"I AM the business"

Prologue
Since 1989, I have carried within me a book titled, Judas Christ. I began writing it in 1990, by hand, with pen and notebook paper, and work continued until I finished the figurative 2nd book of the trilogy in 2006.

It's not time.
A few years ago, I was asked by a close friend, "Why haven't you tried to get this published?"
"It's not time." I replied.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'It's not time!?'"
"It's not time."

The world had changed. Whether it was 1/20/2001 or 9/11/2001, it didn't matter. If it ever had been, the world was no longer ready to read what I had burning inside of me. Then one morning in 2006, a very special day on my calendar, something changed. Something I saw on my computer screen told me as clearly as if the Ghostbusters Containment Field (that's a pretty big twinkie) had collapsed, releasing its pent up spirits. Mine was free, as well.

It is time.
I began sending perfunctory email queries to agents from agentquery.com. I sent a full-blown package to the agent who represented the DaVinci Code. They have very lovely rejection slips. Half-a-dozen rejections does not a career break, but... I tried to examine why I was being rejected, through their eyes, and it became perfectly obvious... There was no way to tell. My packaging and presentation was smooth, nearly impeccable. The query letter was tight, concise, and provided the information the agent needed to decide. So why was I rejected?. There was no feedback to help me understand. I read my own query with the eyes of an outsider. Maybe, just maybe, it was "unpitchable." I had to find out... from a human. I wanted to see the look in their eyes when they read it. "Who is a greater voyeur than a writer, watching his work being read?" How do I get a human in the publishing industry to read my work right in front of me?

To conference or not to conference...
After reading the blog of an intended agent, who was not accepting queries :-(, I resolved to get conferencing. SCWCLA08 right around the corner, and it's a no-brainer for me to return to SoCal. I went to the Southern California Writers Conference in Irvine, CA. I took the manuscript (and ancillary materials) of Judas Christ, a fictional novel I have been working for literally 18 years. Why did I go to the conference?

"I'm not part of the business..."
If you are like myself and a zillion other writers with manuscripts, you envision yourself in a garret crafting a work which will slide from your pen to the hardcover on the bookshelf. WRONG! I learned a lot at this conference, but perhaps the single most important aspect was that "I AM the business". The book industry is really just "the entertainment industry". Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, et al, are NOT the outlet of a machine into which you toss your manuscript. (I'm picturing a Script-O-matic, where you insert or upload your writing, and the conveyor rolls into Borders. Hardly!)

Get thee to a conference!
No... the writer is part of the machine as well. YOU need to get involved. YOU need to interact. YOU need to be heard. YOU need to offer feedback on others. YOU need to network. You need to meet people, and YOU need to be met!

YOU need to get to a conference. But how? I will be discussing that in later posts. What do you need to take, how do you present your work, advice, and an occasionaly caveat. Stay tuned... and maybe, I'll see you in San Diego!