The Truth About Preditors & Editors, and Other Websites for Disgruntled Writers

It's a constantly fascinating to me how boards like Preditors and Editors, Absolute Write and others in this vein bring out the worst in people and exhibit a complete lack of common sense. A recent visit to a couple of these boards had me laughing out loud; I wish I could say that I was laughing "with" these poor fools, but . . . that would be a lie.

What's most unfortunate is that the moderators are more interested in fanning the flames of some rejected writer's disgruntlement than in actually providing some savvy publishing advice. This is sad, considering that one of these moderators has been published by a number of corporate houses. Think of what she could offer, but doesn't. I wonder why. Could she truly have nothing to offer these nameless jerks other than snippets of information that are easily accessible to anyone with Google? Her life must be pretty pathetic if this is the best she can do. But, hey, I guess you have to take your groupies where you find them, right?

The most amusing posts are, of course, the ones which take quotes or passages from correspondence completely out of context and recontextualized to make a point. It's amazing that these people didn't learn how to quote properly in high school . . . but I guess that's one of the reasons why they're not published. The other reason is that they're . . . well, jerks.

For more than fifteen years I've been the Senior Editor at Orchard House Press, which has been known by other names. This isn't a secret, btw. I have worked with some amazing people, most of whom are still with us. I've also had my share of self-important wanna-be writers, many of whom end up vomiting all over one of these stupid boards. Honestly, is there anyone left on the planet who doesn't know that 1st Books and Publish America aren't vanity presses? Just look them up. If they ask for money to publish your book, they're a vanity press. It's that simple, people.

We've been accused of being both a vanity press and a POD. We're neither. There are many, many ways you can tell the difference but Miss Moderator doesn't bother to share that information. That would actually defeat her purpose.

I have nothing to hide, which is not true for any of the members of these board. None of the people posting negative comments about experiences with us will use their real names. Why? Because they don't want to take responsibility. Maybe they know they're distorting the truth. Whatever the reason, they're just spoiled children who just want to rant and get their egos stroked by a self-involved little twerp who has set herself up as an authority. Posting a bunch of book covers on a badly designed website makes you an expert how?

I love my job, the authors and artists I work with, the people who make OHP a great place to work. It's challenging, at times stressful, but ultimately rewarding.

It's no surprise that one of these "helpful" sites, Preditors and Editors, is getting sued. They've got enough slanderous and liabelous material on their site for about 100 lawsuits. Are they really helpful? I doubt it. They're not designed to be helpful. They're designed to fan the flames of discontent. So if you actually want the truth, steer clear.

Bye Bye Berties

I remember my first box of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans. My neighbor, Anthony, was all about Harry Potter--this was around the time that Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban was released--he'd been to the movie premier and received a coveted Knight Bus and now he was bugging me to try these weird jelly beans.

He brought two boxes. We sat kitty-corner at my desk and poured them all out. We each got half of each one and I can honestly say that the spaghetti was amazing the vomit disgusting and the ear wax truly vile. But my all time favorite was grass. Somehow, by some mysterious magic, the scent of new mown grass on a summer evening was packed tightly into that little kidney-shaped bean.

By the time we'd eaten them all, we were both a little jiggy. The late afternoon sun was coming in through the window and the grass outside was very green. I stepped outside to say goodbye to Anthony and took a deep breath.

Grass. Me. Six years old sitting in front of my grandfather on his riding mower as we zipped up and down their acre lawn. He was in a white t-shirt and chinos--his yard work clothes, he wore a suit to his job at a clipping service on Wall Street--and as we rode together he sang, his beautiful tenor voice rising above the motor's roar.

That sweet, fresh scent of grass and timothy and clover. The sun sinking down behind the hills. The promise of ice cream and cool, clean sheets and another summer day to look forward to.

All of that came rushing back when I bit into that singular jelly bean.

Max, Faith and I have finished the first two Harry Potter novels (edited where necessary for very young listeners) and embarked on the third. I've been talking about Bertie Botts' Every Flavor Beans since that first ride on the Hogwarts Express.

Today, Jennifer stopped into the local independently owned candy store (their handmade truffles are delicious) and asked if they carried Bertie's beans. The young woman behind the counter took Jennifer to the display and handed her a box of Bean Boozled. A completely different package, a different approach and far fewer choices. Skunk spray or licorice? Try a black one and find out. Vomit or peach? Black pepper or Plum? Not Bertie Botts Many Flavored Beans at all. My kids were just as thrilled to experiment with these and we had a good laugh after dinner, especially when I got Baby Wipes.

But no grass.

Sigh.

