Kitten Season

One of the more irritating things about being a veterinarian is that some people think you do nothing but play with puppies and kittens. Then again, one of the best things about being a veterinarian is...you get to play with puppies and kittens.

Not all day, of course. But sometimes, even during the most hectic, demanding, awful day—let’s get real, especially on a hectic, demanding, awful day!—taking half a minute to snuggle up to one of the littlest patients is like taking a big old Sanity Pill.

It’s mid-June, which means we’re smack-dab in kitten season. (1) When I lived in rural areas, this was the time of year you’d see little kids in front of the grocery store, with a litter of kittens in a laundry basket and a sign saying, “Free!!!” (2) Litters are abandoned by their owners, some of them literally on our doorstep. Other kittens are brought in by Good Samaritans, who find them in parking lots, hayfields, woodpiles, sheds, inside walls, underneath cars, on the side of the road, in the middle of the road...

And then there was the kitten who fell off a garage roof onto a client’s head. She was teeny-tiny, less than a week old, her eyes not even open. We figured momma cat must have carried her up there, then somehow lost her. It was a hell of a surprise to the client, who was not accustomed to kittens dropping on him out of the clear blue sky. Lucky for the kitten, though—if he hadn’t been standing there at that exact moment, she would have died from falling onto the concrete.

The kitty pictured above is one of the this season's many foundlings. He’s thin, and pretty scruffy, but once he gets some regular meals and TLC, he’ll grow up to be a big handsome cat. He knows it, too—he’s trying to walk across me to get to my lunch (tuna, yum).

Kitten season, we say, and sigh. The shelters are full, the foster homes are bursting, the rescue societies are strained to the limit. So many babies, not enough homes. And yet, despite all this, the kitten-mad among us cuddle each and every squirmy furry little monster, exclaiming, Isn't he cute?

Adorableness. The saving grace of kitten season.

(1) Kitten season starts in mid-spring, and, depending on where you live, ends in mid- to late-fall. That’s because female cats start coming into heat in late February, when the days start getting long. Then they cycle in and out of heat every 3 weeks until fall, when the days get short. They don’t come into heat at all during the winter. (Cats who spend all their lives inside, under artificial lights, are sometimes an exception). The kitty gestation period is about 9 weeks, so that means no winter babies!

(2) If you’re a parent, and you’re considering letting your female cat (or dog) give birth so that your kids can see “the miracle of life”…please, please, please DON’T. I’ll save that rant for another day, and tell you all my reasons why. Just, for now, please believe me when I say it is NOT a good idea.

This Reading Experience Brought To You By...

Courtesy of the New York Times comes this article about product placement in a young adult novel.

Yep, that’s right: product placement.

You know product placement. It’s what made Reese’s Pieces a household name after E.T.; it’s why sitcom characters always hold the soda can with the name displayed toward the camera. Companies pay for the privilege of having their products onscreen. Nobody cares; after all, the hero has to swig something, and whether it’s a Coke or a Pepsi won’t make any difference to the story or to the viewer. If a company wants to cough up enough cash to ensure that their athletic shoes adorn the heroine’s feet, be my guest.

This seems to be the line that the publisher, authors, and Cover Girl are taking about the product placement in Cathy’s Book, a young adult novel due out in September 2007 from Running Press. Cover Girl isn’t paying the authors directly; instead, the company will help promote the book. In exchange, according the NYT article: “Some of the changes that the authors and illustrators…have made since the partnership was struck include altering a drawing entitled "Artgirl Detective" to "Artist! Detective! UnderCover Girl" and changing a generic reference to "gunmetal grey eyeliner" to "eyecolor in 'Midnight Metal.'”

So what? Does this hurt anyone? Probably not. But it makes me uneasy, if for no other reason than novels are one of the last ad-free bastions left in our world. Here in Portland, our city ballpark is named after a utility company. The Triple Crown races are now the Visa Triple Crown, the Kentucky Derby brought to you by Yum! Brands. Everything, it seems, now comes with a tag attached. Even--if you can believe this--a kid’s bus ride to school.

