The
One That Got Away
by Tim Waggoner
"They decided to withdraw the offer
on your novel."
I hesitated,
not quite believing what my agent had told me. "What? Why?"
"The editor said
she was no longer 'comfortable' with the book. Whatever
that means."
The publisher
in question had made an offer on my novel The Harmony
Society over a month before. Not for a large advance,
but they had seemed enthusiastic about the book. After years
of trying to sell a novel, I thought I'd finally done it
-- finally was a Writer with a capital W. And now this.
My agent commiserated
with me a bit before promising to keep sending the book
around. I thanked him and hung up. I knew publishing was
a volatile business and that this particular house had a
reputation for somewhat eccentric business decisions. But
no longer comfortable with my book?
I felt awful.
I'd come so close to achieving my dream of being a published
novelist, only to have it yanked away from me -- two hours
before I was due to attend a local science fiction convention
as an author panelist.
Needless to say,
I didn't feel like going. Even with dozens of short story
sales to my credit, I felt like a failure and a fraud. I
didn't want to have to sit on panels and pretend that I
knew what the hell I was talking about. Didn't want to have
to face friends and acquaintances and have them ask how
things were going with my writing.
I was angry at
my agent for pushing the editor too hard for more money
and better contract terms, perhaps scaring her off; angry
at myself for having been dumb enough to believe that the
offer had been a firm one in the first place. Angry that
I had no clue exactly what had happened to screw up the
deal and that I probably never would. But most of all, I
was angry that I had wasted so much time pursuing my dream.
A dream which had turned around and bit me hard on the rear.
In the end, I
went to the con, if only so I'd have some friends to complain
to. They were all perfectly sympathetic, of course, but
several of them said with a wistful tone, "At least you
had an offer."
I felt like telling
them the grass was definitely not greener on this side of
the fence, but I didn't. I knew they wouldn't understand.
I wouldn't have either, not before.
I moped around
all weekend, felt miserable, talked about quitting writing,
and stuck more than a few mental pins in an imaginary voodoo
doll labeled EDITOR.
Then the con
was over, my friends returned home, and I was left with
only my wife to complain to. But I didn't feel much like
talking anymore. I realized that I'd actually been fortunate
to have a con to go to. While it hadn't exactly kept my
mind off my stillborn book deal, it had, if nothing else,
kept me busy and provided some measure of catharsis.
But now it was
Sunday night and stretching before me was my first full
week as a failure. The question was, what was I going to
do with it?
The next day
I sat down and started to write another book.
I wanted to get
back on the horse, was afraid that I might never write a
novel again unless I did. I used an outline which I had
completed some months back so that I wouldn't have to worry
about developing a plot and characters. I could just write.
And write I did,
well over ten pages a day in between teaching college composition
courses and caring for my then one-year-old daughter. I
took all the emotional energy churning inside me and channeled
it into my book, writing like a man possessed. I finished
the novel, titled Necropolis, in twenty-nine days.
I tinkered with
the manuscript, editing and revising over the next several
weeks, then blasted it off to my agent. But now doubts began
to set in. What if I'd written Necropolis too fast,
hadn't revised enough; what if it was absolute crap?
Sure, my writers'
group liked it, but how could I trust them? They were my
friends; they knew how emotionally fragile I was just then.
I could have probably scribbled out a grocery list and they'd
have praised it as a surefire Nebula contender.
The con had taught
me that I needed to keep busy, but I couldn't bring myself
to write any more fiction, not then. Nearly a decade earlier,
I had worked as a reporter for a small weekly newspaper,
but I had written very little nonfiction since. Still, I
occasionally thought about getting back to it, and now seemed
the perfect time.
I threw myself
into reading about nonfiction writing techniques and researching
markets. I tossed around different article ideas, finally
deciding to write a personal essay about my experience with
testicular cancer. I developed a query letter, sent it out
to fifty magazines, and sat back to wait. A few days later
I received an e-mail from an editor at Penthouse.
He was interested in seeing the article.
A couple weeks
more, and the article was finished and in the editor's hands.
