textiplication.com

I was thinking about the following bit from this post on Jennifer Jackson’s blog:

Despite the fact that nearly everywhere on the internet that my submission guidelines appear it says that I prefer snail mail to electronic queries (last night I nearly killed myself trying to read an email that had the teensy tiniest font ever and all the carriage returns stripped out), I am now getting them in a ratio of 1:2, respectively.

and realized I was thinking something like this:

Well, why do you prefer snail mail when the authors obviously prefer e-mail? Wouldn’t it easier if you switched?

or somesuch goofballery.  It suddenly occurred to me that a lot of prospective writers’ questions on Miss Snark, Evil Editor, and so on carry an implicit assumption that the author is the agent’s customer.  It’s an easy trap to fall into - the author thinks of the agent as providing a service, so the agent should be hopping to provide good service — defined as, of course, whatever the author wants.

But this is exactly backwards.  Authors are not the agent’s customers - they are the agent’s suppliers!  Authors try to provide agents with goods they can sell; agents try to provide editors with goods that they will want to buy. 

Authors, if this doesn’t seem right to you, look at how the money flows: to you! You don’t send money to the agent - the editor pays you for your work, and the agent holds part of that out.  No fees, no retainers.

Customers deliver money, they don’t receive it.  Suppliers receive money in exchange for goods that customers want.  That means it’s the author’s responsibility to write the right kind of query letter, get the agent’s name right, format it the right way, and print the darn thing out and stick it in a stamped envelope if that’s what the agent wants.  Complain all you want, but if you were making widgets you’d still have to package and ship them in the way that the customer wanted.

Of course, I’m not saying I don’t feel a little twinge — query letters are the only letters I’ve actually put stamps on in probably ten years, so yes, it’s not the most convenient thing for me. 

But I’m not the customer.

This was the first con I’d ever been to, and I enjoyed it even more than I’d hoped.  So many people who write so much, so many people who read so much.  So many people who talk so much.  Damn.  Elizabeth Bear can talk me into the ground, and that takes some doing.  My favorite moments:

• Literary beer with Karl Schroeder, a vastly literate and technical autodidact.  In a very brief hour, we discussed ancient philosophy, modern philosophy, color theory, Searle’s Chinese Room, AI, genetic algorithms and evolutionary computing, fantasy writing vs. science fiction writing, L. E. Modesitt, and Charles Stross.  And some other stuff as well, that I’m not sure I remember.  Conversations like that make me eager to read more non-fiction.
• Panel on The Role of the Agent with Michael Kabongo, Eleanor Wood, and Joshua Bilmes.  Great mix of reassurances on the things I’d read in agent blogs online and a few nuggets that I hadn’t already heard.  Not to mention Joshua telling Chris and me the exact first sentence to put into our query letters…
• Realizing that yes, that was Tobias Buckell talking to John Scalzi over there in the lobby.  That person yelling at them from twenty yards away? Elizabeth Bear!
• As Chris sez, Tobias is just the nicest guy. 
• Over literary beer, jointly (as it were) with Elizabeth Bear describing William H. Macy’s nudity in The Cooler as “You can see the package but not the ribbon.”  Elizabeth Bear was the funniest person I met at Boskone. 
• Wen Spencer’s storyboard of one stick figure biting another in the neck. It’s easier than you think, because stick figures are all neck.  
• Realizing how close-knit and friendly the community of fantasy & sf authors is.

By the way, I’m trying to promote the phrase, “I’m biting you in the neck!” as a substitute for the clearly rude “Shut up!”  It’s going to be an uphill battle, but if we all stand together, we can pull it off.

Here.

Bad Chris.  That art stuff will lead to lots of trouble.

I’ve posted before about my completed novel, Knave of Yes, but I don’t think I’ve ever posted any excerpts.  Here, in honor of Boskone, the first couple hundred words:

———————————-

I was proclaiming revolution in Kalida Market when they came for me, the King’s war wizard in a plume of fire and Count Withn bearing my death sentence in his hand. As the crowd ran screaming from the guardsmen’s swords and Lord Helm’s flame, Lord Withn unfurled the black-ribboned parchment and began to read. In the rolling voice in which he announced hangings, burnings, and harvest festivals, he said, “Owen Barker, called the Jest, you are condemned in the King’s name, charged with inciting riot and with treason in words and deeds. King Mollow has decreed the penalty of death.”

Lord Helm’s voice was a shuddering rumble. “I have come to see you do not cheat the gallows, Jest. You have evaded Lord Withn’s guards before, but you will not escape me.” The Count and all his guardsmen looked small beside him; he was huge, a foot taller than even I stand, and twice my weight. Fire licked up and down his body.

I sidled over to a fruitseller’s cart. “Evade? Escape? You mistake me entirely,” I said, palming a handful of limes. “On the contrary, I’ve been waiting half the day to sing you my new song.” I began to juggle the limes.