Friday, March 2, 2012

So Phi, when's your book coming out?



This is the question on everyone's minds. Possibly because, contrary to Parsi superstition that people's najar (evil eye) will annihilate any hope that I had, I did some chicken counting before any hatching took place and announced on Facebook that my book was "done".

What that meant was that the book was out of my head and onto the page. Its fate now rests in the hands of some dear friends who have bravely agreed to critique it.

So what's next?

1. Write a query letter where I describe my 350 page book  in 150 words, conveying clearly that my idea is original yet universal and doing so in a manner so succinct (yet expansive) that in the 30-60 seconds that any run-off-her-feet agent (whose inbox is crammed with at least one hundred of these letters a day) will devote to me, my letter will make her drop her venti latte and call me right up.

2. Find the right agent for me through careful cross-checking across various publishing websites, agency websites, Amazon, etc, weed through the scammers, and settle on one who is new enough to take on a first timer like me yet established enough to know the right people though not so big a name as not to be taking on new clients.

3. Send out flurries of query letters and in the interim, which could last one to 365 days, while away my time biting the skin around the beds where my finger nails once lay and wash it down with the dredges of whiskey remaining in the liquor cabinet.

And that is when the book is coming out.