WHAT ELSE DO LITERARY AGENTS DO?

The Chicago-ailing-dad saga continues. We're feeling much relief today as Jon's sister stepped into the fray. She'll fly to Chicago tomorrow and spend two weeks there. Jon came home last week, sick and exhausted. He picked up some kind of bug while traveling and is just now feeling like he can work. He has a lot of catching up to do with partials and manuscripts and now can concentrate on that, knowing his parents are in good hands.

I spent almost an hour on the phone yesterday with one of our agency authors. His first book in a three-book series will be published next winter. The author has this series is well in hand and he is in the process of writing book number II. But, as he works away at this commitment, he wanted to talk about his writing career in general. This was an exciting and positive conversation on so many levels. This author is bright and dedicated and wants to make book writing his full-time career. At this point he's supporting himself and his family by writing--magazine articles, web writing, etc. His book deal with a large publisher adds to that income, but now the goal is, in his words, "a BIG book."

He had several ideas in mind, but before fleshing them out he needed to talk about them. Two of them are real winners and one just blew me away. So, like a couple of kids planning a summer performance ("I know--let's put on a SHOW!"), we talked about his great plot idea and how to make his protagonist come alive. I love this kind of collaboration because it allows my creative, frustrated author side to shine. By the time we closed our discussion both of us were bouncing off the walls with the excitement of this new project.

As a new literary agent, this was a unique experience for me and I found that I truly love this part of our work. I'm delighted that he instigated this collaboration and I look forward to helping to guide his work in months and years to come.

Happy August everyone!