He did it, but can I?

Genre-hopping. Let's check in with Neil Young on the subject:

"I used to be pissed off at Bobby Darin because he changed styles so much. Now I look at him and think he was a f---ing genius."

I'll go on the record right now as being one of the planet's biggest Bobby Darin fans. In my book, he's second only to Sinatra. No one had the swing or swagger down better. Not Bennett, not Torme, not...well, hell, who else was there? Sammy? Nat? They had their moments. Harry Connick, Jr. and Michael Buble give it their best, and Harry comes close on occasion, but there's an over-earnestness to both of them. At least Harry can write and play. Buble is professional karaoke.

Back to Bobby: what else makes this guy so freaking cool? He wrote a ton of his own material. Take that, Sinatra. Problem with Bobby is that he was born a decade or so too late. By the time he cut "Mack the Knife," Sinatra's brand of swing was on the way out. So over the next ten years, he bounced around from swing to country to folk, writing his own stuff all the way. His last record contract was on the Motown label, for Pete's sake. How versatile can you get?

Now, I don't love-love his folk or country stuff, but I'll give him points for authenticity--that is, he doesn't sound like a poseur. He really pulls it off, no matter what he does.

Thing is, can I? I know the "comic suspense" genre pretty well, having written two novels in it so far. As I try to break through with both Ring of Fire and Battle Axe, I'm finding myself drawn to another, totally foreign territory: young adult adventure. I didn't read a lot of it as a kid (I don't think there was a lot of it when I was a kid), but it's a beyond-huge genre right now, thankyouveddymuch Ms. Rowling.

My son read The Lightning Thief last year and got hooked on the whole series. Intrigued, I picked it up to see what all the hype-la was about. I appreciated it, but didn't quite see anything going on there that I hadn't encountered over the years as a reader. Solid, but nothing groundbreaking.

Kinda like my writing, if I say so myself.

So instead of writing yet another comic suspense novel that agents "don't know what to do with," I thought I'd take a crack at something that's actually selling these days. And I've got a couple of built-in test readers just down the hall from my bedroom.

Wish me luck.

Prince Charles, you have my sympathy.

So I met Carl Hiaasen last night. Yeah, that Carl Hiaasen. My favorite living author. The undisputed king of that tiniest of sub-genres: comic suspense. Turns out he's not ready to pack it in yet. And here I was, ready to step in with my two comic suspense manuscripts and assume the throne.

The guy's friends with Jimmy Buffett--isn't that enough of an achievement for one lifetime? Does he really need to keep writing these...books? The tireless and exceedingly nice guy has just brought out a third YA (young adult) book ("Scat," which my son and I started last night and is very promising) and is working on another adult one as we speak. Which of course means less shelf space for me.

I had a nice, if brief, conversation with him. I do regret not pushing a business card on him with a link to this blog, or at least cramming my query letter in his jacket pocket. Still, I thanked him for all the years of entertainment and the inspiration.

Back to work.

The Query, as it stands.

So I'm getting some traffic with this.

After forty years, Dorsey Duquesne believes he’s finally found his mother. Too bad she keeps trying to kill him. BATTLE AXE, my 100K-word suspense novel, will appeal to fans of Carl Hiaasen, Janet Evanovich and Bill Fitzhugh.

When his father dies, the last thing Dorsey needs is a mid-life crisis. But when the funeral lures long-buried family skeletons out of the closet, his childhood is reduced to a carefully constructed set piece. His sense of identity dented, Dorsey hires a strip-mall P.I. to track down his birth mother—and finds a feisty German woman who not only blames him for the death of her lover, but whose only interest in a mother/son relationship involves picking out his headstone.

Under the spell of her rehearsed charm, he’s soon guzzling sedative-spiked beer and being pulled from her burning cottage by an oddly paternal village night watchman. Before his new “mom” can pen the final chapter of his revised life story, Dorsey must break her manipulative grip on his heart and realize that a family isn’t defined by birth certificates and blood types. Sometimes it's simply a matter of who's willing to take a harpoon for you.

Given your success with the genre, I thought you would be an ideal agent for BATTLE AXE. I’m an advertising copywriter and a writing professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, where I earned my journalism degree. I am also a well-adjusted adoptee and have recently met my birth mother. She does not, to my knowledge, own a harpoon.

Just heard back from an agent today that she liked the book, describing it as possessing "a great grittiness, humor and humanity, along with a nice tense plot." She also said she didn't have the right editorial connections to place it.

Going to a Carl Hiaasen book signing tonight. I plan to thank him for the inspiration and demand an apology for creating such a difficult genre to break into.

Take that, Elmore Leonard.

In his "book" (if can call a hardback with one sentence per page a book) "10 Rules of Writing," Elmore Leonard states emphatically:

Never use any word other than "said" to attribute dialogue.

Although I'm sure he would quibble with my use of the word "emphatically." Because it's an adverb.

Anyway, my son brings home this flyer from school recently that flies in the face of the great Mr. Leonard's advice. So who's right? The multi-million selling book author with 50 years of writing under his belt, or my son's fourth grade teacher?

