But...We're Not Writing Genre Fiction!

I have nothing against genre fiction.

I love Lord of the Rings, Foundation and Empire, Star Trek and Wars. I eat up detective noir, and rate Raymond Chandler's prose up there with Dostoevsky, Dickens, Hemingway, Franzen, Kingsolver...all the literary giants. By the time I was 10 I had read all the Nancy Drew mysteries - there something stimulating about strong, resourceful young women working their way out of one nasty pickle after another. I gobbled up Lt. Chee and Sgt. Joe Leaphorn and their adventures on the Big Res. Stephen King has kept me awake more nights than I care to admit, long after I've finished whatever horrific nightmare he has depicted. And Harry Potter? I look forward to reading the entire series again someday.

But that's not the stuff I want to write.

Could I? Sure. In fact I already have I, guess. During NaNoWriMo in 2008 I wrote Bury Me With My La-Z-Boy. It's about a voodoo Papa who can't die unless he's in his La-Z-Boy rocker. When a hospital orderly is ordered to go find the man's chair, he uncovers a drug cartel operating out of the swamps and bayous of Louisiana, along with a voodoo tribe that can turn themselves into animals. It's not finished and I can't say for certain if it ever will be, but if it is it would fall into the whatever genre vampire stories inhabit. Right now our heroes are trapped in an underground crypt with a bunch of zombies and may remain there forever.

But I'm not writing this to differentiate my own writing interests from genre writers, or to position "literary fiction" as being "better" than genre fiction in any way, shape or form. Maybe what we call literary fiction is actually genre fiction in disguise. Isn'tGreat Expectations a mystery, in the end? Isn't The Brothers Karamazov a murder mystery, along with Crime and Punishment? Could we call The Poisonwood Bible a "family saga?" One Hundred Years of Solitude is as much fantasy as it is real. Doesn't David Copperfield turn out to be a romance of sorts? Lonesome Dove is a Western, right in there with Louis L'Amore. Right?

(Keep in mind that all of Dickens' work was published serially in periodicals, as was much of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Flaubert. We probably wouldn't classify anything that is being published serially in periodicals today as great literature. Could it be that what we qualify as "literary fiction" is such because it has stood the test of time?)

We all know these categories are marketing tools, in the end, just as Jazz, Rock, Country, Alt. this and that are. Without labels we have chaos. Not good.

The "Author Platform" Manifesto

For the author of novels that don't fit comfortably in any genre and aren't published by one of the biggies, it is easy to be completely overlooked. "General Fiction," along with "Contemporary Fiction" and "Literary Fiction" are, to the marketer, non-categories. The audience for these novels is difficult to pin down, unlike work that falls neatly into "Romance," "Sci-Fi," "Steampunk," etc. etc. Market research can identify the profile of genre readers from demographics down to the brand of shoe they wear and the type of soda they drink.

As a result, much of the self-marketing noise out there for indy authors is designed for genre writers. The much ballyhooed "author platform" becomes tricky to pin down in character-driven fiction, unless of course that character, like Conrad's Marlowe or Jim Harrison's Brown Dog, keeps showing up in our books.

My first published novel, Hack, is about an artist who fakes his own death to drive up the value of his paintings. After his faux-demise, he returns disguised as a Mexican playboy who takes up motorcycling to be close to the woman of his dreams who happens to be a biker.

My publisher at the time suggested I build an author platform that would appeal to Harley enthusiasts, since that's what Henry Griffin (as Paco) and his paramour, Hadley, like to ride. It was also suggested that I build an author platform that would appeal to painters, since that's what Griffin does. But painting and Harleys aren't really anything more than character traits, and you don't build a multi-book platform based on character traits unless you're going to feature the same characters over and over again in subsequent novels.

John Irving has wrestlers in at least 50% of his novels, but the stories are not about wrestling, nor would they necessarily appeal to wrestlers or their fans. In One Person features many wrestlers, and those that he tracks throughout the story are either gay or transsexual. Irving, being neither gay or transsexual, needs to balance the voice of his bi-sexual protagonist with something that he knows intimately. Wrestling, along with the familiar New England setting and the focus on community theater, provides that believable ballast.

So, it's no wonder that Irving keeps going back to  wrestling and wrestlers: he knows the territory and can write about it with authenticity. Also, if you look at his overall bibliography, you will find that the vast majority of his protagonists are artists of one sort or another: writers, playwrights, actors, novelists, musicians, even tattoo artists. There are also a number of college professors and Catholic priests. And, of course, wrestlers. While there are exceptions (the OBGYN in The Cider House Rules, or the lumberjack in Last Night at Twisted River, neither of whom are the principals, or the protagonist of The Fourth Hand).