If this works out well for Cover Girl, then certainly we’ll see more of it. How soon before a company offers to pay? How many authors could resist the kind of money and promotional opportunities a big company can offer? (Let me pop a balloon right here—nobody, aside from Steven King and John Grisham and a few others, makes a living writing novels. Even Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates have day jobs). Would we tell ourselves, as the writers in this article did, that it's not a big deal, it's not changing the story?

As far as that goes, I do believe them (and for the record, let me say that the premise of Cathy’s Book sounds absolutely delicious). But if a company pays for product placement in a novel, you can bet that at some point, pressure will come to bear on the author or publisher.

More importantly, does it change the reader's experience? To me, there's a big difference between "gunmetal grey eyeliner" and "eyecolor in 'Midnight Metal.'" The first is good, detailed writing that does what good, detailed writing is supposed to do: evoke a visual image. I read that phrase and I can see the color. In contrast, “eyecolor in ‘Midnight Metal’” pulls me out of the story, wondering what Midnight Metal might look like. Instead of a clear visual image, it evokes...shopping mall.

It's the same difference between the Civic Stadium and PGE Park. One belonged to the city residents. The other is bought and paid for, and you'd better not forget it.

It could be hard to lose yourself in a novel with that kind of message.

A ShoutOut, A Poem, and A Thank You

If you love books, but you haven't yet stopped by Bookseller Chick, get thee hence at once! In this particular entry, she writes about Tequila Mockingbird (hilarious--you just have to read it), and then rounds up a bunch of cool links. First up: Chicks Up Front, a poetry slam performance by Sarah Holbrook. Fantastic all on its own. Made even better by Bookseller Chick's comment that the poem reminds her of Ruth, the been-there-honey-and-you-don't-know-the-half-of-it receptionist in Tallulah Falls.

Thanks to Bookseller Chick for the mention, and to Milady Insanity for making sure I saw it!

Literary Agent Redux

You’ve written a book, and you want to find a literary agent to represent you and your work. How do you find this person, and how do you make sure you don’t get scammed?

(Do you need an agent? That depends. If you’re going to self-publish, no. If you’re aiming for the small, independent publishing houses—not necessarily. But if you’ve got your sights set on the big guns—Random House, say, or Simon and Schuster—then you probably do. Check out this article, or the resources listed below, for more info).

The first step is to make a list of agents who are looking for manuscripts like yours. There’s lots of ways to do this, and I recommend a combination of approaches (hey, it worked for me). First, look for published books that are similar to yours in genre or theme. Often, the author will include his or her agent in the acknowledgements. (If not, a Web search can often turn up the agent who represented the novel; or, as a last resort, you can call the publisher and ask who the agent of record is for that book). Once you’ve discovered the agent's name, you can then search the resources mentioned below to see what other books he or she has represented, to see if the agent might be a good fit for you.

A couple of nice bonuses to this approach is that 1) You’ll get a good feel for what’s already out there on the shelves. Agents appreciate writers who are knowledgeable about what’s happening in their genre. And 2) If an author thanks his or her agent with particular enthusiasm, that’s practically a personal recommendation!

At the same time, do some digging to turn up more agent names. Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents is an great place to start. A new edition comes out every year; since agent information can change rapidly, be sure you’re using the current one. Writer’s Digest Guide to Literary Agents is another good reference, also updated annually. On the Internet, two very helpful resources are Agent Research and Evaluation and AgentQuery.

When searching these references, remember you’re not going to contact every agent listed; that’s a waste of your time and theirs. Instead, you’re looking for those agents who represent books like yours. Using these strategies, you should be able to generate a list of twenty to fifty literary agents, and possibly more, depending on your genre.

How do you avoid scams? Pretty easily, actually, if you remember two principles.

