My Agent ROCKS!

Nope, no news about a possible publication yet, but it seems like Jack is about as fed up of the waiting as I am. I wrote him an e-mail yesterday detailing a tactic of a friend of mine. Her name is Nicole Luiken and for years I had the biggest inferiority complex around her, ’cause she was one of those “wunderkind” prodigies who got her first novel published at the age of 12 and has been churning them out ever since. We met in the Cult Of Pain writer’s group (I’m still holding out for being next in line to get a major publication, then that would make three of us. That’s pretty good odds for one group, but then they were all pretty good writers) and she’s already gotten her books published under the publisher that is currently holding my books hostage. Her agent is Lucille Diver, a woman who turned me down flat when I wrote to her, without even asking to see the manuscript, but by then, it didn’t matter, ’cause I already had Jack.

Anyway, apparently what Nicole’s agent did to get some attention was to break the rules, somewhat. Normally in publishing, the understood convention is that a publisher usually has exclusive rights to peruse a manuscript, meaning that as long as they’re looking at it, no one else does until they’ve made up their minds. Nicole’s agent waited a certain period, then crisply informed the publishers that they were taking too long, they could still peruse the book if they wanted to, but their exclusivity period was over and she was sending the books off to other publishers. When Nicole told me about this, I thought, “Golly and Tarnation, that’s a right fine idea! Thanks, little lady!” Okay, I didn’t actually think it that way, but if I were on a horse when I said that, it would sound fine, trust me on this.

So I wrote to my agent to present him with this option and ask him if there were any ethical dilemmas arising from it that he might not want to deal with, and he responded with, “Actually, I just told the publishers the same thing last week.”

This is why having an agent is so cool. They don’t have to deal with all that politicking and negotiating shit that involves sitting in restaurants and trying to understand the intricacies and legal enigmas of the publishing world. Or, in the immortal words of some other writer who’s name I forget, “My agent lives in New York so that I don’t have to.”

Brilliant. Bloody brilliant.