Personally, I like a good dialogue attributer now and then. But then, maybe that's why I'm not published.

Round one to you, Mr. Leonard.

You're a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith

We interrupt your trek to the polls with this reminder of why.

Hey, you're a lucky fellow, Mr. Smith, to be able to live as you do,
And to have that swell Miss Liberty gal carrying the torch for you
You're a lucky fellow, Mr. Smith--look around you if you want to brag,
You should thank your lucky stars and I mean, thank all 50 in your flag

This bit of Capraesque patrioti-corn was recorded by Frank Sinatra in 1964 and features the incredibly dated backing of Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians. However, it stirs the soul to this day, particularly on this day.



You're a very, very wealthy gent--I don't care if you haven't a cent
You can still have things your own way, on each Election Day
If some poor suckers could choose, they like to be in your shoes
That proves that your good fortune's no myth
You're a lucky fellow, Mr. Smith.

I voted, as much as they would let me. Hope you did too.

Not for me--thanks!

Is this meant to encourage me? What other profession is based on your relying on people beating down your door and then you decide if you'll even acknowledge them?

I speak, of course, of the venerated literary agent. I've been sending out dozens of equeries lately, with maybe a 10% response rate. With a direct mail piece, this would be phenomenal. With a well-written, professional query, it's abysmal. But not unexpected. That's the norm these days--agents are flooded with equeries (and snail mail ones as well) to the point where they only respond if they're interested. But I wonder how much more productive we'd all be if they could take the ten seconds or so to paste in one of three responses and actually...respond:

1. While your writing is strong, this particular project doesn't appeal to me. However, feel free to submit to me in the future. (keeps the good writers going--maintains a connection that might pay off for the agent one day)
2. Based on the way this query is written, I don't have sufficient confidence I could sell your work. (tells the writer the query is crap and to not waste other agents' time with it--a public service to agents everywhere!)
3. Based on the story you're proposing, I don't have sufficient confidence I could sell your work. (tells the writer the story itself is crap and stop querying it outright--a service to agents everywhere and the deluded writer)

I could handle one of these. They're all form replies, they're all professional and polite, but at least it would give us clueless writers some semblance of direction. It would let us know if it's the story or the query itself that has problems. It would let us know whether or not to ever pursue that agent again. It would let us know if we should just hang it up altogether, if one is tempted to read between the lines.

It reminds me of a client I once had. I read him a few scripts for radio commercials and he roundly condemned them all. When I asked for a little direction, so I could improve them and bring them around to his liking, he said, "I don't need to give a speech about why I don't like 'em. I just don't!"

Oooookay.

"Not for me--thanks!"

Now, I ask you, what am I supposed to do with that?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way from the Forums.

I allude, of course, to the 1962 Broadway masterpiece. The book is credited to Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove, but for my money, the show wouldn't have gotten off the ground without Stephen Sondheim's score and lyrics.

As sung by Zero Mostel.

Once called "nothing but a belch of a man" by my ever-derisive drama teacher, Zero took the role of Pseudolus, turned down by Phil Silvers and Milton Berle, and worked his big, fat, sweaty magic with it. He's occasionally out of tune, his dynamics lack any sense of subtlety and he's frequently out of breath. It's incredible. If you ever come across the soundtrack, give it a chance. But steer clear of the '66 film version, which did away with half the songs and fell all over itself trying to look like an episode of "The Monkees."

But I digress.

Just when I thought I was ready to forge ahead with my query, rejection after rejection proved me wrong. Having exhausted my friends, family and writers' group, I did what any writer would do under the circumstances: I turned to complete strangers. I used an assortment of forums and posted the current version of my query there and invited feedback. The comments came fast and furious. Over a week or two, I re-shaped it into something meeting with most people's approval--and keep in mind, these are, for the most part, people like me, not authors with dozens of novels to their name or veteran literary agents. But they can step back and be objective about it where I can't.

It’s hard enough being Michelangelo’s son. But find out you’re Michelangelo’s adopted son and you might as well chuck the chisel—genetically, you’re hosed. That’s how Dorsey Duquesne feels, slogging away on a guitar in the shadow of his saxophone legend father. He discovers why his tunes consistently blow when his emotionally distant mother breaks a marriage-long pact on the eve of her husband’s funeral and reveals Dorsey was “acquired” as an infant. His known world yanked out from under him, Dorsey becomes obsessed with the life he was denied.

Clinging to an anonymous letter and a shoebox of his father’s old demo tapes, he chips away at the secrets surrounding his so-called adoption. Answers arrive in the form of a strudel-baking redhead claiming to be his real mother. She sweet-talks her way into Dorsey's heart, family and wallet, but her charm masks a darker agenda. With the help of a one-eyed detective and a disabled medieval warfare fanatic, Dorsey overcomes his identity crisis while his new "mom" schemes to put him in the poor house—and in the ground.

With their help, I sent out this new, improved query and have already received a request for three chaps and another for the full MS. I drink to you, my faceless brethren.

And I link to you, too--see right.