Trying To Get An Agent (part one)

I started soliciting literary agents when I was back in Los Angeles in July. I used the e-mail at the bank where I was working to send them out when I had spare moments. Then in August I made the move to Indianapolis-- I was in the Midwest by the 16th, having traveled almost 3,000 miles by land in my pickup truck.

I was worried that the one agency that asked for a submission would not be able to get back to me due to my not being at the bank anymore (since I was using their e-mail it would no longer exist when I left the company) but I also did not want to spoil anything by asking about it before the allotted period of three months passed.

So I sent an e-mail in September updating my e-mail address and waited until October to officially inquire as to whether it was a 'pass' or a 'go'. When October came, I sent the inquiry follow-up and waited some more.

Meanwhile, the latest and so-far-the-best edit of my novel has been trapped on the hard drive to a dead laptop. I haven't had the time to retrieve the manuscript from the hard drive, but to be honest I wasn't too thrilled about the submission I'd been sending to agents: I kept rewriting it as I e-mailed them, and that's not a good sign.

Mind you, I've only solicited about 50 or so agents. The sole reply that asked for a submission is merely one agency. The rest either didn't get back to me or passed. But there's still hundreds and thousands of agents out there. I've barely begun the process. However, I am still not satisfied with what I have to offer.

I decided that, no matter what happened with this one agent, I will send a stronger chapter of my novel when the next round of solicitations begins. I imagine that I will have something ready to send by the end of the year, because the holidays are upon us and I don't know if any agents will be in their offices from now until the new year.

And just when I decided to take this tack, I received a pass letter from the agent in question... dated August 13, 2011! I guess they replied to me sooner but I was en route to Indiana when it was sent. The September e-mail update must have gotten buried in the mix, and my October follow-up was probably confusing to them until they realized that I'd never received the August reply.

So, in other words, I was passed on almost three months ago and I've been twiddling my thumbs doing nothing about it. But now at least I know what's up, and I can go forward with a better query and better material to back it up with if I get another request for a submission.

I do feel a little dumb, but then again my strong suit has never been the business side of things. I'm learning this as I go. It will probably be a long long time before I see anything worthwhile coming my way. I am not daunted, however-- this is only the beginning. I should've taken this seriously in the past but I was too busy writing and loving it.

But there's no rush, is there?

"The King Of Politics"

Watching Martin Scorsese's The King Of Comedy on DVD reminds me of the time when I was working in the Network Operations Center of the corporate radio network owned by that behemoth of media conglomerates, Clear Channel.

In the movie, Robert De Niro plays aspiring comic Rupert Pupkin, who kidnaps a late-night talk show host (modeled on Johnny Carson but played by Jerry Lewis) in order to get his big break on the airwaves. The movie wasn't a big hit but in terms of foresight it is extremely prescient. Forget Andy Warhol's 15 minutes, this movie practically guarantees that the criminal class will inherit the media of the future.

It reminds me of my job in radio because there was one moment in time when I had the idea to switch the feed that sent Rush Limbaugh's show from West Palm Beach (where he broadcasts) via a satellite connection that ended up in Denver and scattered all over the network, which was nationwide at the time.

I wanted to switch the feed with a filthy comedy routine by the late Bill Hicks, wherein he wondered aloud if Rush Limbaugh and some of the Republican ex-presidents (with Barbara Bush in tow) engaged in kinky coprophilia. I had the CD in my travel bag, and my position was such that I could've done it easily, and by the time anyone was the wiser the bit would've ended... along with my career in radio.

I often wonder what would have happened had I done that. First of all, I would've been fired and probably fined for violating FCC standards and practices. But the prank would've made the news, and people who hate Rush Limbaugh would've picked up on it and had me on their shows and I might have become some sort of low-level celebrity in left-wing circles. Maybe I would've ended up working for Air America.

But I also would've incurred the wrath of neo-conservatives and right-wingers. Not that it bothers me, but then again they can be a hateful bunch, and the quiet solitude I enjoy now with my wife and son would not be possible due to never-ending torrents of hate mail and death threats. I mean, this would have happened in late 2000 had it actually been carried out, long before I ever entertained the thought of settling down. But I don't think I would've found the kind of peace I enjoy now. Some people have long memories, and the ones who I would've angered tend to carry guns and shoot abortion doctors, so someone like me would be fair game.

Still, I wonder what might have been, as we all do when we think about the paths we didn't take in life. And I don't regret not doing it, because ultimately such an event would only make Rush's supporters more defensive-- after all, they do refer to themselves as 'dittoheads' so there's really nothing a prank like that would've done to convince them otherwise. In fact, it may have only fanned the flames of their devotion to such an extent that maybe it would've made today's current political climate --replete as it is with Tea Baggers and Occupiers and the whole lot --much less tolerable.

Part of me does wish I could've socked it to the right-wingers in such a spectacular fashion, but I think someone like me does it every day here in Middle America, where sometimes my mere presence in a public market stands as an affront to any white upper middle-class American who thinks that minorities are inferior. I think the fact that I am here and raising a son and living the Dream with a capital D can sometimes be more of a 'fuck you' to the dittoheads than any rhetoric I can espouse.

I dunno, maybe I'm just rationalizing a missed opportunity. Or maybe I just have a hankering to do something along those lines again. I look at the papers and the blogs and the news websites and see so many people taking it to the streets, I wonder if I ever did enough. But there's no answer to that, because even if I had hijacked Rush's radio show for a minute in the post-election turn-of-the-millenium, there's no way I could ever top that. I'd have to live that down, or outdo it. And that's the consequence of such an action: once you pick a side of the fence to be on, you have to stay there.

Believe me, it's much more enjoyable being here, in the Heartland, the Crossroads of America, where no one knows my name and yet I can still sympathize with those who believe what I believe as I send my son to a decent preschool and my wife wins Halloween contests by dressing as the leg lamp from A Christmas Story. I don't think I'd want it any other way, the more I think about it.