Hey, There's A Dead Guy in the Living Room

White (Knuckling) Christmas

By Inga VonPeepenskeeven

Well, I have once again been reassigned to Ms. Poelle at Irene Goodman from my temp agency, Sullivan Associates. Let’s just say the bloom is off the rose for us over here. But I am trying to stay positive. She asked me to write her post for this week as she is “knee deep in submissions” (read: neck deep in vodka) and she told me to “make it in the holiday spirit.”

 Her wish is of course, my command.

On the first day of Temping the Serpent hissed at me

“And grab another case of Chopin”

 

On the second day of Temping the Serpent hissed at me

 “*@^$!*%#*!”

“And grab another case of Chopin”

 

On the third day of Temping the Serpent hissed at me

“You don’t need stitches”

“*@^$!*%#*!”

“And grab another case of Chopin”

 

On the fourth day of Temping the Serpent hissed at me

“Who is Dan Brown?”

“You don’t need stitches”

“*@^$!*%#*!”

“And grab another case of Chopin”

 

On the fifth day of Temping the Serpent hissed at me

“Get me Dolly Coooooooot!”

“Who is Dan Brown?”

“You don’t need stitches”

“*@^$!*%#*!”

“And grab another case of Chopin”

 

On the sixth day of Temping the Serpent hissed at me

“For this you had to wake me?”

“Get me Dolly Coooooooot!”

“Who is Dan Brown?”

“You don’t need stitches”

“*@^$!*%#*!”

“And grab another case of Chopin”

 

On the seventh day of Temping the Serpent hissed at me

“Refill my Xanax”

“For this you had to wake me?”

“Get me Dolly Coooooooot!”

“Who is Dan Brown?”

“You don’t need stitches”

“*@^$!*%#*!”

“And grab another case of Chopin”

 

On the eighth day of Temping the Serpent hissed at me

“What do you mean: rude?”

“Refill my Xanax”

“For this you had to wake me?”

“Get me Dolly Coooooooot!”

“Who is Dan Brown?”

“You don’t need stitches”

“*@^$!*%#*!”

“And grab another case of Chopin”

 

On the ninth day of Temping the Serpent hissed at me

“Can’t think with my nails wet”

“What do you mean: rude?”

“Refill my Xanax”

“For this you had to wake me?”

“Get me Dolly Coooooooot!”

“Who is Dan Brown?”

“You don’t need stitches”

“*@^$!*%#*!”

“And grab another case of Chopin”

 

On the tenth day of Temping the Serpent hissed at me

“Google How to Snout Pet”

“Can’t think with my nails wet”

“What do you mean: rude?”

“Refill my Xanax”

“For this you had to wake me?”

“Get me Dolly Coooooooot!”

“Who is Dan Brown?”

“You don’t need stitches”

“*@^$!*%#*!”

“And grab another case of Chopin”

 

On the eleventh day of Temping the Serpent hissed at me

“Give me your nylons”

“Google How to Snout Pet”

“Can’t think with my nails wet”

“What do you mean: rude?”

“Refill my Xanax”

“For this you had to wake me?”

“Get me Dolly Coooooooot!”

“Who is Dan Brown?”

“You don’t need stitches”

“*@^$!*%#*!”

“And grab another case of Chopin”

 

On the twelfth day of Temping the Serpent hissed at me

“Why are you crying?”

“Give me your nylons”

“Google How to Snout Pet”

“Can’t think with my nails wet”

“What do you mean: rude?”

“Refill my Xanax”

“For this you had to wake me?”

“Get me Dolly Coooooooot!”

“Who is Dan Brown?”

“You don’t need stitches”

“*@^$!*%#*!”

“And graaaaaaaab another caaaaaaase of Choooooooopin!”

 

 

 

 

 

I Bet Blitzen Understands Me

From the Desk of Sparkles Tootlebutter

First Elf of Vandeywaggle

Second Lieutenant to K. Kringle,  Claus of the Highest Order

North Pole

 

Dear Ms. Poelle,

Although in recent years we have refrained from responding to complaints regarding list placement, you gave us all here such a hearty and much needed chuckle during what can be a stressful time, so I have decided to make an exception and respond to your letter. For your reference, the letter of which I am referring to is dated Dec 1, 2009, subject line: Argument Against Naughty List Placement.

In my rebuttal, I have pasted a sampling of your initial points below along with my responses. To begin:

·         I have increased my goodwill towards others especially in my empathy for those who juggle family and career.

We are curious. Would this be best illuminated by you asking author Tracy Kiely to, quote, “dose the kids with Benadryl” in order to get an early and totally FOR PLEASURE look at book 3? Or perhaps when you poured Husband a PINT glass of vodka, handed him a Percocet and said, “Open up. Broken ribs or not, the bellowing in pain is annoying me.” (May we remind you it was 9:30 in the morning for that one.)

·         Anyone will tell you, in business, I am all about the three C’s: compromise, compassion and camaraderie.

Let’s see, so when that nice editor admitted she was “terrified of you” during negotiations for that book, that was a direct reflection of your compromising skills? Perhaps later in the year, with a different editor, when you shouted, “You’re in the boat with Fredo!”  and slammed the phone down…that was the camaraderie you are referring to? Or shall we all just wordlessly gesture to the editorial meeting you started by lambasting a recent YA novel only to realize you were sitting across from the very editor on that project.  (To which you “covered” by then adding, “I mean, I am sure it’s no secret to YOU that it has issues.”) Oh, Ms. Poelle, indeed we have three C’s for you, but we aren’t permitted to type that word.

·         Dignity is not only my credo, but my essence as well.

This one was a group favorite. We’ve shoveled out better from Rudolph’s stall. Which do you prefer to point to, the night you Folly Poot, La Janet  and Amy Lindel powered back 17 mai tais and ended up knocking over 2 glasses, three chairs, and skinning one knee? Perhaps when you created a drinking game for the mystery and romance writers during your speech last spring in Walnut Creek? Or should we just cut right to it and discuss the body language misread and consequentially the INAPPROPRIATE HUGGING INCIDENT with a prominent publisher?

Ms. Poelle, I could go on to dispute each of your points with similar responses, but I have already taken enough time on this as it is.  At this time we are, with much glee and wholehearted agreement, denying your request to be moved from the Naughty List this year.

But it’s never too late, and there are some extenuating circumstances we are willing to consider. Well, I mean for you, 2009 is in the tank. But I guess that what I am trying to say is that although you are indeed firmly ensconced on the “Naughty” list this year, you have helped to propel many around you not only to “Nice” but damn near to “Saintly” as they attempt to deal with you barreling around in their lives like a rhinoceros in platform shoes.  So in that respect, keep up the good work, and we look forward to hearing from you regarding your Naughty List placement next year, as we have every year since 1998.

 

Warmest Holiday Wishes,

Sparkles

 

 

 

 

 

You Put Your Whole Self In

By Barbara Poelle

The Fourth Annual Poelle Polish Turkey Trot and Gobble Wobble ™ on Thursday was a shining success. Again, won by Husband, but extra points to the Minnesota contingency for style.  (I wish I could post the picture of my lovely mother carrying a bottle of rum over the finish line, but this is a family show.) HOWEVER! To add adventure to athleticism, this past Black Friday was host to:

The First Annual Poelle Scavenger Hunt and Manhattan Mêlée™

Sponsored by

Root International: If You’re Reading This, I Sold it.

Oh yes, you have correctly deduced the above. A colleague of mine, whom we’ll call Wolly Goot, designed a Scavenger Hunt for Husband and me, which took place on the hilly isle of inebriation (those Ojibwa sure can name stuff) on Friday.  The list was as extensive as it was impossible and when the big and the little hand met at twelve, IT. WAS. ON.

I thought about posting the list, but it is just so dang good that my goal is to convince her to design one for each city and then I will turn around and sell THE GREAT BIG BOOK OF WOLLY GOOT SCAVENGER HUNTS for a skertillion dollars. It truly was stupefyingly fantabuliffic.

Not only was it a hilarious way to spend the day, but it really played on the strengths of Team Poelle. Each section was grouped by how many points it was worth to secure a photo of/object from/ autograph by, with the first grouping worth 1 point, the next 2-5, the next 15 etc. Now, one of us burst out the front door of Root International, camera flailing, and began wildly careening down the street looking for someone wearing leggings who shouldn’t be and a car with multiple parking tickets on the windshield. Meanwhile, the other strolled quietly in tow, creating a comprehensive mapping system with corresponding locations and subway lines in order to achieve maximum coverage in minimum steps. While “the doer” snapped the closest parallel park without touching and 5 cabs in one frame, “the thinker” was deducing the clue which read: I said, “It is better to be a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without” go to my square and take a picture of me. While one of us sprinted down 5th bellowing “I think I see a lady using a stroller in an inappropriate manner!”  The other calmly documented where 4 cemeteries lay beneath 50^th St…and this is why Team Poelle works! Everyone understands that the best way to accomplish a goal is by working with our individual strengths in order to create a vortex of scavenger dominance. With this, we were able to finish with a score of TWO MILLION TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY SIX POINTS.

(Yes, one of the clues was worth two million points and therefore you know that:

a)      I HAD to get it, or die trying

 and

b) we will never, EVER, speak of it again. Ever. Good day.

I SAID GOOD DAY.)

We could have had two million two hundred and thirty-eight points, but I- wait for it- couldn’t get a nun to hug me. It’s true. Three different nuns SHUNNED me when I asked. Although I came kind of close when one of them pressed a bible to my forehead and kept screaming THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU while I spat and hissed. That should be worth at least a point. Because oh, how it buuuuuurned.

The craziest thing? Husband and I kind of set aside the things we thought would be easy “gets” to do at the end, and they turned out to be the hardest ones.  And Husband turned to me at one point and- bless his HEART!- said, “You should blog about this, because this is kind of what it is like for your authors, the hardest edits can sometimes be the easiest ones to do, you just have to trust it will all work out.” And then he shoved me through the swinging door of a restaurant kitchen and snapped a photo. (The expression on the chef’s face in the background should by itself be worth 3 points.)

Later that evening, while I was hugging a fireman in front of Ghostbusters headquarters, I reflected upon what he said and realized that the whole experience was indeed the perfect analogy for how your publishing team works. Everyone from your agent to your publicist to your editor has a specific strength that they play to and whether they do it loudly and with much swearing, or with quiet panache and dignity, the combined team work might just quite possibly get you to House of Brews by 9:57 pm with over 2 million points.

And that, my dear friends…well, forget the Hokey Pokey, because THAT’S what it’s all about.

 

Got Trot?

by Barbara Poelle

Thanksgiving is so awesome, and not just because I get to eat until I am sweating and crying. Thanksgiving is awesome because several years ago, Husband proclaimed it’s a private holiday for just the two of us! Huzzah! Sometimes we go on a trip, sometimes we have a Staycation. But every time, on Thanksgiving morning, Husband and I run in a 5K.

It makes perfect sense if you use that new math that everyone is always talking about:  see, if you burn 400 calories by noon, you can eat 2700 calories before 6pm and it equals out. (If you aren’t getting that answer you are forgetting that in 1987, 2700 calories was more like $1.97.)

Sometimes we sign up to run in a sanctioned race with lots of other people and timers and free Gatorade and collectible t-shirts, but other years we plot it out just the two of us (btw, I am addicted to mapmyrun.com).  Either way, we get suited up and out the door by 9 am on Thursday. (This is where you can made your rude noises and gestures. Everyone does.)

A few years ago, in an effort to quell the lingering homesickness at not being in MN for the turkey carving, I started asking my family to run/walk a 5K any time on Thanksgiving and send me photos of the finish line. What I imagined was a delightful collage of family members adorned in Adidas and GoreTex, hands raised victorious, sweat still glistening on their brow in the morning sunlight as gentle fall leaves clustered among their feet.

But this is my family, people.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. They did it. But let’s just say some of them wore cashmere. Some of them wore flannel. But all of them carried more than Gatorade in their water bottles.  

And thus, we are finally here, The Fourth Annual Poelle Polish Turkey Trot and Gobble Wobble ™ is upon us! (I know, I was such a nice Polish girl before I got a French last name from a Swedish Husband. New math strikes again.)One of these years I am going to make collectable t-shirts. I think they would feature a Turkey wearing flannel Diane VonFurstenberg  and clutching a Cosmorita. That would pretty much sum everybody up in one look.

The rules are fairly straightforward. All you have to do is start walking/jogging at one place and then 3.2 miles later, you take a photo and send it in. If 3.2 miles later you are on your third rum toddy, who cares? As long as you wobble over the finish line you are still a competitor.

Because ain’t that just the truth? I was in California for a mystery writers conference this last weekend and in one of my panels I was blathering away about researching the right agent for you or whatever and then I just stopped and said, “Wait, before you do any of that, you MUST do something first. When you type the last sentence of your novel, even if it is a burnt-around-the-edges-raw-in-the-middle draft, you need to celebrate that victory! You wrote a book! You crossed the finish line! Everybody gets a medal at the finish line!”

In fact, take it one step further, I think you should go out and buy yourself a gift and WRAP it up and put it in your writing room. It will be a great carrot on the stick and then when you type that last page you can bust into it like me hitting the green beans and cream of mushroom on Thursday. (And wow, that is just total carnage.)

Okay, everyone, have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

I’ll see you at the finish line.

Going Brogue

by Barbara Poelle

Just got back from New England Crime Bake and have a three day turnaround before I am off to Cali for a Mystery Writer Intensive. A lot of corpses for a little girl, I know.

With the body count on the rise every day, I realized recently that I have taken a step back from selling romance as I have focused on the mysteries and thrillers. I mean, of course, nothin’ says lovin' like Somali pirates, right?  But I think I am going to leap back into the Fabio fray in the coming months. Bring on the bekilted!

I loves me a glass of wine and a bubbly bathtub and a delicious mass market romance.  The first romance I ever read was Julie Garwood’s Guardian Angel and it is still one of my top favorites of all time. In the last four months or so that there hasn’t been a romance tucked into my purse next to my ereader. It’s kind of an odd feeling.   

BUT! Don’t get me wrong, I still loves me some explosions and things devouring humans, but maybe there can be some faces kissing as well as screaming. I am not the best advocate of the Reese’s genre fiction, you know, “Hey! Your romance ran into my thriller!” “Hey! Your thriller ran into my romance!”  I personally approach my manuscripts the way my sister approached every meal from the ages of 2 to 22: I don’t like anything touching.  I like my thrillers to read as thrillers, my mysteries like mysteries, and my romances as romances. Maybe I should start allowing a few peas to start rolling in the mashed potatoes. Get a little suspense in my parlors. Try a little intrigue in my moors. Throw an explosion into my castles. Yeah, I think I will.

I only do historical romances as let’s face it, I am a Bruckheimer and Bud Light kinda chick, so I don’t really “get” the contemporary stuff. But the world building in historicals are just phenomenal. Furthermore, as we are all well aware, I may not be the IDEAL candidate to nominate for romantic wife of the year. I taunt when he’s broken, I order in when we have a working kitchen (I’ve been told), I contemplate leaving raw sewage on the floor for him to deal with. But for whatever reason, Husband is still allowing me to hang around. But hey, who can define love?

Wait, maybe Husband can. I asked him after one recent spectacular debacle why he’s still all in, and he said “It’s like living with a cartoon”.  Well, okay! Bring on the armpit noises and anvils! Hey, one man’s hospital visit is another man’s romance.

Alright, I am off to pack yet another overnight bag…EVER ONWARD!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where is the On Switch on a Vacuum?

by Barbara Poelle

So Husband is coming home after doing whatever it is that he does for the last five weeks. Maybe it’s venture capital investing. Maybe it’s another family. Who knows? The fact remains is that unfortunately, whenever he leaves on these extended jaunts, he takes the carpenter, the contractor, the maid, the cook, the laundress, the pastry chef and the plumber with him, so the apartment looks like it has been home to several weeks of bacchanalian revelry.

Umm, which it has.

Top that off with the fact the toilet overflowed late Friday night (and I really and truly had a moment where I considered just shutting the door and having Husband deal with it this week. I mean seriously, it was heinous. Like, what, did the entire building meet up for chimichangas that night?)  and throw in about 5 weeks of takeout containers, and I got myself one heckuva barn burner on my hands.

And perhaps the last few times we’ve spoken I have been less than straightforward about the standard of living around the old abode. There is a slight possibility that Husband is under the impression that the bed has been made once while he’s been gone or that I used the kitchen for more than just blender drinks and shoe storage. But in my defense, our communication has been a bit opaque in our last few exchanges, as one of the last few times we spoke I was also screaming into the phone, “The toilet is overflowing….DO SOMETHING!”

So now I have to spend most of the evening preparing for the return of His Nibs, and by preparing I mean drinking this chardonnay while gazing languidly around the room and then when he calls from the taxi on his way from JFK, I panic and shove a whole bunch of stuff in the oven and under the mattress on my side of the bed.

Listen, he married it.

Anyway, so it is entirely possible that this entry may be a bit shorter than previous ones. But! Many good things happen in shorter versions. For example, I have this client we’ll call Matthew Q. Martin, because that’s his name. MQM pitched to me at Crime Bake last year (awww! It’s our anniversary this weekend!) and although I didn’t sign him out right, for whatever odd reason, we hit it off and became friends. And to add some fangs to the kitten, HE is friends with an editor whom we’ll call Hottie McModelface because, please. Look at her. Anyway, the three of us somehow formed this bizarre triumvirate where we would meet up every few months for booze and bickering. Nobody had signed or sold to anyone, but we still managed to maintain this bastardized version of a functional author team.

 Anyway, MQM has this fabulous 6 word story page on his site (check it out: http://www.matthewquinnmartin.com/SixWordStoriesTestPage.html) and Hottie McModelface and MQM and I spent our last outing spouting our six word stories at each other. Now, Hottie kept counting syllables, like a Haiku, (look at her, she’s so adorable you don’t even CARE) and I was well into martini number 2, but good ol’ MQM came up with my favorite six word story of all time. (It’s kinda cheat-y when you use the title this way, but hey! It’s the title.)

Ahem:
An Editor, An Agent and An Author walk into a Bar

The Bartender says, “This a joke?”

Wheeeeeeee! Isn’t it fun? Can you please oh please write me a 6 word story today?  For inspiration, go take a peek at MQM’s site.

*The final note is I have thrown a curve at our precarious trio by signing Matt, but please. You would have almost hurt yourself getting to the phone after reading the latest. We seem to be doing fine, and my next goal is to sell something to Hottie McModelface just to even out the playing field. And by even out, I mean I win everything.

Have fun! Can’t wait to read!

Hurry! It's Already Tomorrow Somewhere!

by Barbara Poelle

Okay, I so totally meant to carve a pumpkin on Friday but here’s the thing. On my way to Frank’s Market I passed by a restaurant where my friends Jen and Rachel beckoned me in to try something called a Cosmorita. It was all tequila and vodka and salty rim and…then it was morning. And a homeless man was poking me with some rebar asking me to get out of his living room.

Then on Saturday, I totally meant to do laundry but then there was this thing that happened where I didn’t do laundry. Instead I just went out and bought new pants. Two, actually.

Then on Sunday I really, really meant to call all of the people who had invited me out for Halloween festivities and explain how busy I was NOT doing laundry that I missed their party. But instead I had to watch the CSI marathon, because, hey, CSI.

So then I had to write this blog, but this thing happened where all of the bones in my fingers liquefied so I had to just slap at the keyboard like a walrus (I was also making that barking noise, but I do that when I type anyway).  And then I realized, hey, no one WANTS me to bitch slap my QWERTY (Which I think would be the lyrics to my break out rap song should I finally sign with Def Jam records. They so want me.) So I’ll just take it easy and phone in it today…

But then I was gchatting with a colleague we’ll call Colly Doot and it went something like this:

Me: …so then I was like, “Uhh, I am allergic to hard candy and don’t think that’s legal anyway. Then”

CollyDoot: Hate to interrupt you on this fascinating tale, but it’s NaNoWriMo and I

Me: OMG You are stroking OUT! Do you smell toast? Raise your arms in the air, stick out your tongue and say the name of your first grade teacher...oh no wait, that’s for a plane crash...okay, spell the word “alphabet” backwards, clap three times and

CollyDoot: Put down the flask. It ‘s National Novel Writing Month.

Holy crap, it’s NOVEMBER already!!! And that indeed means NaNoWiMo is upon us!!! (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) So no more procrastinating people! Put down the cosmorita! Pay that homeless dude to do your laundry! Tell Grissom and gang you’ll see ‘em in December and get TO IT!!!

I would be tickled chartreuse if you indeed hammered out a first draft in this month. In fact, I may even take a peek at some initial pages if you PROMISE ME that you indeed wrote EVERY SINGLE DAY. I mean it. If you lie, I’ll know it. I am everywhere. I am nowhere. I am the ubiquitous ogler. (That’s the name of my rap album with Def Jam btw).

So here’s the thing. It all starts with the log line, the pitch, the hook. Let me hear it today, and then get cracking! (And all of you kids who are already represented, or elbows deep in your current manuscript,  feel free to give me a hook solely for my entertainment. And if you’re Tom Schreck, try not to hurt yourself.)  

What are you waiting for? Seize the Carp!

That Darn System of Tubes

by Barbara Poelle (I had to fire Inga. She took all of my...uh...Pez)

I love the smell of detergent. I love when unexpected people remember my birthday. I love when I am sent a hospitality gift from the hotel and Janet Reid isn’t. But most of all, I love to laugh.

Those of you who have made my acquaintance know that my laugh is much like the tinkling of faerie wings: light, airy, and oh so feminine. (If that faerie is adenoidal and employs flying monkey minions). This weekend I was worked harder than a one armed woman in…wait, my mother reads this. You know what I mean though. But I still managed to find time to laugh.

But I have to say, I have not laughed as hard as I should at some of my non-fiction submissions lately. Where are you? I have this awweeesome snarky project I am going out with now, but I have a feeling I’ll get this one off the table soon (every door until I’m dead, Gable-Collins!) and so now I am itching for a new one. But here’s the thing. I have a total inability to find one of those website/blog books, like Sh*% My Dad Says, or Stuff White People Like, or the LOL Cats. I would like to blame this on losing my thumbs in a corn shucking accident, but the reality is, and I’ve been in enough therapy to finally say this out loud:  

I got no interweb game.

I am like a chubby Greek dude hanging in The Viper Room, toggling my head and raising my glass to the ladies but leaving alone AGAIN.

I found FU Penguin about a week too late, I missed the Texts From Last Night people by the gestation period of a Labrador Retriever. Finding a blog book for me is how dating Husband was for the rest of the world: there is a nice period of building interest and then a brief window of opportunity but then BLAMMO, a great white hits from beneath and all the other girls are doomed to wandering, bereft, with their eternal longing.  

Generally speaking, I have- how shall we say it nicely?- a limited capacity for competition. Like a sociopathic 900lb gorilla, I don’t care for others in my cage. But in these instances, I am not even in the initial zoo. I am so late to the party that I am still wearing chiffon. 

Despite my many many many many attributes, I feel that this is a shameful truth. I am blog-book repellant.  But beyond all of this, what I am most looking for is a site that makes me laugh. Because I have all of this free time, you see, and I should be spending it trolling the web and looking at other people's cats. 

Any suggestions?

 

If I Can Make It Here, I'll Make it Anywhere

By Inga Von Peepenskeeven

Hello! Yesterday my temp agency, Sullivan Associates, sent me over to Barbara Poelle at the Irene Goodman Agency, so I thought I would use this opportunity to blog about a day in the life of a real live literary agent. It was terribly exciting!

I was told Ms. Poelle arrives promptly at 9:00 so, of course, I was early. Around 9:25 I assumed there was a deaf Lithuanian woman yelling at her child in the elevator, but when the doors slid open it turned out to be Ms. Poelle herself howling into her cell phone. She burst forward into the office with a waft of what I can only describe as chlorine and vodka, and barked out, “Nancy! Coffee! And don’t be afraid to Irish it up. ”

My name is not Nancy, but who am I to quibble? Also, since this was all new and I was a bit unsure about publishing lingo, I quickly and quietly Googled the phrase “Irish Up my Coffee”.  Now I am questioning my hearing, I mean there is NO WAY she meant IRISH coffee because it was 9:27 in the morning. Silly me! I wonder what she really said.

