Rejected! (Queries Round 3)

Another rejection! Lara Perkins from the Andrea Brown Literary Agency liked my book. But not enough. Sad face. But she had some really positive things to say (Is it weird that the thing I'm maybe most pumped about is that she loved the title?)! It's a roller coaster of emotions over here! Like Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (quip-quip-slapstick-sillysong-DEATH!).

Anyway, here is the letter. The GIFs are my addition, but, agents, take note--they kinda ease the pain a bit. Something to consider, eh?

Dear C. James,

Thank you so much for your query and for your patience while I considered your work. I'm very grateful for this opportunity, and I think there is a great deal to recommend MORE LIKE A SIREN, LESS LIKE A BELL (for starters, some terrific writing, a compelling character, and a killer title).

However, after careful consideration, I'm afraid I don't feel I'm the right agent for this project.

I think the premise here is quite promising, but I'm afraid I didn't connect with the voice as fully as I'd hoped. As you know, voice is incredibly subjective, and I'm sure another agent will feel differently. I'm truly sorry not to be able to offer you representation at this time, and I wish you the very best of luck in finding the perfect home for MORE LIKE A SIREN, LESS LIKE A BELL. 

One of the most difficult parts of this job is having to pass on projects, sometimes even on promising projects with great potential. Yet, like all agents, I can only take on a small fraction of the work I see--an unfortunate business reality. I have enormous respect for authors, not least because it takes great bravery to share your work with others. I very much hope that you keep this one pass in perspective.  As you know, all it takes is one "Yes." I wish you great success in finding that "Yes," whether with our agency or with another agent or publisher. 

Thank you so much, again, for thinking of me and for giving me this opportunity to consider your work. I very much hope to read of a deal for your work soon. 

All my best,

Lara

So, in the end, I'm heartbroken in the rain. But it's cool. Because at least I'm Martin Freeman.

The Vulgar Cycle Illustration & Bob the Whale

I recently reread my screenplay, The Vulgar Cycle, as I start planning to convert it to a graphic novel script (any talented and committed illustrators out there, drop me a line!). So I thought I'd post this pen and ink illustration I'd made for the cover back when I first finished it. The story is a modern retelling of the Arthurian Legend (nods to secondary stories, analogous characters, a Lancelot-like love triangle) done with precocious teens, tons of swearing, dick jokes, and a proportionate amount of recreational drug use.

My art-school pals, David Jensen and Jennifer Dzik, now both fancy-pants, big-time graphic designers, posed for the figures. David and I have also played in bands together like The Literacy Program. Neither of them posed for the guy in the whale suit hugging the sword. That's Bob the Whale, who appears to the protagonist in a drug hallucination (where else?) to give sagely advice while eating copious amounts of food he seems to pull from thin air (both the advice and the food) and is inspired by a song written by the main characters' band inspired by a song played by my real-life high school band (art mirroring life!). If you really wanna torture yourself, scroll past the illustration for lyrics. 

 BOB THE WHALE 

Bob/He is a whale/He has a tale/But it's really a fin. 

Once/I took him to school/But he didn't fit in/Not that nobody liked him/But the door was too small.

When/I found him on the beach/I started to feed him/He ate like a pig/But Bob is a whale/Now the door is too small. 

Bob/When he dies/He wants to go to Heaven/But he won't get in/'Cause the gates are too small.

Bob/He loves his god/And when he dies/He wants to play with him. 

(lyrics by 5th graders, Casey and his buddy Joey, final 2 verses by Junior, Punk Eddie)

Chats with Steve: The Katy Perry Movie

This is Chats with Steve, in which I copy and paste inane conversations I've had on Gmail chat with my fellow Knee-Jerk editor, Steve. In this episode: the Katy Perry doc, Part of Me .

steve: colleen just watched that last night

Casey: ha

steve: while i read in the other room

Casey: it's a little bit fascinating and it has a good story arc

steve: yeah i have no interest in htat

Casey: you say that now. what did coll think

steve: she liked it she said russel brand was a dick or something and then she sang katy perry songs in bed until she fell asleep

Casey: yeah the interesting stuff to me was her early recording days before anyone gave a fuck

steve: when she was on a gospel label or whatever

Casey: she only did that for a few months i guess the rest of the time she was trying to be allanis morrisette

steve: she should have tried to be dave coulier

Casey: nodoy

steve: nodoy

steve: i'm going to name a dog "doy"

steve: so when he jumps on the couch i can say no, doy

Casey: yes. i understood

steve: no, you didn't i had to explain it to you. nodoy

Casey: ok

steve: the dog's name is doy

steve: and so when the dog does things i don't approve of, i can say no, doy get it now?

