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I have a lot of random thoughts to share today, but nothing really firm, so here it is, my mental stir-fry:
1. Finished Bad Boys Ahoy! last night. Quite good. I think the second story is the best. It has my favorite characters of the lot, and a very gripping romance. Lucien is very shades of Derek Craven, for those of you who swoon over him. Also, this is a very good example of what erotic romance should be. The sex scenes are completely unskippable, because they are where all of the emotional gauntlets get thrown down, where all the big turning points take place. Anyway, give it a whirl. I predict great things for Ms. Sylvia Day.
2. Busy weekend ahead of me. I thought I had my WRW meeting, but no, that’s next week. THANK GOODNESS! This weekend I must: finish my GH judging, ready my outline for delivery to my editor, do my Marlene judging, finish chapter one of SSG2, crit my CP’s new proposal (which she will be finished with any moment, right?), clean my apartment, do laundry, and read a book.
3. Joe from the “Book Covers from the NYT book review” blog posted on my blog, and what’s more, he said he liked the cover of my book, symmetry and all. (By the way, Joe, I love the lobster DFW.) Really, guys, check out this blog. It’s SUCH an education.
4. Last night I had a phone conference with my editor about 2nd PP. I just lub her. I also lub my book. Last night, she made the dangerous mistake of asking me (last chance now!) if there were any passages that I thought should be added, etc. I said no, then promptly spent he rest of the night poring over the book, wondering if there were. And, for the most part, no. Also, my book? Really funny stuff. Naturally, I have a warm place in my heart for the characters, but I think it’s funny anyway. I can’t wait for y’all to meet these folks and share in their adventures!
Anyway, off to send my understanding, patient, long-suffering editor an email about the tiny little things I think I might change, after all… (I think I owe Kerri like a dozen drinks by now!)
On the comments trail of the last post, someone asked:
how do you know what your story is going to be about? how do you know as your writing what is supposed to happen? is it that you know the whole story or it just happens as your writing? how do you know if its right? are there any tricks or shortcuts to getting the story right?
Um, Wow. I just do, I don’t always, some of each, I don’t, and man, if you learn them, could you let the rest of us know? Just kidding.
The fact of the matter is, these are very very tough questions that get to the core of what makes a person a storyteller. I’ve written on this blog before about the whole writer vs. storyteller conundrum, but when we are talking about story, not craft or writing or whatever, but story, I really and truly believe that its bred in the bone. Some people have characters or situations that call to them. They play “what if?” all day long, even if it’s only to themselves, about themselves, about the couple arguing in low whispers at the coffee table across the way… I think that if you’re missing that gene, that storytelling gene, then that’s it. I think if you have that gene, then you need to work your ass off to develop it. You need to play creativity games and practice your Poisoned Nipple Theory equations, and memorize the Rule of Six, and in general, try every trick in the book to come up with a story. Some that I like:
1. Look at a piece of artwork (illustration, snapshot in a newspaper, masterwork in a museum) and pick a minor figure in the piece. Try to figure out what brought them to that place at that time, and what they are thinking. Imagine another day in their life and what happened then (either before or after the point in the picture).
2. (Works best for a romance) Think up two people who would never ever ever ever ever fall in love. Make them fall in love. Adjust as necessary.
3. Think of the most outlandish thing that could happen to you in the next five minutes. Think of someone who would deal with that thing in a very interesting way.
4. Think of a movie or a book you hate. Think of why. Make it work the way you like, then change all of the details that make it recognizably similar to the movie you hate.
Of course, a lot of these aren’t going to make a book. Some will make a short story at best, or perhaps a vignette, or just a cool writing exercise. But that’s what this is. Exercising. Once you’ve forged those neural pathways for a few years or decades or whatever, you brain just starts thinking up stories all the time. Even while you sleep.
