Only On Sunday

Letting go means many things. As a writer it means walk away if it isn’t working; if it does work, don’t edit it to death; when it’s finished, it’s finished, let it fly; whether it flies or not, move on to the next thing. In general I adhere to the idea of letting go. I have several never-to-be-finished novels and untold never-to-be-finished short stories and I give them little or no thought beyond occasionally harvesting body parts for other stories.

There is an exception.

Isn’t there always?

I can’t let go of Stealing The Marbles.

STM was conceived over many a glass of wine and late night conversations with a friend about the Parthenon (Elgin, if you prefer) Marbles while I was on vacation in Greece back in 03. It gave birth during an eleven month frenzy of weekend writing after I returned to the states.

The saga from that point is a sordid, if not typical, tale of the trials and tribulations any writer faces upon venturing onto the rather insane, illogical and impersonal ground of the publishing world. In brief: it got an agent at a major agency, was sent to, and rejected by, all of six editors in total before said agent left the agency, it languished without being sent to another publishing house, I fired the agency for many a reason above and beyond that major gaff.

By the time all the above events worked themselves out, I was nearing the end of my second novel, had started on my third and was researching a fourth and possibly fifth.

Now, I’m not going to get into a rant about the publishing industry here. Anyone who knows me knows my feelings about it. With the proper medication, I can live with it and my feelings about the way it operates without rhyme or reason. All I can do is keep writing the next one.

Which I have done.

Meter Maids Eat Their Young, my second book, is on the query-go-round. If it flies, fine, if not, fine as well. I started book three, Never Trust A Guru In A Polyester Robe, and am a third of the way into it. While there, I started toying around with an idea for book four, In The Shadow Of Order, of which I’ve written maybe 2000 words so far.

And than it all stopped.

There were several reasons for this stoppage, mostly personal, which I won’t bore you with. Somewhere in the midst of sorting out this personal stuff, I noticed that STM was still nagging at me, like one of those goat’s head things that have taken over my yard and get stuck in my feet when I make the mistake of venturing out without shoes.

Those few folks that had read STM liked it, but the response from the all too few publishing houses it was sent to was it wasn’t marketable. Personally I don’t think the number crunchers know what the Marbles are and so couldn’t figure out what to do with a book about them.

I am always amazed by what the industry thinks is, or is not, marketable, what they throw their monetary weight behind and what they let languish. This is what happens when you let number crunchers run a business. The quality goes down the tubes while they take wild guesses at what the next big seller will be (there are exceptions, of course, like Finn by Jon Clinch, coming early next year). I read an article awhile back that opened with something that simply appalled me:

Literature is not a democracy. In the book world, being popular does not necessarily make you great. But if it were, and if it did, then the man (James Patterson) sitting across the table from me in a canary-yellow mansion in Palm Beach, Fla., would be president-for-life of the literary universe, and Philip Roth would be a comptroller in North Dakota.

Now I’m not a big fan of Philip Roth but to even attempt to compare him to an author who, essentially, writes the same damn formulaic book over and over is, well, it’s appalling. At least Roth can write!

Ok, I said I wasn’t going to get into a rant about the publishing industry so consider this mini-rant over. Back to the Marbles.

So, most everyone who’s read STM liked it. Well, not the agents and editors so far, but their criteria is primarily marketability. Still, an excerpt of it I had on my website did receive a harsh, albeit honest, assessment from a fellow Backspacer recently. The excerpt was from the opening of the book and she called it an info-dump. That hurt, I’ll admit, though it prompted me to take another look at STM and for that I’m thankful.

I understand the concept of hooking the reader right from the start. Sad to say, but in today’s book market it’s essential. And, as a big consumer of suspense/thriller type stories, most of which start out with massive death and destruction, I understand this is one way to set the hook. However, it’s not the only way and not always the best way. A blog I read frequently had a post awhile back that I found helpful as well as encouraging after the recent info-dump remark.

Stealing The Marbles does not start with a bang. Indeed, it is very slow to start by comparison to most suspense/thrillers. Told in first person POV, it follows a progression that felt right to me at the time I wrote it and still feels right to me now. I can see, at least in terms of hook, it’s flaws. I can see where one might judge it a tad overwritten, an info-dump, so to speak, right there in the beginning.

Still, I think the original opening was a good one, despite this, but I’ve gone ahead and made some changes. No explosions. No one dies in the first five paragraphs, but it does seem a tad faster in pace.

I’m nearly a third through my edits. I’m going to lose a couple of thousand words overall, mostly the protagonist’s backstory, which will make him and the final product a bit on the thin side perhaps, but the story is the story is the story. To add something just to pad it would only make it lumpy.

Of course, there is still the question of marketability. Truth be told, I never thought STM would be all that marketable to an American audience. Few folks here even know what the Marbles are, much less the history and controversy surrounding them. And the impression I got from those agents/editors who read the story was that they were even less knowledgeable. But I think I know of at least one country where STM would fly.

At the turn of the 19th century, Lord Elgin stole antiquities from the Parthenon in Greece and shipped them to England.

At the turn of the 21st century, Danny Samsel is going to steal them back.

The Greeks love their Marbles. They want them back from the Brits. I think they might enjoy this book. And I would love to give them the chance to read it. Perhaps I’ll have to see what I can do about that.