I Got a Call from a Literary Agent

 

I got a call from a Literary Agent.

A dream come true, right?

However, I was suspect. I didn't want to get too excited, for I know getting a Literary Agent is about as rare as finding a hen's tooth.

I have been getting calls from people interested in a book I wrote way back in 2008—I don't know why it suddenly got attention, but I wondered if this was like the other calls—they wanted me to pay them to market my book.

No, says this agent, he would take a standard 15% commission. He would write up the proposal, a pitch, and approach publishers, plus promote worldwide distribution. He thought it had universal appeal, for it was a journey, a life story, human interest, horse training, and is about an animal-human bond.

The book It's Hard to Stay on a Horse While You're Unconscious is a horse book I paid Xlibris to publish. I was innocent then. I didn't know you could publish a book for free on Amazon, which would take a small fee if it sold, but not before. Xlibris provided some editorial input; they sent paperback and hard copies to me, plus I got a Kirkus review. (It was good; I rambled some, but they liked it.)

I sold a few.

I stopped paying attention to the book when it wasn't selling, and I thought it was overpriced at $19.99 for a soft copy, $29.99 for a hard copy, and $9.99 for an eBook. (I made around $2.50 a copy plus or minus a few cents.) I thought the title was too long. I was rebelling when I heard that you must use a short title, and I felt that the two ways of looking at the word unconscious made sense. If you are hit in the head and out cold, you can't stay on a horse, and I was awed when I discovered that a horse would follow your conscious attention to a point ahead. Also, when you aren't paying attention, a horse can spook, and you will sit in thin air while the horse is elsewhere. (I once rode my daughter's horse Dee and found if I focused on a fence post ahead without touching the reins, she would go straight for it.)

When I read the contract, it sounded much like a real estate buyer's agency contract. (A realtor once tried to coerce me into signing one of those, which meant I would owe him a fee for any house I bought, no matter what agent showed it to me, or if I found it myself, or had an owner-to-buyer agreement. In other words, I was stuck.) Yes, sign a buyer's agency contract when you like the agent and want them to help you find or buy a particular house. Now Oregon law is pushing that, and I'm a licensed Real Estate Agent.

What to do?

(In Real Estate School, the instructor taught that most Real Estate issues are negotiable. Remember that when buying a house or signing a publishing deal.)

Alpine Meadow

 

On the Fourth of July, I trekked through an alpine meadow with a gurgling stream straight off ice melt, with plants and little flowers hugging tight to the earth.  I saw what the wild wolves see. I was at the base of Mt. Shasta.

Thinking about it, I can’t think.

Ray Bradbury had a sign by his desk. “Don’t think.” People call that nebulous something various words—intuition, the internal knowing, the muse, the Holy Spirit, God.

I sat beside the lake, dangling my feet in ice water until they turned numb.   

It will take a while to integrate what I learned on the mountain, and even longer to articulate it. Maybe nothing will come, perhaps everything. Maybe seeing that all creatures and non-creatures are imbued with spirit—the trees, the water, the flowers, the rocks, the little raccoon that wanted to look at me, but didn’t want me to look at him, that giant old Grandmother tree that fell to the earth. It is crumbling, providing shelter for the little ones, providing mulch for the ground—soon, it will be soil.

I got it that human beings are not warring, sniping, sniveling, petty entities by nature. That has been drummed, conditioned, and taught to them. Human beings are love, expansiveness, beauty, and children of a divine creative force.

“Miracles don’t happen overnight. Sometimes they take an entire weekend”

P.S.I didn't have my camera with me. This picture was taken from the highway.