Floating Past on a Hot Promotional Breeze

Well, what a day yesterday was! I’d been dying to write a particular scene all day, but I got caught up in three of the most stunningly orgasmic bits of promotional yumminess and was completely distracted all day. And here’s the worst part (for you) — I can’t spill the beans on any of them yet!

But, rest assured they are completely scrumptious, and when the time comes, you will all get to savor their utter deliciousness yourselves. Sailor Boy is growing weary of my constant squealing, however. Because, dear blog readers, I’ve been squealing. And gasping, and jumping around.

What? You want hints? Okay, okay. Hints (in a lovely, LSATy way):

There are three promotional items.
1. At least two items have been in the works for a long time.
2. At least one item I just found out about today.
3. One item was inspired by Julie Leto.
4. Two items were my idea.
5. One item was my brilliant agent’s idea.
6. One item involves something I’ve never heard of before this evening.
7. One of the items is not bookmarks.
8. At least one of the items is online.
9. One of the items involves a contest.
10. One of the items is something you wear.

Ah, I could do this all day and y’all still wouldn’t be any closer to guessing…

Speaking of the clueless, count me in. I’m totally mystified. Has anyone else noticed the willful ignorance going on in some of these author/agent/editor chats of late? I’ve attended four in the last two weeks, and whoa, nelly! At times I’ve wanted to pull the person aside and ask them to think about what they are asking! Really simple stuff, too. I saw someone ask an agent who had just finished rolling off a lengthy list of places where she had sold books as well as talking about one of her clients who had sold a book to house A, if she was “one of those agents who only sold to House B.” And just when I think I’m done being surprised, I get what I if an agent would find a pretty insulting question! Another writer asked if, after signing with an agent who previously rejected you, should you shop your rejected manuscript to other agents behind her back. Uh, I guess only if you were in the market for a new agent, full stop!

(The topic of writers who won’t let go of their old books is one for another day.)

In general, I’m glad I’m not an agent. I think I’d be the super mean kind. Miss Snark without the convenient veil of anonymity.

Next there’s the broken records. Having been at four of these things, I’ve now seen one person ask the same question at all four opportunities (even twice to the same agent, as if she’s somehow going to get a different answer in a different venue!). They aren’t Magic 8 balls, sweetie. Here’s how it works. You either believe Agent A when she says that X isn’t going to work, or you thumb your nose at her and anyone else who says otherwise and make it work to spite them. What’s actually going on here is that Madame X is getting an answer she doesn’t like. Perfectly fine, perfectly normal, I applaud her for soldiering on in spite of it. But there’s such a thing as a second opinion, and then there’s third and fourth and fifth and so on. At some point, you have to think that the consensus wins, right? And I don’t buy the argument that she’s just gathering information about who to submit to, either. Because editors and agents are famous for saying they’ll never like such-and-such, only to read a such-and-such they fall head over heels for and forgetting all their standards. So stop asking, start blowing their socks off with the actual submission.

And then there’s broken record type 2, where Diana, by dint of having sat in on all these Q&As, has simply seen the same question asked over and over again by different people. I don’t blame these people. They probably weren’t at the other chats and so their questions were, perhaps, perfectly reasonable. But it was still a lot of “yawn, yes, yes, chick lit is a tough sell right now, ‘historical’ means regencies and scottish, and let’s get on to new territory, m’kay?” No one’s fault but mine. Should have probably gotten out of there while the getting was good!

But the really clueless person in all of this is me, because on Romancing the Blog, someone asked the following question:

If an unpublished author has set her sights on writing single title historicals for one of the major publishers, but is offered a deal from a category publisher, would you recommend taking it, viewing it as a stepping stone to her destination?

See, this sounds like a serious question, but it left me scratching my head. I want to know how this person even got into such a situation in the first place! It sounds like quite the story! Not easy to break into category, after all. It wasn’t like Brenda Chin just called this random unpublished historical author and said, “Hey there, wanna write me a Blaze?” (Don’t laugh, I know people who HAVE gotten random calls like this and had to decide whether they wanted to write in the genre before accepting the offer. But it weren’t never an unpub for category romance.) And this is also not similar to a situation in which a person submits a story to a publisher and then doesn’t accept the deal because it’s lower than her expectations. Category rates are pretty well known boilerplates. So, why the HELL would this single title historical aspirant go off and write, revise, query, submit, revise, etc. a category romance novel with a publisher, knowing what her likely deal would be if she got accepted, if she wasn’t interested? Asking if that’s what you want AFTER the contract is offered seems like a rather bassackwards way of going about it, to me.

Okay, let the hate mail flow. I’m bound to get some real doozies today, between the tease and the rant.