First: Only query reputable agents. Reputable agents make their money by selling manuscripts to publishers. This means they'll have an established track record, which you'll be able to find. Most are also members of the Association of Author’s Representatives, and so are bound to the AAR Canon of Ethics. (Note that membership in AAR is not mandatory, and some very excellent agents are not members. Still, they voluntarily abide by the same ethical code). If you use the agent-hunting strategies described above, chances are good that your list will only include reputable agents.

Second: In the agent-author relationship, money flows toward the author, NOT the other way around. In other words, before the manuscript has been sold to a publisher, you never, ever pay an agent. For anything. Ever. As I emphasized above, agents earn their money by selling manuscripts. Once this sale is made, then the agent takes his or her commission (15% is standard) out of the advance paid to the author by the publisher. At this point, the agent may also ask to be reimbursed for any ordinary office expenses (postage, copying, etc) incurred in the sale. These expenses should be clearly explained to the author beforehand, and/or spelled out in the agent-author contract.

In contrast to the above, a scam agent usually has no verifiable record of sales to publishers. He or she will not be a member of AAR. Most importantly, a scam agent will ask for some kind of upfront payment from the author. This payment may be disguised as “reading fees”, “editing fees”, or reimbursement for office expenses (remember, any such reimbursement should only be made after the manuscript is sold). These people make their money from the authors they’ve scammed, NOT from selling manuscripts to publishers.

If you harbor any doubt about the agents on your list, do yourself a massive favor and check them out before you send them your manuscript. (Two excellent resources to help you: Preditors and Editors and Writer Beware). As I noted in last week's post, many authors spend little or no time researching agents. Before they know it, they’ve signed with a scam artist—and only come to realize it when, some months down the road, the manuscripts they've labored over for years remain unsold, and their bank accounts are smaller by hundreds—sometimes thousands—of dollars.

Be smarter than that. Next to writing a fabulous book, finding a good agent can be the most important step you take toward publication. You owe it to yourself—and to your writing career—to do it right.

Agents 101

Fireworks arrived early this year, in the world of writing and publishing blogs. The website Absolute Write, which has been a wellspring of information on writing and publishing for several years, was shut down last week after a threatening phone call from a “literary agent” whose name appeared on AW’s list of 20 Worst Agencies (the AW site is back up, but I can't find their version of the list; so here it is on Writer Beware). This hasty plug-pulling of a respected, educational writers’ website caused a furious backlash among a number of writers and publishing professionals, including the anonymous NYC literary agent, Miss Snark, who issued a take-no-prisoners, bring-it-on shout out to the “agent” who started this whole brouhaha.

So what? You’re writing away in your cubbyhole, deaf to the distractions of the blogosphere. (In which case, what are you doing here?) You say to yourself: Tempest in a teapot, and why should I care, anyway?

If your goal is publication, you should care plenty.

Why? Because in your quest for publication, most likely you’ll be seeking representation by a literary agent. A GOOD lit agent can and will do all these things:

• Help you polish your work, so that it is in best possible shape prior to submission to editors;
• Formulate and carry out a submission strategy to these editors, using her extensive contacts and the relationships she’s built in the publishing world;
• Negotiate the best possible publishing deal for you and your work (this goes beyond the bare question of advance money; this also includes which rights and subrights the publisher gets, the royalties you will receive, and a host of other details—most of which you’ve never heard of, but which can make a huge difference in your publishing experience);
• Mediate any problems which arise between you and your publisher, from bad cover art to book promotion snafus;
• Give you oodles of advice and encouragement, to help you shape your long-term writing career.

So what’s the problem? There are no degree certificates for literary agents, no government regulation, no exams to pass, no licenses to acquire. I could slap together a webpage today, order some business cards saying “Dog-Eat-Dog Literary Agency”, and voila! I’m a literary agent. (Perish the thought—I would be terrible). Many writers, many of whom have invested years in their novels, don’t bother to take the time to learn what separates the good agents from the bad. Bad agents know this. Operating under the time-honored truism that there’s one born every minute, these scam artists go a-hunting. And they catch plenty, with the result that the agent ends up richer, yet another writer ends up poorer (and bitter, to boot), and the book is no nearer publication than it was before.