Anyway, I have to tell you, the schedule of a literary agent is terribly stressful, clearly. From about 9:30 to 10:30, Ms. Poelle appeared to be having private session with her primal scream therapist- I mean I can only assume that was going on, because what else COULD it have been? I was very impressed as I had previously thought it was impossible for a human mammal to sustain that level of pitch and tenor without the larynx exploding from the neck column like in a Ridley Scott film. I am thinking of looking into that therapy myself, as I believe I have the initial mantra down.  It goes something like, “You have got to be f%#@ing kidding me! You have GOT to be F$@*ing KIDDING ME”.  Easy to remember.

Then from about 10:30 to noon, Ms. Poelle gave me a list of names, places, numbers and dates, and told me that we were playing a “fun game” with another agent named Janet Reid, where we attempt to use information gleamed from Janet’s personal life to crack her email password and “see what that terrifying minx is up to”. I tried my best, but it was a little intimidating for a newbie like me having Ms. Poelle stalk back and forth behind my chair, the heels on her boots cracking like gunfire, while she mumbled to herself and rubbed her gums.

We worked right on through lunch, me nibbling on my cucumber and cream cheese sandwich and Ms. Poelle popping Xanax from a Pez dispenser and washing them down with something in a thermos she referred to as a Moose Knuckle Shooter.  It must be some new hip diet.

At about 2 pm, Ms. Poelle told me that she would be closing her door for some kundalini meditation, but since her door is glass, it wasn’t so private. And clearly I am a rube right off the turnip truck because, to me, all it looked like was 20 minutes of weeping followed by an open-mouthed-drool-dripping-slouch-in-the-seat nap.  

While she meditated, I went over my to-do list.

Ginger, here’s some stuff you NEED to get done today:

-Procure chicken suit

­-Call ahead to South Carolina Hilton to ensure no feathers, extra vodka

-Search free+diving+snout+rub+fatalities for all results

- Create active list defining all “hip” acronyms, like BRB, TLDR, and IWBITD

-Get Silkwood collectable decals for rollerblades

-Find out if Brett Michaels stayed with that chick from Rock of Love Bus (he should have picked Mindy!!!)

--Lay in supplies for zombie apocalypse

After I finished the list, it appeared that Ms. Poelle was still meditating (but the new pose was face down on her desk blotter) so I took the initiative to read some of the recent queries she has received from conference pitches.

Wow.

There are quite a lot of you out there with some wonderful ideas. If I had to make an uneducated statement, I would have to say that I bet it is hard when things come very, very close for her and there is not a specific design flaw in execution or content, but a quiet absence of the gut clenching howl of THIS IS IT that makes her click the pass letter. I read over 35 submissions today, and with each one I opened came that rush of excitement, that hope, that silent plead, that this one blows me away. It must be difficult to tell the writers who have pitched, revised, queried, waited, nudged, nudged again, and nudged yet one more time, the word NO. I bet her heart breaks a little with every one. I bet she wants to remind them all how subjective this whole enchilada is and how some of you will move on to create magic with other agents and other houses. I bet she wants to tell you how brave you are.

But I digress.  At 4 pm, Ms. Poelle jerked upright from her meditation, wiped the saliva from her chin and barked, “Susan! Get me Molly Floot!” After some creative deducing and a few turns of the rolodex, I transferred the call.  Ms. Poelle hacked a bit, cleared her throat and graveled out, “Floot! Raise your hem and drop your standards, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere. Grab S&S dynamo Amy Lindel and meet me at Woody’s. ” And she was off in a swirl of Veuve Cliquot and Coach.

Well, actually more like toilet gin and velour, but still...what a day!

 

 

 

SEAMS Madam?Nay, it is, I know not SEAMS.

 by Barbara Poelle

I had a book of my heart come out recently and I find myself doing exactly what I tell authors NOT to do: obsessing over the reviews. I am clicking madly about the sites and even going into the individual histories of the reviewers to see what else they commented on and how THAT book stood up to mine. I’ve been totally mental. My search engine just wheezed out, “I think I can I think I can”, and I am fairly certain I sprained my Google as my fingers have been Michael Flatley-ing all over the keyboard.  

Happily,  I would say about 97% of the reviews are better than I could have possibly hoped,  but there are around 3 percent that are spewing such an acidic cocktail of bile and vitriol that I have to wonder who crapped in their cornflakes? (My parents are coming to town to visit so my mom can admonish me for that one face to face). Now I realize, that maybe not everyone is going to like my client’s book, (buffoons, clearly) but that is what makes the world a lovely place (those are lies), that everyone has an individual opinion to offer (only mine is correct).  And mayhap this is going to sound a bit laughable coming from the chick who made the Whole Foods Security guy teary eyed (he so totally deserved it), but reading these 3%ers has helped me understand that perhaps a more beige approach can get the same job done as stomping around like a goliath bird eating spider. (OMG, not to get off the subject, but like the goliath bird eating spider, I totally need the ability to flick urticating hairs from my body at anything I perceive as a threat. Can you imagine? This Prada bag isn’t on sale? THREAT. This seat on the subway is taken? THREAT. This girl in the elevator with me has gorgeous naturally curly hair? THREAT. )

Anyway. So, as a personal exercise, I have decided to write a gentle letter of hope with regards to an event that I usually approach with the same mental stability as one would if instructed stand under a barrel full of centipedes as they are dumped on one’s head.  So without further adieu:  A gentle open letter to my winter clothes I just took brought out:

Dear Winter Clothes,

I know we haven’t seen each other for a while and I assume life has been both muffled and opaque thorough that zippy plastic stuff.  Now I know green linen pants and purple halter might try to tell you differently as they change places with you, but know that I never stopped thinking of you all summer long. That is why I am hoping that we can try and work together this fall season in order to zip, button, pleat, and smooth correctly. (I am talking you specifically grey stripped pants).

Here’s the thing, I have a brutally busy schedule over the next few weeks. We have a large agency party on the 15^th (you’re all invited by the way), then I am heading to South Carolina and then Boston and Berkeley, so I think it’s fairly apparent that I absolutely cannot even pencil in a shame spiral- I’m already booking those emotions for catastrophic temper tantrums in airports.

Also, I have a really fun new short haircut and I am going to be asking a lot from you, pumpkin colored sweater, and you green layered neckline shirt, because I am fairly certain that what DOESN’T match with a fun new haircut is straining seams and back fat.

So, here’s the deal.  I am going to slide you out of your plastic home and hang you up according to color and sleeve length and then you are going to talk amongst yourselves and decide what it is going to take to ensure that none of you will buckle, strain, pop, or wheeze as I pull you on in the coming weeks. (I am looking at you, fuzzy white turtleneck.)  

I am looking forward to spending the next several months together and I will do my best not to spend the time between 7:37-8:02 a.m. tearing you off of my body and roaring a stream of curse words so vile that it melts the frost on the windowsill and makes the baby in the apartment next door wail as if spotting an axe murderer under the pack and play.

All my best this beautiful fall season,

Barbara

p.s. All day today I am going to live my life as if I have the ability to launch urticating hairs from my body.

p.p.s. Did anyone laugh as hard at my title as I did?

by Barbara Poelle

I am like that Fraggle, Uncle Traveling Matt, I feel like I can only communicate through post cards and flashbacks. But, since I was all Crabapple McNasty about traveling last week, I decided to site some of my favorite things about traveling to Atlanta this week:

1.       When the pilot held us on the tarmac and positioned us to see Sully take off.  It was just like winning three free face punches at David Schwimmer- as thrilling as it was patriotic.

2.       I learned my all time new favorite phrase ever which came to me from a delightful southern belle we’ll call Pam. “I love you like a Christian, so I am going to tell you that you have lipstick on your teeth”.  You know I say this all of the time now, but perhaps with a more blue turn of phrase as the finish.

3.       The free drink coupons the Hilton has to dish out when they almost kill you.

4.       Waking up without an alarm as the sun gently lit up the panoramic windows of my room.

5.       The free breakfast coupons the Hilton has to dish out when they almost kill you.

6.       After hearing what I can only assume was 3798 log lines, I got what we call “pitch drunk” and staggered across the street and bought a jaunty winter cap with a synthetic feather in it (that won’t kill me).  I. Look. A-DOR-able.

7.       The three outstanding pitches I heard that left me panting for the full manuscript.

8.       Two words:  Corn. Bread.

9.       Two more words:  Vodka

10.   Coming home and attending the medieval fair where I may or may not have worn some horns and a cape.  Prove it.

Okay,  I know this is short, but I need to go now. I got a nudge from someone today who sent their manuscript in May. MAY!!!! I mean, people who weren’t born then now have total neck control, and I couldn’t even get to this manuscript. Do you KNOW how much shame is filling my belly? It was like drinking warm honey but laced with thumb tacks and sea glass.  Wait, sea glass is smooth.  I mean bumpy, serrated sea glass. Sea glass with fight in it.

The kind of sea glass I would love to see take a swing at Schwimmer…

 

 

Dude...Where AM I?

by Barbara Poelle

I am returning from a conference in Wisconsin (thanks to Nate and Debbie! You were -say it with me- delightful!) followed by a wedding in Napa, California with a 48 hour turn around before I leave for Atlanta. I am fairly certain only space monkeys can withstand being hurtled through time and space the way I am. I have a feeling that at any minute all of my internal organs are going to liquefy and pour out of my anus. But EVER ONWARD!

With all of this airtime I am getting a lot of reading done, so that is excellent, but I still can’t help but notice how certain things about traveling rub me the wrong way. Here is a brief top ten list:

1.       I am wary of the constant consumption of Zyrtec and Benadryl necessary as each city provides new and interesting ways to kill me. I am like Judy Garland meets that wheezy kid in elementary school that always got hit in the face with the kickball.

2.       Why hasn’t evolution taken care of that weird head lolling hazy doze off followed by the neck nearly snapping due to the ricocheting weight of the drooping skull? Not a fan. I repeat: Not. A. Fan.

3.       How come Husband can’t understand that when I am co-piloting the rental car I might be saying left but I am POINTING right, so CLEARLY he should go right?

4.       What IS that smell that permeates everything in your suitcase after a single night in a hotel? It’s a strange cocktail of potting soil, flatulence and panic.

5.       Headsets: $2.    Sandwich: $8.  Husband missing his flight to the wedding?  Priceless.

6.       I may have accidentally forgot we were in the Bay when I commented in a restaurant how awesome it was that the Vikes beat the Niners on Sunday, but why was it necessary to “Boo” me?

7.       Who is the pilot kidding when he gets on the mic and says, “Sorry about that folks, it got a little bumpy there for a minute…” The entire row ahead of me is sprayed with their own vomit and tears and I am crawling around with a soda can collecting my molars off of the floor.  

8.       At what point does my ereader actually have the capacity to bring down a 747? I think you can ratchet down the hysteria Flight Attendant Lady, I am turning it off already.

9.       Who do I have to talk to in order to get the amendment made that when outside of the state lines of origin, CALORIES DON’T COUNT?

10.   Why is sitting still and facing forward for 6 hours so frakin’ exhausting?

More musings next week…until then, see you in Atlanta!

The Only Open Book Here is Me

by Barbara Poelle

So I have a rash of conferences coming up, I will be in 4 cities over a span of 5 weeks and I just get giddy with the idea that my next little duckling may be out there right now practicing the pitch to me to their spouse/sibling/dog/cab driver. What fun! We are going to have a great career together. The odds are maybe one in five cities, with 5 or 6 coming really close and the rest sort of finding their own way without me. What a sea of possibilities! I am already gearing up for the wide spectrum of questions I will be fielding.  Out of these questions 99.87% of them will be wonderful, thoughtfully articulated, focused questions from authors dedicated to informing me and themselves about a current body of work. But those gems, and they are guaranteed, those .13%...they are out there. And they are comin’ at me. So all of you normal kids in Eau Claire, Atlanta, Myrtle Beach, Boston, and Berkeley, you can have a free period in the library. Bup bup bup baaaa wait a second. You there. Yes, you.  The .13%. Pencils down and pay attention. These are past questions I have been asked by you, and so I will clear a lot up for you before we even meet. Oh, and keep in mind, you generally LEAD with these questions, so there may be follow ups, but you can assume my answers will be more of the same:

Q: “Why did you reject me?”

A:  I can only imagine it was because I was drunk.

Q: “I know you don’t represent ______ but will you look at my synopsis to tell me if it’s at least close?”

A: Yes, certainly! And while we’re embarking on trusting me with things I know nothing about, do you have any disconcerting moles you’d like me to check for you?

Q: “What is a monkey knife fight?”

A: I’ll need half a bottle of Sauza tequila, a picture of Joe Piscopo and some potting soil and I’ll show ya.

Q: “What is your job exactly?”

A: Basically I wake up, blend myself a Stinkeye, which is just vodka, crushed up cornflakes, four alka-seltzers and a handful of Skittles, and then I head to the office where I spend the rest of my day knocking my head against my office door and mewling. Sometimes I will take a break to weep, but usually I am pretty focused on the mewling.

Q: “I have here the next big thing, what do you think it is?”

A: My hangover.

Q: “I have five thriller partials, two full length romances, a YA, a non-fiction about how to de-louse your camper, and three graphic novels. Which one do you want me to read out loud from in my pitch?”

A: The YA, but only if you refer to the tone as “a combination of Stephanie Meyers and JK Rowling, but better than both.”

Q.: “Tell me why you think you would make a good agent for me.”

A: Because I purchased the Acme Insta-Agent kit and was able to use everything but the anvil.

Q: “Wait, how old are you?”

A: I am not really sure but the guy who sold me this G&T seemed comfortable with it, so that’s good enough for me.

Q:”What if you get pregnant while you’re my agent?”

A: Don’t worry, it’s not yours.

Q: “Who would be reading my book if you represent it?”

A: Stinky Pete, and I just bought him a Kindle so he will be able to get back to you a lot faster.

Q: “You’re a lot better looking than your photo, did you know that?”

A: Yes, it is my intent to look as bad as possible in every national media outlet.

Q: “My idea is so good I am afraid to talk about it out loud, can you sign this saying you won’t share it with anyone?”

A: Sure- but then I am going to need you to sign this saying that if you pitch a plot that I have heard before I can punch you in the throat.

Q: What happens to me if you decide to quit agenting?

A: Well, that happens before the locusts but after the first born son thing, so you will probably have an idea it’s coming.

 

Well, there you go, kids. Anyone else who has a question, please feel free to ask it now. It will be helping us all. (You just KNOW Tom Schreck is going to come up with a doozie in 3….2….)

 

 

But I LIVE like Everything's a Negotiation?!?

by Barbara Poelle

So fall is seriously here- wet leaves plastering themselves on the pavement and cold misty rain that refuses to let a simple umbrella stand in its way.  Not like we had any kind of summer, really. When it wasn’t raining it was armpitting, and when it wasn’t armpitting we were breaking ribs, so summer kind of turned Husband and I into agoraphobics.

Last week I was feeling a bit of the boozy blues, (you know the kind I mean, like it is either devour a pound of brie or smash up a Pottery Barn) but then Husband made a casual comment that changed all of that:

Did you hear about those Great Whites off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard?

Um, no. No I did not. And I would love to stay and chat but sorry, I must grab my goggles and head to, ahhh, the, umm, grocery store. Yes, that’s it. I am going to the grocery store.

Unfortunately Husband hasn’t just fallen off of the turnip truck so he sighed and said a sentence that probably has not been said in any other marriage unless your last name is Cousteau. “Please don’t try and get in the water with those sharks this weekend.”

Now, you may notice the head tilt and the slight pulsing of the nostrils, testing the air here, because Agent Barbara scents a negotiation coming.

Yesss.  

In my top ten favorite things in life, negotiating lies between bees and Jerry Bruckheimer movies. Unfortunately, as I opened my mouth to list the seven precipitating facts and the supporting empathetic historical data from our marriage, I made a rookie mistake. See if you can spot it:

“But...come ON! They are RIGHT THERE! I mean, have you seen the footage? They are just chillaxin’ right off of the coastline!  They are BEGGING for a snout pet! You can see it! At least let me wade a little, you know, dip a toe in. I mean, who could find a problem with dipping a toe in? Pleeease!!!!“

Did you catch it? Many of you may assume it was the use of the word “chillaxin” and although close, not the kicker. The kicker? I got emotional.

Folks, that’s a loss right there, and everyone knows it. Rather than prepare a comprehensive argument involving a combination of fact and feeling in order to play on both the strengths of the negotiator as well as the weakness of the opponent, I dissolved into a weepy toddler begging mummy for another lolly before bedtime.

Here’s the thing about negotiating, in agenting AND in snout petting, which I so readily honor in my work life, but overlooked in my quest for denticle snuggles: It’s about the “W”. The win. The victory. And victory doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You have to have a plan. You don’t just go in there all willy nilly yelling about what you want, that is just sloppy and unseedly. (Okay, I got the word “unseedly” when I was ordering something on line and it made me type in the letters I saw in the security box and the letters spelled “unseedly”. Isn’t that a great word? I am going to define it as to embody the quality of banality or baseness. Feel free to use it as often as possible today.)  In business negotiations, you must have a multifaceted approach and understanding about what is at stake. You don’t just say, “So Hubs, can I tie a pig’s head around my neck and hop into the drink with the sharks?” You have to have a plan.

BUT, I let my emotions get the best of me and lost the shot at the title. Oh sure, I Monday Morning QB’d and followed through with the “find another route” because I indeed had a second on deck in a dim attempt to at least double bogey. (Combining two sports in one analogy is a bit unseedly, but I am sulking.)  Polly Soot was surprisingly amenable towards the idea, and in fact offered to throw some fish guts around me as I splashed merrily along. Furthermore, I thought it was exceptionally nice of her to offer to hold my client contact sheet and copies of their latest contracts while I went in. That’s a good friend. But unfortunately, there is one Poelle Polly Root likes more than me, so clearly Husband had somehow communicated to her that he found the idea of his wife sprinting down the sand towards five dorsals riding 13 inches above the water line to be not in his best interest.

Sigh.

So, no Eskimo kisses with the ampullae of Lorenzini for me last weekend. But this just means the next deal that crosses my desk is getting the double barrels, because I need my “W”. In the meantime, I am grabbing a baseball bat and a wheel of brie and heading to Pottery Barn. Who’s with me?

 

(PS:  at “chillaxin” my spellcheck stuttered indignantly, by “denticles”, it was cursing under its breath, at “unseedly” it threw its pencil down and when we hit “ampullae of Lorenzini” it flipped me the bird and walked out.)  

But I LIVE like Everything's a Negotiation!?

by Barbara Poelle

So fall is seriously here- wet leaves plastering themselves on the pavement and cold misty rain that refuses to let a simple umbrella stand in its way.  Not like we had any kind of summer, really. When it wasn’t raining it was armpitting, and when it wasn’t armpitting we were breaking ribs, so summer kind of turned Husband and I into agoraphobics.

Last week I was feeling a bit of the boozy blues, (you know the kind I mean, like it is either devour a pound of brie or smash up a Pottery Barn) but then Husband made a casual comment that changed all of that:

Did you hear about those Great Whites off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard?

Um, no. No I did not. And I would love to stay and chat but sorry, I must grab my goggles and head to, ahhh, the, umm, grocery store. Yes, that’s it. I am going to the grocery store.

Unfortunately Husband hasn’t just fallen off of the turnip truck so he sighed and said a sentence that probably has not been said in any other marriage unless your last name is Cousteau. “Please don’t try and get in the water with those sharks this weekend.”

Now, you may notice the head tilt and the slight pulsing of the nostrils, testing the air here, because Agent Barbara scents a negotiation coming.

Yesss.  

In my top ten favorite things in life, negotiating lies between bees and Jerry Bruckheimer movies. Unfortunately, as I opened my mouth to list the seven precipitating facts and the supporting empathetic historical data from our marriage, I made a rookie mistake. See if you can spot it:

“But...come ON! They are RIGHT THERE! I mean, have you seen the footage? They are just chillaxin’ right off of the coastline!  They are BEGGING for a snout pet! You can see it! At least let me wade a little, you know, dip a toe in. I mean, who could find a problem with dipping a toe in? Pleeease!!!!“

Did you catch it? Many of you may assume it was the use of the word “chillaxin” and although close, not the kicker. The kicker? I got emotional.

Folks, that’s a loss right there, and everyone knows it. Rather than prepare a comprehensive argument involving a combination of fact and feeling in order to play on both the strengths of the negotiator as well as the weakness of the opponent, I dissolved into a weepy toddler begging mummy for another lolly before bedtime.

Here’s the thing about negotiating, in agenting AND in snout petting, which I so readily honor in my work life, but overlooked in my quest for denticle snuggles: It’s about the “W”. The win. The victory. And victory doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You have to have a plan. You don’t just go in there all willy nilly yelling about what you want, that is just sloppy and unseedly. (Okay, I got the word “unseedly” when I was ordering something on line and it made me type in the letters I saw in the security box and the letters spelled “unseedly”. Isn’t that a great word? I am going to define it as to embody the quality of banality or baseness. Feel free to use it as often as possible today.)  In business negotiations, you must have a multifaceted approach and understanding about what is at stake. You don’t just say, “So Hubs, can I tie a pig’s head around my neck and hop into the drink with the sharks?” You have to have a plan.

BUT, I let my emotions get the best of me and lost the shot at the title. Oh sure, I Monday Morning QB’d and followed through with the “find another route” because I indeed had a second on deck in a dim attempt to at least double bogey. (Combining two sports in one analogy is a bit unseedly, but I am sulking.)  Polly Soot was surprisingly amenable towards the idea, and in fact offered to throw some fish guts around me as I splashed merrily along. Furthermore, I thought it was exceptionally nice of her to offer to hold my client contact sheet and copies of their latest contracts while I went in. That’s a good friend. But unfortunately, there is one Poelle Polly Soot likes more than me, so clearly Husband had somehow communicated to her that he found the idea of his wife sprinting down the sand towards five dorsals riding 13 inches above the water line to be not in his best interest.

Sigh.

So, no Eskimo kisses with the ampullae of Lorenzini for me last weekend. But this just means the next deal that crosses my desk is getting the double barrels, because I need my “W”. In the meantime, I am grabbing a baseball bat and a wheel of brie and heading to Pottery Barn. Who’s with me?

 

(PS:  at “chillaxin” my spellcheck stuttered indignantly, by “denticles”, it was cursing under its breath, at “unseedly” it threw its pencil down and when we hit “ampullae of Lorenzini” it flipped me the bird and walked out.)  

I'M WEARING MY SWIM CAP RIGHT NOW

By Barbara Poelle

Stop me if I said this already, but I’ve been swimming in the mornings before work at this giant aquatics center in Harlem and I love it. I mean love it. Despite the fact that I have to get up at ass o'clock in the morning, and then hang my suit out of my office window to dry, I am having a passionate affair with swimming.  I talk about it all the time and throw it into conversations that it has no place in, like, “Hey Abby Zidle, can’t wait to read Where Hope Begins, because I feel like it can sometimes also begin at the 75 yard mark of a 100 freestyle.”  Or “Hey Danielle Perez, big kudos to you on the shout out in EW for F.U. Penguin, because much like the penguin, I too am a form of aquatic marine life.” I know. It’s weird, but I cannot help it. But it’s not like it’s a big surprise when I throw it in, though; I smell like a bucket of bleach and my hair looks exactly like Harry Dunne’s from Dumb and Dumber. (Okay, Husband,  I just spent waaaaay too much time trying to find the perfect link or photo to put in here and I couldn’t get it just right, so can you just set aside some time later today and find Jeff Daniels on IMDB or something and then come back and post it in the comments? I just can’t understand the internet beyond the fact that it is a system of tubes…)

Anyway, so I am in the water every morning barking with glee like an elephant seal and then yesterday I came in to the center to a sign saying the pool will be closed for cleaning and renovations… until October 1^st.

Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

You know what this feels like? It feels like when you read an amazing first book in a series and then you have to WAIT before reading the next one and in the meantime you still eat as many calories as you did when reading the first book and you wear the first book under your clothes just to feel some sort of comfort but people keep saying to you, “Does it smell like chemicals in here?” and you scream at them, “I AM WAITING AS PATIENTLY AS I CAN, ALRIGHT?” That’s what it is like.

I am not all up with the patience. When they were handing out “patience” I was in line for an extra scoop of good lookin’ Husband. (Has he done the IMDB thing yet? You have to kind of grease the wheels.) Yeah, patience and I, we never really got to know each other that well, so it is odd that I have become of her disciples, preaching her word near and far to my clients from the moment we start our journey together.

See the thing is, it’s a hurry up and wait kind of game out here- once you have actually found an agent that is only the first stroke on a 100 yard butterfly. (Which I so totally NAILED last Friday.)  And sometimes, that first manuscript isn’t the one that lands you that great deal. I don’t want anyone to get nervous that one book is the only shot you have. Okay, sometimes, if you write non-fiction about a particular topic that can’t find a home, it might mean that we both need to focus our efforts elsewhere, but if your first manuscript doesn’t sell, it’s not a reaper finger pointing at your entire career. (On this same topic, if your manuscript comes back with monster edits, it doesn’t mean your current version blows chunks- none of us would spend any time on a dud.)  So I guess what I am saying as we all plunge into the crisp business of fall, let’s keep reminding ourselves that Plume wasn’t built in a day.

Oops, gotta jam, my goggles are starting to fog up and it’s getting hard to see the screen.

Yes, They Are Elastic Waisted, So What?

Barbara Poelle

I have just returned from a vacation back in Minnesota where I brought Husband to the time honored and deeply religious experience known as the Minnesota State Fair.  We have been in training now for several weeks, reintroducing meat into our vegetarian diet and such. Go to itunes and turn on Joe Esposito’s You’re the Best Around from the movie soundtrack for The Karate Kid and enjoy this montage:

Clad in matching monochromatic sweat suits,  I am broiling meat for the first time ever in our oven and Husband is gesticulating wildly while we argue about what actually constitutes the broiler….Husband stands with a stop watch to time me while I devour a turkey leg and simultaneously dig for a five dollar bill to purchase a funnel cake…Husband doing sit-ups while I hold his feet with one hand and extend the other to hold a porkchop-on-a-stick for him to bite at each apex ….Husband slapping a handful of lettuce out of my hands and replacing it with a bratwurst….Husband and I stepping on the scale in our (noticeably snugger) matching sweats and high fiving…me weeping and shaking my head after only two servings of deep fried cheese curds while Husband screams in my face and I find a deep well of determination I didn’t know I had and plunge into a third, a fourth…Husband and I staggering into our apartment, our sweat suits and mouths stained with what appears to be both powdered sugar and barbeque sauce, leaning, exhausted, against one another but smiling knowingly…..we are ready….

So we get to The Bigs.  The Show.  The Stage. The original Great White Way.  And we’re not crazy.  We know we are up against some of the best. The family from Chisago Lakes who boast they can eat their weight in Sweet Martha’s. The Fair-Do’d Foursome from Elk River who practically invented chocolate covered bacon. And of course, the 250 lb bikini-top-cutoff-jean-shorts-clad twin sisters from Bemidji who hold the record for single sitting pronto pub consumption since the Fair’s conception back in 1859. But the twins ain’t nicknamed Smoke and Mist for nothing. No one has ever even SEEN them chew- there is just a noise much like a sonic boom and then a pile of crusted over pup-sticks while they sip coyly at their apple cider floats. These were the fierce contenders we were up against once we entered these hallowed fair grounds. But we had trained. We were ready.

Husband and I shyly duck our heads under the front gates of this coma-inducing nirvana, and squinting into the summer morning sun and breathing deep of the colliding smells of cinnamon and cholesterol, Husband turns to me and asks, as if in slow motion, THE question, “Whaaaat shoooould weeee eaaaaaat fiiiirst?”

Now, I realize that it’s impossible to misplace 7 hours of your life without sustaining some sort of head injury, but let me tell you, what happened after that starter-gun of a question was so awe-inspiring, so pornographically carnivorous, that my puny human mind simply couldn’t process it without folding in on itself like a tapioca omelet. It was like dusk on the Serengeti.

I needed to fugue to mentally survive.

I do remember at one point, somewhere between the pot roast sundae (yes I did) and the elk bratwurst (yup on that one too) turning to Husband and saying, “Is this not the greatest day of your life?” and from the depths of his deep fried steak quesadilla he may have mumbled a response but then it’s all darkness again.  Although, at one particular point- one of which I am not proud of, but maintain it was all in the throes of combat- I had my hands full of my all time fave deep fried cauliflower and a 20 oz MDG, when I felt what could only be some sort of organism with more legs than I care to reflect upon land heavily on my head and then sort of root around in my hair for a while, but rather than lose valuable chewing time by putting anything down, I just thought to myself, “Well, if he nests, I can get at him when I get back to the car”.  (Listen, we all have to choose whether or not to be winners or whiners and I fall stoutly- uh, perhaps a bit more so now- on the winning team.)

So, siiigh, I am back at my desk now, and although everyone is still pretty much on vacation for another week, I don’t feel lonely at all because my belly is sitting gently in my lap like a puppy. And my good friend, The Vegan, back home is a simple gchat away so we can send snarky profanity laced commentary to one another while feigning looks of reflection and consternation to passersby.

 I jovially explained to her the things I had consumed at the Fair, but she seemed to focus predominantly on what rotting flesh is doing to my previously pristine intestines. From what I can gather, my colon now basically looks like the BQE at rush hour.  This visualization made me a little nervous, but I continued amiably to talk about the bull bites and their accompanying sauce which OMG is like crack cocaine, you might find me shaking and scratching myself trying to score some down by the bridge, but her little gchat voice stuck in my head I hope you liked that sirloin because you just increased your risk of heart disease by 87% hahaha!  So I kind of started to panic and I was like, OMGOMGOMG the shish kabob gave me E.Coli and so I gchatted another friend and was like, “Hey! So, haven’t talked in a while, how’s it going, how are your kids, am I gonna have to get a triple bypass yadda yadda…” to which she responded, “Well, what did Vegan say? She’s the expert after all. She’s been doing this a lot longer…” Then the Vegan popped back up with her gchat with some helpful links to what was going to happen to me and my children and my children’s children if I continued to consume the flesh of animals, and I started to flop sweat from my hairline down and I pitted out my souvenir shirt and I cried desperately what does this mean what do I do I take it back I wanna take it allllll back and I called my agent in a white hot blinding panic and told her what the Vegan had said and….

Oh, wait. This isn’t about ME at all, is it? It’s some sort of witty parable. Hang on; let me see if I can sort this out:

Let’s see, I was upset because one person who has had experience not eating meat started to dictate to me what would happen if I did…okay…and then our third friend chimed in not so helpfully…right….and then I panicked really hard and continued my dialogue with them until I was hysterical then called my agent..okay, so, now, I am a little slow what with all of the animal flesh digesting inside of me, but I THINK what I am supposed to take away from this is that if I have a question about something I should just drop my agent a quick email before listening to my friends. Is that about right? Phew. So despite the impending heart attack I seem to still be able to suss things out.  Good to know.

(Psst, hey, my clients. This story is NOT about you. I promise promise promise. It was actually a request from someone else to address this today. Cross my heart and hope to clog an artery. You guys are perfect and never panic. Well, except for Bo. He does. But he’s getting better. In fact, do me a favor and just go ahead and preorder now: http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Bone-Memoir-Doggie-Blogger/dp/0806531290/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251759285&sr=8-1 you’ll keep him from piddling in anticipation.)

  

The Scales of Justice

by Barbara Poelle

I am so very happy to currently be on vacation right now, as there have been several 90+ degree days in NYC and coupled with that, a few horrendous days for me in my career. Like, the kind where I stagger onto the train at 9pm and PRAY that someone pulls a knife on another passenger so I can beat them both to death with their own arms. Anyway, after a particularity brutal day in the salt mines last week, I walked in to an empty apartment at 9:30pm and when I flicked the light switch nothing happened. Now, most sane, intelligent people would automatically assume that due to the 90+ degree weather there have been several air conditioners running at high speed so perhaps a few fuses have been blown. But your friendly neighborhood shark snout petter? Oh no. She goes very quickly to a white hot flash of fear, like a cat leaping from a dumpster in the corner of your eye, and then goes directly to How DARE a Homicidal Rapist Murderer Robber pick MY Apartment?!?!

In the darkness, I announce, “Really? I mean REALLY? Buddy, I PRAY that you have some serious artillery, because I am 125 pounds of white hot fury.” (OMG- you KNOW it’s 135 but COME ON! If you can’t lie about your weight to your homicidal rapist murderer robber who CAN you lie to? And to be fair, right after furiously screaming that into the black void I had enough self awareness to grin wildly and shrink my neck into my shoulders for a second in a façade of shame) So I began to stalk my own phantoms, kicking open doors to rooms and keeping up a constant stream of antagonistic dialogue such as, “Please, PLEASE think you have a shot at the title here, Pal, I am about to END you.” And “I really really hope you are still here, because I am bored and hungry.” And, “I am going to do this left handed or it will be over too quickly.” I was more than nervous, not quite afraid, but still 76% sure that something in the next 10-15 seconds was going to happen, like I was slowly turning the crank on the side of a giant box that eerily plinked out the tune, “All..around..the mullberry bush…the…mon-key..chased the weasel…”

And guess what popped out?

Nothing.

Not even Stewie.  

Oh, and BTW- all of you who have flooded my in-box with pleas to remove the glue trap option from the mouse hunt? I get it. I am on the same level as puppy kickers and Fatchelor watchers. (Oh, come on, you know More To Love should just be called The Fatchelor. What an abusive concept, just from end to end, that one is.) But this is WAR Peacock!  And besides, ever since his version of the horse head in my bed, we have seen ZERO signs of Stewie. No droppings, no trap snaps, no squeals of torment coupled with hammer strikes. Nothing.  I think it has much to do with my seemingly continuous roars of creatively ambiguous threats and little to do with Husband’s jamming of steel wool into a hole we discovered along the kitchen running board, but regardless, all is quiet on the homefront.  Which means Stewie is either gone or accumulating reinforcements that will one day outweigh the structural integrity of our ceiling and burst forth in a gigantic undulating twine-ball to rain upon us like a message from God.

(Just thinking of that made me reach for the mai tai at my side. Alright, just thinking of linoleum makes me reach for the mai tai at my side, but still.)  

What was I talking about? Honestly at this point it has really just devolved into the 90 proof ramblings of a mad man.

Ah, yes, got it. Okay. The fact of the matter is, despite being alone in my dark home and presented with the near certainty that in a millisecond I would be asked to choose my own adventure and one of them involved punching and biting, I did a few things I am proud of, a few things that baffled (and angered) Husband and a few things we laughed maniacally about later. But I did NOT do any of the following:

1.)    Suggest to my co-protagonist that now would be a good time for sex

2.)    Huddle in the corner while my vampire boyfriend threw my punches for me

3.)    Use my paranormal gifts as a demon slayer to back flip around the room while wearing leather pants and Monolos

Please ladies; let us take the rest of August to celebrate the heroines we can idolize and emulate that prevent us from assuming helplessness and/or lying about our weight to imaginary homicidal maniacs. Don’t get me wrong, I LOOOVES me the daffy bumblers, the wise-cracking vampire slayers, the size zero shape-shifters, but let’s all try and take one final summer week to roll out the brainiacs, the mis-fits, the “articulettes”. (Oo! Great name for a debate team.) Women who use words as their weapons and mirth as their shield. The chicks who can shatter a stereotype as well as a kneecap. I am on vacay and all ears for your suggestions for the beach read.

Well, one ear, the other is tuned for trouble on the lake in case I need to leap up and defend peace and justice clad in this delightful strappy sundress with matching peep toes and with my crime fighting accoutrements in my Kate Spade beach bag…

But Then Again, Adult Diapers Would Make Everything Easier

by Barbara Poelle

Husband and I bought rollerblades and on Saturday we bladed the length of the island. ( I know, I know, we came back to a message on our answering machine that went [BEEP] uh, hey guys, it’s me, 1994, I am just calling to see if I can get my rollerblades back. And oh, yeah, this answering machine too….)Anyway, it’s only about 12 miles but we had the brilliant idea to leave at high noon, so by about mile 5 I looked like I had fallen into the Hudson and by mile 7 I smelled like I was using horse intestines as a life preserver.

 So we come home sweaty and exhausted and I nag husband to check the mousetraps, because we still haven’t caught Stewie. I have been telling myself that he will not be back, as he was so psychologically damaged by our initial encounter that he rightly views our domicile as one inhabited by a predator akin to a puma. So I am in the other room and I hear Husband say, “Oh my God.” I, of course, bend my arms at the elbows and start rapidly flapping my hands in the air and saying, “What-is-it-no-don’t-tell-me-what-is-it-no-don’t-tell-me…” in that super helpful way I have. So Husband calls me over and pulls the trap out to show me that not only has the peanut butter been pretty much licked clean off of the unsprung trap, but in its place, as if left by the Cosa Nostra, is a single turd.

“Catch this.” It clearly stated.

I roared, while the camera crane pulled back to frame Husband on his knees and my angry fists shaking above my head, “Stewiiiiiiiiiiie!” then I stomped into the office and pulled out some glue traps the super gave us, and yelled, “ How dare you be both irreverent and hilarious at the same time! Nobody does that in my house but ME!” So now we have these glue traps everywhere and I keep picturing something really odd getting stuck to them, like a milk dud or Rod Blagojevich. Someone told me that I am not going to be happy when Stewie hits that thing at mach 8 and tears his legs off, but I am like, “Hey, who poked the puma?”  Which, incidentally, would also make a wonderful new game by Milton Bradley.

But I get it. I mean, I would infest our apartment too. It is a really fun place to be. Like the other day when I was on the phone and Husband was strolling by and stubbed his toe on the coffee table and tumbled onto the couch where he drove his knee into my hip bone and when I reflexively howled and grabbed it I cracked him in the skull with my elbow.  GOOD TIMES! Or after we rollerbladed only 12 miles we had to take a 2 hour nap. GOT LIFE BY THE TAIL! Or when I broiled dinner but neglected to actually turn the oven to broil and almost killed us with bacteria. LIVIN’ THE DREAM!

But that’s the thing: most of life is such a mundane repetition of burnt dinners and stubbed toes that it takes a lot of sifting to find the excitement. But yet, without that mundanity (I’m trying it) the exciting moments  maybe wouldn’t stand out enough to make their mark as beacons in the mist of memory. This is what a good novel must be able to do for us, find the excitement without losing the reality.

See, although I am fairly certain that most major literary figures are not wearing adult diapers, nobody is stopping to evacuate their bladder while contemplating leaving their paraplegic fiancée, or reflecting on the summer they defeated an evil clown (although Pennywise makes me want to evacuate my bladder). But it’s inferred that, yes, as human beings, there is consumption and evacuation happening. While no one wants to read a direct reflection of their daily lives, everyone wants to read characters functioning within the constraints of what the plot has denoted in a realistic way. This doesn’t mean that everyone should be rushing back to their WIP and typing in “Do you think the cartel will find us?” he called from the bathroom as he evacuated his bowels (why is this entire blog a lesson in scatology?)but it means you must take real time into effect when plotting. People eat. People sleep. People set mousetraps and buy lotto tickets and shrink their wife’s favorite summer hippie shirt. These are the personal touches that make a good novel an empathetic one and therefore a great one.

Now go check your manuscript for the simple anecdotal pleasures of life that make it that much more accessible. I am off to audition for the fabulous new game show…say it with me: “ Who! Poked! The Pumaaaaaaaa????”

 

 

102 in My Brains

by Barbara Poelle

I am sorry to say this entry will be short and sour. I have been a miserable sick person, petulant and morose and mewing, like the love child of David Schwimmer and Bjork. These past few days, with my fever spiking and my mucus freely flowing, I’ve been  hiding from everyone yet blaming them all for my shortcomings,  vacillating between caterwauling old jazz standards and spying on the neighbors, all the while embraced in the loving arms of an over sized t-shirt I defensively called a “house dress”.

Yup, I’ve gone all Grey Gardens up in here.

Until this week’s Entertainment Weekly hit the stands and oh cue the doves, sound the trumpet blast, unleash a fire hose of mojitos upon the masses, Sophie Littlefield’s debut A Bad Day For Sorry received a spectacular review! I got so excited that I coughed and coughed and then hacked out something that then turned around and attempted to pitch me a YA, which was just inappropriate to say the least, but easily ignored in my euphoria.

I don’t have any kids (I am sorely lacking the three S’s of parenting: Sympathy, Selflessness and Sobriety) so I cannot imagine what it feels like when someone reacts or responds to something your child does. But I think I can empathize a little bit, because when good things happen to my authors I get all puffed up and preening, but when unhappy things happen, I want to stand roaring and flexing over the offender’s flaming corpse. Is that about right?

Anyway, a lot of my duckies have had just an outstanding couple of summer months but now we are entering a slower time in Publishing, when the city depletes in population by half but still manages to smell like an old French prostitute, and  I think that these are the times when we truly test our mettle. I have no idea what mettle is exactly, but I know it is important not to let it crumble and fall away like that corky bit of umbilical cord, so even though I am crabby and feverish and likely to throw a punch in the next 40 minutes, I want to muscle through my blog and make sure I am keeping to the minimum of mettle I see from my clients daily. The elbow grease they put behind every effort, whether on virtual book tours or on revisions, on book 2 or book 7, is quite frankly astounding. I have just a spectacular client list from A-Z and the least I can do is shuffle across the page scattering 500 words of wisdom to the winds. So let me raise my Theraflu in a toast: to you lovely clients, you make me flush with pride…alright and fever, but still. Thanks for all you do. You make this look easy.

P.S.  Is it weird that I bought 7 copies of EW and then rolled around on them like a wolfhound on a fresh kill?

 P.S.S. Um, did anyone see Janet Reid's haiku challenge? It filled up and was quickly closed, but stay tuned for the winner's entry: http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2009/08/writing-contest.html

P.S.S. And yes, it is pronounced "Poh-Elle" like Noel, and that counts as two syllables...

  

Frogs and Bears and Chickens and Things

by Barbara Poelle

Okay. It’s Shark Week on Discovery and karma is kicking the crap outta me as I actually DO have a sore throat but NO ONE will believe me if I call in sick. And my throat isn’t the cool, “I’m Kathleen Turner from Romancing the Stone in 1984” it’s more like “I’m Harvey Fierstein from that really weird night you had in Soho in ‘97”. So I have to muscle through.

I will try and behave myself and not slobber and wiggle in my chair with glee over all of the new fun shark facts I will be learning this week, because some of them aren’t as, shall we say, comforting as one would hope and I have Husband 87% convinced that I should be allowed to cage swim with great white sharks in the wild. Here’s the thing he DOESN’T know. That I am going to work on the angle that I should get to do it how Michael Rutzen does it. I CAN TOTALLY DO THIS, I KNOW IT.  You guys, Husband neeeeeeds to let me pet one. It is imperative. I will be very gentle and quiet and not disturb their ecosystem. I just want one snout rub.

Unfortunately, the only wildlife I have come into contact with these days is not of the gilled and delightful, but of the scampering and tiresome.

 Last week I came home from work one night while Husband was out, collapsed on the couch, and then watched, wordlessly and with thunderous apathy, as a mouse darted across the hallway and into the kitchen. I mean my head actually slowly turned to gauge its progress. Then I sighed. And slowly rose. And then it was on like Donkey Kong.

I exploded into the kitchen and flipped on the light, and Stewie (short for Stewart Little, of course) darted for the corner behind the garbage and recycling bins. I kept my eye on the corner as I bent down and grabbed rubber gloves and a Tupperware. I donned the gloves, spun the Tupperware on the palm of my hand and then kicked the cans away. What happened next cannot be aptly described, but perhaps this series of texts I have lifted from Husband’s phone will help:

8:07 pm:   F#@&! Me and a mouse are going AT IT! I had him, I f#@^ing HAD him and then he slid under the Tupperware and got away.

8:16 pm:  F#$#@&!!!  He just brought the F*%*ing fight to ME!  He just charged at me in the living room!

8:19 pm:  I have destroyed our home.

8:29: ohmigodohmigodohmigod there are tiny mouse turds on the ARM of the couch. He’s all over me. He’s like a turdfilled ninja! It’s like the beach at Normandy! $@*$#@ Come home and bring traps argrgrghhhhh!ohgodohgodohgod

8:40: He’s gone into the wall. The apt looks like a mongoloid rhino stopped by to enjoy some line dancing. Also, I’m crying a little.

When husband came home and viewed the carnage, he was not terribly pleased. “Why didn’t you go out and get traps?” he asked he up-righted a couch (Oh, believe it. I was flipping them like my toddler was trapped beneath a semi).

“Uh, because I would feel bad about it.”

“And what, pray tell, were you going to DO with this mouse when you caught him in a Tupperware?”

Well, I hadn’t really gotten that far in the planning.  

The best part is that, as a day or two passed, Husband expressed some doubts as to whether or not I had actually seen a mouse. Like, maybe what had actually happened is that I scored some black tar heroin and invited that hooker with the scabby knees who works the GWB bus station back to our apartment but we had a bad trip where we thought Russian acrobats were trying to kill us and our only defense was to tip a couch and throw all of my shoes from the shoe rack at them as they flipped and jete’d through the living room.

But- aha! Last Friday, I called Husband to check in on broken ribs and such and what is he doing? Swearing and sweating as he has had his own run in with Stewie. Now this has tapped into Husband’s deep primal Hunter/Gatherer urges to which had heretofore only been satiated by Chinese takeout and Scrabble. Now our apartment is like a mine field. For example, I would love to have you over for dinner but I better get the linens for the table because if you were to reach your delicate hand into the linen basket in the kitchen SNAP! You would howl in terror and pain and Husband would yell from the corner where he is crouched wearing a grass skirt and covered in river mud, “I have to THINK like the mouse to catch him, Babe! I have to think like the mouse to catch him!”

Which brings up an excellent point. The mouse doesn’t think he is the villain. He’s just eating coconut shreds and pooping on the couch. Man, he’s living the dream!!!! This is a very important point when writing mysteries and thrillers. You can’t just have the bad guy be a bad guy. He has to have different priorities and motivations from our hero, but at the highest stakes imaginable. The old show (and then the movie) The Fugitive is the perfect example. It’s like a prism of villainy, our hero is the villain, but we know he’s the hero. Then the cop chasing him is both a villain and a hero. Then the villain is a hero but really a villain. Brilliant!

You can’t just be good for the sake of being good: booooring. So you can’t just be bad for the sake of being bad. Both sides of the coin must have supporting back story. Check out your villain. Does he/she have her motivations burning through from a legitimate place? Because that might be the cheese that makes me reach for the trap that is your brilliant plot.

Okay, now I am off to buy Red Bull and Ricola so I can stay up all night and watch Sharks, Glorious Shaaaarks!

 

 

To Sleep, Perchance to Score a Bestseller

By Barbra Poelle

I have an ever growing list of bizarre things I am told in a pitch. These range from having someone tell me that Jesus told them to contact me (which is odd because the last time we went out for mojitos he didn’t mention her) to being asked out on a date. (Hey, free dinner is free dinner.)

