And the Beat Goes On . . .

Hello again after a three-week hiatus. During that time, I’ve busied myself with visiting the websites of literary agencies to determine which agents represent historical fiction. As I look at what each agency represents, I’m also interested in the following genres: memoirs, fantasy, and inspirational gift books.

         Why? Because these are the categories on which I’ve been working the past few years. Let’s begin with the memoir.

         My other blog is an online memoir. I hope one day to take the postings and shape them into one or two memoirs—depending on length.

         Back in the early nineties, after the publication of Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, memoirs really came to the fore in publishing. Rick Bragg’s All Over But the Shoutin’ and James McBride’s The Color of Water, both published a few years later, cemented the premier place of memoirs in the publishing world.

         But so many memoirs have been published since then that the genre is not as popular with publishers as it once was. So some agents no longer represent this genre while other agents will say in their listings that they do not want “misery memoirs.”  

         I’m not sure what my memoir will have going for it. Nor am I sure what thread could hold the memoir together. Perhaps I will simply concentrate on the convent years, but I admit to wanting also to share the story of my mother’s influence on my life. I would also like to share some of the post-convent stories, especially those that have to do with peace and justice issues.

         For the fantasy genre, I now have ready the first book in a trilogy. Judy King, who illustrated A Cat’s Life: Dulcy’s Story, has done stunning pen and ink drawings for Book One. I’m nearing completion of the other two books in the trilogy.  

         The manuscript for the inspirational gift book A Celebration of Angels is also near completion. Recently, several friends read it and responded enthusiastically to varied aspects of the manuscript.

         When I worked for Winston Press in Minneapolis in the 1970s and 1980s, all I knew of publishing was the developing, writing, and editing of curriculum for grade and high schools.          

         Today I know almost nothing about what’s happening in publishing: What are agents looking for? What kind of stories do editors want from agents? What are the developing trends today?

         From a fairly thorough reading of the websites of many literary agencies, however, I have learned that some agents represent just nonfiction, while others represent only certain subgroups of fiction.

         For example, many do not represent fantasy, sci-fi, poetry, Westerns, children’s pictures books, and juvenile books. Some agencies represent only “commercial fiction” or “literary fiction.” What do those two terms mean? I’m just not sure.

         I do understand that agents are effective only if they know a wide group of editors at publishing houses. They must know what those editors are looking for with regard to manuscripts. If an agent doesn’t know many—or even one—editor who is looking for a historical novel, then she/he won’t be interested in A Reluctant Spy. The agent will look upon the novel as a dead end.         

         Many editors who retire or leave publishing become successful literary agents. Having worked in a publishing house, they know enough people to approach with a proposed manuscript.

         That’s another thing I’ve been investigating on those web sites for literary agents: their professional background.

         Lots to do. I’ll report more when I get a nibble or two. Peace.

Cat Photograph from Wikipedia

Snail Mail and E-Mail

Two Sundays ago, I wrote about my befuddlement over what to do with the manuscript for The Reluctant Spy—try to get it published or stuff it into the computer’s innards and let it molder for ages hence. Your responses helped greatly.

         Last Sunday, I shared with you the power of a single word—fascinating. Once again, your responses gave me the courage to make the decision detailed below.

         This Sunday I’d like to share with you what I’ve being doing in the past seven days. What I haven’t been doing is blogging. That is, reading and commenting on the seventy blogs I enjoy and try to follow.

         Why?

         Because that word fascinating has impelled me to look for an agent . . . and to look in a new way.

         In the past few years, I’d done an agent search several times. That involves (1) going to a book such as 2013 Guide to Literary Agents or Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents or (2) searching web sites that list agents such as Literary Rambles for children’s books or AgentQuery.Com.

         These books and lists may offer a little or a lot of information about a particular agent or agency: names, address, e-mail address, web site, genre represented. That last item is essential because some agencies represent only nonfiction. Other agencies may represent fiction but only a certain kind: literary, historical, fantasy, contemporary women’s, mystery, mainstream, young adult.

         Finding an agent takes time. Thought. Effort. Here’s what I’ve been doing in the past week instead of blogging:

·      I wrote a generic query letter for The Reluctant Spy. Crafting the first sentence and paragraph so as to entice an agent into reading the entire letter requires going over it repeatedly. When I begin to contact agencies and agents, I’ll modify that letter as necessary. That is, I’ll mention some book an agent has represented or the agency’s client list or an agent’s particular interest in some area. Finding out that info requires extensive research.

·      I studied the books and lists mentioned above to determine which agencies represent fiction, specifically, historical fiction.

