My, how the days whip by and before you know it, a whole week has disappeared with no posts! So, work news: in the quest for an agent, this week I have learnt a valuable lesson. the one guy who I really thought could cut the mustard for me is a jerk. Here's the timeline: mid February, I sent him an email enquiry so as not to waste his time if we were on different pages. Late March, I decide six weeks was a reasonable amount of time to wait, so I followed the instructions on his web page - which is probably what I should have done in the first place. Six weeks on from that I don't think that it's unreasonable to expect a reply that says something like "Sorry...", or "Sure, send me something..." or even "I'm busy for the next four months, I'll be ages getting back to you".
Of course, as is a writers need for rejection, I thought my pitch was maybe under-par, but then I had the good fortune to bump into an author friend of mine. I was telling her this and she said her agent was just as bad at getting back to her. She had emailed him a question about her current contract and received back pretty much the same as me. Nothing.
Anyway, turns out we were talking about the same guy. At my level, I can understand it, but if you're already involved in a relationship, that's just plain inexcusable, so I'm moving along the bus now and just chalking that one up to a lucky escape. There's hundreds of great looking agents out there - why would I want to be involved with one who can't be bothered responding somebody who was important to him a little while ago? The blogs he recommends also suck. Not even a patch on this one even if I do say so myself!
Not perturbed by this, I mailed a publisher out in the States to see if he would be interested in seeing Too Hot For Dogs. Half an hour later, I got a very cool reply saying "Sure - send it across". That's the sort of response you need from a professional. Game on brother. I salute you! It's not a blank cheque but in the quest to be published, a human response calling for action is classed as a victory.
Talking of Too Hot For Dogs, we have about four more panels left to work on and we're done on issue one. In the quest for the best issue I could deliver, I've killed off a million ideas and undertaken a live rewrite which has made it much slicker. Thus, issue one has now become the prologue and issue one will dive straight into the story without the need for all the character introductions - hence a lack of blogging around here.
The downside of a creative burst is that it inevitably throws up other ideas. Most are consigned to the trash, while others are too good to throw away. In the latter instance, the majority are soaked up into Carnival of Souls simply because it's a book where anything can happen and, more often than not, does.
This is why people like me needs publishing deals - so they can spend all day working on them instead of lining the pockets of The Man.
Meanwhile, my buddy Richie read my post about starting to play again and hooked me into an online recording project. This could be very cool. All seems simple enough - maybe some of those ideas I thought were trashy could be harnessed into something there. It's a hard life being plugged into the creative grid. First port of call is probably to reinstall GarageBand and get some tracks started up to get rid of the cobwebs. Excited about that...
Over in the park next door, some cheap ass prick let his dog attack one of the swans who was protecting his cygnets. When the swan came at it, I thought he was going to smack the dog one with the stick he was holding, but instead he let the swan have it. I was over the other side of the lake or quite seriously, I would have been over there... next time brother, next time. Cock.
Currently listening to: Advance copy of Brigade: Come Morning We Fight and The Outline: You Smash It, We'll Build Around It.
Currently reading: The Lies of Locke Lamora: Scott Lynch and er... Who Are You Stripey Horse?: Jim Helmore/Karen Wall (awesome kids book!)
Currently watching: CSI New York: Season Four
Clip of the Day: It's a surprise