Over the next week or three, I’ll post some more about agents: how to recognize the bad ones, how to find the good ones, and how to get the agent of your dreams.

Barbaro

Two weeks ago, at the Kentucky Derby, a big bay colt blasted past the other horses as if he possessed a top gear unknown to the rest of the field. But more than that, what caught my eye is how relaxed he seemed. His ears flicked from side to front to side, as if he had all the time in the world, there at the finish, to listen to everything around him. With those ears, in that instant, Barbaro had my heart.

I’ve been a horse junkie all my life (the fact that I grew up a city kid, with nary a fiery steed for at least ten miles in any direction, seemed like a particularly sarcastic joke on the part of the universe), and I’ve followed the Triple Crown races almost that long.

The Kentucky Derby. The Preakness Stakes. The Belmont Stakes. Three races in 5 weeks. Anything can happen, and so goes the old saying: That's why they call it horse racing.

As a kid I watched Seattle Slew, the little horse everyone laughed at, romp off with the Crown. Then, the very next year, Affirmed and Alydar slugging it out from Kentucky to New York, Affirm’s margin of victory growing narrower with every race, until that immortal Belmont Stakes: Affirmed and Alydar battling head to head down the homestretch, me jumping up and down in front of the family TV yelling, and at the end…Affirmed again, literally by a nose. The second Triple Crown winner in two years, the third in 5 years. All the "experts" proclaimed that the mighty Crown, the benchmark of equine greatness since 1875, was a benchmark no more. With snide condescension in their voices, they said, Modern horses are just too good. From now on, we’ll probably have a Triple Crown winner every two or three years.

That was 28 years ago. No horse has claimed the Crown since. But this year, as I watched Barbaro blow away the field at the Kentucky Derby, I thought with a thrill of excitement: This is it. This guy could do it.

Anything can happen. A jostle down the backstretch. A thrown shoe. A horse not up to his best. Sure. That’s why they call it horse racing.

We don’t like to think injury. Of course it happens; injury is a risk in any sport, with any athlete performing to the utmost. All it takes is one bad step. But these are horses. We love them. Injury is too terrible to think of.

Yesterday, barely 100 yards into the Preakness Stakes, Barbaro took a bad step. From wishing for a Triple Crown, now we pray only that he survives.

Enchanted Evening

Like most writers (and most veterinarians, for that matter), I’m an introvert. I take my socializing the way I take wasabi—small doses for flavor, carefully calibrated not to overwhelm.

Not only that, I’ve succeeded in avoiding most of the party-giving occasions of life. Given that my boyfriend is as introverted as I am, birthday parties—surprise or otherwise—are highly unlikely. (I should point out that avoiding parties is not one of the reasons I’m unmarried. I mean, I may be a reclusive geek, but I’m not so far gone that the thought of having a shower given in my honor sends me screaming for the hills).

Which made it all the sweeter when my writing group threw me a party to celebrate the publication of Tallulah Falls.

What a lovely, magical, amazing experience.

We thought perhaps 20 or 30 people might come; it was a Sunday, after all, and raining to boot. Instead, something like 75 people crowded into my friend Connie’s living room, mingling, chatting, and nibbling on adorable tiny homemade cheesecakes. And me? The party organizers sat me down at the head of the table and for over 3 hours, I signed books, chatted with guests (some of whom I hadn’t seen for years), and laughed, laughed, laughed. Ton of fun? You have no idea. In a fit of optimism, I’d ordered 45 books from a local bookstore, figuring we’d have some left over. We not only sold out—the next day I had to order more, for all those who’d paid for a copy but didn’t get one at the party.

Perhaps the most surreal aspect, though, was that for the first time, all my worlds collided.

People who knew me as a veterinarian met those who knew me as a writer, who met still others who knew me as a college instructor. The consensus I heard from everyone afterward: “You know so many nice, interesting people!”

