I'm very surprised to still have the occasional Cure-related news to report...
We've recently sold Cure to a French publisher. Don't know yet when it will actually appear in France, but am looking forward to seeing it (though my French is not good enough to actually read it...). There's something really cool to me about the book appearing in a foreign language.
Also, I was interviewed last week by Above the Law, an always-entertaining "legal tabloid." It's certainly the first time in my life that someone has referred to me as "living the dream"...
As is probably always the case after giving an unscripted interview, there are a couple of things I would say slightly differently if I had a do-over. Specifically, my answer to the question as to what advice I would give aspiring authors is both a little muddled and not entirely accurate of what I actually think. (To be clear, I'm not saying I was misquoted, I'm saying I wasn't articulate.) First of all, I don't actually know if most books that deserve to get published actually are, and don't know why I said such a thing. The point I was trying to make was just that in my experience agents and editors are smart and hard-working, and that as hard and frustrating as attempting to get published is for writers, and as tempting as it therefore is to vilify agents and editors, most of them are doing the very best they can at jobs that are both difficult and incredibly subjective.
But lazy and/or incompetent agents certainly can and do kill a book's chances. My novel racked up a lot of rejections, and it was my great fortune to have an agent who was the very definition of tenacious when the chips were down. But I have known other unpublished writers who signed with agents who quickly flaked out on them after their manuscripts didn't immediately sell, and if I'd ended up with such an agent my book would not have been published. Unpublished writers generally cross their fingers when it comes to signing with an agent, which is just one of the ways that blind luck enters into getting published.
Also, when I said that aspiring writers shouldn't focus on writing something publishable, I was referring to not doing so while teaching yourself the craft of writing. If you're writing a novel with the goal of publishing it, I certainly think you should learn as much about the publishing market as possible, and have a good idea where your work potentially fits into that marketplace. Publishing is a business, after all, and the idea is to publish books that people will actually buy...
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