Now, the other way to interpret that question is about themes. On one level, Secret Society Girl is about this college co-ed who joins a notorious campus secret society and causes havoc. On another level it’s a story about the battle of the sexes and the different forms that friendship can take and determining self-worth and accepting irreconcilable differences and whether or not we should all like Tolstoy. I didn’t know all of these things while I was writing the book. Some of them I didn’t know until several months later. There are some thing that the story is about that I don’t even know yet.
That’s okay. You don’t have to. It kind of comes out while you’re writing it, the way you think you’re doing knit one purl two knit two purl one and then, magically, a hundred rows later, you have a pattern. Once you notice it, though, you can start knitting tighter or looser to make the pattern look prettier or more pronounced or whatever.
Regarding the other questions….. I know (mostly) what happens in my story before I start writing it. Soemthings still come as a surprise, or I might plan for something to happen in a given way and then when I get to that point in the writing I realize it doesn’t work out so well as I’d thought it would, and so I change it. But these changes and adjustments and additions are relatively minor. I consider myself “a plotter.” Some of my friends haven’t the slightest clue what happens in their story before they write it. Some people, not me because I hate this term and think it sounds like people who try to pull your shorts down in front of the whole school (sorry, childhood trauma), but some people, call this being “a pantser” as in “fly by the seat of their pants.”
Both ways appear to work fine for different people. I think that it might behoove an individual to try a variety of methods while starting out, until they hit on the one that works best for them. Every time I’ve tried to write without knowing where I’m going, I get trapped, so I know that method doesn’t work for me. I like to know where I’m going ahead of time, so that when I’m actually writing, I get to delve into the scenery and stuff, rather than watching out for every single street sign to make sure I haven’t missed it. I’ve got friends that feel exactly the opposite. Whatever works for you is the best way to do something.
How do I know it’s right? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Usually I have a pretty good clue that it’s working if one or more of the following things happen: 1) I read it over later, and get lost in it, 2) it says what I was planning on it saying, and 3) my critique partner, agent and/or editor says she likes it. Yes, other people’s opinions matter.
Any tricks or shortcuts? No. Sorry. If this were easy, everyone would do it. But seriously, if you ever do find the tricks, I would love to hear them!
What do you all think? How would you answer these questions?
P.S. I love what Julie said in the previous post about how being a writer is all about the choices.
In the comments section of the last post, TJ Brown wrote:
Yay! for starting on your sequel. I am wondering how I will do that if the Rink Rats series ever sells…go back to a world and characters that you left a long time ago. I think it would be very odd. Well, hopefully I will get the chance!
I’ve been lucky, because I knew before I was three chapters into the book that it had series potential, before I was five chapters in that we were going to be shopping it as a series, and before I wrote a word past chapter six that my publisher had committed to not only the first Secret Society Girl book, but also to its sequel. Because I had that committment, it freed me up to be thinking about what I wanted to do with the sequel even as I was writing the book.
At the same time, however, I wanted to make Secret Society Girl very much a stand-alone project. At the forefront of my mind was some commentary I’d heard on one of the Buffy DVDs. Josh Whedon said he wanted every season finale to be capable of being a series finale. I very much hope that the readers will want to read more about my heroine and her adventures, but the book has a beginning, middle, and end that work all by themselves.
(Now, as far as SSG2 goes… well, I hope it will be accessible to first-timers, but even more than that, I hope it will get them intrigued enough to run out and buy SSG! That’s what happened to me when I read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in 2000.)
I think, for me, the key has been the knowledge that I’m not “going back” as much as I am “going forward.” I am taking my heroine and her friends into uncharted territory and seeing how they handle it. As I told my editor the other day, the last book was about an outsider; this book is about an insider.
The “going back” part has mostly been in the form of putting myself in the mindset of a senior in college. I’ve been listening to the music I listened to in college, remembering the books I read, even looking at old pictures and syllabi. I don’t think Amy listens to much Dave Matthews Band or anything, but it makes me think of college when I do, of the way I thought about boys and sex and school and friends and the future. Being back in her head is fun. In many ways, reading over the book in page proofs made me start thinking of things I would have done differently. Turns out that Amy’s been wondering some of the same stuff. She’s got another chance now.