He writes these characters because he knows them or has read about them. For example, the hand doctor in The Fourth Hand has a habit of flinging dog turds at scullers on the Charles River with a lacrosse stick while jogging. I asked him where he got that idea, and he said it was in the Cambridge news.

Nonetheless, Irving's fondness for the professional profiles of his protagonists does not an author platform make, at least according to the indy author self-marketing pundits.

This morning I had an exchange with a indy-author "publisher," that went something like this.

There's a an outfit that calls itself SOOP (Something or Other Publishing). The proprietor asked me if I would like to list my latest novel, The Healing of Howard Brown, on his site. So I had a look. This is how I responded to his solicitation:

Hi W - checked out the marketplace. Now, imagine my bewilderment: there is no category for adult literary fiction. Hemingway, Faulkner, Dickens, even Jonathan Franzen have no place for their stories on your site. Neither do I, nor do any of the thousands of MFA graduates with wonderful novels outside of the commercial realms of the big publishers. I understand the perception that the market for self-published books is all non and/or genre fiction. But there are legions of boomers out there that are tired of the thirty-something female fiction foisted upon us by the big publishers. So...business opportunity? Maybe?

And this is how he responded:

Thank you so much for pointing this out. We will add the category "Adult Literary Fiction" and you can be the first one to post your book :)

We'll see if this actually happens. Meanwhile, I'm exploring angles that I hope will help potential readers of The Healing of Howard Brown broaden their experience and awareness of the overall themes of the story, which is, from what I can gather, how an author platform is supposed to work.

The Authenticity Trap

One of my PLU mentors, after reading a draft of Howard (much of which is set in Louisiana) asked me if I ever had any experience in the South, and in particular with Southern African Americans. He wanted to know if I was really qualified to write about such things, perhaps because he knew I hailed from lily white Marin County. It was a question of authenticity.

Of course, if an author's stories had to be born of direct experience, genres like sci-fi, fantasy and their many sub-genres would not exist. Neither would Alice in Wonderland, Animal Farm or 1984. Thus, authenticity begs the question: where does direct experience stop and the imagination begin? Are dreams and visions less authentic than conscious experience?

In Ned Hayes' bestselling novel The Eagle Tree, the protagonist is an adolescent that is, as they say, "on the spectrum." Written in first person, the story portrays the thought processes and behaviors of an autistic adolescent so convincingly that we can't help but think the author himself must have, at one time, been on the spectrum. I don't know. Ned may be a science nerd, but I can't imagine that he was flapping his hands in front of his face at age 14.

The same could be said of many novels with unusual narrators. Forrest Gump, the original novel by Winston Groom, comes to mind, as does Walker Percy's habitation of Alison, the mental ward escapee,  in The Second Coming.

What my PLU mentor did NOT ask regarding Howard was whether I had any direct experience with mental illness. Maybe he assumed that I must, given my penchant for drooling, shuffling around the campus talking to myself, and accosting strangers with rotten watermelons. Insofar as authenticity is concerned, such a question would have been far more relevant than my experience with Southerners.

Oddly enough, in his "faculty review" of Howard, my mentor wrote:

The Healing of Howard Brown is a capacious and energetic narrative of self-discovery, delivered with an authentic voice that is supple, smart, somber, witty, ironic, self-revealing, self-doubting, and wonderfully lyrical. Themes of family, trust and responsibility to others, the national as well as personal past, and the life of the spirit resound throughout, with a cultural resonance involving class and race, the North and the South, the definition of masculine identity, and, centrally, the nature of mature love in a multitude of relationships-husband-wife, brother-sister, and father-son....

To this I added:

...in the face of a debilitating mental illness that runs like a poison vein through the family tree.


It wasn't until after I went through the process of trying to describe the novel that it occurred to me that the central theme - or as Irving might posit, the "what-if" question - is about the notion that the "apple doesn't fall far from the tree," and that if one is to lead a mindful, fully aware and responsible life, one might do well to take a hard look at that tree. It's easy, and lazy, to assume that everybody is consciously in control of their own behavior all the time. When we assume that, it's just as easy to label those that misbehave as "problem children," and, later, "bitches," and "assholes" that are out to get us and revel in attempts to make our lives miserable.

