Yesterday was 120 days after the day I submitted the partial manuscript of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People to an agent, send at the agent’s request. Conventional wisdom is that you wait 3 or 4 months after submitting requested material, and if you haven’t heard back then a follow-up e-mail is appropriate. So I sent an e-mail, asking of the book was still under consideration.

The agent replied the same day with a nice e-mail, the gist of which is as follows.

I do really like your unique story concept that involves both professional baseball and the mafia. I’ve been reluctant to dismiss it. But addressing the sex, drugs, drinking, and lifestyle at the end of the story is too late for a Christian publisher to accept…. If these elements and the general market are the track you want to stay on, it isn’t a good fit for [our agency]. 

Here is a bit of feedback I’ll offer on the sample chapters you sent, though. There is too much dialogue at the expense of description and character development. There are some excellent books on writing…that would be beneficial for you in these areas. I hope you find this helpful.

I wish you great success and joy in the process as you continue to work on your writing. Let me know if at some point you decide to change direction on this story.

So, what to do? I sent a follow-up e-mail this morning, thanking her for her time to give me feedback, and asking her to clarify the comment that the sex, drugs, drinking, and lifestyle is “too late” for a Christian publisher. I’m not really sure what that means. It is introduced too late in the book? How does the placement affect acceptability? Plus, what she’s referring to was a disconnected scene, written early on during the writing but coming nearer to the end of the book than to the beginning to get if written while it was fresh on my mind. It dealt with a sexual situation that didn’t involve sex, if that makes sense.

Maybe she was saying that Christian readers, at least those used to reading books that come from the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) are used to a certain absence of these subjects, except for the redeeming value of being released from one. If those subjects are absent from the beginning of the book, the typical CBA reader will read blissfully on. Then, if 2/3 of the way through they read something they’d rather have not read, they will be offended. Having put so much time into the reading, up to that point, they will be upset. That’s the only way I can interpret it.

So what to do now? Last night I was fixing typos found by my wife, through chapter 27. I’m soon to have an e-mail of some additional typos through the end of the book from my nephew.  Then I have to read the book for typos, for plot consistency and completeness, for line edits, etc. Then, taking the agent’s advice to heart, I have to see if there are places I can cut dialog and add to description/narrative. Plus, I have to wait on all my beta readers to report, and incorporate suggestions they make. At that point the book will be ready…but for what?

My choices are: 1) continue to submit to agents, 2) find some small presses who don’t require agented submittals and submit to them, 3) self-publish it, first as an e-book and soon thereafter as a print book, or 4) put it in a shoe box and let my kids find it when I assume room temperature.

Right now I’m favoring number 3. It will probably cost me $100 for a cover suitable for print and e-book, which I can ill afford right now. The print version will cost me $10 to have a proof copy produced and mailed. Or maybe I could just make up a cheapo cover and call it good. Either way I’ll get it published. The time required to do that will be a whole lot less than would be required to stay on the query-go-round with agents and publishers, leaving me more time for writing.

Simultaneous with that, or perhaps of a slightly higher priority, will be going through the proof copy of Documenting America, finding all the typos, correcting them, and uploading corrected files to Kindle, Smashwords, and CreateSpace. That will put a paper book of this in my hands, releasing me to ramp up the marketing.

After that, I suspect I’ll get Doctor Luke’s Assistant e-self-published, and add one more short story to my list of things for sale. At that time, I’ll re-assess, and make further decisions.