I’ve been futzing around with starting SOCIETY2 for quite some time now, and I really must get moving on it, so last night, I did a little BICHOK (butt-in-chair-hands-on-keyboard) and wrote six pages. Woo hoo! I reread them this mornign and I’m very happy with them, and on the way to work I thought of a great way to finish up the chapter, so hopefully I’ll get to that tonight.
My latest issue of Lady Jaided, the Ellora’s Cave magazine, came in the mail yesterday, and I was dismayed to learn that they are discontinuing the project. I know that the magazine business is incredibly tough, but I thought they had an excellent concept and really fascinating articles. I learned so much from reading Lady Jaided, from the current debate over the cultures that practice female genital mutilation to the hsitory of the art of Japanese rope bondage. Damn those puritannical distributors! So, Playboy and Maxim and stuff is fine, but a magazine of female sexuality? No way. Jaid Black says they will continue the magazine in some form online at the EC website, which makes me happy, especially because an old boss of mine is the EIC, and she’s positively brilliant.
In other news, from Publisher’s Marketplace:
February 13, 2006
Childrens/YA
Ellen Emerson White’s LONG MAY SHE REIGN,
for teens and beyond, imagining a woman president’s daughter in her first year of college — having recently and barely survived a terrorist kidnapping, to Jean Feiwel at Holtzbrinck, in a good deal, by Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House (world English).
Yay! I love the President’s Daughter books, so I’m thrilled there’s going to be another one. (They did start getting dark though, didn’t they?)
1. Sailor Boy and I have been playing a game of chicken about admitting to the fact that we have no food in the house. First person to break down and actually make a grocery run is the loser. This has been going on for weeks. I thought I’d emerge triumphant, as Sailor Boy finally agreed on Sunday to go to the grocery store tonight. But last night, Sailor Boy, in his secret alter-ego as Law School Boy, pulled an all-nighter. Now, some might consider this cheating, but alas, I am a soft-hearted fool, and thus… I will go and get us some food so Sailor Boy can rest his dear sweet brain.
2. I read two books this weekend. Neither of them were contest entries, which I have due at the end of the month. I read half of a book that I’m blurbing, but then my computer crashed, which sucked, because the book was hilarious! Anyway, the books I actually read: Forever, by Judy Blume, and A Bad Boy Can Be Good For A Girl, by Tanya Lee Stone. I don’t know how I never read Forever before, because it appears to be a right of passage for American schoolgirls, and I think maybe I shouldn’t be admitting it out loud, since I’m supposed to be some kind of Judy Blume expert, what with the Pocket book and all. But anyway. It’s a great book. I cried at the end, and I think it’s all tragic but very realisitc.
The Stone book was actually touted on a blurb as being a Forever for the modern generation, and considering that the plotline rests very heavily on an actual physical copy of the book Forever, I find that very meta. Anyway, I also don’t find the description particularly apt because I think Forever, more than being a book about sex, is a book about adolescent love in all of its complexity, whereas this one was more about the sexual mistakes that adolescent teen girls make. ABBCBGFAG is also written in free verse, which, considering that my main experience with poetry (which I admit, is not very in-depth) is with Latin lyric and epic poems (I know, I know, nerd alert!), I find it hard to wrap my mind around this form. Latin poetry not only conforms to an incredibly strict meter, but it also works almost like a concrete poem. In a poem about isolation, for instance, two words describing each other are kept at the absolute largest distance from one another. So part of the fun of readingthte poem is seeing the pictures the word makes and marveling at the skill of the poet who manages to create such a work of power within the strict structure he is given. Free verse, to me, reads like someone started leaning on the carriage return.
