After the tough go-round with the last two agents, we talked for at least an hour. I called my mom, Maddie's biggest fan, and tried to get ahold of my husband, who got back to me after we left the hotel room. But mostly, I tried to bolster my young co-writer's confidence.
"—I'll stay." Maddie smiled at me, and I laughed aloud.
It felt completely different to pitch Off Grid with my daughter at my side. I was relaxed. And so was the agent. She waited for Maddie and I to get ourselves sorted out—as usual, we were talking about the million and one little things that mothers and daughters talk about. I have no idea what we said to one another exactly, just that we were talking to one another almost privately, but in front of the same agent I had to pitch to—and the agent was, if anything, charmed by our interplay. After all, we are extremely close, Maddie and I are. We talk, we write, we walk—together. And all of that comes through when we're around one another I think.
"Yeah Mom, it's awful, I never liked the ending either, I don't like any books that end on cliffhangers, it's cheap, it's not right . . ." Maddie entered the fray.
"It's just that if you end the book on a cliffhanger, and it doesn't sell as well as you expect it, and you don't get to put book 2 out, all your readers are disappointed," explained the agent. "Would you be open to changing the ending?" She gave me a sharp look that was both honest and decent—more intelligent than critical.
"Good, then I'll take your manuscript too," she said.
"I do," I said, and I smiled, and we said our goodbyes.
Because we are. We both have been looking at scenes that need to be trimmed. Our word count (131K) is about 5-7K too high, but we both know how to make the book better. And we both feel that we would be at home with this particular agent . . . so now we wait to see if she feels the same way.
In the meantime, there is a neat postscript. Maddie had one more pitch. This one was with the Christian Fiction lady I liked so much. And she was absolutely wonderful to Maddie. She listened. She smiled. She asked lots of questions, and she gave many compliments. She also offered to read the first ten pages of the Third Eye of Cain—so Maddie left Governor 4 on a cloud.
The next morning, in fact, we ran into the Christian fiction lady in the lobby. We actually hugged one another, and she even offered to give us a lift to the airport. I declined, saying, "Aw gosh, that's the nicest thing, but I think it would cause you too much stress," and we smiled at one another and wished each other the best. She gave Maddie an extra smile and more kind words.
I wrote her back actually, which I worried was pushing the limits of politeness but nonetheless I sent her a simple thank you because it felt right to send such a note.
And we bought one of her books. It's got a hopeful message and both of us took the time to read it, and while reading it, I mostly just thought with gratitude about the people in the publishing industry who try to do their best and help others to reach their best.
That's the message I reckon I choose to take from our first Writer's Conference. Remember the good people, and keep on trying to get your own good words, your messages, your work out to others. And in the meantime, be kind to whoever you can be kind to, not because it might help you, but because it might help them.
After all, it's a hard world we live in. But that doesn't mean we gotta turn hard too. We just gotta keep heading where we're supposed to go, and hopefully we won't have to make our journey alone, or without the kindness of strangers and loved ones along the way.
As I wrote last week, Maddie and I attended a writing conference where we pitched our books to ten agents. I thought long and hard about how much to share about our personal life, as well as the conference we attended and the people I met. I struck a balance on privacy: I am not revealing the names of any of the agents we pitched to, nor am I sharing the names of any of the writers we met–no matter how much I liked them. As far as our privacy, I decided that anyone who's considering the whole pitching and querying process, or the one-on-one pitching writers do at conferences, may draw some benefit from seeing an inside and unvarnished look at how two writers, a mother and daughter team, worked through a hard day–together. The second part of the story picks up where Part One leaves off: the first pitch Maddie has to make.
Maddie's first pitch was to a sweet lady who specializes in YA. I knew going into the pitch that we were sort of trying to fit a circle into a square hole. The Third Eye of Cain is not directed at the YA market alone. Although several of the POVs we write through in the novel are teenagers, a few other leading character-narrators are adults. Just to explain for non-writers, novels can be written through three different perspectives: first person; third person; and, omniscient. Maddie and I both write mostly through third person, and we like to go with third person shifting POV, which means that when a scene changes, a different character is followed, and the reader only sees the world through their eyes. Shifting third person POV is very effective because it allows you to paint different facets of your fictional world. This approach has plenty of fans and it is not revolutionary. However, the YA world apparently doesn't like writers to shift POVs. Or so we found out during this pitch.
