Archaeology

Some day, many years from now, Internet Anthropologists will discover this blog, which by then will probably have one or two people supposedly following it. They will analyze blog trends and note that my week long break is unusual and frankly, unacceptable. They will raise their mighty pitchforks and demand to know why the amusing and extremely useful free information suddenly slowed and even seemed to stop. They will decry me as the greatest villain of an age, to have neglected my imaginary readers thus.

Fortunately, I don't care about their opinions any more than I care about yours. I ignore everyone equally. 'Sides, life's been hell. And I feel no need to make excuses about that. So let's get down to brass tacks, shall we?

I suppose I should continue my current line of thought. Or better yet, I should go back to the beggining and talk about identifying agents who actually represent what you're writing about. But instead, I feel the need to do something topical. Sort of.

Recently, there's been an outbreak of aspiring authors bypassing the usual submissions system and sending queries directly to the agent himself at his e-mail adress. Maybe 1/4 of them are people who already went through the normal channels and were rejected.

There's not much to say about this except don't do it. Seriously. Agents are busy people. Readers and submissions managers are gate keepers. Bouncers even. Agents have too much else to do and wasting their time gets you on the shit list. Your chances of obtaining representation from an agent drop dramatically for this infraction, for this refusal to follow protocol. For your sake, the agent's sake, the reader's sake, and yes, even other's writers' sake's, don't do it.