I've got a damn good book here and I will see it into print.

————————

Index of all Blog Posts

Hot damn! From one of my query letters to a nonfiction lit agent, query only, no additional materials, I just got a request for a proposal plus sample chapters!


So once again my book is under consideration with two agents simultaneously! One full manuscript (still holding my breath on that one) and one formal proposal.


Current stats for The Story of Q:

Total queries: 640
Rejections: 573
Outstanding: 65
Under Consideration: 2

As NonFiction:

Total queries: 439
Rejectionsw: 388
Outstanding: 50
Under Consideration: 1

As Fiction:

Total queries: 201
Rejections: 185
Outstanding: 15
Under Consideration:


————————

Index of all Blog Posts