·      I visited agency web sites to determine two things: the names of those agents in a particular agency who are interested in the type of fiction I have to offer and how they want someone to query them: electronically or by snail mail. Do they want only a letter? Or a letter plus the first five pages of the manuscript? 30 pages? 50 pages?

         Slowly, I’m beginning to develop a list of agents to contact.

         In the past few years when I’ve done an agent search I’ve taken the easy route—sending out only e-queries. That’s cheaper than snail mail and usually, if the agent does choose to respond, the response comes much quicker than through the mail.

          This time, I’m decided to do two things differently—bless that word fascinating! I’m going to send out snail queries and I’m going to send them not only to agencies that represent historical novels—which is what I’ve done in the past—but also to those agents that represent “mainstream” fiction. That’s a breakthrough for me. I believe that in the past I’ve been too narrow in my vision. I’m going to cast a wide net this time.

         In this coming week, I hope to continue my search and also to visit each of your blogs at least once. How can I expect you to offer your thoughtful suggestions if I don’t follow your postings? And I so enjoy discovering what you are all doing and thinking.

         I’d appreciate any thoughts you have on the process I’ve detailed. I plan to spend the month of September searching lists and sending out queries. I’ll keep you posted. Lots to do . . . and I love it!

                  

Researching Bronze Age Greece

Last Sunday I asked a favor of all of you who read this blog: I needed more reviews for A Cat’s Life: Dulcy’s Story and A Cat’s Legacy and asked if you’d help me get them.

         While asking for reviews, I also reflected on my lack of a platform—at least one dependent on page views of my two blogs.         

         The fourteen encouraging comments you left on last week’s posting have been so helpful. You complimented both books, which many of you have already read and reviewed. You stood behind reviews you’d written for them, offered to write a posting about how one of the books had helped you in a time of grief, and in general offered me your continued support as I try to get both books into the hands of readers.

         In addition, one of you ordered copies of both books, two of you have already left reviews on Amazon, and three of you offered suggestions for how to increase my page views. It’s now time to consider what direction to take. I’ll share my decision with you when I’ve made it, but for now I simply want to say to all of you a heartfelt “Thank you” for responding with such good will and creativity to my request for help.

         Today I’m posting about the new manuscript on which I’m now working: Three Roads Diverged. It explores questions about definition: Why do we let others define us? What happens when we cast aside those definitions? Does our integrity depend on resisting being defined by others? And finally how old does someone have to be to walk away from the definitions families impose?

         The novel, which takes place in Bronze Age Greece circa 1250 BCE, demands research on my part. I began this research back in the late 1980s with the study of classical Greek. 

          That was not the language spoken during Greece’s Bronze Age, but it would, I thought, introduce me to the language in which the great plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides had been written and to their cadence and syntax. I hoped both would lodge themselves in my unconsciousness and influence the way I wrote.

Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides

         Those renowned Greek dramatists used the ancient myths of their land as subject matter for their plays. I’d decided to use those myths also. So exploring the plays of these classical dramatists in the original language seemed appropriate to me.

The ancient theater of Delphi.

         To begin, I studied classical Greek for two quarters at the University of Minnesota and then continued my studies through correspondence courses from the University of Wisconsin.

         I never became proficient in speaking the language because of my auditory learning disability, but I did begin to understand syntax as I translated from Greek to English and English to Greek. Moreover I began to appreciate the way classical Greek writers approached their subject in both histories and plays. To write authentically, I needed to learn how those early Greeks thought.

         Beginning in the late 1980s, I have purchased many books on Greece’s Bronze Age and on the city/states of the time like Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Athens, and Thebes; the flora and fauna of Greece; religion; typography; law; arts and crafts; the role of women and men; mythology, and any other subject matter that explored the world at the time. I now have a library of over a hundred scholarly works on Bronze Age Greece.

The Lion Gate at Mycenae.

         I’ll be working on this manuscript for at least two years. My postings on this blog will reflect my progress. Next week I’ll share with you how I began to write back in the early 1990s. Have a good week. Peace.

         

Researching and Writing a Novel

As you know from my past postings, I’ve completed the manuscript for a historical novel entitled The Reluctant Spy. During the thirteen years I’ve worked on this manuscript, it’s gone through four incarnations. The first version—written in the late ’90s and entitled “Who Is He for You?”—was a series of monologues spoken by the characters who peopled the Gospel of Luke. Friends described these monologues as “spiritual reflections” or a “devotional” book. No viable novel here.

Ancient Gospel manuscript page.

            In 2001-2002, those reflections became “almost a novel,” when I introduced a character named Ephraim. The twenty-seven monologues became its ribs. Ephraim’s crisis of faith was the musculature holding those ribs together.

