Foolproof Secret #33
Posted By John Klawitter on May 18, 2009
John Klawitter, Author, Screenwriter, Director
by John Klawitter
1st Turning Point Staff Columnist
Copyright © 2009 John Klawitter
I promised you one of my foolproof secrets on how to get published. Actually, I promised to tell you how I sold my first novel. I’m a little bit of an intellectual-property thief here, because this isn’t actually my secret, it was given to me by Erik Van Lowe, and that out of the goodness of his heart. And I think that means it’s only fitting, right, and proper that I pass it on to you.
I met Erik in the late 1980’s, maybe 88 or 89, when we were both working on Monster Tales for Phil Mendez, the legendary animator who created Kissyfur. I think Erik had worked with Phil on his Black Santa Claus Christmas Special, and I’d been working on Sindbad’s Dreamquest, so I’d seen him hanging around Phil’s office.
Erik gave me this advice one time when we met at the infamous, low-budget, show-biz Denny’s located where Sunset Boulevard crosses over the freeway. We’d knocked out a few story ideas and had our fill of waffles and eggs and sausages, and were walking out to the parking lot. I was bitching about an unfair world that wouldn’t allow me to get any of my Vietnam novels published.
I may seem like a crank about this, but I’d tossed away a fellowship in Grad English at UCLA to go see a war and write about it, not unlike my heroes, Crane, Hemingway, and maybe Heller. Certainly not Mailer, though if you’ve read The Naked & The Dead, you know he had his moments before he started believing the stuff critics were writing about him. Castrated by critics, I always say, when talking about Mailer. Anyway, I went to war in the time-honored scribe’s tradition, only upon my return I failed to realize that the success of war novels is tied to the popularity of the conflict.
Erik was a graduate of USC, and if I remember correctly, he had a Masters in Creative Writing. He’d written a couple of pulp novels about a black Dracula, and said he’d never had any trouble getting them published.
I let out a wail and ranted on about the long list of agents I’d contacted and the shoebox of personal rejection slips asking me to stay in touch.
“Well, that’s your problem right there,” Eric said, a wicked smile spreading over his thin, dark face. “You don’t send to agents, you send to publishers.
“Publishers don’t accept manuscripts from writers, fool.”
“Who told you that?” he said. “Some honky-no offense-agent from their high tower digs in Manhattan?”
“Erik, they just don’t!” I insisted.
“I’m sorry, friend, but you asked, and I’m telling you publishers are the way you have got to go. It’s the only way you can go! You’re the cream cheese out here in Hollywood, but back there you’re nothing. You think any agent is going to break their ass to get you in the door on a lousy first novel they are only going to make 600 bucks off of-if they’re lucky?”
I sighed and looked down at my soft leather Bally boots. I guess I looked pretty discouraged, and Erik wrapped an arm around my shoulder.
“You can’t give up on this, man,” he encouraged me. “You got too much into it. Look, you follow the Erik Van Lowe tried-and-true method, and you’ll get yourself published. I swear on the black heart beating under this beautiful ebony skin.” He made a fancy little hand-sign over his chest, not really the sign of the cross but something more like what a devil or a vampire might do.
“Okay, go ahead,” I muttered.
“First thing, you get your ass over to Crown Books and you find those books on the best seller list right now that are exactly most like yours.”
“Well, that’s easy-there aren’t any!”
“Okay, top hundred, then…you said it’s a war novel, right?”
“Yeah…Vietnam,” I mumbled.
“Okay. Everything’s genre now; that’s how the stupid idiots put it on the bookshelves. You get your ass over to the war novels shelves and find out who’s publishing the Vietnam ones. Don’t buy them. Just scan ‘em a little so you’ll know what you’re talking about. Get the publisher’s name and the address. Take a notepad and write it down. Title, author, publisher. Then when you get home, get on the phone-call New York directory assistance. 212 area code.”
“I cold-call the publishing company?”
“Right. Course, they won’t let you through to editorial without a name. Make up something. Who’s their best war novel editor? Who’s that brilliant guy turning out The Blood & Goop series, or whatever? If you’re sincere enough, sometimes the operator will come up with a name…sometimes they put you right through, because you’re not just some pesky, un-agented writer with another stupid manuscript to clog up their system.”
“Unbelievable. But, okay…So I get through to the editorial department. What if I actually get this guy on the line? What do I say?”
“You don’t say nothing, my friend. You hang up. You don’t want to talk to him…you just want his name.”
“I go through all that trouble to get his name?”
“Right. And then you sit down and write the most beautiful bullshit query letter known to mankind. And you can do it, because here you’ve got an editor who loves to do war stories and is dying for a spot of recognition and a little glory, and you can praise the be-jesus out of his latest fabulous work of editorialism.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
We parted ways in the Denny’s parking lot. Not long after, Erik moved east to New York, to work on The Cosby Show, and I never saw him again, not to this day. I mulled his advice for a week or two, not totally convinced. But, as I had no other ideas, I drove over to the local bookstore. Unfortunately, the U.S. Army troopers had slunk out of Vietnam over 15 years before, head’s bowed in defeat and shame, and there weren’t any best selling novels illuminating what that had felt like. Ever the realist, I lowered my sights to published hard cover novels that weren’t best sellers, and then retreated even further, to the war novels section in the paperbacks aisles. And there, I actually did find a couple.
The next day, I called New York information for the phone numbers, and then made the calls. Out of the ten possibilities I’d gathered, I actually got five names of editors. I typed out brilliant query letters saying what a fan I was of each editor’s work, and how intelligent and far-reaching they were to realize that the legacy and lessons of Vietnam should not be forgotten, it being our longest, most dragged out, most televised war, and all. Then I taped the letters to the front of each copy of the manuscript and sent all five out at once.
Time passed. I mean, lots of time. After about six months, the reject letters started to dribble in. Two said they were sorry but they didn’t read manuscripts unless submitted by an agent. Six months to tell me they couldn’t or wouldn’t read my work-that’s a crime against the muse in itself, or at least a mortal sin. Two others said the material ‘wasn’t for them.’ More months passed until it was nearly a year gone by. Looking back, that was a grim time for me. There were no TV specials or show biz assignments coming in, so I was paying the mortgage and putting three kids through private college by grinding away at a heavy volume writing job. I was Senior Writer/ACD at a national savings and loan headquarters in East L.A., where I gained some questionable notoriety as the fastest (if not the best) writer in the business.
One day I was getting ready to duck out for Chinese food with one of the art directors, when my phone rang.
“Hello,” a cultured male voice said from the other end of the line. “This is one of the senior editors at Ballantine/Del Rey. I’m in charge of the war novels, and we want to buy your most excellent novel for our Ivy Books imprint.”
That novel, CRAZYHEAD, never climbed to the top of the charts, and it did get me in trouble with the CIA, but in the years that followed, it went on to become a cult classic on that particularly sad war. I’ve adapted it to a screenplay, and though it’s never been made, I’ve optioned it at least a half dozen times to production companies over the last fifteen years. And, of course, CRAZYHEAD made me a published author. Erik Van Lowe’s secret had gotten my foot in the door.
John, I’d love to follow your advice . . . but I’ve never found anyone who writes what I do. One reviewer called my books, “Disney for adults.” That’s actually a fairly good description, but not a lot of books like that on the shelves. None, that I’ve ever seen.