The one that has kind of boggled me that I get more often than I would expect is : “this is based on a dream I once had.” I cannot describe to you how bonkers I feel when I hear that. It is so totally fine if that is the truth- yay, great ideas can come from anywhere!- but don’t tell me that. It makes me feel like next you are going to tell me you can channel dead pets or summon Pan.  But in the last few weeks I have definitely heard it more than thrice (I am trying that out) so I decided to put it to the test. Below I have written a brief summary of three books I would like to pitch to you which are based on dreams I have had recently. I had to be a little choosy because 5 nights out of 7 I dream I am swimming or about to swim or am talking about swimming. Which is hilarious to me and will definitely lead to a flurry of googling to see if that represents, like, a secret loathing of intimacy or a subconscious desire to club a seal.  I am not sure it means anything more than the fact I love to swim and never get to do it anymore. And the fact that I have an unhealthy and probably detrimental obsession with the lovely Carcharodon Carcharias. In fact, OMG, don’t even get me started on the letter I just wrote to my local news station about their pathetic attempt at sensationalizing a story where some fishermen were in the ocean for, like, 12 seconds, when their boat sank and they showed all of this shark footage and teeth and said AND I QUOTE, “coming up next, the fishermen who were rescued from the jaws of sharks and lived to tell about it”. I sent a SCATHING 2 paragraph email which vacillated between insulting them and informing them of actual shark attack statistics. I read the e-mail out loud to Husband who yelled his patented, “you tell ‘em!” and then he dissolved into gales of laughter when I hit send and he gasped out, “They are definitely sending that one around tomorrow.”

Okay, anyway, so here are three book pitches. The protagonist name and occupation has been changed to fit the tone, but we can all safely assume she is a dashing young woman with a come-hither stare and mustard on her shirt.

Book 1/Literary Fiction

The House of a Hundred Teeth

Child Psychologist Sissy Simonson is invited to her cousin’s house for a 100^th birthday party for an aged aunt and finds that her cousin has spent the last 10 years adding a flurry of doors and rooms to the family home. That doesn’t stop Sissy from trying to open as many doors as possible in order to find-what? We never know. The good news is that one of the doors can be opened using her high school locker combination. The bad news is that her teeth are falling out as she hunts and both of her contact lenses have turned into giant ice cubes, which are too cold to put back into her eyes.

Book 2/Comedic  Women’s Fiction

Swimming with the Fishes

Ace newspaper reporter Peach Beckinridge is headed home for the wedding of high school chum Bethany Fishes. Although she is certain she is married, she can’t seem to remember her husband’s name or occupation. She turns to a dear friend who is sitting next to her in the church and asks, “Uh, do you know who my husband is?”  To which the dear friend laughs gaily and points to the church doors, announcing, “Everyone knows who your husband is!” and in walks Michael Phelps in a unitard. Peach is confused, she is fairly certain her husband is NOT Michael Phelps, but has always wondered if she could take him in the 200 butterfly, so off they  go to her childhood home to compete happily ever after.

Book 3/Horror

The Slosh

Film Student Mina Meyers is thrilled to learn that she has been accepted to attend an elite writer’s forum in a small town in California. Mina is especially excited to sit down at the private seminar which features such great minds in literature as the chick that was in front of her at the AMC and an old baby sitter. However, her excitement soon turns to horror when the skylight opens and laser beams emit from the sky, slicing seminar attendees in half, their innards sloshing into the floor, and forcing Mina to run for her life. Mina uses her wits and a toothbrush to outsmart some sort of bug/alien hybrid to emerge into the sunlight where she is immediately quarantined by an army man only referred to as “The Colonel” who bears more than passing resemblance to Rush Limbaugh.  Her horror turns to relief as lots of cute army guys begin unloading kitchen appliances and she feels good enough to accept an orange push pop from one of them.

Uh, wow. I stand corrected. These are brilliant! Anybody else care to throw in some of their somnambulist bestsellers?

 

 

Broken Ribs and Broken Rules

by Barbara Poelle

The last 10 days have passed in a blur. With Thrillerfest in NYC and then RWA in DC I feel like I am existing in a sort of a fuzzy middle-Earth where I kind of get what’s going on but everyone has weird feet. And I have gained 7 pounds from all of the second breakfasts and elevensies.

Like TFest, RWA was extremely productive for me this year. I arrived on Thursday, Husband in tow, because I wanted to keep my peepers on him with the broken ribs and all. (Don’t ask. But just remember, I warned you not to make me mad.) So I set him up with his Percocet and remote control and then proceeded to conduct back to back to back meetings and workshops and schmooze fests from Thursday at 3 until Saturday at 5:30, popping in every once in a while to make sure Husband hadn’t OD’d, each time tripping over his latest room service tray and swearing like a sailor on shore leave. By Saturday night, my voice was shot and my liver was openly boycotting the consumption of any more fermented libation (it was also hard to get a solid night’s sleep while someone’s husband kept roaring in pain) but I muscled through to a bright Sunday morning, and the reality that we had several hours to kill before heading back to NYC.

I have never been to our nation’s capitol, despite the Obamas’s constant invites, so I wanted to wander around and say hi to Abe and the gang while I had the chance. I got Husband all lubed up on his hillbilly heroin and we hit the sunny streets of DC.  

Now, we have a standing agreement in our little marriage that if we have to do something involving culture, or dignity, or hygiene, then I get to counteract it with an activity of my choosing, such as hobo fighting or welding. Well, I was feeling very generous, what with the roaring in pain and all, so when Husband said he wanted to check out some museums, I acquiesced sans caveat. (That is the fanciest thing I ever said. I might need to sit down.) So off we go to check out the Hoodie-Whatever so we can see the art by What’s His Knuckles.

BSE.

(Which clearly stands for Barf Sound Effect.)

Anyway, so we are in the Hoodie-Whatever, wandering through the multi-galleried catacombs, and we get to that part of the exhibit that always makes me laugh. I call it “the pots and pans”. You know what I mean. There’s all of these clay bowls and broken shards of pestles and mortars used to grind pemmican or whatever (BSE)and it’s soooooo boooooring I want to break MY ribs. But of course, Husband is clearly invested in whatever it is we’re looking at so he wanders deeper into the gallery, focused on something in the distance which I can only describe as some old dude’s mothy underpants in a glass case.

In fact, Husband is so invested in his ancient undies that he blows right by a tiny alcove which is sporting 2 pots and a sign that says Please pick up and feel the difference between a Earthenware Pot and a Stoneware Pot!

Okay, two things. First?

B.

S.

E.

And Second?

Suhweeeeet. Now, I know Husband has not seen this sign, and he is a solid 15 yards ahead of me. I reach in and grab the Stoneware Pot, step about 5 steps towards him, and slap one of my infamous wild grins on just as he is turning back to gauge where I am.

The emotions that passed over his face in the span of 1.7 seconds…honestly? It is impossible to describe. I want to. I really want to, so I am going to try my best to mimic the stream of consciousness he later told me that he went through:

Ahh, there she is and- what is she? No. I am not seeing this. She is not holding a priceless ancient artifact from 210 BC. She wouldn’t do that. What am I saying she would so totally do that. We have to get out of here. I have to stay calm. Don’t draw any attention to her. I am not really seeing this am I? That’s definitely an artifact from 210 BC. And she is definitely holding it. No she can’t be. Yes she can. Look at her face. She’s doing this. She’s really holding a priceless artifact in the middle of the Smithsonian.  

Now, on MY end of things, what I saw was a man with broken ribs move 15 yards in the span of a single blink. I mean it; his legs looked like Hummingbird wings. One minute he was gaping at me from the next room and the next millisecond he was inches from my face and hissing, “Put that back! You put that back right now!” The best part is that he WENT to grab it from me, but his sense of preservation and dignity would not allow him to touch a priceless ancient artifact so he jerked his hands back as if an asp had leapt from it.

Now I lose it. I mean totally lose it. And I trot backwards to the alcove practically bent at the waist and howling. He sees the sign and lets out this MASSIVE sigh of relief, kinda swaying a little, bless his heart, and he grins and says my second favorite thing Husband can say to me, “You got me.”

And ladies and gents, that’s how you keep ‘em coming back for more! I don’t care if you are writing a thriller or a mystery or a romance, in all of the reads from the last two weeks the only manuscripts that have remotely captured my attentions from TFest or RWA are the ones that have mastered the “gotcha”. My favorite fish? The red herring, of course! The best way to catch him? Well, the bait and switch, of course! What’s his favorite move? The Double Cross, of course! Dig deeper, add layers, shatter expectations like 2000-year-old earthenware. No matter the genre, keep ‘em on their toes! Now, this is not to say throw all genre convention out with the bathwater, but (now here’s a worthy challenge) BE SMARTER THAN ME.  I am a sucker for the gotcha, across the board, not just in a “whodunit” capacity. Check out Jennifer Haymore’s romance A Hint Of Wicked, that is a book that keeps you on the carousel until that final chapter. Trust me. You will NOT be disappointed. And I have a delightful cozy coming out in September by Tracy Kiely which basically pulls the red herring out of the water and beats him against the dock until it’s sushi for everyone. Freveletti’s RUNNING FROM THE DEVIL has bait flying around like someone tossed a grenade into the fish tank! And just you wait Henry Higgins until February 2010 when I unleash Graham Brown’s book on ya’ll. You’ll have trouble trusting your own mother.

I guess what I am trying to say is, surprise even yourself. Be original. Be a stand out. Be a shelf stealer. Work harder, every page, every sentence. Find a way to pull the story through the narrative that leaves me certain that I am going to be tackled by the guards at the Smithsonian for even THINKING I know what’s going to happen.

Now I have to go. Broken Ribs and I are headed off to price trapeze lessons. Hey, I looked at pots and pans, I EARNED the right to flip over a bar 30 feet in the air.

(BSE)

 

Obeeee-Wan and the Queen

by Barbara Poelle

Something happened at Thrillerfest this past weekend that reminded me of the summer I was 19 and I was 99.97% sure that I was a bee whisperer. See, in the backyard at my childhood house there was a row of really pretty blossomy trees lining the fence with their heavy foliage so that kiddie-diddlers and republicans couldn’t spy on our swimsuit clad bodies. In early July, I had noticed a small ball of gauzy hive material forming in one of these trees. I became extremely protective of the goings on in this hive, and in fact placed a few phone calls to the local nature center to discuss their activities.

(Okay, to do this story total justice, I guess I should tell you that at this time in my life I was involved in a certain activity that made my countenance a familiar one in our city. And since I had a very recognizable surname, The Nature Center Dude was extremely forthcoming with his information, and I believe perhaps looked forward to the info-calls. Ugh, is there any way I can get away with this entire post without actually saying what I was involved in? I am going to try…)  

Anyway, at some point around the beginning of August I was obsessed with going outside and sitting directly under the tree where the bees were hiving. To my friends and family I would sagely refer to this as “Just Bee-ing.”

However, my Zen state was interrupted mid-August when The Nature Center Dude became alarmed at my fresh description of the hive. 

“It’s a little bigger than a basketball, and it looks like a fat tornado.”

“Uhh, okay, whoa. These are not bees you are dealing with here. You are talking about a wasp’s nest. I would advise you to keep your distance. As the summer comes to a close, the wasps will become increasingly determined to build the hive up before the drones make a living cocoon of their bodies to protect the queen for the winter frost.”  

I practically swooned. Can you imagine? All of these young wasps forming layers of beefleece for the queen, dying off during the winter, the frozen husk of each corpse falling to the snow covered earth, the final selfless act for their royal lady.

I may have hung up on The Nature Center Dude in mid sentence in order to rush out to do my bee-ing.   

I will say, to give TNCD full credit, the “bees” were certainly acting a bit more, shall we say, agitated by my presence. (I kept calling them bees because bee whisperer rolls a lot easier off of the tongue than wasp whisperer.) I noticed that the lulling hummmm near the hive had become a definite buzzzzz and even the family dog wouldn’t come near me when I was sitting under the tree.

Now let me set the stage, it is the last week in August. It is my father’s birthday. We are hosting a large pool party of friends and neighbors and relatives. There is potato salad and watermelon and dead things on the grill. At some point my sister announces to my cousin that I think I am a bee whisperer and the ribbing starts and I become indignant.  

“I am. Watch.”

I saunter over to the nest. When I am approximately 5 feet from the hive, I turn to toss a sly and flirty look over my shoulder that clearly said, “These bees would cover me in their beefleece this winter if I asked.” And when I turned back what I saw was a roaring, winged Garven Dreis. That’s right, Red Leader no longer standing by, but heading straight into the Death Star. (Anyone who was into Star Wars just announced to whatever room they are in that they want to have my baby.)

 Now to this day, many will scoff at this, but in those milliseconds, in the time it took for one human heartbeat to lub-dub before impact, I heard a teeny tiny voice, as if a mouse had huffed a full tank of helium: “God save the queeeeeeeen.” And then the wasp plunged what most certainly was a needle filled with jalapeño juice into my eye.

When I turned back to my sister and cousin saying, “Hey! I think one stung me!” they laughed it off, because they assumed that if one had indeed stung me I would have run screaming down the block, republicans and kiddie-diddlers be dammed. And perhaps because of the activity I was involved in that summer, my first concern was not the white hot searing pain of a thousand campfire embers pulsating beneath my eyelid, but the idea that my eye might swell up, so I immediately headed into the house to grab an ice pack. It turned out that the actual impact of the stinger was in the upper eyelid, I could see the little dot in the mirror, and I pressed the pack to it for a while, but then got bored. At about this time my cheek started to feel numb and tingly, but I figured it was from the ice. I walked back outside and bent to get a coke from the cooler. My sister came up and said, “Did he get ya’?” and I stood up to face her to say, “A little.” And when I did, the look on her face was priceless. She could not have shown more horror if I had the still kicking legs of a frog hanging out of my mouth.  

No matter how old either of you get, there is a particular way that one sister can wail, “Mooooom!” that makes the other certain that she is either on her way to her room, or to the morgue.

Long story short. When we got back from the emergency room my sister made me say, “Sloth loves Chunk” about a dozen times. And that activity I was involved in?  Let’s just say it involved wearing a crown and a sash and being extremely public. WHILE LOOKING LIKE SLOTH FROM GOONIES.

So let me just tell you. As much as it PAINS me to say this, I am not a bee whisperer.

Nor am I sci-fi agent.

As much as I can’t help but try and read your sci-fi thriller or your sci-fi fantasy, it is just going to end up with me clutching an epi-pen on the car ride home. I promise I know my strengths. I will whisper the crap out of your horror, your thriller, your edgy mystery but you and I have to agree that I have no business sitting under the sci-fi tree and communing with you. Sure I may know a few fun facts about Star Wars and in some private moments refer to Husband as Salacious Crumb, but that’s where it ends. I promise there is an agent out there for your sci-fi, one who will become the beefleece, not demand it. But I ain’t her. This is why I said No to your pitch last week. Not because of your narrative or your execution, but because the next sting could be fatal for me.

Now get back out there with your sci-fi/fantasy and beat the pavement like you would a womp rat.  

 [ps-Guess who I am negotiating with on an offer right now?!?! Tune in Sunday to find out...casue she better quick kicking me around by then in time for her post.]

TOM AND MISA ARE BRUSSEL SPROUTS

by Barbara Poelle

The first time I ever ate a brussel sprout I was 19. This was not due to some stunning Polish ritual where all the relatives gather in costume and I was presented with my first mini cabbage, although that… Would. Be. Awesome. Like a Sprout Mitzvah.  I am so throwing a Sprout Mitzvah for myself. You are all invited. All gifts must be cruciferous, which as much as I want that to mean something we all learned at Hogwarts, it actually means all gifts must be edible plants, like kale. Although since I am making the rules, when you present the gifts to me, you must yell, “Cruciferous!” like Harry Potter.  And as far as costumes you must dress as a famous dead person. Listen; don’t question the rituals of Sprout Mitzvah. Just show up dressed as a famous dead person bearing broccoli and you’ll be allowed in. I should start pricing DJs…hmm; maybe my cousin Dave's band would do it for cheap.

Oh jeez, what was I talking about? Ah yes, the first brussel sprout. The real reason I never had a brussel sprout until I was 19, is that my father despises them. DESPISES them. This is a man that would pretty much put walnuts and peas in an omelet but cannot abide a tiny cabbage. My mother was fairly indifferent to them, so we never, ever had them in the house.  I cannot remember why I ate the brussel sprout when I was 19, but I can remember almost screaming in ecstasy, because I loved it so much.  

I love brussel sprouts. I buy them at least twice a week now.  I think about them when I am not eating them. I wish I could carry one in my pocket and rub it with my thumb when I am scared. Anyway, the point is, in the first few decades of life, we form a lot of our opinions based on the general inclinations of our family and friends, but as we get to be our own human, we kind of branch out a bit and try different things. For example, I had never read a Tom Robbins book until I met Husband, and he had never read The Stand, so we each tried a little nibble and voila! I have devoured Robbins’s list and Husband can’t sleep if I ask: “Babe? Who would win in a fight, Pennywise or Flagg?”

I think it’s really important to listen to what other people are reading, and take a risk every now and then and pick something up that maybe you wouldn’t have. I mean, I can think of several mystery brussel sprouts right now that people should be slathering in butter and devouring, and it confuses me why we aren’t all laying on a hammock and enjoying their delightful flavor.  

One that comes to mind is author Misa Ramirez and her mystery Living the Vida Lola. This is the first book in a series featuring detective Lola Cruz, a sassy, voicey Latina who is really a girl just trying to get ahead in love, life and career while stumbling around dead bodies. It is a fresh and biting read, like that first chipful of homemade salsa, and I can think of ten people who should be reading this over the summer and then standing in line next to me to get Hasta La Vista Lola in January.  You know who you are.

The next one that makes me crazy is why isn’t everyone standing in the streets screaming for the next Duffy Dumbrowski novel? I loved ON THE ROPES and TKO so much, that I may or may have not threatened author Tom Schreck to keep me at the top of his list for his WIP or I will unleash a hell of feet and teeth on him. I do not care that Tom is a boxer and a black belt. What he has in training I have in white hot blinding rage. I can take him. Anyway, in this mystery series Tom’s protagonist, Duffy Dumbrowski, is this raw everyman boxer with a heart of gold and a head of rocks and his supporting characters are like an orchestra backing a death metal lead singer. And of COURSE there is a dog; is name is Al and he is Muslim. Don’t you HAVE to check this out?

I have this client, we’ll call her Lauren Destefano, because that’s her name, and she and I will get in these five exchange long e-mails about what we’re reading and who we think had a better second book than first, etc etc, and I LOVE this. I find myself reinvigorated after these exchanges to go out and BUY NEW BOOKS!

Hey, let’s single handedly stimulate the economy and order something new today. Tell me something I should order TODAY to read this summer.

But be forewarned: anything I buy today I won’t be able to get to it until August, because I am just slammed trying to finalize these Sprout Mitzvah details….

Red Belly. Green Hair. And Freedom.

 

By Barbara Poelle

Ahh, summertime. And the living is easy. Unless you’re in publishing this summer, then the living is endless hours of bingeing and cutting. But that doesn’t make as nice a song.

When I was just a little Shark, June through August was easy livin’!  Summer was for campfires and hiking boots, ice cream cake and sun tea, bronze skin and green hair.

Yes, I looked like some sort of novelty pencil top troll during the summer because blonde hair turns bright green with prolonged chlorine exposure. And prolonged expose I did. The moment the sun came up to the moment it dipped behind Mrs. Studie’s house, I spent every waking minute in the backyard, swimming. I would call over KelC, King-Thing, and Spaghetti and we would crank up the New Kids on the Block and hang tough in the summer sun.  But when the three of them would pull themselves out, dangling their legs and drinking Diet Cokes on ice, I was still doing handstands in the shallow end, diving for rings and sticks in the deep end, and begging them to come back in and play; I was never done swimming.

Are you there with me? Think 13 years old. Think the year before bikinis and boy’s phone numbers.  The year before varsity and calculus.  Can you hear NKOTB with their tinny croon on the boom box? Can you hear the dog bark at a passing car, a bird call to its mate, a distant plane passing over head? Can you be there?

Now cut to the sound of the house door swinging shut on the porch.  Hear Jordan Knight cut off mid-falsetto. Hear the heavy click of a tape being changed. Hear Axl.

Welcome to the Jungle.

When the screen door slides open, the squeak slicing the air like a trumpet blast announcing royalty, you’ll need a second. You will think to yourself, how do I process this? How do I describe what I am seeing?  I’ll help you: What you are seeing is the result of an evening back in college when Reese Witherspoon and Aphrodite got drunk and let things go too far. Yes, this is their love child. No, go ahead and stare. I know, trust me. I grew up 3 years behind this.  The thick blonde hair, the spattering of freckles across the bridge of the nose that only romance heroines have, the blue and green checked bikini, simultaneously demure and filthy. Yes, yes, drink it in. I’ll wait.

You will notice that KelC has been struck dumb mid-sentence, King-Thing powers down the rest of her coke without taking a breath, and Spaghetti is just open mouthed gaping. They’ll be okay, they’ve seen it before. It just takes a second. What you are seeing pour herself onto a lounge chair and pick up reading material (maybe Cosmo, maybe Skeleton Crew), is my older sister. For reference purposes we will use the name the Underground French Mafia uses when tracking her whereabouts: Le Bink.  (The Underground French Mafia, much like the kingdoms of Florin and Guilder, have to keep tabs on the most beautiful women in the world. I don’t know why, I am not in the UFM. Or from Florin or Guilder.)

Cut to everybody’s favorite Shark, flopping in the shallows, spotting someone dry and fresh; someone to plaaaaaay.  

“Le Bink! Le Bink! Wanna play paddle ball?”

Le Bink has adjusted her tortoise shell sunglasses and picked up her magazine, the pages sounding like gunshots as they turn.

“No.” Flip.

“Le Bink, Le Bink, wanna dive for sticks?”

“No.” Flip

“Le Bink, Le Bink, wanna play Monkey See Monkey Do?”

“No.” Flip.

“Le Bink, Le Bink, wanna play Jump or Dive?”

Pause. Slow grin.

“Alright.”

Okay, now remember that scene in Braveheart when William Wallace is like, “No, guys, it’s okay; I am just going to talk to him, nothing bad will happen.” And his bekilted buddies are like, “Dude, don’t do it, remember last time when you said nothing bad was gonna happen and they played canasta with your innards?” (Yeah, I totally slid “bekilted” in there. I am feeling good about that.) Along the pool edge, KelC, Spaghetti and King-Thing suddenly start to murmur and burr to each other, this Scottish Trio has been here with me before.

See, Jump or Dive’s inventors (uh, and competitors) are not the sharpest knives on the tree. Basically I launch myself into the air and at the apex of my upwards arc, Le Bink will call out either “Jump” or “Dive” and I have .07 seconds to rearrange all of my limbs to allow for the according end of my body, either feet or head, to enter the water first.

So it begins. I thump towards the end of the board and launch myself up into space. I just know Le Bink is going to start out with the big guns in order to get me to leave her alone, so I already begin to pike my body into dive position mid-air.

“Jump!” she calls, ohdearGod I misjudged! Heaving my spine back as if I have run into a low slung limbo pole, I overcompensate and back-flop hard onto the surface of the water. I come up sputtering and the Scottish trio is clucking and shaking their heads, while Le Bink flinches and “ooohs” over the top of her magazine.

“I’m okay, I’m okay, I ‘m ready…” I say as I heave myself up the ladder out of the deep end. My size sevens slap rapidly against the gritty surface of the board, and once again I am in space. I know that she is going to say ‘Dive’ because she thinks that I think she is going to say “Jump”. So again, I am already head to knees on my upward arc.

“Jump!” she calls and ohthehumanity, pull up Goose, Pull UP! but I just can’t get there and I hit the water in a perfect sitting position, the slap on my rump worthy of the one I deserved (but never got ha-HA!) for outlining the flowers on the kitchen wallpaper in blue ink.

This continues, me attempting to predetermine what it is Le Bink wants to see, launching limbs and extremities into the fray, only to emerge, sputtering and baffled, to the surface. After a particularly spectacular miscalculation where I may or may not have dislocated seven out of ten toes, the Scotsmen are practically keening. Even Le Bink is looking a little green around the gills.