Howard's sister, Sisi, is just such a misunderstood character. She's bipolar, BPD, and, later, psychotic. Neither I, my real sister, my father or my mother were any of these things (as far as I know). We've had our struggles with other demons, with clinical depression at the core, but I've not had any direct, ongoing experience with anybody that suffers from these maladies. I've researched them extensively, of course, just as Irving researched hand transplants in The Fourth Hand and AIDS in In One Person, and as I suspect Ned Hayes did when writing The Eagle Tree.

Does that mean I'm not qualified to write "crazy" characters? Howard has his drug addiction, his pixie dust seizures, and all sorts of other delusions and hallucinations. Jack Sublette has an unnamed intellectual disability. Alcoholics and misfits hang off the family tree like Christmas ornaments. Oh, and there are some sane characters too...for the sake of juxtaposition.

So, if there's any platform to build upon, it has something to do with mental illness and all it's anti-social outgrowths, from racism to homophobia, and what have you. And having the heart to deal with it all compassionately.

Platform bullshit aside, I suspect that all fiction writers prize a good story, well told, whether it's a western, a romance, or a LGBT erotic vampire steampunk fantasy. And, while the world of independent authors is rife with folks that think they can make a living by plugging pre-built characters into genre-based templates (and there are many that are doing just that) that's not what I, or I suspect most of the thousand or so writers that will graduate with an MFA this year, have in mind.

Now available on Amazon

On Amazon

Self-Serve Query Letter & Chap 1 Contemporary Fiction

Greetings!

Learning to Limbo (100K words), is a playful, big hearted tragicomedy in the Russo/Irving mold that chronicles the misadventures of middle-aged Jack Irwin and his family as they bounce across the country in search of gainful employment, domestic tranquility, and a few people they can trust. It is a story that working parents past, present and future will see as part of their own: the triumphs, the tragedies, the innocent mistakes and the not-so-innocent mistakes, and above all the forgiveness that keeps families together to face another challenge. If you know how to limbo, you can get through anything.  

Synopsis

According to the history books, The Limbo Dance originally developed on slave ships as men tried to squeeze under the low beam that separated them from their women below decks. Like those men, Jack Irwin, a middle-aged, 12-month-unemployed family man, finds himself in a 21st century version of that same tight spot.

When Jack’s parental gravy train derails, he is forced to take a low

paying marketing gig in the low cost Midwest, leaving native Norcal behind. A month after settling in Indianapolis, they're moved to New England, the nerve center of BFC (Big Fat Corporation) where Jack is lured into a French-style "stress-relief" relationship with sex-crazed poodle-haired exec. Meanwhile wife Carrie has gotten embroiled in a nasty email scam. Eventually incriminating photos wind up in her husband’s hands.  

The tightest of the tight spots? Not by a mile. Jack gets implicated in a revenue reporting scandal and is terminated. The affairs come to light. Jack gets crabs, Carrie gets paralyzed. Son Robbie flunks out. Only 11-yr old Lulu knows how to save the family with her ownversion of the limbo: the happy hop.

Background

I've been in the business of writing my entire career, both agency and client-side.  My debut novel, Hack, was represented by John Galvis Literary Agency and published by HD Media Press in August 2012. My business and corporate satire is gaining steam on The Huffington Post and other sites, along with a steady stream of quirky humor. I'm looking for a long-term partner that is interested in creating great, timeless fiction in the tradition of the classic storytellers. More on about.me.

Sample below. I think you'll want to read the manuscript - I have a feeling  Learning to Limbo is right up your alley. I look forward to hearing from you.

Jeb Harrison

www.jsh-creative.com

Learning to Limbo

Part 1 – San Anselmo

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick

Jack go unda limbo stick

All around the limbo clock

Hey, let's do the limbo rock

Limbo lower now

Limbo lower now

How low can you go?

Chubby Checker – The Limbo Rock

Chapter 1 – In a Tight Spot

[Which describes the condition and profession of our infamous and odoriferous hero John Henry Irwin the III.]

Jack Irwin parked his rustbucket diesel Rabbit as far away from the lobby of Luna Microsystems as he could, hoping the long walk across the parking lot would allow his odor to dissipate. He had driven all the way from San Anselmo north of the Golden Gate through a bone-chilling January mist with all the windows and the sunroof open, down 19th Avenue past San Francisco State University and onto 280, where he floored his rusty bunny in hopes of generating a purifying hurricane that would leave him springtime fresh by the time he checked in for his interview. At age 43, a year on unemployment, with wife, requisite two kids, dog, mortgage, car payments, computer payments, insurance premiums, orthodontist bills, cable bills, bills of every shape and size, and a blossoming addiction to prescription painkillers, Jack was in a very tight spot. The last thing he needed was to asphyxiate his would-be employers.

