Just the FAQs

Well, people have been so curious, I thought I'd put off my impressions of Comicon and the miserable day I had Sunday and give you the Crewd Philosophy FAQ page V 1.0

Personal questions:
Are you crazy?
Depends. Has the draft been reinstated? If so, then yes. Stark raving mad.

If you're not crazy, then what is wrong you?

Nothing. I'm perfect in every way.

You're so weird.
That's not a question. According to the tried and true animal personality test, I'm a donkey. According to the slightly more reliable Meyers Briggs, I was either an INTJ or an INFJ. I forget which.

What I wouldn't give to see the inside of your mind for a day...
*grining* be careful what you wish for.

So you're a writer like us?
Yes and no. I write, but if you're reading my blog, you're probably a lot farther into the process of doing so profesionally than I am.

What do you write?
Things, stuff and such. Which is to say, every combination of genre and medium, but I focus on novels and short stories of fantasy and SF. My magnum opus is pure literary fiction though.

Where do you come up with all those phrases you use on the site?
Different ones come from different places. "There can be no Greatness without audacity" I think I adapted from the term "fortes fortuna adiuvat" which means fortune favors the brave. "BBB" is shorthand for bland banal bullshit. The rest I think I pretty self explanatory within context. And yes, I do make up words. Sue me.

Why do you hate babies?
Because they're a lot of work. I don't mind working if I agreed to do it, but kids create work for everyone around them. At seven o' clock on a train with a headache, the last thing I want to have to do is control your hellspawn. And then there's the way people will use children. I'll never forget the time I took an hour and a half drive and stood outside for two hours to get a good spot at an outdoor concert. Within ten minutes some old man pushed his way through the crowd brandisihing some mewling parasite, probably his grandaughter. After setting up shop directly in front of me, he put her on his shoulders and blocked my vision for the rest of the concert. Why should I like children?

Weren't you a child once?
Jesus. Am I ever going to live that down?

Professional questions-
What do you do at the agency?
Mostly I read queries and pass maybe one in thirty on to Mark or Linda if I like them. We're in the process of trying different styles now though because Mark wants to see everything. I'm not wild about the idea because he's so busy, but he'd give you the shirt off his back. After months of being the exclusive query handler (and doing away with an enormous backlog) I came to see myself as a gatekeeper whose job was as much to keep my boss in as the "riff-raff" out.

What else?
Anything that needs doing. Paperwork, which is mostly collecting, entering, verifying, redustributing information. For instance, some of our authors might recognize my name from when I asked for their info for the agency site. Or there are the files I made and updated to track editor responses to things we sent them. The cool part about that was seeing how much faster they get back to us now than they did when the agency first opened (which I wasn't around for.) I think Mark's built up two or three years worth of "street cred" in just one year of business. I also do readers reports and some editorial letters. Some of you may have gotten some very detailed feedback from me and not even know it! The upside to the changes in queries is that I might get to do more editing, which I love doing. Wheeee.

How often do you guys talk? Do you work at an office together?
Agencies tend to be pretty flexible. Ours is small and young, so the vast majority of work is remote. Sometimes communication is pretty light, sometimes it's everyday, mostly by Skype unless they're just quick things we can do by e-mail. We meet together periodically to do things like update master lists of ongoing projects or analyze sales trends. By which I mostly mean Mark teaches Linda and I how the whole thing works.

What's this other internship of yours?
Marketing for a major publisher. I'll say no more than that.

You do two internships and you're in school? What for? And are you crazy?
I'm studying publishing at Pace University. It's weird for me because I come from an academic background and that's a "professional" program. Hopefully one day I'll be able to get paid to do the stuff I like to do. Otherwise I'll have to do something dreadful like become a teacher.

That reminds me, you taught English in Japan, right?
Yes, and it was a terrible job. Loved the country, but christ. Maybe someday I'll talk more about it, but for now, just know that every job I've ever had, from party magician to customer service at Kohl's was better. So was being assistant facilities manager/Mailroom Supervisor/archivist/gopher etc. at a Medical Journal publisher. My only consolation is that the chain of schools I worked for, which I thought were very poorly run and treated both employees and students like dirt was entering a tailspin while I was there which ultimately ended up putting them out of business earlier this year.

What's the single most important advice you can give me as a writer?
Never give up, never surrender!

What about entering the world of publishing myself?
Think long and hard about why you want to. It ain't glamarous or high paying. If you want to publish to put out your own books...it's a different thing than it used to be. POD and everything have changed that. Honestly, you better be really sure you want to work with books 24/7. And you better remember that yours is as a support role. Like most of my classmates, I have a background in writing but came to the conclusion I'd rather edit. I can't speak for everyone, but I simply realized I was better at helping other people than writing my own books. It makes me feel good to do something that comes so naturally and can have such a dramatic effect. It's all about personal satisfaction and not about gain or recognition. Think you can handle that?