Guest Blogger: Dana Fredsti
At long last, Dana Fredsti is here to blog about her experience getting her first novel published. Dana is a mystery novel, short story and screenplay writer, B-movie actress (okay, C movie actress), zombie aficionado, exotic and domestic feline advocate, swordfighter, wine lover and beach glass junkie. You can visit her online at DanaFredsti.com.
Getting published is not an easy thing. And how’s THAT for a most simplistic stating of the obvious statement you’ve read in a while? But it’s true. I’m sure there are publishing urban legends the equivalent of Lana Turner being discovered in Schwab’s Drugstore; some of them might even be true. But most of the time the instant success stories are fabricated by publicist spin-doctors. The kid who wrote Eragon, for instance, self-published the book and promoted it relentlessly with the help of his family, building up a readership at fantasy conventions and such before being noticed and then picked up by a major publisher. Good for him, btw!
The first draft of MURDER FOR HIRE: The Peruvian Pigeon (henceforth referred to as MFH) was written in a month, by my best friend Maureen and myself. We alternated chapters and character POVs and wrote the entire thing longhand. I had semi-legible handwriting back then (it’s since deteriorated into ‘I should be a doctor’ illegibility) and Maureen printed instead of using cursive, so it wasn’t too hard to transcribe it with my step-dad’s then state-of-the-art word processor. He had a snazzy dot matrix printer. Remember those? The ones that used the paper that came in perforated folds and you had to separate each page and remove the side strips? Yes, folks, that’s how long ago we wrote the first draft. There were a few gaping holes in the story; places where we’d scribble ‘need action here!’ or ‘this doesn’t make sense. Fix! But we pretty much had what we thought was a pretty smokin’ first draft. In fact, we thought it was so good, we sent out a slew of query letters before we’d even typed the thing up. We figured we’d have a few months before hearing back from any of the publishers (this was back in the days when you could still send manuscripts directly to publishers and have a shot at it being read), which gave us plenty of time for typing and tweaking. Imagine our surprise -- and panic -- when we got a reply with a request to see the entire book from an editor with St. Martin’s Press less than a week after sending out the first batch of queries.
This prompted a three day and night marathon of revisions and filling in those holes as we typed it up. I did the actual typing because I was the better typist. Maureen sat in a chair next to me and added her opinions/commentary as I typed. We were hopped up on chocolate and/or Beringer white zinfandel for most of the marathon. The sugar/caffeine/alcohol cocktail combined with sleep deprivation made us very loopy by the last night (and all of this no doubt account for some of the things that made their way into the finished first draft). I still remember typing madly at 3am by the light of the word processor and a small desk lamp when Maureen suddenly said in a singsong voice, “Dude, if you were a supermodel, would you rather be Cindy Crawford or Paulina what’s-her-name?” After staring at her in disbelief, my reply was a borderline hysterical “I don’t know! I don’t know!” before turning back to the computer and continuing to pound the keys like some insane pianist. Maureen, btw, preferred Cindy Crawford. I still haven’t made my choice.
I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise to anyone that St. Martin’s Press politely declined to publish the first incarnation of MFH. Maureen and I are still both a bit mortified we thought it was even close to publication-ready when we sent it in. But talk about a wasted opportunity. The mystery market wasn’t glutted at the time, we’d gotten a crack at a major publishing house without even trying…and we blew it because we didn’t have the common sense to make sure our finished product was a: finished and b: well written before sending off query letters. Points for hubris, same points taken away for stupidity.
It took me approximately 16 years from the time the first draft was written to get MFH published. During that time span the manuscript was: stuffed in a drawer (or the electronic equivalent) for a few years; underwent massive rewrites at least 5 times; waited patiently while query letters and the first three chapters went out to agents and publishers; collected many rejection letters, and was occasionally sent out in its entirety to interested parties. Sometimes it was returned with polite ‘no thanks, not what we’re looking for’ and twice it was returned with ‘we like it, but it needs work in these areas.’ So I’d do rewrites and try to fix the problem areas indicated, but could never get it to the point the interested parties actually wanted to publish it.
During this same 16 year period I had short stories and essays published and a couple of screenplays produced, but I couldn’t seem to break through the wall of book publishing. I really wanted to get MFH published and had built a pretty solid emotional and creative barrier that got in the way of really committing to another novel project. My break finally came because of a writer friend, Brad Linaweaver, who’d read every draft of MFH (except for the first one, which is buried in a secret crypt never to again see the light of day) and thought it deserved to be published. He championed it to James Rock with James Rock Publishing Inc. and after a long wait during which James Rock read two incarnations of MFH, it was accepted for publication in February 2007. It was a long road to publication, but so worth it to finally hold the finished bound copy! Now I’m on the long road of publicity, but that’s a story for another day.
Please feel free to post any questions you have for Dana, and she'll be around to answer them. Meanwhile, The Peruvian Pigeon is for sale at amazon.com and other fine retail establishments. Thanks, Dana!
Comments
Are you actually in the house, or is this whole riggamarole being conducted through the intranets, which, as we know, is more of a series of tubes than it is a dump truck (thanks, Ted Stevens, you crazy ol' crackerbarrel)?
I've always been a little curious about the subtitle. Is "Peruvian Pigeon" supposed to be camp, or is this a reference that's simply beyond me? Am I stirring deep, repressed shingles of anger by even asking? Oh, how I love those shingles of anger.
Hubbicula! To which house are you referring? I am currenlty in MY house on my laptop, which would involve those 'net tubes. Peruvian Pigeon is a VERY broad parody of Maltese Falcon. It's also the name of MFH's most popular show we performed back in the day. Not sure about those shingles of anger. They sound kinda painful, though!
IG...that's a really good question. I'm trying to remember what kept me going aside from sheer stubborness...but I really think it was the need to get closure on this project. It represents a very fun and important period of my life, as well as my friendshp with Maureen and after a while I was sure I had a well written book that deserved to be published. So...I just kept going. I'd have periods where I'd stop sending it out, then get inspired again. The rejections and the reasons given were really frustrating - they'd contradict one another 'we love the characters, but the mystery needs work' and 'the plot is engaging, but the characters don't capture my attention' within the space of the same week. Argh... Anyway, I've always been like one of those punching dolls - you hit it it, it goes down and then slowly comes back up again... Hope that answers your question!
Congratulations on getting MFH published.
Besides this one, do you have any other novels tucked away that you've been submitting for publication?
Again, please accept my congratulations. The book looks like a lot of fun, I can't wait to pick it up. :-)
D, I guess it depends on how the crazy in the brain manifests itself. Mine is fairly benign...
Valerae, thanks for the congrats! I am working on the second in the series (at least I hope it will be a series!) and while Maureen isn't involved in the writing, she has let me bounce ideas off of her (I try not to leave bruises), has memories of our shows that I've lost (an invaluable asset), and...well...there really is no Daphne without Maureen. I don't have any finished novels tucked away at present, but I DO have half a dozen screenplays. Does that count? :-)
Other Lisa, I will be writing posts on the road to publicity, but i have to say other writers have been my greatest allies in the road to getting publicity. Just a tremendously generous group of people. I hope to return the favor to all of 'em!