Just three hours ago body odor worries were far from Jack Irwin’s mind.

His sleep was restless, as it had been since the layoff from the start-up that didn’t start-up a year ago,

and, as usual, wife Carrie had kicked him out of bed for his nocturnal spasms. So he had spread his long, banana-slug frame across the stained, child and dog-worn living room sofa, praying that the monkish one-note hum of the SubZero would quiet the bellicose cacophony of thousands of fast-talking recruiters half his age telling him what to say at tomorrow’s job interview and pulled a misty blue cashmere throw under his chin. The full-body sweats had finally passed, and he had poured nearly a quart of cold vanilla almond milk down his parched, smoke-ravaged throat by the soothing refrigerator light, letting the cool air blow softly over his drenched pajama top. Finally he stretched out on the sofa in the dark living room.

He was just drifting off when the alarm went off upstairs. He threw off the cashmere blanket and jumped up. “Shit,” he growled, rushing for the stairs, then stumbling over their slobbering, spastic yellow Labrador retriever, Barney, named by his 7-year old daughter Lulu after the famous purple dinosaur.

            
"Jesus...fuckin' dog!" growled Irwin, shoving Barney out of the way. He heard Carrie groan in the bed upstairs as the alarm continued to beep, and pictured her pulling the down pillow over her head as she had with reliable consistency all fifteen years of their marriage. Irwin dare not disturb Carrie before her designated wake up time lest she unleash a lethal swarm of killer bees or some other pestilence upon the household.

Alarm squelched, Irwin rushed downstairs and stood aside as the dog raced for the door, then dove into the cold January darkness to terrify whatever remaining nocturnal woodland creatures might be about. He grimaced as the dog squatted over what remained of the lawn, a hopeless patch of anemic fescue that perhaps Robbie, his nine year-old beamish boy, would someday learn to mow. Maybe Carrie would attend to Barney’s morning contribution before he came home and stepped in it.

            Sure enough, Carrie Irwin had her pillow in a death grip over her sleepy, frizzy-haired head. "God, Jack," came her muffled voice from underneath the pillow. "What time is it?"

 "Six AM, Thursday, January 12,” he announced as if to remind himself that it was big interview day.

“I gotta be outta here in 20 minutes." He rushed into the bathroom, quickly ran the electric razor over the graying stubble on his dimpled chin and wide, square jaw, then contemplated trimming his thick, wiry gray-flecked eyebrows, decided against it and jumped into the shower. He vigorously shampooed what was left of his rapidly receding sand-colored hair and whitewalls, resisting the usual urge to linger under the warm stream and soap his itching hemorrhoids. Instead, with a silly little TV jingle phrase gotta go, gotta go racing around in his head, he pulled on the corporate uniform: Nordstrom boxers, Ralph Lauren socks, Polo khaki slacks and Polo oxford blue shirt. He was working on his standard-issue red power tie when he heard the dog gouging another deep groove into the front door; grabbing his penny loafers, he bounded down the stairs and flung it open.

It wasn't until Barney had rushed in, skidded across the hardwood floor, and stood wagging in front of the cabinet that held the dog treats that Irwin smelled it: unmistakable, powerful skunk, so strong it made his eyes water. "Fuckin' A!" he muttered in a hoarse whisper, shutting the door, figuring Barney had chanced upon Mr. and Mrs. Skunk doing the wild thing in the bushes and had received a double shot of skunk lovin’.  He turned, woozy, and stumbled across the living room to the kitchen, expecting the smell from outside to dissipate. Instead, the smell was equally strong if not stronger in the kitchen.

Irwin took one look at the dog and groaned—he could practically see the odor wafting off his golden fur, like the hind end of Pepe Le Pew in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

Irwin grabbed the stinking pooch by the collar, dragged him across the floor and shoved him back into the dark, nearly chopping off the tip of his golden tail as he slammed the door behind him. The dog turned and began gouging the door with renewed vigor, peeping like a maligned bird.

"What's that smell?" Carrie Irwin stood at the top of the stairs in her nightie, disheveled but still a distractingly ravishing sight to Irwin, even with his brain burning at five alarms. A few extra pounds had made her curves more pronounced, her luscious lips and cheeks a touch fuller; her almond-shaped hazel eyes more inviting.