Cut From a Different Cloth

Some women are built to breed. They've got curves in all the right places, but most importantly in this case: hips. When our children were small, Jennifer carried them effortlessly on her hip. She had one hand free to do other things like get our her wallet at the store. Even her 80 year old grandmother could balance Maxwell while cooking a meal for seven. It didn't even slow her down!

As for myself, I go from shoulder to hip without much change. I certainly don't have nice wide hips for carrying children--before or after birth. Carrying the kids for me was an exercise in pure brute strength. If they weren't big enough yet to hold on, they were tucked on the left side at a bit of a 45 degree angle to ensure that I could get my arm around them enough to ensure they wouldn't slip off my "hip." This left my right hand free, which was convenient since I'm right handed. However, I do carry my wallet in the left hand pocket of my jeans. Which became comical when I was trying to pay for something at the store.

The other day, my 6 year old daughter and I were shopping for clothes. She's grown about 2 inches this year and really needed a couple of pairs of pants, that she would actually wear. She has lots of pants (mostly purchased by other people) that she refuses to even consider. I trot them out occasionally to see if she's changed her mind, but that's never happened. Her first pair of jeans came from her great aunt Joannie who has one child, now grown, a girl. Joannie knows how to shop for girls. These jeans had sequins and all kinds of sparkly stuff on them. She wore them until she couldn't get them on anymore. And then she begged for them to be included in the clothing archive--don't ask--until I relented.

She's tall enough now, that not as many jeans have the kind of artwork she desires. So finding even one pair is a challenge. More challenging for me, however, is the way they're cut. The popular cut of pants these days for girls--and young women is fine as long as they're standing upright, but when the need to bend over comes into play, watch out. I have seen more backside in public than I ever saw of my plumber, if you catch my drift. Call me old fashioned, but I think a 6 year old's rear end should stay covered, even when she has to bend over.

We finally found some pants that both of us could agree on. And she actually wears them. And as I stepped into my lightweight Carthartt pants this morning, I was thankful that I'm not built to breed and can buy my jeans in the men's department, because I cannot imagine what would happen if I were to wear these low-slung fall off your bum jeans and need to bend over.

A Conversation at Dawn

“We try a new drug, a new combination
of drugs, and suddenly
I fall into my life again

like a vole picked up by a storm
then dropped three valleys
and two mountains away from home.

I can find my way back. I know
I will recognize the store
where I used to buy milk and gas

I remember the house and the barn,
the rake, the blue cups and plates . . . .”*

The drugs just even you out. They’re not going to make this go away. You have to do that yourself. Try to see everything that is good around you . . . how many people love you.

It is a second skin that envelopes. Cutting off all light. All life. You wait, breathing in and out. Just breathing. All you have to do is stay calm. Days pass. A week goes by. You cannot work. Inside your head the words are spinning, spinning.

In the book you are reading to your children, Mr. Bass tells David and Chuck, “You must never doubt.” But you do. You doubt your power, your strength, the children on your lap. You are your son’s hero. You are your daughter’s world.

I know a man who sees his life as a series of tasks to be accomplished. He finds excitement only in the pursuit. Once the object is his, he ceases to want it.

Ticking off tasks on your checklist is not a life.

After five days, I am back. Everything is tentative. But I laughed with you this morning at the breakfast table. I didn’t yell at my children. I looked at the sky and remembered that you’re always there. Reminding me that all I really have to do is breathe.

*Jane Kenyon, “Back.” Constance. Greywolf Press, 1993.

A Dream of Space

Years ago, I came upon a PC game based on Arthur C. Clark’s RAMA books. It was only my second PC game and it was hard for me because there was a lot of math for an English major, but I did “beat” it. When I’d finished, I watched a video interview with Clark. He was in Sri Lanka, surrounded by the most beautiful flora, talking about science, space travel and RAMA. It seemed incongruous and yet strangely fitting at the same time.

I don’t know much about Clark’s personal life—how he ended up in Sri Lanka is as much of a mystery to me as quantum mathematics, but the images from that little video stayed with me. I count his work as a major building block in my own development as a writer and as a thinker and my world is a little smaller without him.

I don’t much care for Heinlein; Asimov I could take or leave, but Arthur C. Clark was a guy I went to again and again. What I liked about his work in particular was that he made the extraordinary seem possible. His stories featured regular people doing extraordinary things. These were characters I could relate to and their dreams of space became my dreams of space.

From the time I was about eight-years-old, I thought about space all the time. I imagined myself living in space. I imagined waking up and looking out a window to see a starfield or a gas giant or a million other things that were still mostly imagined. The Hubble telescope was decades away and the first moon walk had just occurred. There was an excitement about space—about the possibilities—and I lifted my eyes to the stars again and again and dreamed.

