Writing popular fiction

recalled to the home world—their death notices being cover
stories—to deal with a crisis that has arisen there. On the home world, a
supernatural beast has appeared, one which does not fit into either maseni or
human mythology. Unlike other supernatural creatures, it cannot seem to live in
harmony with its fellows, but wishes only to destroy. Because they know nothing
of it, they have no spells, charms, or devices to use against it. They have been
undertaking the investigation of the beast's origins in secret, because they
know that anti-maseni Pure Earthers would make great propaganda out of the news that the maseni did not, after all, exist in complete harmony with their supernatural brethren. (The Pure Earthers appear at several points in the story, extreme racial bigots who want the aliens and the supernatural characters all put in their places again—out of sight and mind.)
    Tesserax enlists Jessie's and Brutus' help in solving the problem, asks them to track down this elusive and dangerous beast, on the maseni home world. They will depart Earth in a day or so.
    "Book Two: The Beast at Midnight": Jessie and Brutus reach the maseni home world and begin their investigation in cooperation with the alien police. They find that the beast's claws and fangs are as dangerous to the maseni supernatural creatures as to the flesh and blood maseni, an unheard of thing. Supernatural people are vulnerable only to spells, chants, silver bullets, wooden stakes through the heart, and other complicated devices. The supernatural people are as terrified of the new beast as are the real people, but refuse to give out any information that they have. Jessie cannot understand this duplicity until, at last, he and Brutus discover that the beast is the product of a mating between a human supernatural and a maseni supernatural. The maseni supernaturals want to find some way of dealing with this thing themselves before it becomes public knowledge and, as a consequence, intermarriage of supernatural races is forbidden because of one bad result. Jessie, when he knows the parentage of the beast, is able to combine a pair of supernatural devices—one which would hurt the mother, one which would hurt the father—and use them in concert to destroy the mindless beast that the two 'races of ethereal creatures have created. Triumph. Return to Earth.
    End of Outline
    When the editor agrees to contract for a novel from sample chapter and outline, you are given a deadline to meet. In the paperback field, you usually have three or four months to deliver the completed script, unless the novel is complex and important enough to warrant a longer creative period. In a hardcover contract, you may be given anywhere from six months to a year, and even longer for special projects. In either case, paperback or hardback, you will be given half your advance money on signing the contract and half on delivery of publishable manuscript. If you should not be able to deliver the script, you must return the original payment. Few writers default on this, but the potential for default is what keeps new or unproven writers from obtaining contracts in this manner.
    10.
Who publishes the genre I'm most interested in
? It would be difficult, in a book intended to remain timely for a number of years, to give you a solid marketing list for each category. My suggestion, then, is that you do what I did, when I was a new writer, to keep up with markets for genre novels: first, read as much as you can and note the publisher of each novel, so you gain firsthand knowledge of what each house's line is like; second, buy
Writer's Digest
magazine every month in order to take advantage of their market lists, and purchase the hardbound annual,
Writer's Market
, which the same people publish. And then, good luck!
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