Anyway, having said that, while reading the poem/novel, my eyes began to skim over the weird constructions, much as it would if I was reading one of those forwarded email messages where the formatting is all screwed up. Because the story is SO COMPELLING. The characters are real and sympathetic and their plight is so understandable. You want to scream at them to stop doing what they are doing but not in that “idiot girl in a slasher flick going into the basement in her underwear” way. Because you know it doesn’t seem stupid, not in the moment, in their position. And you know it’s a mistake, all at the same time. You can understand why they make the choices you do, even as you know what they’ll think of them later. It’s a very powerful book, and it is one that sticks with you and make you think a lot. I don’t know if I remember a lot of the lines because they were in this “poetry” form or because they were the kind of thing that seem ripped out of the young girls’ hearts, all bleeding and pulsating.
Go out and give this book a try. There’s a link to it on Amazon over on the right, under “Books Read in 2006″.
Some of you may remember that some time ago, I talked about a friend who had made another sale, but couldn’t announce yet. Well, the cat’s out of the bag:
Colleen Gleason writes:
For all those who thought Christine should have stayed with the Phantom…
I’m delighted to announce that I’ve sold my version of the timeless story of Christine Daae and Erik the Opera Ghost, to New American Library’s Eclipse Erotica trade paperback line.
My take on The Phantom of the Opera was inspired by Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical and film, although I drew heavily on the original book by Gaston LeRoux and brought in Philippe, Count de Chagny and Raoul’s brother–a main character that was left out of Weber’s musical.
So for everyone who wanted to know what really happened during the Music of the Night scene, and why Raoul was such a milquetoast, and why Christine left with Raoul when we all knew she should have stayed with the Phantom…you’ll find out when you read my book!
Tentative release date: June 2007
Congratulations, Colleen! That makes three sales for you this year!
How come it took me 27 years on the planet for someone to tell me about this movie? It’s one of the most amazing films I’ve ever seen! Seriously, if you’ve never seen The Lion in Winter, go out and rent it right this instant. Like, tonight. Brave the snow or whatever. Dialogue like I’ve almost never seen. And written by William Goldman’s brother James and wow, so much talent in one family… see if you can recognize how many times it slipped into iambic pentameter.
We rented it because they quote from it at one point on vintage The West Wing, and we figured that if Aaron Sorkin thought it had good dialogue, it was worth checking out (though I still don’t understand his obsession with Gilbert and Sullivan).
In other news, yesterday I polished off that Judy Blume essay. Keep your fingers crossed that it’s what Jennifer was looking for! I saw this description of some of the other stuff she’d been receiving on her blog and wondered if I wasn’t getting personal enough with it…
Finally, another dud of a TV-show-on-DVD-from-Netflix experience. Sometimes, I think, you can agree that it was cancelled for a reason. I fear we were spoiled by our fabulous Firefly and Joan of Arcadia experiences. Wonderfalls wasn’t too bad, but Tru Calling — man, its dialogue is like the opposite of The Lion in Winter. I had to turn it off because my eardrums started bleeding. The plots were pretty ridiculous, too. Like the one where two fully suited up and oxygen tank-bearing fireman hold Tru back while a completely non-suited, non equpped fireman runs into a burning building. Or the one where a telemarketing company lets some girl in jeans wander all over their office. Or the one where the same girl in jean convinces some big-time corporate lawyer that she’s been sent by a four star hotel in person to discuss a problem with his reservation. I can’t throw my television against the wall, but I sure as hell want to. Ugh, seriously, skip it. I heard it gets better when they add Jason Priestly to the cast… as if that shouldn’t have given me a clue, right? Actually, I kinda like the Priestmeister. And it can’t possibly make it worse. Sailor Boy and I are thinking of watching it with the volume turned down, because… well, Eliza Dushku. Very very easy on the eyes. And she runs a lot. It’s like Baywatch in that respect.
Another recent TV-show-on-Netflix dud was House. People have been raving about this show, so we thought we’d try it out, and the plot are interesting and all, but it’s like CSI on the living, and I never really liked the CSI format. Too structured for me. It’s like you know how well something’s going to work and whether or not it will make something worse depending on what commercial break you’ve reached. Plus in every episode they seemed to have this completely random need to always, always always show the patients getting a very very painful spinal tap. The producers are obsessed with filming needles. It’s like the gore they show on Nip/Tuck. Is that shit strictly necessary? House himself was funny though. He’d really liven up ER, I think.