But I willna surrender!

My arms, splotched and shaking like raspberry jello (which my mom has already called out that she is making for a snack for all of us) lift my shivery corpse up the ladder. I cross to the board. Spaghetti has found some bagpipes and their mournful tone fill the air. King-Thing clutches her kilt, white knuckled and pale faced. KelC is keening, “Mercy! Just cry out Mercy!”

My feet step to the board, chlorine teardrops falling in slow motion from the curve of my ankle bone. Forty yards away, Le Bink narrows her eyes. I am exhausted, but as I start the sprint to the end of the board and launch myself into the air, I know.

 I KNOW.

 She is going to call Jump.

I leave my feet beneath me, my spine straight, my dignity rising with me as I arc through the air.

“Dive!” she yells.

I give it everything I have. I jackknife as if snapped in two. Instead, I end up beautifully parallel to the water’s surface.

Belly down.  

Now, I have never been thrown through a plate glass window (though for goodness sakes I came awful close once and I might of kinda deserved it) but I would imagine that it would be a similar feeling to what I experienced that day. I feel like I hit and then the surface tension just held me for a quiet, achingly beautiful moment and then the water just kind of folded me into its arms, submerging me, like that fat woman who used to over-hug me at the racquetball club. The impact itself was like being bitch-slapped by Poseidon. I would have thrown up in my mouth except for the fact that my lower intestine had already launched itself up my esophageal tract and lodged against my uvula.

The bagpipes blew one final note as I sunk to Davy Jones’s locker. And then I was up at the surface, gasping and heaving, as the Scotsmen just shook their heads and left the scene slowly, off to mourn.

 And to eat raspberry jello.

And this, my dear friends, is what you are doing when you write what you think I want to see and not what is organically you. No matter how much you think you know what I am going to look for, or say, or want to add to my list, you can’t dive when you are in jump position. Stop trying to turn that historical fiction into a thriller. Don’t put the dog in the YA.  You cannot wait for me to call out what I want, you have to throw yourself into your choices for genre and character and execution wholeheartedly and if we connect great, if not, that’s okay too; you’ll find someone you will connect with. Launch it into the air and own it all the way down.

Although who am I kidding. Twenty years later and still…this August? Break out the haggis, it’s on.

 But this year, I KNOW she thinks that I think she is going to say Dive, so I will Jump. Unless she is thinking that I am thinking that she is thinking Dive, and knows I will Jump…then I should Dive.

So I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me….   

 

 

Extra Cheese and a Side of Weeping

by Barbara Poelle

This past Christmas the family theme back in Minnesota was “As Seen On TV”. This means that all of the gifts had to be of the Sham-wow variety. There were Bug-Vacs and Moolarms (alarm clocks that Moo) and the like, but I received the greatest gift of all from my sister: the Pasta and More. This is the item that allows you to put all of the water and pasta in a blue Tupperware and put it in the microwave and then you can put veggies on a double-decker steamer thingy above it all and BAM! Pasta Primavera in about 10 minutes. Now clearly this handy device helps you avoid all the effort of the, well, the water and the pasta on the stove, where you put in the, you know, the water and the pasta…but, right, the veggies! Come on, you can do that on your stovetop! That takes a whole other pot! And a steamer! See? I don’t know how I have lived without the Pasta and More. It’s like Velcro, or plastic. Or toilet paper. (Because, OMG, why do we not all know the name of the person who invented toilet paper? Their face should be on the nickel.)

Anyway, I am just so glad that last year’s theme was As Seen On TV, because the Pasta and More has  come in handy this last week as every night when I get home from work I need to spend an hour or two eating my feelings. And maybe crying a little. No, really. Why am I eating my feelings and crying? Well, because last week, a colleague of mine was going out with a brilliant manuscript and was told by an editor, “The writing is amazing, but amazing writing isn’t enough.”

AMAZING. WRITING. ISN’T. ENOUGH. (I suggest you grab the nearest carbohydrate and stuff it in your mouth and chew vigorously.)

I mean, I haven’t been living in a bubble- although not a bad idea as I am basically allergic to Earth. Seriously, the worst? Someone recently spilled some margarita mix on my arm and I BROKE OUT IN A RASH. Oh the humanity! To be allergic to sour mix! But it does explain that massive asthma attack I had in Mexico in ’04. Anyway, what I am saying is, I don’t have my head in the sand, I know that the publishing industry is really going through it right now. Earlier this month I was asked for the platform on a literary fiction author. I was like, “Uh, she writes good.”  That’s the first time I have been asked for platform on literary fiction.

Is this what we’ve come to? Turning down material because the writing is amazing but they don’t have enough followers on Twitter? (For the love of Megan Fox, did Husband hide the bagels? I don’t care; I’ll eat handfuls of dry cereal.) I mean, I am all for self promotion. In fact, one of our clients just sold to S & S based on a fabulous angle he took in tootin’ his own horn. I love virtual book tours, blogs and tweets, but are we now seeing brilliant writing as a secondary element to viral media in selling a book to a publisher?  

Uuhghgh. I have to go. I can’t type holding these doughnuts.  

(P.S. Next Christmas the theme is "Pawn Shop Gifts", meaning all gifts must come from a pawn shop. My cousin is a cop, so I tried to vote for "Evidence Room Gifts", but was, for some reason, turned down.)  

Tough Love is the New Black

by Barbara Poelle

A colleague of mine, we’ll call her Jolly Loot, recently came into my home and performed what some may consider an intervention- others, an exorcism- regarding the contents of my closet. Apparently, Jolly vacillates between open mouth gaping and outright hysterical laughter at some of my wardrobe ensembles, and she felt she needed to step up and help out someone in need. Friends don’t let friends wear polyester blends or something.

Here’s the thing: back when we shared an office, I was oftentimes guilty of feeling like I needed to shake things up or “etch-a-sketch” the day. When this would happen I would quietly rise, leave the office, go buy a new outfit and come back dressed completely different.  This made her insane.  To add to her agony, sometimes, on a very rare occasion, I liked to go to this discount store aptly named The Big D and make purchases.  Now, I didn’t get the memo on this one, but apparently, buying your clothes from The Big D when your offices are on 5^th Avenue is akin to setting puppies on fire while working for PETA because she would scream and tear at her hair and rock when I would come waltzing back in wearing what I called a flow-y summer dress and she called a mu-mu.   

So, Jolly decided that a deep colon cleanse of my closet was in order. We set a date, and then Jolly came over to my apartment and made me pull out every item in my closet and try it on and it had to go into either the donate, throw, or keep pile.

Of course, there were some ground rules. I began the negotiations by insisting I was allowed three vetoes, and the subset veto clause denoted that if said veto included clothing that was actually composed of two or more items that would still only count as one veto.  Furthermore, it was acknowledged and agreed by both parties that should an item of clothing have particular sentimental value it was allowed to remain in my closet as long as it was never worn “in public”. This was followed quickly by Jolly clarifying that a secondary “in public” sub clause be initiated specifying this restriction included “popping downstairs to the bodega for a diet coke”, and “grabbing the laundry from across the street”. (Damn that crafty vixen, Jolly Loot!) And finally, there was one more clause on Jolly’s part: she would allow a complete ensemble to remain in the closet as long as I never wore all said pieces from ensemble simultaneously, as apparently, “that’s too much matching”.

(W!T!B?)

During the mighty purge, Jolly kept texting another colleague we’ll call Melissa Sarver (because that’s her name) with such phrases as:

OMG Sarver, there are not one, not two, but THREE velour jump suits in here  

Or

This is the first time I have ever seen an actual skort 

Now, you might think that prancing around in tightey whiteys and a tank top while someone laughs at you and texts about you to other colleagues might be somewhat disheartening, but please.  I am in Publishing.  

And there were Bellinis.

I mean, sure, there were a couple of touch and go moments when Jolly had to tear a jean skirt out of my hand screaming, “You are not 22 anymore! You are not 22 anymore! I won’t let you do this to yourself!” and then one other when she pulled out the tiniest halter top in the world and was like, “What Care Bear wore this?” and I said, “That’s the shirt I was wearing the night of my first kiss with Husband.” And she murmured what sounded a lot like “what a skank” under her breath, before acquiescing that it could be filed under emotional wardrobe keepers.  (That and the fact there is no danger of me wearing it even inside the home because it looks like it came directly from Gap Kids and I look like I came directly from the 4^th of July hot dog eating contest on Coney Island.)

By the end of the evening, I had FOUR bags to donate and two to toss out. I had one veto left (I wouldn’t let her throw my favorite plaid pants away nor a pair of sassy corduroys) and I had only howled in agony twice (you guys, I rocked that jean skirt, I rocked it! And who DOESN’T own a pair of culottes?). Then Jolly hung up all of my keepers in order of sleeve length and color. I gazed at my “new” wardrobe in reverence, and I had to admit, I was better for it. I mean, sure, maybe Jolly didn’t have to drive her point home by yelling, or “For the love of- people your age HAVE children they don’t DRESS like them.” or “Don’t you DARE even try that ON!” But then again, Jolly also didn’t have to kindly say, “I don’t think that’s the silhouette you want to be going for” when perhaps someone else might have barked, “Either suck it in or throw it out!” Regardless, what I have now is a sleeker, more refined wardrobe, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that on my own.

And you too, can have your very own Jolly Loot experience through your second readers. They need to be trusted to dive into your manuscript and tell you that sure,  maybe you could bounce a quarter off of some sections,  but you would lose a buck seventy- five in others.  But you must, you MUST, choose your readers wisely. No frenemies allowed. You need someone who firmly yet lovingly sets you straight that no, neon is NOT the new black, but they don’t feel that they are losing any of their worth by telling you so.  

Sometimes, those who you thought were your “besties” can turn angry and resentful when your star starts to rise while theirs still lies gently among the reeds. There is no way anyone could have doled out the tough love like Jolly did, but even when she was verbally berating me, I knew she was doing it for my own good, and I never once thought she was secretly making me keep all of the clothes that are too tight or out of style in order to make herself feel better. The frenemies  may quietly and almost unknowingly sabotage the confidence, and in some cases even the execution, of your manuscript in order to alleviate some of the ache at watching your success.  This is pretty pathetic, but occurs more often than one might think.

All in all, you need to make sure that whoever is reading your work is there to make your manuscript the sleekest, most streamlined it can be, who doesn’t let you get away with anything, and who is almost freaky in their determination to watch you succeed, as in the case of a very spooky text I received in the middle of the day on a Saturday afternoon:

What did I tell you?!?! Take that off.

And I did. And I am better for it.

 

 

 

Who Needs Crystal Balls When You’ve Got Frog?

 

 by Barbara Poelle

In yoga yesterday we were in this position that was so painful I think I may have time-traveled for a second. No really, I think that when your calf muscle actually separates from your shin bone, it opens a space/time continuum and I slipped right through it like I was lathered in bacon grease.  I could hear my yoga instructor from very far away saying, “Now, if you are feeling discomfort, go ahead and use this two word mantra and breathe through it...”and I was like, “I got two words for YOU, Gandhi….” But I didn’t think she would appreciate me chanting those , so I just acquiesced to the time travel.

Now I was only in the future for a short while, but let me tell you aside from learning that the avocado was declared the National Fruit of the United States, ( I mean who knew, right? Who knew on so many levels?!?!) apparently, in the future,  there is this universal knowledge that authors are the driving force behind their own publicity. I know, the future is WIIIIILD, isn’t it? Who’s looking at monkeys driving cabs when this is floating around? So, as much as I wish I had the Preakness winners or the lotto jackpot numbers , all I was able to grab is the information regarding platform and publicity for authors and bring it back here, to all of you, in order to fulfill our destiny as a human race.

Oh, no, no need to thank me. I do this out of a crushing sense of altruism. I can’t help it. I’m a giver.  

Okay, so what is a platform? It’s basically anything that tells a publisher how famous you already are. In other words, it is all of the ground work you establish in order to sell your book to a waiting audience. And how does one go about establishing? Well, I happen to have these 10 helpful hints from your very own future:

1. Establish who your audience is. Get specific.
2. CREATE A WEBSITE and build it shamelessly. Collect business cards wherever you go. Your web site is your calling card and your brand, make your book proud

3.       Create an enewsletter. Establish a mailing list and encourage people to sign up for it.  Set a goal to get it to 500 people, than  2000, than 3500. Blog, tweet, chat, grog, get traffic moving towards your site and signed on for your newsletter.

4.       Get on list serves, and be a part of online communities

5.       Create an on-line presence by volunteering to review books for other sites, or to guest blog on someone’s site.

6.        Read BUZZ YOUR BOOK by M.J. Rose and Doug Clegg, or Get Known Before the Book Deal by Christina Katz and/or any other reference guides you can get your hands on. Pick and choose the styles of promotion that work for you.  

7.       Befriend local booksellers and build from there.

8.        Join things, serve on boards, volunteer in organizations that reflect your content. Look for ways to create contacts that are outside of the box.

9.       Go to local conferences and, if you can afford it, national ones too. Meet and greet and grin and win.

10.   Know someone who knows someone? Get a blurb/foreword/introduction confirmed with a celebrity or expert on your subject. Ask if you can link to their site or if they will guest blog on yours.

Remember, agents and publishers look at proposals every day, don’t make us work too hard to see why this is a slam dunk, because, if there is one thing we hate more than puppies and Christmas, it’s hard work. 

I know, I know, I get all whiny and petulant when I think about how tight the industry is getting, too. It’s enough to make a girl drink before noon. (Okay, I mean nine). But there are ways to be proactive. I would loooove to get some comments on this blog entry and hear some other ways authors have promoted their works, so please do jump in here and give a shout out to something that has or has NOT worked for you. I look forward to reading.

In the meantime, though, I need to call my broker and have him buy MAAAAJOR stock in…uh, ahem, heh-heh…’cause there was…see I….heh.

Uh, nevermind.

 

Blast From the Past

by Barbara Poelle

Husband read this entry before I posted it and advised me to begin this entry with:

Warning. The following content may not be suitable for some. Reader discretion is advised.

At BEA I was on a panel and I also heard roughly 45-50 pitches in 2 hours. (Do the math. Then have a shot of tequila. ) I know it is so nerve wracking to pitch and the agent is this great unknown- I get the impression that most assume I will run the gambit of requesting your work to slapping you.  This story is for anyone and everyone who has ever felt nervous to pitch to me.

So usually, I know, I am pretty much the model of decorum. I should write a book: Etiquette with Effing Ease by Barbara Poelle. Well, this weekend at BEA, I had an adventure that, should your child ever make a diorama out of it, it may get them either a national award or expelled.

So I BEA’d my brains out from pretty much Wednesday on. I hit the show and did my schmooze. You know, 10 hours a day of tossing my hair and laughing and handing out cards and doing the double barreled finger air gun shooting. I know, if Two Wild and Crazy Guys had needed an agent, I would be a shoo-in. (Is that right? “Shoo”? Because it would make more sense to be a “shoe” in, meaning your foot in the door. Sigh.  If only there was some sort of interconnected electronic international data base where one could look things up.)

Anyway, after tearing up the town and a pair of Holly Root’s shoes on Friday night, I set out to make Saturday a more leisurely experience. Maybe just a single finger air gun and a slight chin nod.  

After my appointments and rounds, I had a casual dinner with some colleagues and then a scheduled drink with an editor.  I have this favorite restaurant near the Javits Center that I love, so we had a long and lovely dining experience, and then I headed up with the editor to have a glass of wine and talk about how awesome this new thriller I will have ready this summer is going to be.

Have you ever had to drag something heavy, like, I dunno, an armoire over hardwood floors? Well, about 20 minutes into my time with this editor, that is the sound my bowels made. Hmm. Not the most pleasant of sensations, but I am able to hold a conversation and still maintain a hair toss if I need it. This was followed, roughly 3 minutes later, by a sound much like a tugboat slowly attempting to dislodge itself from between two battleships. And then, I will spare you the details of what happened next, but suffice to say it was as if someone in my lower intestine had shouted “Fire.” and everybody panicked. I leapt up mid sentence and launched toward the bathroom as if the paper towel dispenser had started dispensing hundred dollar bills.

(Right now my mom has smelling salts in one hand and the phone with my number speed dialed into it in the other because she thinks I am going to go into greater detail, but don’t worry, I think we all get where we are at with this story.)

So, let’s just say, this editor and I pretty much had to walk away from this as best friends or never speak to one another again, because I spent a portion of our meeting either in the bathroom or sitting there sweating and crying a little. We were literally trapped in the restaurant. We were at the mercy of my Shrimp Tom Yum Soup.

At one point I said, “I know in a few weeks this is going to make a really funny story, but I can’t laugh right now.”

And then we laughed.

The point is, we are all just mammals tumbling around on this big muddy marble called Earth, and although agents may sometimes seem scary, just remember I was brought to my knees by a cup of soup.  So please, if you come to Thrillerfest or RWA or Moonlight and Magnolias or any other conference I am taking pitches at, have a seat across from me and let’s talk about your book.

Ooh! You could title it Tom Yum Part Deux: The Reckoning.

Scaaaaaary.

 

Proof that it IS Only Drunks and Small Children

By Barbara Poelle

On Sunday morning at 4 a.m. a man fell off of the roof of our building. Apparently he had been up there imbibing to excess and toppled right off the corner and into the sleepy abyss below. But don’t worry, I didn’t tell this tale to be gruesome and chastise-y. He lived. Oh yeah, he plummeted 6 stories down into an alleyway and onto a pile of garbage where he promptly passed out in a hazy dreamlike state, awakening only to the feeling of a detective shaking his shoulder as he slumbered amongst the detritus  of my past week.

So basically, what I am telling you is: I saved a life this weekend.

Well, okay, not me exactly, but my spaghetti squash guts and Windex-soaked paper towels did. Just think about that. What if instead of tofu meatballs and soy yogurt I had been chowing down on broken glass and hypodermic needles? Or what if I had thrown out my cement block collection this week? This man would be dead.

No, no thanks needed. I was only doing my duty as a citizen.

The best part is, the call to 911 was made by some woman who was up for an early shift at work and saw his body go by her window. He seriously passed out in the garbage and was only aware of what had happened after being shaken awake by police. (And I hope she took the day off.) There was a whole investigation then, just in case it was an attempted 187 and not a MGD 64, but no, it was just a lone gentleman with a case of beer and a hankerin’ to see the pretty lights of Manhattan at 4 a.m.  

How awesome is that? I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a horrible, horrible happening, and clearly that gentleman needs to attend some sort of meeting, but can you imagine starting a novel out that way? Like, your protagonist shakes himself awake in a pile of garbage after being thrown from a roof. Or your protagonist starts his Memorial Day weekend shift shaking the shoulder of a man who has just toppled from a rooftop into a dumpster, and is thinking, “So this is what my shift is going to look like.” Or, let’s say this event happened to the father of your protagonist on the night she was conceived. Or perhaps the husband of your protagonist on the night she planned to kill him. Man, the list is endless!

I just signed a new thriller author last week, and his novel has an opening line that makes me want to throw a barstool through a bay window, it is so good. I am serious. It isn’t exactly like the happenings of the ‘hood this weekend, but it has that same kind of feeling- when I read it, it makes me look like a large pit bull mix, I kind of tilt my head and I go “Mhrrah?”  I have been dying to find a new thriller and I even wrote what I can only describe as a “haiku lament” to author Shane Gericke  of Thrillerfest begging him to help me find a new thriller this summer. (His response, also in haiku, was hilarious. Check out Shane at www.shanegericke.com. Hey, it doesn’t count as a shameless plug if it’s not my author.)

But there is always room for more on my list. So if perchance, your protagonist falls off of a rooftop or is thrown through a plate-glass window in the first paragraph, you know where to find me.

Subjectivity Just Means You're Wrong

By Barbara Poelle

Last week Husband and I went to a highly-lauded Broadway show which boasted Tony winners and a captivating story. The house was full and so was my belly, so I settled happily in my chair to enjoy an evening on the town with some high quality entertainment seated next to my handsome life partner.

Now,  there are several different ways to say “love”. You can love your new Kate Spades, you can love Mexican food, you can love your nephews and you can love your spouse and they are all different versions of love, yet they fall under the simple umbrella of the word without any true qualifiers. Like you can’t loveest something the most, or love squared something, but it is generally accepted that the surrounding phrase will allow the listener to understand which type of love you mean. The same could go for “hate” I guess. So I want to make sure that I am absolutely clear on this, as the surrounding phrase may be a bit ambiguous in meaning: I hated this show with the white hot super nova hatred of a thousand pillaging Norsemen. I hated this show with the kind of visceral hate that quite possibly created a rage goiter in my neck. I hated it to the point where I wished I would have brought a helmet full of bees to wear as that would have been more enjoyable to experience than this show.

This is the point where you think I am going to tell you the title, right? Ooohhh, nooo. No way. Uh-uh. Because people LOVE this show. And not just Jimmy Choo love, but Grandma and kittens love. Hold hands and cry a little love. So trust me when I say I am in the minority here, and I will zip my lip in order to avoid the fall out that would rain upon my head like a piñata filled with needles and cockroaches. (Wow, that may be the creepiest thing I have ever said.  I actually got a little light headed at the thought of that one.)  

Which brings me to the reviews, because, for the love of Blake Lively, why are people flocking to this show? I feel like the emperor is nude, preening and prancing through the streets of Manhattan while everyone oooh’s and ahhhh’s about his astounding new robes and I am like this dirty little street urchin standing on the dung wagon pointing and yelling, “Uhh, you guys, HE IS NAKED!”

Apparently, as Husband has tried to explain to me on several occasions, not everyone has the same opinion as I do. And FURTHERMORE, sometimes I can be wr-….wro…less right than other times. Now I know this. I get rejected so often by editors that I have a permanent dent on the surface my desk from dropping my head in anguish. This ain’t my first time at the Shame Rodeo.

Clearly I am involved in a truly subjective business. I have seen some bru-TAL reviews on some of my client’s works. I have been on the phone with clients who are making a high pitched keening sound heard only by hamsters and Dakota Fanning over some review, and I am able to completely ride it out and shut down the angst.  But my favorite example of subjectivity in publishing is among the agents. I was giving a talk in California recently and someone asked me, “Do you ever refer manuscripts to other agents in your agency?” and I was like, “Not only other agents in my agency, but in publishing. And I get referrals all the time from other agents.” This is the version of subjectivity that makes publishing ROCK.

Good writing will out. Maybe the story or the protagonist isn’t ringing my bells, but I if I think I can make a love connection for you with Janet Reid or Jen Schober I am absolutely going to send you their way. And they do the same for me. I always feel a sense of pride when someone signs or sells one of my referrals.  And it comes with a free gift of booze, too, as you know they are paying for drinks next time we go out.

So, I guess, all things considered, keeping a little subjectivity around is a good thing.

Subjectivity and a helmet full of bees.

 

 

Springtime Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

By Barbara Poelle

Well, I snapped at the security guy at Whole Foods. Totally justified, though.

See, the thing is, you fight 7000 people to get to the frakin’ albacore tuna salad and then you stand in line for 6 or 7 hours in the check out, so by the end, simply putting your wallet away burns the very last of the calories your body has stored for survival. Like, you can’t even blink at that point or you would collapse. So I of course am already munching on the tuna salad while I head down the chute to the exit with the plastic fork provided for me at the end of the checkout lines. Now, it is important here that I call it a chute, because it is basically just two rows of dry goods bottlenecking us all from the checkout lines toward the exit doors.  There is no escaping the chute. Once you are in, you are out.  So I am happily heading down the chute and into the exit when the security guard, who was not old enough to grow the facial hair he so desperately wanted to on his upper lip, says, “Excuse me young lady, can I see a receipt for that?”

Okay, now, there are several things about this situation that are going to equal something going very badly, very quickly for our friend in blue here.  First off, young lady? While most may find that a bit endearing or perhaps complimentary, it immediately made me Catholic and seven again.  Beyond that, this dude has not even seen the slippery side of 25 yet, so give me a break.