Casey: maybe

steve: the dog's name is doy

Casey: uhhuh. go on ...

steve: and so when the dog, whose name is doy, misbehaves, i can say, "No, doy" because the dog's name is doy

Casey: Hold on. You're going too fast.

THE END. 

"How to Enjoy Batman Comics: a Love-Letter"

I've begun writing a monthly column for The Prague Revue. Before I was asked to be a regular contributor, I'd previously published a piece there titled "How to Waste Five Hours on Wikipedia" (a tongue in cheek how-to on pre-gaming before going out the bars while simultaneously filling your noggin with useless knowledge!) I'm running with the how-to angle at least for the foreseeable future. This time around it's how to read and enjoy Batman comics (hey, it's right there in the title!). I've been reading Batman/Detective/all the shorter-running spinoffs since about 1989, a child of the great Batman: the Movie  hype that sweeped the nation that year. I saw Tim Burton's film for the first time as a triple feature with Ghostbusters II and I think Bambi at the now long-gone Skylight Drive-In Theater in Wisconsin.

Anyway, I could go on and on about the caped crusader, my favorite storylines (which, you'll see in the Prague Revue piece, are a bit biased based on the period I started reading), and favorite characters (Jason Todd, because he was my first Robin, even when everyone else hated him enough to vote to kill him off). But I already go on and on enough in the piece, which you can read at "How to Enjoy Batman Comics: a Love Letter."

Queries: Round Two

Spent this beautiful Saturday morning prepping three snail mail queries and wrapping sold books (farewell, Karsten Harries' The Meaning of Modern Art, we've had some good times together) to take to the post office while watching The Wire tempered by Amazon Prime episodes of Clarissa Explains it All  (it's too much otherwise, man. It's too much).

These are my first snail mail queries which I was hoping to get out closer to the last batch, but part of last week was spent on a trip to Chicago to see a section of More Like a Siren, Less Like a Bell  performed to a sold-out house at Chicago's Strawdog Theatre (put on by the amazing Pre-Posthumanists). I'm hoping to have audio to put on the site very soon. Then over the long holiday weekend, my wife, Jessa and I played host to our good friend and Monkeybicycle travel-essay contributor, Dakota Sexton. We took a mini-vacation, acting as tourists in our own town, showing Dakota around, as she brainstormed for her piece on Memphis, and generally being much more active than we normally would in 105 degree, 90 percent humidity weather (rides, haunted houses, and fifty-cent freak show exhibits ("A beautiful woman's head with the body of a hideous snake! What horrific accident could have made this beautiful woman so hideous?") at the Agri-Fair, drinks and small stage acts at the gallery street-fest downtown, karaoke, sushi, margaritas, and a brief reprieve to an over-air-conditioned theater for The World's End).

So, choices for my first snail mail queries were based on essentially one criteria: they had to be sent to the biggest and best. While I understand I'm likely over-reaching by trying to score John Green's agent, I'd rather be able to say, "At least I tried," rather than under-sell myself. Plus, I enjoy the close, personal attention each of these agencies provides its clients and see some marketable similarities between some of their publications and More Like a Siren. So when I post about receiving the rejections for these, feel free to say "I told you so." It's okay. I'll be alright as long as I have my free-streaming Melissa Joan Hart.

Here's what I sent and to whom: 

Sterling Lord Literistic (Douglas Stewart): Query letter, first full chapter (34 pages), and SASE

Writers House (Jodi Reamer): Query letter, first 14 pages (section break in first chapter), and SASE

McCormick and Williams (Amy Williams): Just the query letter and SASE

Pre-Posthumanists Present: Paranoia!

If you live in the Chicago area, I hope you'll check out the first Pre-Posthumanists event Wednesday, August 28th at Strawdog Theatre. It's a great idea for a new reading series started by the ever-awesome Ryan Duke, Grayson Daskawicz-Davis, and Simon A. Smith (whose work appears in The Way We Sleep) where they select pieces of prose fiction and produce them as plays.  The show will feature a piece by (again, another The Way We Sleep contributor) James Tadd Adcox, as well as a section from More Like a Siren, Less Like a Bell. James' is about a mean computer (I believe *UPDATE: IT WASN'T!) and mine is about '80s music and V.D. so there's something for everyone!

Here's the press release:

The Pre-PostHumanists will host their first reading to the delight of their Overlord, the Singular Consciousness, on August 28th, 2013 in Strawdog Theatre’s Hugen Hall, 3829 N Broadway.