Any recs for TV shows I should be watching on DVD? (I’ve got LOST, btw). Should I finally catch up on Battlestar Galactica? My brother’s a big fan and I tried watching with him, but that episode right at the beginning where the robot people figure out how to track the hyperjumps and no one can sleep or eat or anything because they have to keep jumping every half hour? Yeah, that was the part where I figured that the humans were completely outclassed and the show was too depressing for me. But people keep telling me that I a) look like Starbuck and b) have to see this show, have to have to, have to, so I might have to brave it again.
Everyone else is doing it.
I don’t know what this is supposed to mean, unless it’s the spectral analysis for “Waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy behind on deadlines and freaking out!”
Many of you know that I hate giving up on a book, even if it’s a bad book. I will almost always struggle through something once I’ve begun it. In fact, I only gave up on two novels last year, and I think I will go back to one of them, because I think it’s important to learn to appreciate Kafka. (The other one was a wallbanging contemporary romance, and it sucked so much that I won’t even give it away, thereby preventing its awfulness from being inflicted upon another unsuspecting individual.)
Well, we’re four books into the year so far and I’ve got another wallbanger on my hands. This one is a historical romance. Now, I love a good historical romance, and frankly, the more bodice-ripping it is, the better. I cut my romance-reading teeth on Johanna Lindsays and Amanda Quicks and Jennifer Blakes. And I can suspend a lot of disbelief when it comes to historical romances. The usual historical-accuracy claptrap doesn’t bug me in the least. I can accept that the heroine is the one chick in town who knows how to read. I can buy that the guys all have perfect teeth and good grooming habits. I will look the other way when it comes to progressive opinions about slavery and servitude and other social issues. I’ll even buy that the silly chit has some romantic fancy in her head that makes her want to marry for love.
Unless that hasn’t been her character throughout the whole book!
So, to protect the not so innocent, I’m not going to discuss the details of the current wallbanger. Instead I will discuss another book that had this same problem. Last year, one of my favorite books was The Companion, a regency vampire novel by Susan Squires. Now, with the understanding that this was one of my top five books read last year, let us discuss the ten pages of the novel that drove me absolutely batty and which are remarkably similar to this other, less-than remarkable novel I’m reading now. (Avoid if you don’t want to be spoiled.)
So the heroine of The Companion is a half-English, half-Egyptian daughter of an archaeologist who has spent her whole life doing the dig thing, a bit like Rachel Weisz’s character in The Mummy. She is characterized as an almost painfully practical and pragmatic individual. In fact, at the book’s opening, she is unsuccessfully attempting to propose an in-name marriage to her deceased father’s business partner, a gay Frenchman more than twice her age, because such an arrangement would allow her to stay in Egypt and continue her archaeological duties. Alas, he turns her down. Things get worse for the poor dear when she arrives in England (where she is considered an ugly, too-tan Arabic bookwormy nerd) and learns that her father invested her inheritance in his last unsuccessful dig, and that she will have to swiftly wed someone in England or risk the streets.
Being painfully pragmatic, and mourning the fact that she will never return to Egypt or her beloved archaeology work, she tries to win the hand of any old codger with a living who doesn’t completely disgust her, because, hey, girl’s gotta eat. So far, I’m with her. Life sucks when you have no money and you aren’t allowed to do the one thing in life you’re trained for. Unfortunately, no one wants to marry her boring, bookish, too-tan ass, so she decides to hire herself out as a lady’s companion or governess, because, it’s respectable work, and hey, girl’s gotta eat.