The check was welcome, of course, but I had gained something
far more important than money: I felt like my words were
valued again -- not by my wife or my writers' group, not
even by an editor of a national magazine. But by me. And
I needed to feel that way, needed it like a man lost in
the desert needs a drink of cool, clean water.
I toyed with
the idea of saying to hell with fiction altogether and writing
nonfiction exclusively, but I couldn't do it. Despite the
instability (and occasional insanity) of a fiction writer's
life, I loved it too much to quit. I returned to working
on short stories and noodling around with novel ideas. My
agent called to let me know he liked Necropolis and
would start submitting it to editors.
I'm not the only
one who's had a book deal go sour on him, of course. SF
novelist J.R. Dunn (This Side of Judgment, Days of Cain,
Full Tide of Night) once had an editor send him a two-page
letter of revision for a novel. Dunn made the revisions,
turned the novel in, and it was rejected.
"Naturally you're
going to be furious when your book's rejected," Dunn says,
"but you want it to be rejected for good grounds, not a
minor technical point." It turned out the editor "basically
didn't understand what a radio was. I told my agent to drop
the publisher and go on to another, and that's what we did."
The novel, This Side of Judgment, came out two years
later in hardback to good reviews. Dunn says the moral is
"not all editors are idiots" and advises writers to "keep
banging your head against a wall" until your book finds
a home.
Editor Gordon
Van Gelder says that having a book deal fall through is
"definitely not common at all." He advises authors to research
a publisher to determine size, longevity and stability before
submitting. Smaller houses are especially precarious financially.
Van Gelder assures
that there is "no stigma" for authors who've had book deals
collapse on them, and that actually the book's more attractive
to other editors because it had a deal before. For instance,
Van Gelder once bought a book by Tanith Lee that had been
abandoned after the Abyss line of horror novels folded.
Not only did Van Gelder think it a fine book, but it was
a sequel and he felt Lee's fans should have a chance to
read it.
"It was the right
thing to do," Van Gelder says, "plus I made some money for
St. Martin's in the process."
Happy ending
time. My first daughter is now seven, and my second is two.
I've long since gotten over my anger at my agent and continue
to have a great working relationship with him. The editor
who rejected my book because she was "no longer comfortable
with it" was fired years ago. I have a full-time, tenure-track
job teaching creative writing at a community college, and
I've published over sixty stories in various anthologies
and magazines.
Given the mergers
and downsizing in publishing over the last few years, and
the fact that The Harmony Society was a slipstream
novel not easily pigeonholed, my agent and I decided to
investigate the possibility of placing the novel with small-press
publishers. A recent start-up, DarkTales Publishing (www.darktales.com),
seemed a likely prospect. They publish offbeat horror/dark
fantasy novels and have brought out work by such authors
as J. Michael Straczynski, Yvonne Navarro and Mort Castle,
among others. We decided to give them a try.
And they took
my novel, with every intention of publishing it. But after
a couple of years, the publisher realized their business
had grown too big, too fast, and they needed to slow things
down. DarkTales would still be bring out my novel, but they
couldn't say when. So, after letting out a long sigh, I
decided it was off to market once more.
The Harmony
Society finally found a home with Prime Books. The advance
was less than that offered by the original publisher, but
the overall terms are much better. More important, my book
is with people who are enthusiastic about it and who intend
to do their best to promote it. If the original publisher
had brought out the book, while I would've made more money
on the initial advance, there would've been little to no
promotion, and most likely The Harmony Society would've
come and gone without much notice. I'm confident that Prime
will do my book justice. Who knows? We might even sell a
few copies, too.
Since placing
The Harmony Society, I've also written an erotic
mystery novel called Dying For It for Foggy Windows
Books (www.foggywindows.com) and published a short story
collection called All Too Surreal with Prime Books
(www.primebooks.net). As for Necropolis ... well,
it's still making the rounds. I'm hopeful that one day it'll
be published too, but if it isn't, it won't be the end of
the world -- or my career, for that matter.
Because despite
my successes -- or perhaps because of them -- I've learned
the most important lesson an author needs to learn: I don't
need publication to feel like a writer. The only thing I
truly need is to keep writing.
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