"Barney got skunked," he said, marching up the stairs.

"Ugh!" grunted Carrie Irwin, squeezing her nostrils shut, crawling back

in bed and cocooning under the covers. "Disgusting," Irwin could hear her mutter as he walked past to retrieve his standard navy blazer.

Outside Irwin noticed that the skunk smell, though still strong, was not as strong in the chilly morning

air as it seemed to be in the house. He was closing the front gate when Barney came racing up, smashed open the gate and made a run for it. Irwin tackled, wrestled, grabbed the collar. Just when Irwin thought he had the dog, he slipped his head out of the collar and tore down the street. Standing there with the empty collar in his hand, Irwin didn’t even try calling after him.

Now, in the parking lot of Luna Microsystems where he was interviewing for a mid-level managerial position in the academic sector, Irwin checked himself in the rear view mirror, ran his fingers through his silver sidewalls and sighed. There was a new crack in the dashboard - a result of Magic Fingers relentless rattling - and he made a mental note: that was at least 67 cracks that he could count, which he did frequently.

 He heaved his aching 220 lb. six foot frame out of the tiny vehicle and shook himself all over like a wet, freshly skunked dog, his arms shimmying like spaghetti noodles by his side, tongue wagging, gut jiggling like the proverbial bowl-of-jelly in the weak winter sun. After a short time he noticed that a couple of workers had paused to observe his little St. Vitus' dance, so as he walked through the parking lot he threw in a couple of "happy hops", a sort-of Teaberry Shuffle that he and the kids broke into when feeling particularly silly, or in the current context, particularly fed up with the absurdity of being 43 years-old and interviewing for positions that required half his experience.

But the happy hop, for Irwin, wasn’t always mere silliness, rather, just like his St. Vitus warmups, had lately become disguised expressions of existential desperation – a physical manifestation of a psychological Houdini act where he figuratively shed his shackles and wriggled out of, squeezed under or hopped over, a sticky situation; often times to land smack dab in the middle of another, even stickier quagmire. So, just as he was about to enter the lobby of Luna Microsystems he threw in a subtle hop, like an extra sprinkling of Pixie Dust, partly for good luck and partly to ensure he was limber enough to run if things got ugly. Then he straightened his power tie and opened the big glass doors.

Irwin’s purity of purpose was blown to bits when he saw the receptionist falling out of her blouse. He imagined working around women like…like that. Who was harassing whom when the receptionist’s breasts practically jumped out and shook your hand? he thought.

He had just finished signing in when the receptionist gave him a queer look, wrinkling up her nose as if

Irwin had just passed some particularly noxious gas. Irwin attempted a smile and it struck him that perhaps the everlasting odor of Pepe Le Pew still clung to him like a cloud.

"Hi," he said. "I'm here to see Dinesh Singh."

The girl winced, and Irwin hoped that it was because she might have a little gas herself. "Please have a seat. I'll ring him for you."

                        
Then it was: "Hello," said a chocolate-colored Indian fellow with gleaming teeth. If he smelled anything unusual he was gracious enough not to let it show.

Irwin followed the young man through an incomprehensible maze of cubicles, extending almost as far into the distance as his increasingly blurry vision could discern. He was making yet another mental note to make an appointment with an eye doctor when he noticed that most of the cubes were empty. Irwin wondered what had happened to all of the former inhabitants.  Why couldn’t they have filled this job with one of those folks?

“All right then, my friend,” said Singh, clapping his brown hands down on the desk. “Do you have any questions?”

And so Irwin interviewed.

At first with a tall, middle-aged thin turkey buzzard of a man with yellowing skin who thought something was rotting in his trash can.

Then with a compact, broad-shouldered, thick-mustachioed Super Mario Brother who apologized for having too much garlic in his eggs that morning.

And with a very young, pudgy, rosy-cheeked girl with a garter belt collection of all sorts and sized adorning the rim of her cube and photographs of newly married couples on every available inch of desk space. She wondered if one of the garter belts was getting a little ripe.

Then Irwin met Abdul Abaya who had a big round table in the middle of his spacious office at the end of the hall, with a large window overlooking the bay to the north.

"Ah, welcome Mr. Irwin. Please have a seat. I have been so looking forward to meeting you!" Irwin felt flush, surprised by the sudden curiosity in his capabilities.

