shalanna

Actually, I should be asking, "What does it mean when an agent e-mails you and tells you to call him?"

I sent a submission to this agent a couple of weeks ago. (It was a partial of the same chick lit novel that everybody else wants to see.) We'd had some back-and-forth years ago, when he looked at _Dulcinea_ and liked it. So . . . I didn't see any calls on the Caller ID, so he must've felt I could get hold of him more easily and at my convenience (not when I'm in the shower, elbow-high in bread dough, etc.) We just got back from having blood drawn in preparation for our doctor's appointments tomorrow, so I ate some crackers to raise my blood sugar before I called the number. I got his voice mail. I left my cell phone number, but said I'd try him again (in case the rule now is to let the writer make the long distance calls.) I've got to take my mom to Wal-Mart for toilet paper and prunes now (she's old . . . whattaya want), so I'll call again when we get back.

But all he says is give him a call. Obviously he doesn't want me to get all excited (which I did once before when called by an agent). And he hasn't seen the rest of the book yet, which he could request by e-mail. So it can't be about representation, etc. Maybe he's going to refer me to another agent who likes this kind of story better. You never can tell. If it's something scary ("You are being sued for plagiarism because sentence eight on page twenty-three is EXACTLY the same as sentence three on page forty-nine of Herman Wouk's _Marjorie Morningstar_"), I don't really want to know. (I've always feared that I'd have a flare-up of that cryptomemory or whatever it's called, where you regurgitate fragments of books you read in childhood and think it's your own new writing.)

Our cell phone doesn't charge for long distance other than airtime, so I can try a few more times. Now I'm getting nervous. I suspect I'm going to get a referral to an editor or to another agent or something, because he said before that if it wasn't his kind of thing, maybe he'd refer me to another agent in their agency, and so there's really no reason to be optimistic or excited or whatever. That always happens, and I always hit hard when the balloon gets popped, so I'm determined not to get puffed up again.

Playing phone tag already. If anything comes of it, I'll let you know.