Second, are you &$#^* serious? I mean are you &%#@* SERIOUS? There is no possible way to get into this chute without passing through the checkout lanes AND I have a frakin’ plastic fork from the end cap on the checkout lane AND I am carrying two bags- one full of books and one full of the detritus of my life. Are you really thinking that I am going to waltz out flashing stolen goods, Colombo?  Because I was thinking maybe I would PUT IT IN ONE OF MY BAGS.  

This is kind of the gist of what I said to ol’ Barney there. But he just kept staring at me, so I dug, and I mean dug, through the flotsam and jetsam of my purse and pulled it out, while balancing my OPEN container and my other bag, and despite having only purchased said tuna salad, he looked at the receipt for 15 seconds. I know it was 15 seconds, because I managed to get in one heavy sigh, an eye roll, and a scoop of tuna in that time.

Finally, Magnum PI hands me the receipt back and says quietly, “Thank you, miss.”

Well, I feel like I should probably kill myself now.

I admit, that on very rare occasions, and only when asked repeatedly, I may perchance offer up a gentle opinion or observation. (Did you hear that thunk? That was husband falling over.) But Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen did I have to do it to the Whole Foods security guard?

So I of course called Husband and told him I was an awful person who deserved to get mercury poisoning from the tuna and he talked me out of going back in there to say something which is just as well because it takes a long time to write “crazy shouting tuna salad lady who hurt my feelings” on your List of People to Kill and I wouldn’t want to interrupt him. Then Husband may have casually mentioned that perhaps I am wound a little tightly and perhaps should get some exercise that evening in order to get some of my aggressions out. After I verbally slaughtered him for suggesting not only that I am “wound tightly” but that I need to exercise, I thought about it and concurred.

I love running in NYC, and I really enjoy a good run before or after work. But my favorite time to run is right at noon-I love the hot sun blasting down on me as I go. Unfortunately, it is hard to go running at lunch at the office because I come back smelling like something an anaconda couldn’t quite digest.  So I have to reserve my best runs for the weekend. And by runs, I mean only 4 or 5 miles. I loves me some 5K races, but would be interested in seeing how I would do in a 10K and then a half marathon. Which brings me to what can only be described as a shameless, self serving plug, (but what else would you expect from a Whole Foods Security Guard abuser?), you have to read RUNNING FROM THE DEVIL by Jamie Freveletti. (http://www.jamiefreveletti.com/)  I signed Jamie with this manuscript in part because the protagonist is just so unique and fascinating- she is an endurance marathon runner, meaning she runs these monster races in intense locations, like 100 miles through Death Valley and stuff. Jamie, a runner herself, has been involved with these races for years (I am pretty sure her husband, Klaus, runs in some) so she created a plot where her character, an ultra marathoner, is literally running for her life. I promise not to do shameless plugs anymore (that’s a lie), but do yourself a favor and read this thriller.  Now whenever I am running and I think I just can’t go another mile I pretend I am Emma Caldridge, plowing through the Columbian jungle, and it works every time.  

So we all have Jamie and her character to thank for me not verbally abusing the cab driver who insisted he knew how to get to my apartment but ended up in Brooklyn.

 (Lie. I truly unleashed. I’m pretty sure it was almost in rhyming couplets at one point.)

Well, I am trying at least. I mean, now I am working on at least feeling bad after. That’s progress.

 

Ps. Whole Foods security guy if you are reading this, I am sorry. But COME ON! Are you serious? Wow, Jessica Fletcher, where were you when we were all looking for Hoffa and the Lindbergh baby, huh? I mean, how in the name of Clay Aiken could you possibly… wait. I’m doing it again, aren’t I. Off to run.

Shoes Make the Man

by Barbara Poelle

I am in California- LA first and then up to the Bay Area to hang with Sophie Littlefield and friends (A Bad Day For Sorry, pre order NOW on Amazon! Do it!) and I am a little bit homesick. I used to live here, Los Angeles, surviving on a diet of club soda and rage-all toned and feral. Ahh, those were the days: when I used oxygen as a food group and carbohydrates were on the same level as pedophiles. Oh, size two; you have gone the way of the jelly shoe.  I miss you both.

Which reminds me, I have to look dirty hot for a wedding in June, and I think the best way to get there would be to roll around in some swine flu, but statistically speaking I have more of a chance of getting injured by my own toilet than catching that so I guess I’m out of luck. Where’s Captain Tripps when you need it?

This wedding is going to be amazing and I know I am supposed to say that it’s going to be all about celebrating the love of Husband’s Bro (known from here on out as HBro) and Posh (no, seriously, HBro’s wife2be looks exactly like Posh spice. Exactly. Thank goodness I bear such a strong resemblance to Gene Wilder so that we both get fake celeb attention when we go out or I might feel bad about myself.) Anyway, I know I am supposed to be all about  love and eternity and stuff, and I am, don’t get me wrong, If I could have HAND PICKED HBro’s wife I would have picked Posh. Oooh, I wish I could have. Like on a sweet yet sassy reality show called “My HBro’s Keeper” where husband and I would choose the bride for HBro by making them do weird and accidentally suggestive things. Posh would have MURDERED the competition. Seriously. At the end of the show there would just be Posh standing there, slightly out of breath, while holding a hunk of human hair and one Jimmy Choo.

Anyway, so Posh is going to be gorgeous and the wedding is a stunning outdoor spectacle and everyone will live happily ever after, but let’s talk about the bestest most fabulous part of the whole thing: my bridesmaid shoes. Oh, yes, strappy fuchsia Kate Spades, screw the photo album, you are now topping the list of things to rescue in a fire (are you paying attention Husband?). These shoes are so spicy, so naughty/nice that my joyous weeping at the altar may have nothing to do with the nuptials.

Shoes are such a passé obsession, I know, but the thing is that these shoes will not only change the way that I feel and look, but how I carry myself. For example, I used to sing a bit of opera. Don’t get excited. Only Root and vodka can make me sing. Anyway, sometimes I had trouble hitting this E over high C and my voice teacher would make me bring my highest heels to the session and bam! I floated that sucker like it had wings. Then when I had to do a particular lower section she would make me take me shoes and socks off and sing barefoot. Nailed it.  This insured that I knew I had the notes in me when it was go time.

This is something to think about as far as characters. No, stay with me here. There is a famous actor who picks out his character’s shoes before even stepping on the set.  Think about it. They affect stature, carriage, stride, gait, motion, and stance and those attributes in turn can help create the foundation of a persona. I’m just saying, next time if you are in a jam trying to figure out a new angle to take for your character, try starting with the feet.

If it helps, I’ll post a picture of my feet from the wedding. You can thank me later. 

PS-On a total side note, I got this from Allison today. Check it out...she'll comment more in a bit....

 I'd like to post a brief Outrage, Shock, & Call to Action! I just found out that my mom's school district's board is voting next week to possibly eliminate the position of "librarian" in their schools. (My mom teaches 5th & 6th grade music.)So if we have any Wisconsin readers, email the board and encourage them to keep the librarians employed....

The Friendly Skies

by Barbara Poelle

So Husband and I were in Minnesota over the weekend to attend a book launch for my client (have you picked up your copy of Purge: Rehab Diaries yet?) as well as to make a grand appearance at the to-do for the 40^th wedding anniversary of my parents- just a quick weekend jaunt, we thought. What could be easier? Well….

On Sunday night we had a layover in Wisconsin, but our flight out of Minneapolis was delayed by three hours. One of these hours was spent strapped in, locked and loaded, on the tarmac. They turned off the engines to conserve fuel which was fine as it ensured that the only ambiance was provided by two drunken nasally ‘Sconnie moms (they weren’t ‘Sotes, we natives can tell, it’s in the nuance of the fricatives) who apparently never get out of the house except to accompany their daughters’ volleyball team on away games who chose to spend that last hour prank calling their ‘Sconnie Mom friends and pretending to be a Chinese takeout restaurant worker over and over and over while hiccupping and giggling. At one point a young teenage voice behind me said, “Is that your mom and Mrs. Harris?” And the response was a humiliated, “They had some margaritas at the airport.” 

I think “some” means seven.

So four hours later we arrive in Milwaukee, but of course we had long since missed our connection and apparently since the Great Vampiric Outbreak of Aught 3, all of the air traffic from Milwaukee stops at 9:58 pm. (The only REASON I can think that in this, the new Millennium, any major airport would only completely close down at 10pm is because of all the vampires getting sucked into the jet engines at night, because otherwise for the love of Gene Wilder WHY are there no flights after 10 pm?) So at the gate, the customer service rep for the airline gives us boarding passes for 7:45 a.m. without batting an eye. I say, “And what accommodations will you be providing for us?” and she proceeded to tell me that “Well, because the delay was due to weather the airline was not responsible….”

Okay. Many sharks have what is known as a nictitating membrane, which is an eyelid that closes during predation to protect the retina from the flailings of prey. That magnificent animal known as the great white shark does NOT have a nictitating membrane. Instead, that sweet pumpkin has the capacity to roll his eyeballs back under the true eyelid which gives him that white-eye or dead-eye look that they are so famous for. 

I also do not have a nictitating membrane. So when my eyes rolled back and went dead and still and black, the nice lady at the airline counter handed over a discount hotel voucher and called the shuttle to come pick us up immediately.

So Husband and I spend a restless six hours in a hotel room somewhere in Milwaukee, and then are walking back through the front doors of the airport at 6 a.m. to see that glorious lite-brite departure board and all of its lovely times and gates and flight numbers. And one tiny “cancelled” next to a flight.

Our flight.

Which explains why the ticketing area looks like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

So I let loose with a delightful string of obscenities which may still be hanging over Lake Michigan now, and also causes a young woman to move to the other side of the terminal while casting horrified looks over her shoulder. So we get into the snaking line and when we finally arrive at the ticket counter, I ask the Sally Struthers Doppelganger what the issue is and here, friends and countrymen, is where we get to the whole point of my tale. When asked about the problem with the plane, Sally responds:

“It got struck by light-nin and it don’t work no more.”

It. Got. Struck. By. Light-nin. And. It. Don’t. Work. No. More.

I just don’t have it in me to type any more than that.  Except to say, everyone, please, treat yourself to a copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. You’ll thank me for it.

 

Ps Also, OMG, did you know that you can spell cancelled like cancelled AND like canceled? Somebody should straighten THAT one out before a fistfight breaks out in an airport or something.

 

 

 

Lest Ye Be Judged...

By Barbara Poelle

 

Last year I judged a contest as an anonymous expert. Now there is only one thing in this lifetime you should distrust more than flan, and that is an anonymous expert. However, in this case, I was revealed after the results, so people could spell my name correctly when they added me to their list of People To Kill.

 

(Come on. You know you have one. I have one. It is on the side of our refrigerator facing the wall because Husband says “people may find it distasteful”.  I am like, “When is Fat Guy In Yellow Camry ever going to drop by and be offended?”

 

You know who you are, Fat Guy. And you know what you did.

 

You. Know. What. You. Did.)

 

But I digress. The rules of the contest were for unpublished authors, the first 250 words, give or take. That’s a toughie, ain’t it? I mean go back and check out the first paragraphs of some of your early works. Brutal. But I can at least get an idea of what isn’t working, and more often than not, I end up requested more if there is at least a hint of something happening in the first few paragraphs, so it’s good for everyone.

 

Anyway, so after it was done I wrote an open letter to the contest participants. I have since paraphrased and cannibalized this letter on many occasions, but I think I am due for an overall holler out to everyone. See, I am really behind on my submissions. I have hired a wonderful intern for the summer, but my intern doesn’t read my slush, I read all of my initial queries. She will be responsible for fanning me with a large palm frond and telling me my hair looks nice. Maybe I’ll have her file something from time to time, but not if it impedes the fanning. So I really don’t see me getting my head above the waterline anytime soon. But I am trying. I promise.

 

Regardless, I am overdue giving the props to the authors out there. So here it is:

 

Authors,

 

Thank you for being so incredibly brave. Sending only 250 words in is like I’ve asked you to see a picture of your child, but only her elbow.

 

This is a wildly subjective business and for as many times as you have been rejected, multiply x clients with y editors each and know that I have been beaten with the no thank you stick quite a bit myself.

 

Once my identity is revealed there may be a flurry of googling, and much rolling of eyes and harrumphing (“no wonder she didn’t like mine” “I queried her last year!”  “she looks like my cousin, Fran” ) and if you compare my fiction and non-fiction sales, it appears as if I have loaded a cannon up with clients and then fired- they are as scattered in range and subject matter as could be. The identifiable trait that they all seem to have is that they understand the foundation and mechanics of writing and are able to build upon that by composing plot and character and facts that are interesting enough but accessible enough to appeal to a wider range of readers.

 

Ta-da! There you go. That’s the secret.

 

Okay, there’s a little more to it than that generally fueled by feelings of rage, mourning, ambivalence, desperation, apathy and a pinch of narcissism just for color, but overall you have to just keep refining your technique by reading and writing as much as you can in order to truly establish a solid understanding of what makes a stand out a stand out.

 

In the end, however, subjectivity is going to play a role from the first word to the first sale, and that my friends, is the real crux of it. I mean, I love mustard and pickle sandwiches. Love them. But I am not going to be able to force a mustard and pickle sandwich on a ham on rye kind of fellow, but that’s okay, cause this guy over here is perking up at the idea of one, and let me tell you, (if I ever sign you, you’ll get this) if I see an opening I am going to shove that mustard and pickle sandwich in his mouth and make him chew.

 

Hang on; I think I got away from myself there. And now I’m kind of hungry. 

 

What I am hoping that we all take away from this is that there is such a wide range of agents and editors that you can’t let one or twelve or thirty tell you you ain’t got it, kid. Keep reading what’s on the shelves. Pay attention to your technique and basic writing mechanics. And write. Write like your life depended on it.

 

Because mine does.

 

ONWARD!

 

Barbara Poelle

Oh What A Beautiful Morning

 

By Barbara Poelle

This morning as I was scooping oatmeal into the coffee maker, I realized that I may not be starting my day out in exactly the right frame of mind.  So I decided to take a quick jog. At 7:20 am.  In 32 degree weather.  At one point I caught a reflection of myself in a storefront window as I lumbered by in three layers of clothing and I saw that I had the kind of hitch in my getalong that George Romero would have been proud of.  Like a bag of Barbara skin was lurching, mindless and insatiable, towards Broadway in hopes that the deli had fresh brains on sale.  I stumbled back into my apartment a few minutes before 8, and proceeded to the shower where I applied the conditioner before the shampoo.

Uhh, can I get a mulligan here?

Generally speaking, I am a morning person. I am up and yelling at the TV newscasters with a song in my heart and toothbrush in my mouth before the alarm even goes off. But if I can’t get myself started on the right note for the day I end up “chasing normal” for its entirety. And considering “normal” for me can oftentimes include food stains on my shirt and some sort of minor injury, when I am starting with a deficit, it is harder than ever to rally.

Like the first line (or lines) of a novel, my initial moments in the morning set the tone for me, and if my bells ain’t ringing after the first paragraph,  I am typing up a pass letter because otherwise it’s all percolating oatmeal from that point on. The opening of a novel is so important that I will admit sometimes I can’t read past it in the slush. Some of the common roadblocks are gigantic run-on sentences, mixed metaphors or- the death knoll of many- the cliché.  (If fog is soup or the rain is coming down in sheets or the screaming is blood-curdling I am not your girl.)

On the flip side, many of my favorite books have murderously good first lines, or first paragraphs.

Take Ahab’s Wife:

Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last.

Fabulous.

How about this one, can you recognize this tone?

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privot Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

Beat the Reaper also has a wickedly delicious opening line (but if I retyped it here I would get calls from more than just my mother). THAT opener is a fantastic example of setting the tone- it just continues from there in its brutal, voicey narrative for the next several hundred pages and then when you get to the ending you find yourself verbalizing the same types of noises you would make seeing a monkey fast pitch a hamster. (I have to admit, I loved that book in all of its gratuitous glory.)

Whoops, I just checked to see if my first lines test stood up with The Stand and I just lost 27 minutes of my day as I got started reading it again.

Now I am so into this. Let’s play a fun game. See if you can match the first line with the corresponding work:

1.       Bernadette had been dead two weeks when her sisters showed up in Doyle's living room asking for the statue back.

2.       You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don't.  Trust me, I was there.  I know.

3.       My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie.  I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.

4.       This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

5.       The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the grass into whiskers of pale straw.

Ooooh, aren’t they all wonderful? Okay, here are your choices:

A.      The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure by William Goldman

B.      Lamb by Christopher Moore

C.      White Oleander by Janet Fitch

D.      The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

E.       Run by Ann Patchett

 

How did you do?

The matches are: 1E; 2B; 3D; 4A; and 5,C.

There are several websites and contests dedicated to the first line of a novel and from time to time I like to sniff around them and see who’s knocking me out of the park with a fabulous, fresh opener. It’s also a great exercise to get the creative juices flowing, and I will often recommend a few first line brainstorms when my authors are stuck on what to work on next.

In the end, of course, it is the body of the work that will truly stand the test of the read, but it can’t hurt to start off with the most bang for the buck, can it?

 

 

Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love

by Barbara Poelle

This weekend I was attending a conference in Dallas, and when I got to the hotel on Friday there were a few messages waiting for me. Now I was extremely travel weary, so I may be paraphrasing here, but let me get you the meat and potatoes of it all:

Beep

“Uh, hey babe, it’s me. Uh, I heard some alarms go off in the building and when I look out the peep hole into the hallway there is just a blanket of grey…so I think there might be…oh… people are screaming and carrying things, I gotta go…”

Beep

“Hi Babe, I, uh, am outside [sound of a fire engine] I don’t know if you can hear me [fire engine is overpowering voice]…BUT YEAH, THE APARTMENT ACROSS THE HALL IS ON FIRE AND [unintelligible] BUT DON’T WORRY [the siren cuts out] uh, like I said, don’t worry, I‘ll call you later…”

Beep

“Hey, babe. So, yeah, the firemen said some paint cans ignited in the apartment across the hall, I am downstairs in the café with everything I grabbed….it’s funny, do you know what I grabbed? Your laptop and our wedding album. Anyway, I’ll call you when everything is figured out…”

At this point I am basically frothing and barking so I call Husband and he is back in the apartment and he says other than being stinky from smoke and chemicals, everything is intact in our place. I immediately congratulated him on his choice of items to spare (and then I may have committed some sort of marriage faux pas by asking if it would have been so hard to unplug and remove the 5 ½ foot antique lamp my grandmother gave me and carry it down three flights of stairs…he just sat there in silence until I resumed my fawning over his bravery). But most of all, I was so so so googly eyed in love over this: he grabbed MY laptop, and our (I mean couldn’t you just?!?) WEDDING ALBUM.  Never mind that in the digital age we could most likely call the photographers and be like, “All our memories burned up, please send us more.” He just thought, “These things are important.”

How levelheaded.

I have to tell you, I don’t think I would have been able to make the right decision on the grabbing of the possessions. I would spend lot of time second guessing myself, and then panicking that I was forgetting something important.  Eventually the firemen would discover my smoldering corpse in the ruins clutching what appeared to be a Coach bag, the DVD of The 'Burbs and a handful of Pez.

It got me thinking, this is going to sound so passé, but I ADORE ALL of my clients. If there was a fire I would just grab my Pez and hunker down because the thought of even thinking of it… simple nonsense.

Oh, sure,  Right, right, we alllll love our clients, editors, agents, publishers, dentist’s sister-in-law’s neighbor, everybody is just warm and fuzzy and braiding flowers in each other’s hair, pass me the rum and call me Cloudbreaker,  but I am not kidding when I say I ADORE MY CLIENTS. I find them to be as savvy as they are maniacal, as determined as they are insane, and just overall a DE-LIGHT to work with.

For  example, come be a fly on my wall, friends.  These are just some of the phrases my clients have uttered to me over the last few days (Oh, brothers and sisters, I write the good ones DOWN):

“... I just don’t think this hotel is the kind of establishment you would kill a hooker in…”

“…yes, he seemed totally insane. Which is why I gave him your cell phone number…”

“…Well, hang on, I am in the Starbucks, so I am going to step into the bathroom to scream…”

“…If this is publishing, I better take up yoga…”

“…Alas, I think I'm going to have to blow off my Procrastinator Anonymous class this week….”

Aren’t they delicious? Do you see why I love my motley brood? But seriously, they are all as different as they are single-minded in their intent, and if the grenade was lobbed into our campfire, I would happily fling myself atop it while they sang one more verse of Koom By Ya.

But don’t get me wrong, these folks, although perhaps similar in form, are all cut from their own individual mediums. Some are suede while others are copper. Some have edges where the others are round. Some call me ma’am and some call me crying, but they are all united in their efforts to produce quality material.

For example, I have two authors that have books coming out this week. Oh, wait they are out today. GO BUY THEM.

Ahem, excuse me.

Anyway, one is a non-fiction memoir concerning institutionalization for an eating disorder (Purge: Rehab Diaries) and one is a sinfully delightful historical romance (An Indecent Proposition). Not exactly two sides of the same coin, eh? But both works have been executed with passion. Both works have the clear intent to transport the reader into a world they may not be familiar with. And both books use the word “throb”.

(Not totally sure about that last one.)

This is a wonderful example of how eclectic and subjective the industry is, as well as my list. Any given Tuesday I could be pitching a YA, a non-fiction art book, and a riveting literary fiction, and feel just as passionate, just as determined on each, and I couldn’t tell you which was my favorite because they all are. Really, how could I possibly save just one from a raging paint can inferno? No, I would gather them all in my arms and we would fly on a magical unicorn to the safety of a cloud-covered mountain top where we would eat tofu-dogs and tater tots.

Forever.

Ugh, okay, I am done Pollyanna-ing about the office with ribbon wands and baby songbirds. I do one of those a year and that was it. Enjoy it while you can, clients, ‘cause I’m back to cursing and bellowing at you tomorrow.

Where’s my Pez….

Pretty is the New Charf.

by Barbara Poelle

Ugh. There is a Pretty girl in my office building. And I don’t mean like your neighbor shows you a picture of her niece and you’re like, “Hey, there, well..she’s…pretty,” while they nod and beam. I mean like the kind of Pretty that needs a capital P. The kind of Pretty where I immediately gain 5 pounds in my face and grow some sort of chest pimple while I am standing next to her in the lobby waiting for the elevator.

Pretty kind of looks like if Mandy Moore and Angelina Jolie had a love child. Pretty accessorizes. And Pretty has this uncanny superhero-like ability to always appear next to me when I think I am having a good day; it’s as if I yelled, “Hey Kool-aid” or more like, “Hey Shame Spiral!” and poof there’s Pretty.

Like last Thursday. I felt like I had kind of a sassy thing going on with my zip up black boots and a somewhat dangerous top with a silver clasp that really seemed to say, “I can get a little crazy. I can drink espresso after 6pm,” (Um, no. No I can’t. It’s like what happens when you feed a Gremlin after midnight). So I am standing at the elevator bank humming Tainted Love, tapping my leather clad toe a bit, forgetting Pretty even exists. The doors open and I step in and they are about to shut when who manages to slink in right before the doors close without disrupting the slide? Pretty. In size 0 jeans and a jaunty yet clearly expensive scarf.

Okay, now COME ON, the Fates would NEVER allow me to sashay into the elevator while the door is closing. The Fates would make sure that I tripped and fell into the elevator and then the doors would slide shut on a trialing end of my scarf and I would be madly untangling myself while making gagging noises and then enjoy the painfully silent journey as I remained, collapsed and rubbing my neck burn, amongst the legs of others on the elevator floor.

But not our best girl, Pretty. Nope. She slides through balancing a coffee while texting. It’s all I can do to not push her right down, but then she’s like, “Eleven please,” without looking up and Little Barbie the Troglodyte shuffles over and presses 11.

Sigh.

