You Can't Judge a Book By Its Cover. No, Really. You Can't.

Last week a lot of things happened, including the fact my mother was hospitalized. She's okay now but in the middle of all this - and it always seems to happen this way - I finally heard back from my agent and my editor. Yes, both of them. In the same week. Which I think is one of the signs of the end of the world in the book of Revelations, right after the plague of locusts and all the oceans turning to red.

For those of you who have lives beyond this blog, I'll recap: I had sent the plot treatment for my second novel, which is a sequel to my first, to my agent about four weeks ago. It was my fervent hope that he would fall in love with it, send it along to the editor of my first book, that she would fall in love with it and from there the dominos would all fall into a wonderful pattern.

Instead, I heard nothing. After two weeks I wrote him and nudged him and he said he would get to it soon. Two more weeks passed and then....

I got an enthusiastic letter from my editor talking about the first book. She used the word "thrilled" three times and the letter had two exclamation points. It also said that a jpg of the cover art was attached and that everyone, including the sales reps who had seen the catalog, loved it. The letter seemed a little effusive, especially in light of the fact I hadn't heard from her in months, but I took it as a good sign. I was at lunch when the email came in and I couldn't open the jpg file on my iphone so I rearranged my afternoon and ran by my house specifically to look at the book cover.

Here's the sad part. I think this is supposed to be one of the experiences that writers describe as fun.

I hated the cover. It was a sick pale turquoise color and the word LOVE was huge and the word AIR was huge and the words in mid were very small and tucked in the middle. It looked like the title of the book was LOVE AIR. Plus my name was wierdly big and they had the words "a novel" on the cover which I thought was strange too and there's a drawing of an upside-down house on a cloud. Overall, not exactly what I had pictured. Overall, quite cheap looking. Why had they asked me what sort of cover art I liked if they were going to create something that was the absolute opposite? Wy did they ask me what sort of art I liked if they weren't going to show me the cover of the book before the final decision was made? Now for the record, I sent the file to my friend Laura in tears and she didn't think it was that bad. But my reaction was like being kicked in the gut.

In a rare moment of lucidity, I decided not to respond to my editor at all. No response was really asked for or required....the cover was already distributed to the sales reps and set for the catalog and if they hadn't shown it to me for approval in advance it seemed unlikely that they would do anything about my dismay at this point. Which goes back to my earlier point - when you've sold your book, you've sold your book. In other words, someone else owns it. It's just like selling a house and you can't knock on the door months after you moved out and say "Excuse me, but why on earth did you paint my house that awful turquoise color?" I figured if I called my editor while I was upset, I would say the wrong things and I would say too many things. When I had called Laura all I seemed to be able to say is "They flushed it. They took my book and flushed it down the toilet." I didn't figure me ranting about flushing would help at this point and besides, the week was still falling around me in shambles. I closed the file and went back to the hospital to fetch my ailing mother.

The next day it occured to me that, for whatever reason, my editor did indeed send a very positive letter. When I saw the book cover my first thought is that she'd sent the positive letter because she knew the cover was awful and I was being placated. Not much money to spend on her book, not enough to get an art director for the cover or send her on a book tour, but we'll send her a real upbeat letter and that will have to be enough. But after talking to Laura another possible interpretation emerged - as difficult as it was for me to believe, just maybe my editor really did like the cover and maybe she had meant the things she said in the letter about being optomistic about the book. Maybe the window of opportunity was open an inch or so.... maybe it was open wide enough to slip the second book through.

Because here is how it works. I don't understand much about how publishing works, it's all through-a-glass-darkly stuff to me but I do think I'm right about this. Editors and agents are easily distracted. They have a lot of people and projects vying for their attention. When you are on the top of the pile of things they have to do, they give you a lot of focus. This focus usually only lasts for a brief period of time and then something else moves to the top of pile and takes their focus. If you try and contact them when you're not their top priority, they won't respond at all.

When you're a writer you live on maybes. You suck them in gratefully, like air.

So, I figured, at least my editor is thinking of me right now. It might be a good time to hit her with the news that this book she says she's so thrilled about has a half-finished sequel.

I wrote my agent. Please contact my editor, I said, trying to write in a way that didn't sound like begging. Tell her about the second book. I know that the odds I'll be on the minds of both my editor and my agent on the same day are astronomically small but still, I thought I had to try....

And that's where the story gets complicated.

Complicated enough to require another entry on another day.

But in the meantime, I have a blue book.