Titled "Pre-PostHumanists Present: Paranoia" the reading will feature the stories of James Tadd Adcox and C. James Bye, hosted by Brandon Eells (Singular Consciousness) and Eleni Pappageorge (Melissa Maynard), with performances by Sara Gorsky, Matt Kahler, John Leen, Kayla Pulley, Ben Vigeant and Johnard Washington, and directed by Alex Huntsberger.

Editors Ryan Duke, Simon A. Smith, and Grayson Daskawicz-Davis select short stories and deliver them to a director for casting. The story is then presented as a short play reading with actors playing different roles and minimal staging.

Doors open at 7pm, show at 8pm. Tickets available at preposthumanists.com.

Review: Cute Stripey Cardigan for Twenty Bucks

Cute Stripey Cardigan

Cute Stripey Cardigan for Twenty Bucks 

Two for Twee Records/MPDG Ltd.; 2009

Cute Stripey Cardigan's third album in as many years is a response to the age-old question, "If squirrels could write music, what would it sound like?" The lyrics to album opener, "You are Adorable, I am Adorable (We are Adorable Together)," offers a glimpse into the life of an organic, lemon-poppy seed cupcake that has fallen devastatingly in love with a broken-spined, first-print copy of The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and features glistering, peanut-brittle guitars, a string quintet, and harmonies sung by three of the original surviving Ewoks. The final lines, delivered from the point of view of the weary copy of the Beatrix Potter classic--"My little Poppy/You make me so sleepy/But you are a sweetie/You know how to read me"--provide proof that the two will survive all of the relationship hiccups presented in the preceding verses.

Speaking of hiccups, second track, "Get Up! Get Up! And Dance to Your Hiccups!" is a rollicking delight dedicated to the recent YouTube craze of tweens posting videos of themselves downing bottles of Jones Cola and then ecstatically dancing herky-jerk to the beat of their or their friends' hiccups. The track also includes a ukelele solo by the ghost of the eternally darling, Spanky of The Little Rascals. Brilliantly stark closing track, "Let's Tint Everything Just a Little Bit Yellow," is simply an audio recording of a daffodil digitally sped up by 1,500% so that the listener can experience its emergence from seed to blooming flower in a mere three minutes and twenty-two seconds.

It's great to see that Cute Stripey Cardigan have landed on their penny-loafer and Mary Janes wearing feet following the sophomore slump of previous record, We Like Books and Milk. Fans of Manchester's The Sunday Picnics, early Scratch N' Sniff Stickers, and actual scratch 'n sniff stickers will fall head over heels for Cute Stripey Cardigan for Twenty Bucks.

RATING: 5/5 Fluffy Baby Chickadees

Queries: Round One

Having begun to submit queries for my novel, More Like a Siren, Less Like a Bell , I figured this blog would be a great place to detail the process (better than doing it on my Ghostbusters III petition blog for example). As far as I know, I'm following all of the rules: use standard formatting for the letter, including a specific reference to that agent's work and how it relates to my manuscript; have several friends read over the general letter and edited based on their notes; send only what the agent asks for on their agency's page and don't bog them down with unnecessary kissingup. Time consuming, but actually pretty fun, plus it's giving me a chance to brush up on some YA literature and see better where my writing might fit in the field.

This week, I've submitted to the following: 

Lara Perkins at Andrea Brown

Molly Jaffa at Filio Lit

Nicole James at Aaron Priest

Adrienne Rosado at Nancy Prost

Jennifer Carlson at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner

Nancy Stauffer at Stauffer Literary

Maria Massie at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin

Charlotte Sheedy at Sheedy Litierary Agency

Christopher Schelling at Selectric Artists

And the whole process is going quicker than I thought it might. Within two days I had two responses, one a form rejection from Maria Massie (you can't win 'em all over!) and another an encouraging rejection from Ms. Sheedy's partner, Mackenzie Brady who said both she and Ms. Sheedy thought I had a "fascinating premise for a novel here," but said that Ms. Sheedy is "so overwhelmed with current projects that she is not taking on any new clients at all." Overall, knowing Ms. Sheedy is Daniel Handler's agent and that what I presented in my query letter caught her interest is encouraging enough to keep at this. Plus I like my book. I spent a lot of time on it. Like years. So even knowing there will be far worse than this to come before someone likes my book enough to want to see if book buyers might like it too, this whole query process is actually fairly enjoyable, especially if my wife keeps agreeing to watch classic episodes of Doctor Who with me while I submit to agencies.