"I'll meet you at the registration booth then. Do you have everything you need for the interview?"
Jane rolled her eyes. "Yes, Mommy."
When Jane arrived in the interview area early, she peeked in the door. Three tables had been set up in the room where the dessert party had been held. Each had two people sitting on opposite sides and a placard with the name of the editor or agent. She was early, so she sat down on a chair in the hallway, waiting with the two other eager, nervous interviewees. They exchanged smiles all around, but didn't speak.
A few minutes later, the door opened and twowomen and one man walked out. One woman was smiling. The other two people looked disappointed.
Jane and the other two women she'd waited with rose and entered the room. Jane went to the desk with a card saying "Gretta Green." This was the first agent she had an interview with.
Jane leaned across the table and shook the woman's hand. "I'm Jane Jeffry, and I'm pleased to meet you, Ms. Green." She handed over the folder with the first three chapters and the outline.
The agent pulled out the papers, set aside the chapters, and went to the outline first.
"Oh, it's an historical novel, isn't it?"
"Yes, but it has a mystery element, too."
"But it's historical," Ms. Green said with a frown. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but historicals are dead and gone. Nobody's doing them anymore."
Jane didn't know quite what to say to this, but pulled herself together and managed, "But I've read a lot of historical mysteries that have been recently published."
"Yes, maybe so. But mystery is the main thrust of the books, not the historical element. And the outline suggests that's almost all historical. I'm sorry. It's not something our agency does. Good luck. It's been nice meeting you. Take my business card in case you decide to rewrite it as a pure mystery."
She handed back the folder, gave Jane her business card, and smiled dismissal.
There was nothing for Jane to do but thank her and get the hell out of the room.
She glanced at her watch once she was outside in the hall. Her fifteen-minute interview hadn't lasted quite four minutes.
Shelley could tell it hadn't gone well when she spotted Jane moping at the registration area.
"Struck out?" she asked sympathetically.
"I was in there less than four minutes, Shelley. She said it's too much of an historical novel and not enough of a mystery. Odd how fast someone can devastate someone's hopes."
"How could she tell that fast?"
"She skimmed the outline and made a prune face."
"She's an ignorant child, Jane. I took a look at her through a crack in the door. She can't be more than seventeen. Pay no attention. You still have two interviews to go. And you need to put this one out of your mind. When is the next one?"
"At the break at three this afternoon. This little girl who tossed me out had the nerve to give me her business card and said I could contact her if I rewrote the book."
"No! That sure takes a lot of gall. She obviously isn't the agent you'd want, no matter what. The other agent is a baby agent, too, isn't she?"
"Yes, and she's named Tiffany. She's probably fifteen years old," Jane said.
"Buck up, Jane. Breakfast will give you the en-ergy. The first session starts in an hour and we need to coordinate who goes to which seminar. You go to your first choice, of course. And tell me your second choice and I'll go to it and take notes like mad."
Shelley's brisk orders helped Jane over her disappointment. But only a little bit.
The restaurant was crowded. Fortunately, most of the guests were finishing up breakfast and Shelley and Jane were served in a relatively short time. In the brief spell between the ordering and the arrival of the food, they'd worked out the schedule for the morning seminars.
Jane would attend "Time and Again," about historical mysteries, and Shelley would take notes on "Brightening Up Your Submission."
They wolfed down their food and headed to separate meeting rooms. Unfortunately, Gretta Green was one of the speakers and cited Jane's book proposal, though not by specific name, as a perfect example of what her agency didn't want to handle. She was the first speaker and Jane wanted to bolt to the suite and have a good cry. But she stuck it out.
The second speaker was a grown-up editor. At
least thirty-five years old. And as politely as she
could, she told the group that Gretta was wrong.
"Readers of both sexes like a strong sense of
different times and circumstances. It's a wider
audience than most agents realize." She listed by
name several of her publishing house's bestsellers that were as much history as mystery.
Gretta just smiled condescendingly through this part of the introduction as if she knew better than the seasoned editor. Jane was glad she'd stayed.
The third speaker was an historical writer of some renown for yet another publisher, and she backed up what the editor before her had said.
"I've received more fan mail for the first two books in my historical series than I earned from all ten of my first books, which had a contemporary setting," she said.
She also went on to explain that she'd cut her publishing teeth on category romances, as many other writers had, and she and they had come to mysteries or thrillers with a lot of experience in writing and found it a wonderful change from the restrictions of short romances. Many of these former romance writers, including herself, had done historical romances and knew their way around research.
Although Jane wasn't among this group, she found the information very interesting and enlightening. Maybe Gretta, the baby agent, had spoken a shred of truth. Jane told herself that when she went home in a couple of days she'd look over her manuscript one more time.
The author went on to give some even better advice. "Lots of research into the period is vital, of course. You have to like doing this. More im-
BELL, BOOK, AND SCANDAL 75
portant, though, don't put in everything you know. It makes it a history text, not a novel. My own rule of thumb is when I find some fact that makes me slap my head and say 'I never knew that,' it's what should go into the book. If I didn't know it before, probably many readers don't know it either and will be pleased to learn it."
Jane wrote this down in her notebook and underlined it. She remembered making a house plan and leaving out bathrooms. She had had to do a lot of research to find out what sort of "facilities" her imaginary house would have had in the time period and may have gone a bit overboard describing them in her manuscript.
The introductory remarks having been made, the speakers then called for questions from the audience. Jane was surprised to learn that many of the aspiring writers in attendance were quite ignorant about the world of publishing. Some of them asked downright silly questions, like would submitting their work on pretty colored paper make them noticed.
The panel overwhelmingly agreed this wasn't to be done.
Another asked if she should copyright the work herself before submitting so nobody could steal her work. This struck Jane as absurdly arrogant.
This also met with a negative reply from all three of the speakers. "If the work is good enough, it will be purchased, not stolen. And the
publisher will see to having it copyrighted," the grown-up editor said.
Most of the rest of the questions were either trivial or about technical things, like whether to use single or multiple viewpoint.
Jane came out of the session revived and cheerful. For one thing, she'd realized she still had a lot to learn. More important, she already knew more than most of the other aspiring writers.