As another aside, I have the same issue with Off Grid: it shifts POV from teens to adults. Which means the audience for the book could be adults, but it could also be teens or young adults. To me, this an interesting but not overly big issue, but some agents do't feel the same way. And plenty of readers, not to mention agents, say they're open to books that cross over between or bend genres, so to speak, but some agents, as well as readers, prefer to remain immersed in one genre at a time, and the YA genre is distinct from the adult genre. In addition, the YA genre has different protocols or accepted stylistic approaches, and one of these is that shifting POVs is or may be a negative against a book.
Once I introduced us, Maddie settled in and got through several paragraphs of her pitch uninterrupted. The agent was young, with long dark hair and a pretty way about her. She said several complimentary things. For one thing, she raised her eyebrow and asked Maddie, "Wow, did you memorize all that? That's pretty impressive stuff, you did a great job," and her words didn't seem insincere. We talked some more, and then got to what I call the denouement. The pregnant moment, where an agent says, "Yes, no or maybe." The agent raised her issue with the book: she said that in the YA market, books sell better if they follow one POV alone. All the same, she asked us to send her three chapters. We thanked her and headed outside, me to prepare for my third pitch, and Maddie, to make friends with a trim, well-dressed older lady who would end up talking to and eventually exchanging emails with Madeline by the end of the day.
Once again, I went off in search of Maddie, and we spent the next hour or so chatting with other writers, particularly the older lady Maddie had befriended. We observed writers walking in and out of classrooms. We noticed what folks were wearing and overheard snippets of strange but ordinary writer talk. All writers are, Maddie always says, a little strange, and I defer to her conclusion with a chuckle. I at least fall into this category, I fully admit.
It's funny, how kindness is such a gift in a profession that can be so hard. I talked with Maddie a lot about this kind agent as we shared a turkey sandwich at lunch. "She really does do Christian fic," I said, "So I'm not sure we're a fit for her, but I am sure she'll be awfully kind to you, and she's your final agent to pitch to, so we have two to look forward to," and I kept going over her pitch as we shared lunch. I was exhausted. I knew Maddie was too. But, I thought to myself as we walked back to the Intercontinental, I'd gotten through a hard morning.
I felt like my day was almost over, and hers was just starting. I felt like we were going to be okay, if not great, as far as that elusive thing we were searching for: a home for our books, or someone who would like our work enough to take it on professionally. I was cautiously optimistic, and that's about as good as I do when facing the obstacles that come with trying to bring a book to market via the traditional gatekeeper method. I try to keep my chin up, and remind myself that though my books are different, they will be wanted and are of value.
But from the moment we sat in front of the tough but fair blonde editor, I realized things were far from fine. This pitch occurred in the middle of the room, where the noise was at its highest decibel rating. This meant that the now tired editor (after all, she had thirty authors or so on her schedule) had to work harder to hear us. From a simple physical standpoint, the editor couldn't hear Maddie very well, and Maddie's voice was quieter than usual. Because the editor couldn't hear Maddie, she kept interrupting and asking questions. On top of that, she had no interest in following Maddie's memorized spiel. If anything, she was annoyed at the very thought of a memorized spiel, and she took her annoyance out on this newbie, seemingly soft-spoken first-time writer. She asked questions that interrupted her own questions, and throughout all this, Maddie's voice grew even softer.
Three thousand years in the future, a technologically advanced dictator controls the world, and the only hope for humanity is nine Chosen humans, who are the personified elements of nature.
It's one of the first things we wrote while we worked on the synopsis and on rewrites about three drafts ago, this summer. But I couldn't get a word in, nor did I feel like begging or explaining or apologizing. If anything, I wanted to argue, but this wouldn't do us any good. And I realized that the editor needed for some reason to vent. So I did what I could: I tried to explain the book and why it had a market, but the time was flying past, and I knew that nothing I said was gonna sway her. She did finish the sentence with a halfhearted, "Congratulations on finishing your first novel," and we got up and left the room, both of us blushing.
"Oh my god," Maddie mouthed to me.
"Yeah, um, let's go upstairs and talk," I murmured. We took the elevator almost in silence.
Please stay tuned for the next installment, which talks about how we finished strong.