            A wondrously kind editor, Susan Tobias, praised the writing, but turned down the manuscript, which was entitled “The Jesus Interviews.” She said that it was too predictable because most people know what happened to Jesus. Moreover, the manuscript too closely followed his life as an itinerant preacher.

            Judy Koll Healey, a friend and published historical novelist, helped me understand what I needed: dramatic tension. She noted that the manuscript was about a man finding his way with the focus on the way. To create a novel, I needed to focus on the man.

            It took me the rest of 2002 to understand what Judy was trying to tell me and to devise a plot that would put Ephraim squarely into a dramatic situation that would reveal the depths of his character and his struggle through a crisis of faith. To do that, I had to move away from Jesus and let the manuscript become Ephraim’s story.

            In 2003, while writing version three—“The Yeshua Spy: The Plot to Kill Jesus”—I had trouble with Jesus, whom I was now calling Yeshua (his Jewish name). He tried to take over the second half of the book. I had to wrestle the manuscript away from him in order to keep the dramatic tension and suspense provided by Ephraim. Readers know what happens to Yeshua, but not to Ephraim who is wholly fictitious. It was in Ephraim that I had to find the story arc that would keep readers reading.

            After completing this third version, I asked Vince Skemp, a professor at the College of Saint Catherine in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to read the manuscript and advise me as to its authenticity. While helping me realize how little I really knew of the first century and Yeshua’s Jewishness, Vince thoughtfully provided me with an extensive reading list. The books on that list impelled me to write the fourth incarnation: The Reluctant Spy.

            Wanting to steep myself in first-century Judaism, I spent most of 2004 and 2005 reading Jewish and Christian biblical scholars. However, The Reluctant Spy is a novel, and I’ve taken many liberties in presenting Ephraim the Pharisee, Daniel the Sadducee, Chaviva the Jewish wife, John the Baptizer, Yeshua of Nazareth, Hashem the Almighty, and Miryam of Magdala.

Icon of Mary Magdalene.

            One such liberty involves Hanina ben Dosa, a first-century Jewish Hasid. A real person, he was born about ten years after Yeshua. However, for purposes of the novel, I had him be a contemporary of Yeshua. Another liberty I’ve taken enables Ephraim to travel freely throughout the Galilee without worrying about the purity laws embraced by the Pharisees.

            If this manuscript—the fourth attempt to “get it right”—ever gets published, the biblical scholars I read may not recognize their own expertise. Yet what they wrote inspired me with a desire to show Yeshua as both Jew and human being: a man who walked the roads of the Galilee and believed that Hashem called him to proclaim the kingdom.

            My reading also dramatically changed the bias I’d always had against the Pharisees. The Gospels present them in a negative light because of the times in which the evangelists wrote. Modern scholarship has definitively shown that the ordinary people of Palestine in the first century of the Common Era admired and respected the Pharisees, a small group of devout Jews who sought to make holy their own actions for the good of their people.

            Among the books I read, the following proved most helpful in understanding the Pharisees, Judaism of the first century of the Common Era, and Yeshua as a Jew: Jesus of Nazareth: King of the Jews by Paula Fredriksen; Jesus the Pharisee by Hyam Maccoby; The Historical Figure of Jesus, Jesus and Judaism, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, and Judaism by E. P. Sanders; and Jesus in His Jewish Context, Jesus the Jew, and The Religion of Jesus the Jew by Geza Vermes.

            For the Epilogue, I relied on Wanderings: Chaim Potok’s History of the Jews. In it, I discovered what might have happened to Ephraim late in his life. Several other scholars provided food for thought as I tried to put myself back in the time in which Yeshua lived. I also consulted multiple reference books for names, maps, Roman and Jewish culture, and biblical background.

The Galilee circa 50 CE.

            All this research took time. Writing, editing, and polishing the manuscript has taken more time. And now—in December of 2012, thirteen years after I began working on this proposed novel—has come the time of looking for an agent. 
             Next Sunday, I’ll share with you what searching for a literary agent entails and what’s happening with my own search, which began this past Monday. Are any of you seeking representation from an agent? If so, I'd so like to read what's happening in your search.

Postscript: I just reread last Sunday's posting and realized that I'd said that this Sunday I'd tell you about my spelling woes in high school. Oophs. When I sat down to write today's post, I totally forgot that commitment. So next Sunday, I'll post on spelling and the nun who said, "Stop putting me on, Dolores!" Then I'll return to researching background for novels and writing them.

All art and maps from Wikipedia.