“Well, it’s another dry day out there, isn’t it?” he said, swiveling around to the wide window overlooking the serene silver water. The winter thermal inversion had turned the air around the Bay Area into thin layers of taupe haze. The “no burn” policy had been in effect all through the Christmas holidays, angering many Bay Area residents who insisted that you couldn’t have Christmas without a fire in the fireplace. “And no rain in the forecast, is that right?” Abaya added.

“Yes,” Irwin said.

Abaya swiveled back around. “I just hope there’s enough water left in July for my tomatoes.” Irwin nodded and was gearing up to talk about gardening when Abaya stood and gestured to the various pieces of marketing literature he had laid out on the table.

“Well,” he pronounced, “As you can see our problem is not tomatoes.” He waved his hand across the

piles of literature that looked as if they might have come from several different companies. “We need someone to get a handle on this mess.”

Then he stopped and sniffed the air like a dog, nose twitching uncontrollably. "Do you smell skunk? I smell skunk. Don't you?"

Before Irwin had a chance to answer he was on the phone to building services complaining that a skunk must have gotten into the ventilation system somehow. Then he dialed each of his direct reports and they all admitted that they smelled something odd and noxious, so he dismissed the team for the day, ended the interview, and started packing up his things.

And thus it was over. 

Irwin took a couple of deep breaths to loosen the growing constriction in his chest, then looked around and realized he had no idea how to find his way back to Dinesh Singh's office, much less find his way out of the building. After several panicky minutes walking up and down the corridors between the cubicles he found an exit sign, made his way to the lobby, took a final look at the receptionist's heroic cleavage, walked across the parking lot without a single happy hop, got in his rusty long-eared bunny buggy, engaged the diesel reverberation engine, and headed home through the hazy city.  

_________________________________________

Git 'er on der Kindler fer $2.99 ratnow!

Querying: Bassackwards & Cattywumpus

If you've never had the pleasure of "querying" literary agents in hopes of finding one that wants to represent your work and has the editorial contacts in the publishing industry that will want to pick it up, well, you're missing one of the great joys of life. 

First, there's the research. Almost every literary agent out there claims to represent "general fiction", which is Publisher's Marketplace only label for everything that isn't genre fiction or non-fiction. There are other sites like Query Tracker that allows the writer of "general fiction" to further categorize their work, but the agents in general don't distinguish between literary fiction and contemporary fiction, so all an author would be doing is limiting their choices. 

So the list of agent possibilities is quite long. In order to find agents that might be interested in your particular brand of non-genre fiction, you have to go to the agency's website and find them. However their description of what they like is mostly intended to be inclusive - they don't want to miss out on a blockbuster just because they intimated that they weren't down with religious mysteries, for instance. (ie: The Da Vinci Code). 

Once you find someone who has either represented a book that's something like yours, or they claim to like "riveting stories told with a compelling voice" or something you think might be relevant to your novel, you structure your query so they feel like y'all are a match made in heaven. And every agent wants a different type of submission: query letter, synopsis, first chapter, or first two chapters, or first 10 pages - every agent has different requirements. 

If you're a LImbolander you know I like to go for the funny bone. I have yet to find a single literary agent that has admitted to even a remote appreciation of humor, much less someone that likes funny stories. This, we're supposed to assume, is because the general reading public does not like funny stories. Or anything remotely light-hearted, fanciful, bawdy, or inappropriate, regardless of how meaningful it might ultimately be. If an unknown John Irving were to try and shop The World According to Garp, or an unknown Richard Russo was to shop Straight Man, these days it's unlikely an agent would even take a second look. When was the last time a tragicomedy like The Hotel New Hampshire or That Old Cape Magic was a bestseller? 

So here I am doing what I do, trying so hard to be serious for a change, trying to build some

pathos into the relatively insensitive hilarity and dark irony, feeling like I just arrived in a "no-laugh" zone. I'm certain it's just me looking out from what's a sorta dark unemployed place lately, and I'm probably only a third of the way through the query process. It's the same process I used to snare my first two agents, and Learning to Limbo isn't a far cry from Hack, so something is likely to break loose. 

But wouldn't it be great if the authors, the ones that are working for nothing, completely betting on the come, could publish the availability of their book and then let the agents do the research? Given that more and more great books are going to market without an agent or a publisher, but by the pure blood, sweat and tears of the author, wouldn't ya think that the shoe or at least the shoelace might be headed over to the other foot?

Get 'er for $2.99 on der Kindler right now this very minute!