Write Good or Die

published author? Or should I do the responsible thing and get a well-paying office job?
    "You aren’t allowed to give up," my girlfriend (now my wife) told me. "You’re a writer, whether you get paid for it or not."
    She was right. I’d be miserable doing anything else.
    So I decided to write a blockbuster.
    My previous approach to writing was very free-form and unstructured. I’d write when I felt like it, about whatever I felt like. My growing pile of form letter rejections was testament to how well this worked for me. I needed to regroup.
    The term “high-concept” is often bandied around Hollywood, used to describe movies that have strong, central hooks. Blockbuster novels have hooks as well. "Shark kills swimmers on New York beach." "Little girl is possessed by the devil." "Science learns to clone dinosaurs." "FBI trainee interviews a captured serial killer." I wanted to write something like that—something that could be described in a brief sentence, but still perfectly conveyed the story idea.
    Coming up with a catchy hook on which to base ninety thousand words was easier said than done. I took a break from writing to brainstorm. How could I put a new spin on an old concept? What topic could capture the public’s imagination?
    I decided on something with universal appeal. The hook: Satan is being held and studied in a secret government laboratory.
    It would be a cross between Jurassic Park and the Exorcist. A thriller that pits cutting-edge technology against thousands of years of theology. Plus, it had the biggest monster of them all—an eight-foot-tall, cloven-hoofed Beelzebub, complete with bat wings, horns, and a predilection for eating live sheep.
    To do the story justice, I knew I had to research the hell out of it, so to speak. When I had a confident grasp of the science and religion involved, I worked on developing characters that would interact with the demon, and then a storyline that would do the concept proud.
    A year later, my techno thriller Origin was completed.
    Now what was I supposed to do with it?
    I went back to my Rejection Book to review my previous queries, and was surprised to see how poor they were. The letters fell into two distinct categories: egocentric and desperate. Rather than succinctly pitch my novels, I had been begging for them to be read, or stating how rich I’d make the publisher once they bought me.
    Plus, I was shocked to see typos and poor grammar, not only in the queries, but in the sample chapters I’d submitted.
    For Origin , I needed a different approach. I decided to do the same thing publishers do to sell books. Namely, an ad campaign.
    Rather than a standard query letter and sample chapters, I put together a four-page package. The first page was a two-paragraph excerpt from the novel, when the hero first sees Satan sitting in a gigantic plexiglass cage. The second page was styled like back-jacket copy, describing the story and the hook in a few sentences. The third page was an author bio, with black-and-white photo. The final page was a simple note stating that the book was seeking representation, and my phone number.
    No SASE. No return address. I didn’t even personalize the note.
    I made one hundred and twenty submission packages and sent one to every agent in the Writer’s Digest Literary Agent Guide .
    I sent these on a Thursday.
    By Tuesday, I had five agent phone calls, all demanding to see the book.
    I was in shock. Usually, an agent response took between three and ten weeks. Now I had them fighting over me. What should I do?
    Luckily, I had previous agent experience, so I knew how to approach the situation.
    When I finished my first novel, I sent it to six NY agents, and one of them took me on. I sat back and waited for the money to roll in.
    Eighteen months later, and the agent isn’t returning my calls. When I finally pin this person down, I find out the agent submitted my book to a total of two editors in a year and a half.
    This time, I wanted to hire an agent who would work for me. I wanted to be involved in every aspect of the submission process. My next agent would keep me informed, be my biggest advocate, and help me build a career.
    After several phone interviews with ultimately twelve agents, I decided on Todd Keithley from Jane Dystel Literary Management. Todd was my age, had a specific plan to market me, and most of all, loved the book.
    There was rewriting. And more rewriting. And more rewriting.
    Todd generated a buzz in NY