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Plague Writing

Publishers, in a time of plague and pandemic, have a difficult time.  People aren’t really interested in much else beyond the crisis of the moment.  Sometimes I wonder if it’s bad form to seek publication at a time such as this.

Fiction, I remind myself, is truer than fact.  And it’s a great release from the daily stresses of living amid COVID-19.  A friend of mine who’s an editor told me that novels are selling well.  Nonfiction not so much.

For the last several weeks I’ve heard nothing from the agents I queried all the way back in January.  Many of them are in New York City, the epicenter, it always seems, of American drama.  So many people living so close together.  How could they be thinking about fiction?

It’s the future.  Fiction, that is.  Those of us who indulge in speculative fiction know that it is a coping mechanism.  It teaches us how to handle “what if…?”  The coronavirus is a big “what if…?”  Like a monster or a demon it is invading our everyday reality.  We’re isolated.  We need fiction.

This kind of deep understanding provides verisimilitude to fiction.  In a recent rejection an agent told me I was a smart writer with a nice style.  My story, however, didn’t grab her.  It isn’t viral.



So now I’m thinking it may be time to turn again to the small presses.  I’ve queried over a hundred agents.  The small presses what to know what genre my book is.  That’s hard to answer when even I don’t know.  I read a lot and I’ve read nothing like it.  That’s why I wrote it.

Even if it were accepted today by some editor working remotely, it’s going to take some time to get to a press where people are physically able to work the printing and binding.  And that’s supposing it’s going to be not print on demand.

Last night I spoke to a New York Times bestselling author.  I’m related to him.  All he was interested in was how to get through this outbreak.  Me, I’m writing daily as if these were my last words.  And I’m still hoping they’ll be published.

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