Re-enter the hero (I say “re” because the two of them shared quite the intimate little sea voyage, during which he thrilled her mind with chess, her body with his abject hotness, and her sense of adventure with his nifty ability to behead pirates with his bare hands). He’s decided to go back to Egypt for a variety of very important vampy reasons, sees that she’s in dire straits, is as attracted to her as she is to him, and thinks he likes her just fine. So he proposes, saying that if she marries him, he’ll make her rich, take her back to Egypt, and let her plan an enormous archaeology project.
Now, this painfully pragmatic heroine, who is totally in love with Egypt, more than a little fascinated with the hero, previously willing to marry gay men who could be her grandfathers in order to get back to archaeology work, and who has nothing going for her in England aside from a dreary life addressing correspondence for doddering old dowagers in Dover — what does she say?
She says no, because it will be a loveless marriage.
WTF? Seriously. W. T. F??!??!?!?! I actually went back and re-read those ten pages where she whines about how awful it would be to be in this loveless marriage with Mr. Hotty McHotVamp, living the high life, in Egypt, digging for lost cities, because I couldn’t believe she was saying that. So, loveless marriage to strange old coot is fine, but loveless marriage to hot sexy guy who is making your dreams come true is not? Bitch, please.
Not only did it seem very unlike the heroine, but it also seemed very unlike the kind of powerful feminist characters that Squires is wont to write. As soon as those pages were over, she promptly drops those worries and instead brings up her more pragmatic concerns like — what happens when she gets old and he stays young? And can her turn her into a vamp? And will he want to drink her blood? And will her kids be vamps? Now, those questions make sense to me, and they fit in perfectly with her character, to want them answered before she enters into any kind of arrangement with him. The love crap? Not so much.
I finally decided that those ten pages were an aberration, some sort of random romance trope that her editor forced her to stick in the book, and continued on my merry way with the novel, the other 390 pages of which were pure genius and I love them and they were brilliant and romantic and compelling and fabulous.
However, this book that I’m reading now? Same frickin’ thing! You’ve got this heroine who is willing to do all manner of truly scandalous, truly terrifying, and truly dangerous things — some of which may destroy her life or end it — in order to achieve her goal, but when the guy she has the hots for (and this one doesn’t even has as many red flags as Mr. Hotty McHotVamp) offers to make all of her wishes come true is she just agrees to marry him and let him make her happy forevermore — well, then she starts throwing around the L word like she cares, or like being trapped in a loveless marriage with a rich, nice, hot guy determined to make you happy, give you multiple orgasms, and otherwise make sure your life rocks is in any way, shape, or form the worst fate imaginable. Worse than selling yourself at some deranged Victorian bachelor auction or wedding yourself to the sniveling lordling who has raped every scullery maid in the keep or locked yourself away in a shack on the moors and subsisted on turnips while sewing lovely little scarlett A’s on all of your frocks…
I. Don’t. Get. It. Are we romance readers forced to put up with this illogical crap just because it’s romantic for the heroine to only want to marry the hero for love? Like, she can marry anyone else for whatever reason, but if it’s a guy she can actually fall for, she has to love him first?
I loved The Companion despite those ten odd pages, because they happened pretty late in the book, and I was already more than in love with it enough by then to overlook its one blemish. I don’t love this book as much, and I’m not far enough into it to overlook this crap, especially since it doesn’t appear to be some ten page offhand comment, but rather a major driving force in the book. Look, princess, you’re steering awfully close to the TSTL Island, and I’m beginning to wonder what your hero sees in you. Marry the damn guy, achieve your goal, and count your lucky stars that you caught a man with wealth, good looks, power, all of his teeth, good grooming habits, and the desire to give you multiple orgasms and whatever else your foolish little lovelorn heart desires. Most people in your time period were not that lucky. Shit, most people in ANY time period are not that lucky.
So, should I ditch this book or keep reading? And does anyone want to recommend to me a good historical to wash the taste of this one out of my mouth?
Introducing Guest Blogger Maureen McGowan!!! Maureen, tell us about your recent trip.
