Sunday, September 13, 2009

Agent News

I got a call from my agent, Grace Morgan, friday about my Despite Them manuscript. Without beating around the bush, she said she loved it! What a load off my mind. You never really know what someone else is going to think about your story until they actually read it. She told me she liked the way I handled my characters and asked if there were going to be other stories in the Macgregor series. I told her I had a plan for at least four.

"Good," she said, "because that bitch at the end has got to go!"

I love that my characters evoke such emotion! You can cry along with them, or you can be pleased that they got what they deserved, and you can rage at them (and me) when I decide to leave the story hanging with the bad guy (or gal) remaining on the loose, enticing you to want more...

She did want to see a few minor changes, things that didn't quite make sense to her, so I spent the day yesterday flushing them out, making revisions, then printing all 309 pages over again.

She told me she's going to pitch Despite Them to Avon Books and Pocket Books first, as they do many of the Scottish stories. If the violence is too much for them, she'll try a few of the men's book publishers. I asked her if she thought I should tone down the graphic nature of the story, and she said, "Oh, hell no. This will sell just fine."

See why I love her?

So now it's another waiting game to see who will pick me up.

Today, we went to the sea to chill out for the morning. Here are a few photos of the tranquility of the coast of Maine.





2 comments:

Cat said...

Woohoo! You're on your way now! We'll be "Despite Them" on the shelves soon, I'm sure of it. What lovely ethereal pictures of the coast... so different from the coast here.

Mary Duncan said...

My wish is to see all FOUR of my titles on bookshelves across the US and sell well enough to have a demand overseas. How cool would that be!?

It was so still this morning, barely a ripple on the bay. A perfect morning to kayak, if only we had a pair. Usually, the wind picks up by 9:00 or so, but these were taken around 11:00.