I have no idea if Pretty adores her job. I have no idea if Pretty has love in her life. I have no idea if Pretty has ever seen the sunset in Pebble Beach, holding a Bloody Mary the size of a toddler, while the Scottish dude plays the bagpipes on the Links at Spanish Bay.

All I know is that Pretty gets within my orbit and I immediately curve into myself as if "fight or flight" has simply become "fat". 

It’s almost Pavlovian.

However, I am not alone in my quest for total insanity, as I recently heard a similar story from a colleague that reminded me of Pretty.  Okay, let’s say we have an author whom we’ll call Anna. Now Anna has a three book deal with St. Martin’s Press and her numbers are just fine and she has tidy little royalty checks zipping her way across the ether. Everyone is looking forward to re-upping her contract. Now Anna has a “friend” in her critique group whom we’ll call Bobbie. Now Bobbie has a two book deal with Berkley, she got hers after Anna, and for a little bit less, but for whatever reason, she is a touch ahead, selling maybe 1500 more copies per book than Anna and she is also due for a re-up.  Anna finds out what Bobbie is getting as far as an advance/co-op/publicity/option clause, whatever and will be unable to shake the feeling that Bobbie got the better deal. Now Anna has 3 more books with SMP, and suddenly what looks like a legitimate shot at the extended Times list, but she cannot help but fixate on Bobbie’s new cover art. Then Anna gets a fantastic article in Marie Claire but cannot stop musing about Bobbie’s appearance on the local KUSA morning show with Blart and Fergie.

(OMG, would you not tune in EVERY DAY to watch a morning show starring Blart and Fergie?)

So here we see that no matter what her agent, her editor, her husband, her neighbor (the one with the pretty niece) says, Anna cannot help but feel like Bobbie is having a better career than she is. And for that reason, and that reason alone, Bobbie IS having a better career than Anna. Because Bobbie ain’t the one on the bathroom floor at 3 a.m. sobbing into a towel so her husband can’t hear, is she? And Bobbie ain’t the one madly scouring chat rooms looking for people bashing her “friend’s” book. And Bobbie for sure ain’t making passive aggressive comments to other writers in the critique group about who is “settling” for what when. So Anna is living her truth- Bobbie IS better off. But only through Anna’s eyes.

Now I have another colleague whom we’ll call Polly Soot, because for the love of Elvis that chick doesn’t need any more publicity about how good she is.  Anyway, Polly Soot has this DIVINE list she calls the seven deadly publishing sins.   http://waxmanagency.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/the-seven-deadly-publishing-sins/  and I think she does an outstanding job of really exploring some of the self-defeating behavior that authors can get into early on in their career. Check it out. And then tell me how AWESOME it is that she uses a Don Quixote reference as kind of a throw away. So high brow. It makes me want to cheer and barf at the same time.  Medically speaking: to charf. (Mom! Charf isn’t unladylike! It even sounds classier! Don’t unfriend me.)

I guess what I am saying is that I don’t want the Annas of the world not to enjoy their successes because they are worried about the Bobbies of the world having more.

Live it and love it.

What’s that? Oh. No. I am still not okay with Pretty’s ability to wear size 0 jeans while munching a chocolate covered croissant in the elevator.  But today’s lesson was for you, not for me.  

 

 

Huh. The Rhythm IS Gonna Get You.

By

Barbara Poelle

Something horrible just happened. It’s so horrible, I am not even sure I can talk about it. Okay, here it is. This is so bad. Okay. I am in my office. I am a grown-up. I have a Roth IRA and a marriage certificate. And just now, when I got some good news on one of my projects, I clapped my hands and leapt from my chair and yelled, (this is so horrible):

“Let Me See That Tootsie Roll!”

And then, oh, the terror. Oh the humanity! I proceeded to shout, (oh help me), “To the left to the left to the right to the right…” while doing something extremely untoward with my hips.

The true horror of this moment, however, was not the when I launched to the part of the song where I chanted, “Now, dip baby, DIP.” But the fact that as I rotated the groove in its full circle, while coffee grinding the arms of course, I ended facing out the window and there, in the building across the street, mouth agape, was a stranger in a cubicle, staring at me from across the distance.  

Don’t worry.  I didn’t just come to a screeching halt like a needle across the surface of a record.  Oh no. I just sort of lost my stank in slow, awkward increments, so that it looked like not only was I in need of some sort of medical attention, but those rushing to my aid should definitely bring a wallet for me to bite on.

(Honestly, though, in the scheme of shame, that is so like a -4 in the History of Barbara. Once, back when Husband and I were dating, there was one afternoon, we were having a lovely conversation about the movie Before Sunrise, and my pants fell down. My pants fell down. That is not normal. People’s pants should not just fall down when they are talking about Richard Linklater movies. In their defense, though, this was from an era when my pants were being held up by my hip bones, not my lunch.)

Anyway, my groove of horror got me giggling a little, and then a lot. There is nothing better than a hearty gut laugh, and I had me a doozie today.

Which is why every year, on my birthday, I have my friend Amy tell me about the time she had to be cut out of a dress in the fitting room at H&M.

Wait for it.

Twice.

(I am gone in gales of laughter right now.)

Yes, it is true, the same H&M, six months apart, Amy had to be cut out of a dress. I will never do the story justice the way she can in person, but let me try cliff noting in three easy phases, from the very first telling and every June since:

She begins: “Hey, thanks! Yeah, I lost about 20 pounds since last summer, uhh, ‘cause there was an incident…”

In the middle we get to: “I know, so so so horrible, right? Well, just wait. Six months later, I walk into the same H&M…”

The ending: “…just know there is a picture of me like a wanted poster saying, “This chick is NOT a size six.”

(Now I am leaving out the best parts, like, “…and then a line of sales associates actually formed as they all individually took a crack at me…” but you get the gist.)

This tale does not have an ounce of profanity in it. It does not exploit any race, religion, or belief. It is a story of an Everywoman, gasping and red faced, in the small confines of an H&M fitting room, having life throw her a curveball. (uhh, twice.)

This is the kind of comedic protagonist who rings my bells. And although it is really, really hard to beat a story that includes the line, “…and she only succeeded in ripping out the front  of the dress, so the flesh of my stomach exploded out  and began undulating with every gasp…” I think it is a clear barometer of sorts to gauge the comedic works that I go ga-ga over.  

This spring, I would love to sign a comedic fiction that slays me. (I have got a real corker of a non-fiction coming out this fall. Don’t worry, I’ll be barking about it come September…) but in order to sign something awesome, I need to read more comedic fiction (like A Night at the Operation of course!) As of today, my list of top ten favorite laugh-out-louds in both fiction and non-fiction would be (in NO particular order):

1.       Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott

2.       Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss

3.       Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

4.       Lamb by Christopher Moore (although A Dirty Job is a goodie too)

5.       The World According to Mimi Smartypants by Mimi Smartypants

6.       (I cry a lot in this book too, but that nativity scene kills me)A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

7.   The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure by William Goldman

8.       Any of the Blanco, Texas novels from Ben Rehder

9.       Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins

10.   In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd

I feel like I should definitely be reading more in the comedic fiction world before I go launching into the unsolicited queries with a flashlight and machete…any suggestions? I’ll be here.

Uh, yeah, I’ll be here…Droppin’ it like it’s HOT, yo.

To the left to the left….

 

 

Traiting Up

by Barbara Poelle

Maybe you can help me with something. And by something I mean preventing my husband from throwing either himself or me from the George Washington Bridge.  Here’s the deal:  I am not what you’d call “fashionable” or maybe even “pulled together” or perhaps “bathed”.

I don’t have time for such frivolities.

But what I do have is this habit of winding a lock of hair around my index finger as I read.  And perhaps as you might imagine, in my job, I read from time to time. But sometimes, much to my chagrin, my hair is pulled back with a hair elastic and I cannot get at that favored strand.  In order to release the mane for the appropriate twistosity,   I must remove the hair band and place it delicately next to me, on whatever surface is handy.

Now apparently these small, black elastic ovals peppering our lovely home create some sort of white hot anger in my life partner.  I am not sure why. But I can say that, on average, once a week he will storm into whatever room I am in and go very quickly and very passionately through the seven stages of grief while clutching one of these elastics.  It is a truly fascinating thing to behold. I have never seen anything quite like it. Last Monday he came into the bedroom holding one at about shoulder height and kind of shook it menacingly and said, “This has GOT to stop. This has GOT to stop.”  And then proceeded to both inflate with defiance and wilt in defeat all at once.

 It was almost beautiful.

So in my infinite wisdom (oh, it is infinite) I said to him: “If I died, you would be so touched every time you found one of those”.

He was, uh, nonplussed, to say the least.

 (OMG, I have NO IDEA what nonplussed means, I have just always wanted to say the phrase, “He was nonplussed, to say the least”. That was so awesome, it felt like I was getting away with something, like buying $.25 worth of Laffy Taffy with a quarter I found on the ground outside of Super America.)

Anyway, despite the nonplussing, it got us talking about quirks, and I realized that quirks are the traits that make characters. And the more individual the quirks are, the more solid the character. They can be as clearly stated as Adrian Monk, or as subtle as Miss Marple. I mean, who doesn’t love the fact that Indiana Jones is afraid of snakes or that Arnold Drummond needs clarification on Willis’s thought processes? That is what makes them characters.

There is plenty of opportunity for us to steal from everyday life to enhance fictional characters and give them layers. Take for instance my sister (please). This is a woman who got ALL of the looks and ALL of the brains, but when she is reading something and really contemplating it, she drums her fingernails on her front teeth. Holy Christmas and the Easter Bunny, have you ever heard a woman drum her fingers on her front teeth for the length of Stephen King’s IT? No, no you haven’t. Because we would have met in the support group. But what an awesome trait to give a character. (That is the second “awesome” this blog. Third time’s a spanking.) Then I started thinking about how when we all used to sit down to watch a family movie together my dad would pull his socks off to the point where they just covered his toes and how my mom loves shoe string potatoes to the point where I think she may have killed a man in Reno just to take his fries.  (That is the single funniest thing I have ever said. I can’t stop laughing.)

And Husband, don’t even GET me started on Husband, he has this obsession with post-its.  This is a man who owns two palm pilots, a calendar and an iphone, and still, he covers every surface, both horizontal and vertical, with notes to himself. (Sometimes I add, uuhh, shall we say, some “blue” to-dos. Really funny when he sees them on the ‘fridge. Really horrifying when Holly Root does.)

About a year ago, I asked one of my authors who was struggling with book 2  to write down 20 character traits about their protagonist that may or may not be clearly stated in the work. The most amazing things appeared on this list that then allowed the author to understand the whys and hows of their character’s motivations. I am not going to share the exact discoveries, because then I would be no better than that dude in the weird mask who exposes magic’s secrets,  but I will tweak them a bit to demonstrate:

[character] is afraid of frogs

[character] always has some shade of the color red on , toenail polish, underwear, etc

[character] has never had a relationship last for longer than 6 months

 Do you see what you can pull from that? Now imagine 20 of those. You can shake open the fiercest fist of writer’s block with 20 traits, because you can write a short story on just the underwear and the frogs and the 6 month relationships (that just described every year of college for me) so you can open any chapter with that.

Nobody wants to read plots. Everybody wants to read characters. So make them readable.  Make them interesting. Make them secretly cut out pictures of dogs in clothes, make them afraid of ice cubes, make them murmur the lyrics to “Baby Got Back” when nervous. Or best of all, make them leave their hair binders peppered around the house and make their Husbands love them more, not less, because of it.

(uhh, do you think that worked? I hope so, because I need to read this proposal and my hair is tied back…..)

I Can’t Handle the Truth

by Barbara Poelle

So I have jury duty this week. And I am not gonna lie, this morning I was pretty pumped, because 100 years ago chicks couldn’t vote so the least I can do is perform the civic duty that simply amounts to listening. I’m proud to be an American citizen. God bless America and the Los Angeles County Fair. I am humbled and awed to be a part of the system, no matter how miniscule my role.

Okay, who are we kidding? Do you KNOW how much I love to give my opinion? I mean, come on! And now someone I don’t even know is going to ask what I think about someone else’s business? Oh, YUM.

People, I was born to jure. (If you’re not used to me doing that by now, you never will be.) We are speaking of a woman who hollers at the 7:30 am newscasters to the point that Husband yells from the bedroom, muffled from the depths of his pillow, “Yeah, honey, you hold them accountable!” We are talking about the woman who, in traffic, once released a diatribe of such bile and rancor in regards to a stranger’s bumper sticker, that Husband slowly shook his head and murmured, “You are full of just so much poison”.  We are talking about the woman who writes letter of both commendation and condemnation at the drop of a hat, or quite frankly, the drop a platter of salsa on Husband’s pant leg.  

This is the woman you want as your juror, a very passionate believer in her very own opinion.

Okay, not only would you want that quality in your juror, but, seriously, I wore what would quite possibly win The Most Adorable Juror contest. I picked it out the night before and I really feel like it said, “I am intelligent and honest but maybe a bit of a wild card. Maybe my middle name is Jo. Or maybe it’s Danger.” (Say that last part kind of growly.)  

Tomorrow I am going to go for something a little more style, but with some essence of humility about it. Like my middle name is for sure Danger (growly) but my aloofness comes from being misunderstood. (Look into the middle distance like you’re in an 80’s hair band music video)

Oh, another thing I am able to find enjoyment in, besides my wardrobe choices, is the fact that I have an author who writes these wickedly delicious crime novels…let’s just call her Sophie. Um, because that’s her name. And let’s call her book something fun and different, like, uhh, oh!  A Bad Day For Sorry. Um, because that’s the title. And oo! Oo! Let’s pretend it is coming out August, 2009. Because it is. Anyway, so Soph writes this series which I can basically sum up as saying it’s like The Closer meets Dexter. There is this salty heroine who runs a sewing shop in a small town in Missouri, but her real business is helping women, uhh, “take care” of their abusive husbands throughout the tri state area. Right? Don’t you just want to push someone down to get your copy? Anyway, so Stella, the protagonist, has certain instances when she encounters the law (wait until you meet “the law”- think if Ed Harris and Viggo Mortenson had a love child.)( Wait, don’t.) and every time Soph writes something technical about the surroundings or the language it is so spot on because she will research/call/visit/break into/burn down whatever facility can give her the essence of what she is describing. It can be as simple as the mechanism of a cell door, it doesn’t matter, I know when I read it that Soph has most definitely crouched down in front of a cell door somewhere and listened to how it sounded when it slid shut. This is what can make the difference between accessible writing and stand out writing. It is effortless to the reader because so much effort has gone into the writing. I am 87% sure that Sophie does not kill husbands on the side. Fine, 83%.  But the feel of a wrench in Stella’s hand, lifted and swung, I know Sophie toggled a wrench in her hand to get the heft and the weight of it before sitting down to write that day.  

So that being said, I am going to try and be uber vigilant during my jury duty and maybe I will be able to help one of my authors down the line with something. I didn’t really think of this until the end of day today, but I was able to jot a few things down and maybe someone will find this helpful as they craft their novel. These were mainly off the cuff, some a bit more refined than others, but I still think they are all extremely helpful:

 The drinking fountain outside of the jury holding room is extremely warm to the touch, yet the water still arcs cool and refreshing.

It smells like fear and fruit roll-ups in the hallways of the court house.

The metal detectors did not like the amount of pocket change the woman in front of me was carrying, but I sailed through with a large canister of mace attached to my keychain and a mysterious bottle of liquid that is actually eucalyptus oil, but totally could have been nitroglycerin.

The bathrooms on the 11^th floor do not provide adequate escape opportunities for criminals, as the air vents are only as wide as a human head.

Courthouse Security uses the word “jackhole” a lot. Like when they have to be called to the women’s  bathroom on the 11^th floor because some jackhole has their head stuck in the air vent.

I think the best jurors are the ones that look a little dangerous.

So there you have it. Go ahead and poach what you need to from those humble observations, I think that they could really make all the difference. And Soph, the first line of book three is the best thing ever; I actually started crowing when I read it. Keep going! I can’t wait to read the rest.

Now excuse me, I have a big day pontificating tomorrow, and I need to go ice my head some more.

Various Nefarious Plans

Barbara Poelle

Something is afoot over here on the 7^th floor of 27 W. 24^th St. and it is making me as giddy as a weredingo on her first moonlight jaunt.

(Yes, they have them loping about in Australia. Yes. They do.  You know, “A weredingo ate my baby” and whatnot.)

Okay. Let me set the scene for you:

About 3 weeks ago, a note appeared in the women’s bathroom on the 7^th floor. I am paraphrasing here, but the gist of it was something to the effect of:

Whoever is throwing their toilet paper all over the bathroom, please clean up after yourself.

It was probably the size of a small recipe card and copies were on the inside door of all stalls, placed at eye level when, uh, seated. When I first saw it, I thought, “Huh, never really noticed toilet paper strewn about, but whatevs. Nice enough little note.”

This little post stayed put for a solid ten days before it was removed- whether by the author or the tee-pee queen, I don’t know. But it was gone. So, some days go by, I sell some books, watch some BSG, eat some deviled eggs and then today I come into work and in the bathroom there is a new note. I am again paraphrasing but:

Woman who is throwing her toilet paper around. ENOUGH! This is not a Starbucks bathroom or a bathroom in a bus station. Other women use this! This is not your house! Nobody wants to see your toilet paper and your unflushed business. THROW YOUR TOILET PAPER AWAY.

I was so happy to see this I practically barked.

There are so very many fabulous things about this latest note, least of all being the clear emotional escalation towards total meltdown regarding an issue that as far as I can tell, isn’t really happening. I mean, let’s break this down into two possibilities:

1.)    There are anywhere from 12-20 women using this bathroom on a given day, not including visitors. Maybe one overspools the t.p. a bit, and the remainder floats gently to the ground. Perhaps this happens more than once. Perhaps followed hours later by a flush mishap. All perpetrated by different passersby and all within normal bathroom (mal)functions.

OR

2.)    There is a nefarious ill-bred female on the seventh floor intent on desecrating our bathroom the same way she attacks the commode after a venti mocha latte or a weekend greyhound trip to Poughkeepsie.

Regardless, I love these notes so much.  I am desperately trying not to provoke the situation. But, it is very difficult. I actually brought a pen with me into the bathroom in order to jot a little note on her note that says:

Your pleas fall on deaf ears- this is MY toitey now, wench!

Because O.M.G, right? How a-MA-zing would THAT be? It would be so very fantastic. I seriously clicked my pen and was ready to do it. But then I thought, “Wait, I think I might be a grown up.” And I didn’t.

But to draw the most ridiculous metaphor ever, this is sort of like publishing. No, it is. Just follow me down into this weredingo den and I’ll explain:

So, there is a book. Let’s call it…Swirly. So Swirly is a comedic commercial fiction, a veritable ROMP if you will, and it comes out in hard cover in May and sells 894 copies.

All year.

Well, I am going to want to put my little sign up on the door and say, Whoever is responsible for not selling enough copies of Swirly, I am tipping dangerously close to insanity and blaming you for it.

But here’s the thing: there are a lot of components to why Swirly didn’t knock it out of the park. It wasn’t just some pants-around-her-ankles idiot all jacked up on the power of public urination who stood in the way of Swirly’s success. In fact, I bet if we all really thought about it, we each may have been a bit responsible for the stinky turn out. Starting with in house excitement and moving right through execution and pub date, did Team Swirly do everything possible for the success of this book- did they? Did Team Swirly don their jerseys and burst onto the field with everyone healthy and focused on the big win? Did Team Swirly stay hydrated?

 I think what we forget is that a book’s success is dependent on so many moving parts, and thus, accordingly, so is its failure. (I also think the only difference between my education and a Harvard one is that I don’t use the word “thus” as much as those dudes do, thus I will be saying it more.)

I am marinating on this because I am about to have a very yummy book come out and I feel like everyone has been doing everything possible to make sure it hits the scene like a four ton whale stuffed with dynamite. I mean it.  I want this book smashing cars. I want this book to make people stagger around as if covered in whale juice while murmuring, glassy eyed, “That book was just so good.”  And I feel like we all chipped in to make that possible. I will OF COURSE be pimping it out on this site hard core as we get closer, so never fear, but as for now, I just wanted to say that I am very proud how hard the author, the editor, the marketing team, the publisher and I have worked on this, and I feel that no matter what happens, we all gave 110%.

Good. Now I must go. I am off to throw some toilet paper around the bathroom…

 

MUSH! MUSH!

By Barbara Poelle

We’ve all heard the old adage “Unless you’re the lead dog, the view never changes,” and I gotta say I am feeling like the seventh dog when it comes to my in-box. Right now I have about 109 unread requested partials and fulls and another couple dozen unsolicited queries to review. I have about as much chance of getting through these in the next month as Stinky Pete has of coming up with a new come-on line. (Stinky Pete is the “residence challenged” gentleman who hisses the same delightful vulgarity at me maybe once every other week as I head to the train at night after work. Because I am a LADY, I won’t be able to tell you exactly what he says, but suffice to say, I usually come back with a high quality zinger.  I really think we’d have a chance at our own sitcom, Pete and I, if only I was a little more connected and if only he was a little more, oh how shall I say this, sane.)

The thing is, this whole thing is a numbers game, and despite being told there would be no math after 10^th grade, let me break this down for you: I am generally good for about 80 pages an hour. If I request a partial I am usually getting 35-40 pages.  A full generally is good for about 350-400 pages. Now I don’t have my abacus handy, but let’s see, carry the one, and x=the circumference of, and if train B is traveling at …mmmhmm, okay, yes… then that basically boils down to, well, the technical mathematical term as defined by Pythagoras is actually:

A butt load.

And the view never changes.

I really, really want to be reading those partials and fulls. I really do. Today’s partials become tomorrow’s fulls which become Thrursday’s clients and Friday’s child is full of grace or whatever, so I NEED to be reading them. The thing is, everyday is just such a grab bag of madcap adventures where wackiness is ALWAYS ensuing that I just can’t seem to get to more than two or three a day. (And Janet Reid if you DARE to comment on what your turn around time is, I am falling on my sword. And when I say my sword I mean an extra large pizza with mushrooms and onions.  And when I say falling I mean eating.)

Furthermore, to add insult to injury, apparently I have been very good at publically touting how my turn around time is six to eight weeks. Six to eight weeks. Have I been drinking Stinky Pete’s thinkin’ sauce?!?!?

Sure, six to eight weeks…ON MERCURY. (it would have been so much more fitting with my seventh dog analogy here if I could have said, six to eight weeks ON URANUS. But a day on Uranus is only like 10 hours or something and my mom is FOR SURE already going to call and say “Oh, Barbie honey, you’re such a pretty girl, do you have to be so crass?” I think that’s actually on our family seal or something.)

I promise, I WANT to read the work. I am DYING to read the work. I used to be totally FINE turning around work within six weeks. I also used to run a 5K in 24 minutes and comfortably digest cheese. These times they are a changin’.

I guess what this might be, however, is another adage in itself along with the great ones. Something to the effect of:  You are never “truly finished”.

or

It’s all about “the journey”.

or

There ain’t no party like “a west coast party”.

These are the valuable life lessons that have brought me this far, and so perhaps this is just another one masquerading as the virtual e-pile of work I have looming before me.     

In the end, I know what Pythagoras would tell me: do the math. Mathematically speaking, there is a sparkly jewel somewhere in that 109. Maybe, dare I say, two or three.  The only way to truly tell is to read them. So I am off, to read.

Hmmm,  I wonder if Stinky Pete would be interested in an internship this summer? He clearly has a penchant for romance….

Tennis for Vasectomies and Other Incongruities

Barbara Poelle

So I was in Chicago for the Love is Murder conference (a BLAST, by the way, awesome) and I did almost three hours of pitches from authors – exhausting, but each had their own individual style and I had such a quality group of interesting pitches, so my hopes are VERY high.

(When I am being pitched to like that I always picture everyone is my mom or my cousin or my uncle, because generally they are someone’s mom, cousin, uncle and I would go sooo medieval on someone who was rude to my mom. I mean it. I would remove their pancreas with a melon baller.)