Okay, so when I left Toronto early (for me) Friday morning, it was in the low 40’s, raining, and I admit I was looking forward to basking in Florida sunshine more than the chance to pitch agents, talk about writing and see some loop-buddies. When I landed in Orlando 2 ½ hours later, to temperatures barely out of the 40’s and ferocious rain, I started to have doubts about the weekend.
Man, were things about to change.
The conference was great. Those STAR chapter writers really know how to put on a conference. Thank you ladies! Friday night, at the speed-dating event I met everyone I wanted to meet and they were all lovely. Things were looking up.
Saturday, they got better. My pitches went well and during Diana’s great workshop she pulled my name out of a hat and I won an ARC of her wonderful book SECRET SOCIETY GIRL. If you haven’t preordered one yet, get thee to an Amazon website. It’s fantastic!
Note from Diana: No kickbacks. This is all her.
But my luck was just beginning…
First, a little backstory… One of my CP’s and best friends, Harlequin author Molly O’Keefe, is about to give birth – like any day now. And I need to be in the loop on these things. The hotel’s internet connection went down sometime on Saturday and although sure her hubby would call my cell, Sunday morning in severe communication withdrawal, I turned to checking my home voice mail just to make sure she hadn’t popped yet. I wasn’t expecting any other calls – except maybe one from this guy with a heavy Russian accent named Yuri who keeps leaving messages to tell me about his wonderful moving service. Yuri, buddy, I’m not moving.
Anyway…
No baby. But I had a voice mail from Elaine Spencer at The Knight Agency telling me one of their agents was interested in my manuscript (an adverb like “very” might have also been thrown in there) and wanted to know if I’d accepted representation elsewhere.
I hadn’t.
But you’ve probably already figured that given the whole pitching-to-agents thing.
Shaking and suppressing a scream, I went down to breakfast where I quickly found Diana and we jumped up and down. (Okay, in our chairs. I wasn’t fully caffeinated yet and not much of a jumper.)
Moments later, my name was drawn out of a raffle box and I’d won the conference fee to RWA in Atlanta. Hey! Isn’t The Knight Agency based near Atlanta? Didn’t my pitch to their agency happen at RWA in Reno? The stars were beginning to align.
I spent a frantic what felt like hours (probably ten minutes) trying to return Elaine’s call. The number she’d left got a little garbled (as voice mails are wont to do) and I ended up calling every possible number with an exchange ending in “17” in the whole freakin’ state of Georgia. (Okay, I got the right number on the third try. By now, you must realize I like to exaggerate.)
My flight back to Toronto not scheduled until Monday, I Sunday afternoon trying to find an internet café in Cocoa Beach or Cape Canaveral from which I could send an e-mail… but for some bizarre reason, visitors to the area seem more interested in sandy beaches and theme parks than spending hours staring at computer screens. Go figure.
Sunday evening (while sucking back mini-margaritas and trying to catch the Superbowl ads while avoiding the actual game) Diana called my cell to tell me she’d received an e-mail from Elaine asking for help in tracking me down! Hearing this, I started to get more confident the news from the agency, should I ever find a way to get it, might be really good news.
Finally, Monday, after forgetting to set my alarm and sleeping in (remember the margaritas?), and then spending too long: finding gas for my rental car, trying to get the gasoline smell off my hands after filling said car, covering every square inch of the departure level deeply regretting the discount airline I’d chosen, and then waiting in the line from hell at security in the Orlando airport, I arrived at my gate with seconds to spare and the opportunity to call Elaine who told me Pamela Harty wanted to speak with me about representation… Could I talk to her now? I looked at the airline staff in the middle of pre-boarding hundreds of Mickey-overdosed children and considered it… I could catch another flight home.
But instead I scheduled a time to talk to Pamela the next day, and yippee! I am now a very happy new client of Pamela Harty of The Knight Agency!
So, now you know the answers to questions #2 and #20.
Diana… You must divulge the rest.
Ha! Nevah! Congratulations to the newest TKA sistah!
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