Planting a Garden

Querying agents and publishers is mostly about waiting. 

After researching appropriate agents for my book and composing the perfect query letter, everything else is a waiting game. It takes very little time to personalize the query and click send on the agent email. 

As a writer, I could always productively use that time to resume work on another unfinished novel or write a poem or a book review on Goodreads. Or clean the bathrooms or vacuum the living room. Or watch TV or go for a walk.

Or plant a garden. Yes, plant a garden! Everyone's planting gardens! People have grown fat from baking bread and are raising saddle sores from riding their new bicycles. So now they're planting vegetable gardens. So natural, so Zen, so one with earth, so marvelous an outlet for restless Americans! So metaphorical with respect to life and rebirth and fertility! Just so...exclamation point! 

We are all planting gardens. Including me. 

Skeptics who hang on my every word will note in my bio (to the right of this post ) my aversion to gardening. But for months there was a box with five varieties of vegetable seeds sitting in my kitchen. The instructions said that the time to plant those seeds is NOW!

Yuck. Dirt, flies, weeds, stones, shovels, heavy bags of soil. But there I was, dropping tiny little seeds into little pots with burlap sides and within days witnessing shoots of various shapes and sizes thrusting through the perlite. That was nice, I guess. And then yesterday I was shown by my garden-hound wife how to fill large pots with soil mixtures and daintily transplant my shoots that, over time, will reward my efforts with tasty cucumbers, beets, radishes, lettuce, and onions. 

That is if I water them enough. If the sun doesn't kill them. If the deer don't eat them. Nature is remorseless, but I refuse to lapse into the metaphor jungle on that score. 

So, am I a gardening convert? Do I see myself volunteering at the local community garden? No, I'm not really a nature boy--mainly, I fear nature. It's that nature is so uncontrollable and apolitical. Nature is physics, chemistry, and biology--it will not bargain with you. As the saying goes, "Don't mess with Mother Nature." I do hope to literally taste the fruits of my dirt endeavor, but if it doesn't work out, that's fine too. I'm up against formidable natural forces.

But it sure beats sitting around waiting for the next book rejection.

How to Pitch a Novel

I'll be pitching my novel at the annual Writer's Digest Conference on August 13th--if there is an annual Writer's Digest Conference on August 13th!

What this means is I will have one-on-one sessions with about a half-dozen book agents with the hope of convincing them to consider my book for representation. And I will have 90 seconds to make my pitch.

I've been honing my pitch for over a year and will continue honing and rewriting until the book is finally picked up. My current pitch includes an opening "hook" that describes what my book is about and its intended audience. This is followed by a brief plot summary and how my book is different from the usual stories of its kind. It goes like this:

COME THE HARPIES is a timely, action-packed satire with YA/adult crossover appeal. It imagines a U.S. 56 years in the future based on what’s happening right now.

Our hero Egon Pace is a shy senior at White Castle High and a total misfit in the violent polluted world of 2076. Inspired by his rebel dad, Egon hates the things that America loves most.  Shooting guns, leading Yakker troops in foreign mercenary operations, and breeding as young as 14 to repopulate a nation ravaged by environmental disease and endless war. 

Egon’s attitude makes him a target at school. He’s constantly dodging bullets, bullies and fists. When Lynette, the girl he loves, is nearly murdered in the halls, Egon snaps and fights back hard. 

But when he’s discovered with a banned book from his dad that reveals the truth behind America’s path to apocalypse, Egon realizes his days are numbered. As the state comes after him, Egon and Lynette bolt to a fabled utopian nation in the west. It’s a race for freedom…a race for survival.  

This all sounds pretty dark, but COME THE HARPIES is not your typical gloom and doom dystopian downer. Often it veers into hilarious farce as it depicts our poor twisted nation and the buffoons in charge as it circles the drain.  

I’d compare it to what the young heroes go through in the Shusterman novel, Dry, set in The Uninhabitable Earth.

This does time out a little long, but if my pitch is indeed cut off at 90 seconds, I can always leave out the last paragraph. Or figure out how to cut 20 words.

Or talk real fast!