But you know what? Pitching for writing is kind of like swimming for quilting. Or tennis for vasectomies. No, hang with me here. It makes about as much sense to tell me about your writing as it does for me to swim about a quilt. I have yet to discover the clear correlation between a great verbal pitch and a perfect narrative execution. In fact, I have actually discovered the opposite is true. I have this author who shall remain nameless, unless I accidentally trip and type Graham Brown’s debut Black Rain, Random House 2010- an exhilarating must read where Indiana Jones meets The Ruins, which I am not going to do because I am not as shameless as that.  Anyway, this nameless author, let’s call him Shlam Shlown, pitched to me at a conference and it was sort of like watching a tree sloth run for its life. At one point I might have dozed off. I know I cried a little. (This is the part where Shlam Shlown yells out, “Hey! I was tired! I JUST got in on the red eye and hadn’t slept!” so go ahead and insert that here). Anyway, I worked with Shlam on his pitch to get it a bit more refined and then I said, “Great work! That makes MUCH more sense. I’d like to see the first ten pages of that, Shlam.”   

Eventually those pages arrived, so I opened them, most likely humming a jaunty tune and thinking about maybe getting a tuna salad from the deli downstairs. I glanced over the query letter (a pilot AND a lawyer…huh) and flipped to the first page and started reading.  

At the end of the first paragraph, I was thinking of topping my tuna salad with caviar as I had in my hands SOLID GOLD WRITING. In fact, when the deli delivery guy came, I simply gave him page one and said, “Keep the change”. He wept with gratitude and I think he now owns Bulgaria.

Let me tell you, brothers and sisters, there is NO WAY I knew what he had when he was talking to me. I mean, sure, a nice hook, but still. NO WAY. If however, he would have sent the pages through normal channels or brought them with him, I would have taken a look earlier and maybe been able to talk my husband into letting me get that Prada messenger bag that I soooo need to own but will now look like a jackhole buying it in this economy when according to him we need these nonsensical items such as “health insurance” and “food”. 

But I get it. Pitching for writing makes sense for authors as they have legitimate excitement in getting some quality face time with someone in the industry, and it’s a nice draw for a conference.  For me, the excitement comes in the same shades of that “first chat on-line with a match.com pick” kind of way, where in a few brief minutes they have said all the stuff you have been longing to hear and promise to hand it all to you with a smile and a rose. Then sometimes, when you actually get the manuscript, it is the equivalent of quickly discovering your dream date has a penchant for bathtub gin and animal tranqs, and gets all amped up and wants you to throw bologna at him and call him Nancy.  Everyone can make their manuscript SOUND like the next Shlam Shlown, but the real proof is in the pudding- er, I guess the bologna-  when I actually get to take a look at the narrative execution.

On the flip side, however, it is very easy to tell when a pitch is NOT what I am looking for, and it has nothing to do with the pitcher and has everything to do with what I am currently looking for to fill my list. Anything from genre to word count can come into play and there is no way that I am out to hurt anyone’s feelings (there are no feelings in publishing), but I don’t want to waste anyone’s time including my own. So, generally, I will simply tell the truth, “That doesn’t really sound like what I am looking for right now, but thank you for taking the time to chat with me about your work.” See? Now THAT’S a melon baller friendly kind of statement if I ever heard one.

So I guess what I am trying to say is that pitches aren’t my favorite but don’t ever sweat it if you decide to verbally pitch your work to me, because even if you fall down, or I cry a little, as long as you can get a sentence out and it sounds like something I would REMOTELY be interested in, I’m gonna ask to see some of it.

Then you too could be the next Shlam Shlown. 

Maybe Baby...

Barbara Poelle

In my youth I made a few minor errors in judgment. You know, like for example when I thought I could jump a retaining wall on my roller blades, or when I convinced myself I was a bee whisperer, or like, say, all of 1998.

 

Regardless of my oh-so-minor errors in judgment my father would appear with the appropriate empathy/antiseptic/bail money and he would always tell me, “You get to make every mistake in the world- just only make it once.” And I have done my best to stick by that motto..except when it comes to one issue, I am still a sucker every time:

 

THE MAYBE MANUSCRIPT.

 

The MAYBE MANUSCRIPT is as elusive to identify as a Cylon. For those of you who are not Battlestar Gallactica fans it means that a MAYBE MANUSCRIPT looks and sounds like a YES! MANUSCRIPT, but there is something intrinsically, illusively wrong  about its construct that leaves you subconsciously uncertain about its overall value to the current market. (Counselors, approach the bench: just because I watch BSG does not mean I like sci-fi. It means I like looking at Lee Adama. Don’t send me your sci-fi.) The MAYBE MANUSCRIPT will convince you that you should represent it despite that nagging feeling that it may be detrimental to the safety and sanity of the rest of the crew because your total inability to place it after signing will lead to weeping at the weekly meetings and to eating your feelings at night by consuming more than two Boca Burgers with extra mustard in one sitting. 

 

Do you see the danger here? But like Charlie Brown to Lucy’s football, I still occasionally go barreling at that MAYBE MANUSCRIPT yelling, “This time will be different!” and then well well, whaddya know! I am laying on my back covered in dirt and mustard.

 

All agents and editors have their own Achilles for the MAYBE’s, but speaking for myself, The MAYBE MANSCRIPT, that saucy siren, will disguise itself as a YES! MANUSCRIPT in three ways:

 

MAYBE 37

This occurs when MAYBE is query number 37 on a day where all submissions seem to have been sent by very angry people who are certain that I am personally keeping their steampunk-thriller-featuring-a-coming-of-age-story-about-a-young-girl-and-her-shape shifting-horse from the Times List. MAYBE 37 sidles up to the screen and has an interesting idea backed by competent writing and a solid impression of where it belongs market place. MAYBE 37 will hypnotize you with its lovely turns of phrase, as beige narrative becomes magenta when cushioned by the previous 36 that came before it. This is a book that is totally and unabashedly whelming. (Hey, you were warned looong ago about ept and gruntled.) MAYBE 37 gets in because I am not thriving on billable hours; I have to leap into the trenches to create THE ONE if need be. And so I sign MAYBE 37 and I nurture it and care for it and then eat three Bocas when 19 houses turn it down because although competent, it wasn’t ever going to be a true stand out in the genre.

 

(MAYBE 37 also has a fraternal twin known as MAYBE I HAVE HAD TOO MUCH COFFEE when a manuscript comes in that does something so original it is almost offensive and I think I am  going to create a whole new audience, nay, a whole new GENRE!

 

ROAR!

Uh, I’m not. )

 

 

 

MAYBE HILTON

This is an entertaining non-fiction book but do we really need this in the world? For example, MAYBE HILTON could be on a certain subject matter, and the author could have a nice reach into an esoteric circle of readers but how does this seriously apply to the greater reading world at large? What can I tell an editor about the reading public’s likeliness that they too will want to check out a hilarious memoir about a Canadian mail carrier who dreams of being a hockey star? Every once in a while I will work and work on the platform with MAYBE HILTON’s author and I will knock on doors until my knuckles bleed in order for someone to see the joys of such a unique take on Zamboni drivers, but sometimes, it just can’t happen. Ugh, I am such a sucker for the humorous MAYBE HILTON that if it is funny, I can’t help but take a run at it. And then?

Dirt and mustard.

 

MAYBE YOU CAN NEVER LOOK ME IN THE FACE AGAIN

MAYBE Y.C.N.L.M.I.T.F.A. occurs when your best friend/aunt/favorite pizza counter dude asks you to take a look at their manuscript. And there is that terrible moment when you are reading and the husband has just shot the dog and husband is spelled with a Z when a tiny voice says, “Mayyybe I can make this work out.”

No.

No, I can’t.

But I also can’t go back to Aunt Mildred and say, “Were you drunk? This is mule puke.” So MAYBE Y.C.N.L.M.I.T.F.A comes with a ball and chain caveat- although I would NEVER take something on out of guilt, I will always read it and go elbows deep into explaining why a 225K word novel written in second person just ain’t commercially viable. Because if I don’t? It’s going to be a cold, pizza-less Christmas.

 

I know better. I do. I know when a YES! MANUSCRIPT comes by…I always say it’s just like listening to that Orff piece Carmen Burana. (Counselors, approach the bench: just because I listen to classical music does not mean I am classy. It means I married a man who is. Don’t send me classy things.) With a YES! MANUSCRIPT, there is this bubbling, driving swell of angst and excitement as I read which leads me to think that calling someone from my home at 9 p.m. on a Saturday to sign them is the right thing to do. That’s not to say I can sell every YES!MANUSCRIPT I sign, ( I don’t want to TALK about that historical fiction. Ever.) but I for sure, 100%, cannot sell a MAYBE.

 

But still.

 

I am me, after all.

 

Sometime soon, I won’t be able to help myself.

 

I will approach the hive and whisper soothingly to the bees:

 

“This time will be different.”

Be AFRAID, be very AFRAID

Barbara Poelle

The wickedly talented Grand Central editor Jaime Levine and I were enjoying a recent outing together when I commented it’s been a while since I was sure that both Pennywise and The Other were standing in my closet.

 

I’ve just been needing a good old fashioned scare from a book.

 

So we get into a normal run of the mill discussion on some of the great ones, when she causually mentions, “I have this book coming out soon and…well…I’ll send you a copy and see what you think.” Of course I politely nod and smile and inquire about the plotline. Jaime says, “Well, it basically takes place between the hours of 10 p.m. and dawn in this small town in Wisconsin. There is a helicopter crash and then something starts killing people.”

 

Well, okay, I’m in. But not like, cannonball in. I’m just wading, you know, maybe up-to- my-calves-while-holding-a-tropical-drink in.

 

Jaime sends me the book.

 

Good cover. Nice, ominous colors. Striking imagery without being cartoon-y. Hefty in the hands but not daunting. A delightful mass market paperback with a solid one word title and an author whose name you can really bite into.

 

Afraid. By Jack Kilborn.

 

Okay, sure. Innocently, I pop it in my bag where it is safely nestled between an umbrella and my ereader. Maybe the corner creasing a bit from being nudged by my uber presumptuous stainless steel eco friendly klean kanteen, but otherwise innocuous, it rides quietly home with me on the subway on a brisk winter Friday night.  

 

There is a delicious dinner when I get home (thanks babe) and some chatter. I unload my bag, stacking the contents nearby, flip open my ereader and settle in to read some manuscripts. My husband wanders by my roost on the couch. “What’s this?”

 

“A book Jaime gave me.”

 

“Can I check it out?”

 

“Yup.” (I may have also added, “Ooh, let’s make some popcorn.”)

 

So the Poelles nestle in for a craaaazy Friday night in New York City, the only sound the munching of popcorn and the flipping of pages as he settles in with Afraid. (I’m ereading, my pages don’t make noise.) About seven minutes later, Travis murmurs, “Whoa.” I glance up. Two minutes after that, “Oh, God.” I look up for a full beat. Thirty seconds later, “Oh, no…OH NO.”

 

I flop my ereader into my lap, “What? What’s happening?”

 

“This book, I, uh, it’s really scary.”

 

So I do that face (the same face, incidentally, that I use when his food looks better than mine, or I am cold and my sweater is sooo far away, or I want to watch the Die Hard marathon instead of go to MoMA) and he rolls his eyes and hands over the book.

 

Oh.

 

My.

 

God.

 

People, this is the kind of book where you wish you had arms like Sarasvati, one set of hands to hold the book and the other to cover your eyes while reading. I don’t want to get into too much detail here, (which is hilarious because I spent about 40 minutes outlining the entire book to Holly Root last week and in retrospect I think all she said was “Are you gonna have the soup?”) but let’s just say that, yes, this is a story about a small town in Wisconson from the hours of ten p.m. and dawn. There is a helicopter crash, and apparently something from that crash is systematically killing people. And oh yes, the people are not killed, ohh, what is the word I am looking for here. Can I say kindly? Gently? Hmm, okay, let’s see…sometimes there was silence. Sometimes there was screaming. And I am talking about me, here.

 

The thing about Afraid is that yes, there is violence and gore and of course the word “gratuitous” may be bandied about, but what I like about the violence is that it isn’t mysogonistic. The rage is equally and horrifically distributed between all the sexes; the only difference in the splatter is the blood type. And I gotta tell you, some of these ‘Sconnies do not go down with a whimper and a sigh. (Glossary: ‘Sconnies. What us Minnesota kids affectionately call Wisconsin kids…I have long tried to get my Sconnie friends to call us “’Sotes” but it hasn’t caught on yet) You spend the book vacilating between cheering them on and weeping with fear because you quickly fall in love with this little town and ohmygod she is just trying to hide and stay as quiet as possible as what goes on below surpasses human comprehension please please please stay quiet  and then you turn and look and it is 2 am and your husband is sleeping gently beside you but you’re completely freaked so you poke him awake and then fake that you didn’t because he would be mad but you just don’t want to be alone when you click off the light.

 

So, yeah, uh, it scared me. Last night I was 99% sure that ________ was in my closet.  (oh no, you’ll get no spoilers from me, dear friends, let me just say I am going to super

glue my socks on for, oh, say, the next year or so). This book is not for the faint of heart, so if you are the type of reader who will be setting aside Pride and Prejudice or  The Notebook, thinking “I wonder what that adorable Barbara Poelle was talking about” just remember:

 

You’ve been warned.

 

Afraid will hit the shelves in about two months, so if you are interested in understanding why I still find myself listening for the floor creak that doesn’t quite fit the others or can’t quite look at a pocket swiss army knife the same again, it I promise it won’t kill you to preorder on Amazon.

 

Well, perhaps I shouldn’t make that particular promise.

 

Happy screaming.

 

 

 

 

The Big Five

Barbara Poelle

Five Plotlines I’d Kill to See

So Grand Central has this amazing book coming out this spring (tune in next week for me to GO BONKERS about it in this blog, and I mean BONKERS) and it really got me to thinking about what I would kill to see in my slush pile. And I’m not talking about “Oh, I would kill to have tickets to see Carrot Top.” I am talking about leaping out from the closet wielding a chainsaw wearing a rubber mask and galoshes kill to have the chance at signing. I feel pretty confident that typing these out ensures that they are now hurtling through space and time towards me, but it’s a Tuesday and there’s a new President so I may just be feeling wildly optimistic.

Okay, in no particular order

1.       It Devours From Beneath.

So, here’s what I am thinking. Small town. Quirky yet authentic characters. I’d like a Sherriff’s Deputy who is constantly under the umbrella of her father’s stint as Sheriff, but maybe daddy wasn’t such a great guy. Character driven- maybe sleepy bayou town? I’d like people to be dying horrific deaths. I’d like the culprit to be something that devours from beneath. I don’t care if its DNA is all bling’ed out or if pollution forced it into shallow waters, or if it is a megladon, just give me something devouring from beneath. Think Northern Exposure meets Jaws. Think Tremors. Just give me something that makes me check the closet or the swimming pool or both. Oh, and maybe give the heroine a police dog. For five extra points you can name the dog Justice.  (For ten extra points you can find out why).

 

2.       Moonlighting meets Psych

Remember how awesome Maddie Hayes and David Addison were? The bees being, the bears bearing and the doors slamming, and through it all that fabulous chemistry. I would like a series featuring two detectives that have such electric magnetism together that they make you want to commit a crime just to have the pleasure of them hunting you down. But to add an extra layer I would like it if either one or both of them had an ability or- wait for it- a disabilty that made them a particularly adept partner. Maybe one is blind and so they can smell things at the crime scene. Maybe one is deaf and so is extremely adept at reading body language. I don’t know, but give me good old fashioned chemistry meets unique new twist.

 

3.       Sigma Chi Till You Die

I used to love reading Christopher Pike’s books when I was 12, because sometimes it was the cute cheerleader who was chopping the heads off of the varsity football team. Now maybe this is the vodka doing the typing, butI would like to see a femme fatale in the vein of Basic Instinct but with a Legally Blonde type of approach. Say protagonist A kills her husband and then protagonist B finds out and blackmails her into killing her husband, but protagonist A decides to kill B instead. Lots of black, black humor.  And give me a finale like the trailer fight scene between Uma Thurman and Darryl Hannah in Kill Bill Vol. 2

 

4.       The YA YA’s Standing by Me

So go back and read The Body by Stephen King and then watch some girly movies (That came out wrong. I don’t mean girly movies I mean chick flicks) and give me something from the 50’s or 60’s or 70’s where something horrific has happened and how it is processed as adults. Wait, I think I just stole that entire plotline from IT. But you know what I mean. It doesn’t have to be a thriller or horror novel, think more like commercial fiction. We can kill somebody’s husband again in this one, but let’s have some flashbacks here too.

 

5.       Zombies Zombies Everywhere and None to Drink

There is nothing better than a good old fashioned apocalypse novel. Okay, I know that many people will tell you that zombies are so passé, those people should be checked for excessive red eye because me thinks thou doth protest too mucheth. I love to read these as I love to imagine myself in those circumstances (hit the pharmacy first and then a pawn shop NOT a sporting goods store, those will be picked clean, but pawn shops will have many useful items as well). And having an apocalypse is fine, but having something that chases you during the apocalypse is better. Vampires, infected folks, Republicans, anything.  It can be a bit steam-punk or a bit sci-fi but at the very least give me something lurching through dark subway tunnels and a backpack snagged on a ladder rung.

(Side bar: Hey, mom, I’ll save you the call:  “steam-punk” is like that movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or the movie Wild Wild West, with Will Smith, where they take inventions from today that they couldn’t have had in, say, Victorian times and power them by steam. Almost like Mad Max but those guys had gasoline. And Tina Turner. )

So there you have it. These are the five plot lines that I am currently stalking in the field. The big commonality I see here is that they all must be character driven, and so in the end, I guess that is what I am truly restless for.

Well, that, and something devouring from beneath.

 

 

 

Big Goals

Barbara Poelle

At a recent pee wee hockey game, my five-year-old nephew scored his first goal. Ever.  Unfortunately as we live 1500 miles away we were not there to see it, but when he came home, he called us and well, hot diggity dog we howled and celebrated like it was November 4^th all over again.

There is something so delightful, so thrilling about a phone call with good news, and I am lucky enough to have a career  where it appears as one of the perks of the job. A client once made fun of me saying she knew I was calling about an offer, because I had a “barely restrained squeak” to my voice on the message- which I scoffed at, but yes, truth be told, my vestigial tail was wagging.  I just love those phone calls and I do my best not to turn into a 15-year-old girl from the valley who just got asked to the prom, but sometimes I can’t help it.

Lately, though, I have been feeling like I am losing that personal quality in my discourse when dealing with my private life.  Oh sure, I’ll text and email friends and family, but am I being an actual friend or just a cyber friend? Ooo! Ooo! Wouldn’t that be a great Saturday morning cartoon? The Cyberfriends! My name will be The Dish and it will be a double entendre because I will be sassy and adorable but my super powers will directly correlate to how many carbs I have consumed. I will wear an alluring- but not skanky!- blue lycra suit and a tasteful yellow cape and sport a picture of spaghetti and tofu meatballs on the front. 

Yes, I said tofu meatballs.

But I digress.

When my grandfather was in the war he wrote my grandmother about a gazillion letters.  Those letters held such a rich tapestry of family lore, of undeniable realism, and they FELT like history.  Even the stamps told a story. Now I blog, I log, I google, I twitter, I do things that a decade ago weren’t even words, much less verbs and I am starting to worry: what if I want to have a torrid love affair ala Bridges of Madison County or Benjamin Button? What is my kid gonna read while feeling a mixture of betrayal and rage yet also a deep sense of humility? An old iphone? How bouge-y. (That’s my slang for bourgeois. Also because I have no idea how to spell bourgeois. Regardless, I think I am supposed to say freedom fries instead anyway.)

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I loves me some technology. If there was a fire and I could save either my ereader or my husband I would miss him terribly and think of him constantly while I was uploading. But I doubt if The Fountainhead would have meant as much to me if I hadn’t felt the weight of it in my hands transferring from right to left as I passed the mid-point of the novel.  And I adore that my copy of Anne-Marie MacDonald’s Fall On Your Knees has my maiden name written inside and entire segments have been taped and retaped in. And if I hadn’t been in that bookstore in Santa Cruz 8 years ago (Aahh, see? The tofu meatballs are making sense now...) I would never have been able to introduce the sales clerk to the joys of Anne Lamott.  

I guess what I am getting at here is that I am going to do a better job of calling my grandmother, rather than e-mailing. (Although it is hilarious to instant chat with her). And maybe rather than texting happy birthday to my friend I will pick up the phone and sing it. (A voice like an angel, I tell you, AN ANGEL!) I am going to remember how much I enjoy those calls to my clients in my professional life and vow to be involved in less communication and more communicating in my personal life.

There, I feel much better.

Now off to google blue lycra….

Spacing Out in '09

Barbara Poelle

Greetings and salutations! I realize I have some wildly brilliant, kitten-heeled shoes to fill as the Lady Reid click-clacks her way off into the sunset, so I will do my best to try not to single handedly annihilate the readership.  However, I cannot promise that I won’t attempt to casually try out new words because can someone please tell me what is going on with being “inept” or “disgruntled” but nobody is ever “ept” or “gruntled”? All I am saying is, I will do my darnedest to dazzle and inform, but be prepared for some turns of phrase that may leave you feeling sullied and alone.

Serial blogging is a bit of a new adventure for me. I have done several guest blogs and I love to hear myself verbally pontificate at conferences and workshops on the finer points of, oh, say, the sub-genre specific  euphemisms in romances or the necessity of a multifaceted publicity approach for new authors, but the weekly exploration of industry, craft and creativity is going to be a new one for me.  However, what a perfect time for new adventures and risk taking- it’s a new year! A clean slate!  A freshly tapped keg!

The double whammy is that our agency just moved into new digs. I have a fancy new office with a fancy new desk that has that new car smell, and all the bells and whistles that are mine to ring and blow. I sit in my brand new leather swivel chair and survey my kingdom of covers and queries cackling with glee… but when the glass door closes and I feel mildly ill from the spinning, I realize that I am in a brand new space- and I mean that in every sense of the word-so how do I make it the right space for me?

The “space” for a proper, creative working environment is so important in ALL aspects of this industry. As a writer, you have to be “scribbling away” in a proper environment, and I have to be reading in one. This new office has amazing flow and energy (yes, I am one of THOSE people), and it is stunning and sparkly and absolutely conducive to success for all of our agents. But what is that thing, that feeling, I can’t quite put my finger on, of how to make the “space” mine in which to produce astounding feats of agenting? Of course, there is one specific thing the new space does not provide- specifically the Ethel to my Lucy, the incorrigible Holly Root of the Waxman Agency- there was nearly a full scale surgical procedure to remove us at the hip. But what was it about my stinky old chair, my doorless suite, my chipped desk that created such a positive environment? Think, Poelle! Think! Do I need a goldfish? Should I burn some sage? (Root, you know I did.) What does “creating space” mean?

Well, let’s break it down. Creating my space means of course, the right chair (ooh, swivel-y!) a solid work surface (smell that? That’s the smell of winning) and some shelves to brag upon (Check out that A Hint of Wicked cover, eh?)Hmm, okay. Let’s see. Creating my space also means attacking my queries with the same voracity I attack my contracts- because queries become contracts. Creating my space means attending conferences where I listen as much as I speak. Creating my space means taking a chance on a new voice. Creating my space means cutting back on coffee, laughing more than yelling, having chocolate at 3pm, praising more than cursing, brainstorming more than just storming and simply loving every single minute of being an agent.

Well, look at that. This is my space after all.

How gruntling! (hey, I warned you...)

Whether a promise to create the space in a busy day full of kiddies and carpools to have some time to finish that novel, or to purge the home shelves to make space for the manifestation of that 2009 Edgar, make the space for something in your life this year.  Even if it’s simply a new swivel-y chair.

Wheeeee!