When I was ten, I started reading Clark’s work in earnest. I carried a paperback copy of 2001: A Space Odyssey with me to school where it perched on the top of my stack of school books in the hopes of a free moment or two to read at the end of any given class. When I finished the book the first time, I can’t say I was sure I understood what had happened. That would come later. But I still remember being gripped by that story, sitting on the edge of my bed when I should have been sleeping, reading by the light of a small desk lamp.

Clark represented a kind of everyman to me, someone whose imagination was full of magical ideas. He represented the possible. And when you’re ten and a girl in the late 1960s, the possible means a lot.

I still have that paperback copy of 2001: A Space Odyssey. And I still look to the stars and dream.

Farewell, Arthur, and thank you for letting me soar to the stars on the wings of your imagination. I hope that wherever you are, the stars shine as brightly for you as you made them shine for me.

What Matters

I know there are good literary agents out there. Unfortunately, they’re about as approachable as a star—the heavenly kind, not the Hollywood variety. They are an integral part of the New York literary scene and their clients are A-list.

But there are a whole lot of great B-list, or mid-list, authors who are the bread and butter of any publishing house. They’re the bulk of your title list, the steady sellers who’ll probably never have a book on Oprah, but nevertheless are solid, talented and essential.

The other day, I returned a phone call from a woman who wanted to know if the literary agency she’d hired had actually sent her manuscript to Windstorm. Normally, I don’t personally return queries about manuscripts, but I really felt for Nancy (not her real name, obviously) and I wanted to stop her from spending any more money on this phony excuse for a literary agent.

We had a nice conversation; she’s a decent person trying to sell what’s probably a good book. Almost ten years ago, she sold a novel to a New York house which enjoyed modest sales. Her agent at that time, as well as her editor, are now deceased. She has no other contacts at the corporate press and no way to get her foot in the door. Ten years ago, in today’s industry, might as well be a hundred. She’s right back to square one, despite having worked both with a reputable agent and a well known house.

She found this other agency in the Literary Market Place, which is a standard industry text. Lots of writers use it for reference—we’re listed in it, as a matter of fact. But it’s not part of their job to verify that the agents they list are reputable, connected or even vaguely familiar with the industry. It’s caveat emptor—as Nancy discovered.

My day was crammed with problems—a series of printer errors, an in-box full of hateful email—I mean the truly ugly stuff—from customers angry at the delays to people telling me I'm not doing my job because I don't have control over the known universe. I felt like taking a shower after I got through with those. Honestly, it was like being spit on over and over again. It’s amazing how easy it is to forget that on the other end of that email is a real person.

At eight o’clock at night, I pushed away from my computer. My work shift started ten hours ago. I saw my partner for about two hours today—she’s been ill without a diagnosis for almost two years—during breakfast and just before the kids ate around six when she came down to teach our son math. I stoked the wood stove because our furnace motor burned a year ago and since I don’t have $8,000.00 lying around we’re heating with wood. The main part of the house is comfortable, but we’ve shut off one floor for the time being, and I’ve added about 90 minutes of extra chores to my day between splitting wood and maintaining the stove. I was too angry and too discouraged from my workshift to even speak until I’d had something to eat. Luckily, a friend of mine, knowing I probably wouldn’t eat unless someone put a plate in front of me, showed up and created an incredible chile relleno casserole out of the what was in the fridge. After that, we made pipe cleaner creatures for the kids and I finally began to feel human again.

It’s almost one AM now and the kids and my partner are sleeping. I still have a lot to do and I don’t expect to get to bed for several more hours. By nine tomorrow morning, I’ll be here again.

Up until ten years ago, I worked at various jobs from frosting cakes to teaching college. Each of these jobs had its own stresses and rewards. But I’ve never come so close to wondering whether Windstorm was going to make it recently when a series of very expensive problems arose—both in the business and in my personal life—and the wear and tear of a chronically ill partner and two special needs kids is making me rethink the wisdom of this choice if career. But the very fact that I’m sitting here at one in the morning rather than lying in bed staring at the ceiling and dreading getting up for my job is a large part of what keeps me here—working at odd hours and between making snacks and home schooling—trying not to take the ugliness personally, trying not to let it seep in through my skin and make me as bitter and dead inside as the people I often have to deal with. I’m not like that and I will never be. I won’t remember their names in a couple of days, and by the time the tulips are blooming in my garden, I won’t even remember their stupidity. But I will remember Nancy. And I expect she’ll remember me. And that’s what matters.

Religion vs. Faith

Donald Jackson, former official scribe for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, is currently working on a project with the Benedictine Monks of St. John’s University (MN) to create the first handwritten English Bible in more than 500 years. A number of the completed pages are already on display. They remind us how truly inspiring—and inspired—illuminated manuscripts can be. In an essay in the Wall Street Journal, staff writer Naomi Schaefer Riley noted that viewing the pages was like “looking at a Chagall window with the full sun of the afternoon behind it.”

Ms. Riley goes on to note that Mr. Jackson, speaking with a group visiting the exhibit “proudly” said, “‘I’m not a committed Christian or a committed anything’” The connection Ms. Riley wants us to make is not only Mr. Jackson seemingly flip about his lack of connection to organized religion, but he’s also without faith. While the former may be true, Ms. Riley certainly is in no position to comment on the latter. Because no one, except Mr. Jackson, knows the truth of his own heart.

Several members of my family are quick to criticize organized religion, lumping together anyone who attends services regularly and/or is part of an organized religious community as lacking some kind of essential common sense. What they don’t realize is that they’re talking about man’s religion. Man’s religion is not God’s.

When my daughter was seven days old, she was re-hospitalized because she was severely jaundiced. Jennifer and I had spent the past three years trying to figure out why our son stopped talking after receiving his MMR and his developmental milestones all but ceased. We’d been assured that thermerasol had been removed from children’s vaccines. To be honest, we didn’t really believe what we were told—that there was no connection between his sudden loss of speech and the vaccine, that he was autistic, that we were destined to lose him to his interior world. Of course, about two years ago, the drug companies admitted that they’d never taken thermerasol out of the vaccines. I was not surprised.

We were exhausted. The second pregnancy had taken a huge physical toll on Jennifer; Max was still saying only two words; and now it looked as though we were facing another undiagnosable problem. It was Father’s Day, 2002. We had friends over for a cookout. Our pediatrician called in the middle of the afternoon. Faith’s blood work was in and it didn’t look good. He wanted to have her admitted right away.

We packed a bag and ourselves into the car; our friends generously offered to stay behind and clean up. It was cold and rainy. I sat in the hospital room with Faith in my arms while Jennifer took care of the paperwork. I could hear her voice in the hall and I could see Max beside her. The sun broke momentarily through the clouds. I remember thinking it looked like an egg yolk. Sunlight slanted in through the window for a minute and then was gone. I wept. But not for the reasons one might imagine. Not because this was unfair, not because I was tired, not because I already had one special needs child and what had I done to deserve another. I wept because I loved her. I loved my daughter with a depth and a passion that was completely different from the way I love my son and my partner.

I wept because I was afraid she would die. Not from the jaundice, mind you, but from something else.

As it turned out, this was the first step on a road that would take us first to a diagnosis of Coombs and then, a month after her first birthday, to Children’s Hospital and her diagnosis as a Type 1 (insulin dependent) diabetic. During the week we spent at Children’s, the day nurse, Sarah, told to me on several occasions that I should “grieve now.” But I had no reason to grieve.

Jennifer and I never doubted our ability to figure out what was wrong with our son. And we kept looking, reading, talking, trying new things until we figured it out. We knew that we would be shown the way. Whether through the intelligence we were given or through the illumination that came from the books Jennifer read or the sheer willingness to keep trying we completely changed his life—and ours.

I wept on that June day in 2002 because I didn’t want to lose my daughter, and I hoped that was not the path that God meant me to walk. When we received confirmation that Faith was diabetic, I was neither angry nor full of grief. I was thankful it wasn’t one of a million things. Her diagnosis was not a death sentence. There is a reason these two particular children are our children. I have faith in the wisdom of the Divine’s choice—though I don’t even attempt to understand it.

I know that I can’t expect to walk into any church in my town or any town for that matter, and be greeted with open arms. There are many reasons why man’s church and man’s religion does not welcome me. But God’s church always does. Man’s church is, by its very nature, subject to the same prejudices, insecurities, politics and dogma as any organization run by human beings. We may have been made in God’s image, but we are not God.

While Mr. Jackson’s remark didn’t exactly endear him to me, I resented Ms. Richard’s assumptions even more. I don’t find the dissonance between Jackson’s work and his remark ironic; instead, it’s just sad. It seems obvious that Mr. Jackson is indeed committed to something. What’s pathetic about Ms. Riley’s article is that she seems more interested in presenting Mr. Jackson in one light and herself in another—making herself look pious by casting aspersions on someone else.

What would Jesus do in that situation? I’d like to think he’d kick some hypocritical a**.

Cris