Yes, I do. To everyone who came, thank you—I’m overwhelmed that so many of you took time out of your hectic weekend to come buy a book and share a laugh with me. Thank you also to Broadway Books, a wonderful independent bookstore, for ordering in the books for me—twice. And to my wonderful writing group, the Writers of Renown, and our fearless leader, Karen Karbo—novelist, memoirist, and indefatigable teacher—I am still floating on air. Thank you, compadres! The next party, in honor of the next one of us to get published, will be at my house. I can only hope to match what you’ve done for me—no way can I top it.

Champagne, anyone?

Happy Mother's Day

Mother’s Day used to be a day of phone calls, cards and flower-sending.

Now it’s a day of remembrance.

Today I found myself remembering the girly-girl things my mother taught me. Mom loved style, she loved clothes and make-up and shoes, and she had a particular romance with purses. I was her only daughter, and I am not a girly-girl. I used to think it’s because I grew up with older brothers, but I’ve met lots of women who did and who are passionate about girl stuff, so it must be something else: renegade DNA, a woogie bit of brain chemistry.

Whatever lay between that particular difference between my mother and me, it never stopped her from patiently teaching me the finer points of being female. Like how to do my nails. Mom was expert at manicuring her own, and ever since I was a little girl, I thought she had the most beautiful nails in the world. I still do. She kept them long, with perfectly symmetrical curved tips, the color almost always some gorgeous dark shade of red. I remember the lineup of little bottles—some kind of milky fluid, some kind of clear fluid, the polish itself (no red for me, not at 13; Mom started me off with clear, and later, pale rose). And then there were the tools—orange stick, file, the hangnail scissors in their own special green plastic pouch. I remember the burning-hair smell of nail filings, the sharp odor of acetone. I loved those evenings, Mom’s explanations and demonstrations, the sense of received knowledge, of wisdom passed down. As far as the nails themselves…well, I did learn, and for a while, I practiced. But I never have been disciplined enough to spend time on things that don’t interest me, and sometime during the intervening, nail-clipper years, I’ve forgotten the details of my mother’s technique. To me, that my mother’s nails were the most beautiful in the world somehow seemed enough.

Mom taught me how to put on makeup; how to buy clothes; how to scuff the soles of newly purchased high heels, to keep from slipping on a rain-slick sidewalk. But while I always learned willingly, I never felt passionately enough about these things to make them part of my daily life. Even now, when I see a woman beautifully made-up, right behind my admiration is the thought: There’s fifteen minutes of sleep lost.

I don’t need to be a girly-girl, though, to treasure the lessons my mother taught me. It’s part of her that I keep forever, her legacy to me made in an observation here, an admonition there, a funny story, an explanation, hundreds and thousands of them, over the years I was blessed to have her. I dream and I remember, and I long to have her back. I stand in a fitting room and look at myself in the mirror, and I hear her say, “Cute isn’t enough. What does it do for you?”

To all mothers, in this life and beyond: Happy Mother’s Day.

And The Bell Rings For Round Two!

Like most unpublished writers, I had one goal in mind: publication.

Didn’t see much beyond that, except, of course, that life would become easier. As if the alchemy that would transform my hundreds of loose manuscript pages into a gorgeous bound book would also transform my working life into a smooth, clean machine. I would be a writer! Gone would be the juggling of schedules, the stress of too many tasks in too little time, the eking out of an hour here, a morning there, to work on my books. No, I would be a writer, and my life would be writing.

If the laughter you hear is a little shrill, well, that’s because nothing has changed—except now, I’m working under a deadline.

It was different for Tallulah Falls. In the normal course of publishing (we’re not talking Kaavya Viswanathan of Opal Mehta fame here—her path to publication was definitely the road less traveled), the only person invested in the completion of a first novel is the writer herself. I realized an important truth about halfway through the first draft: Nobody cared if this thing got finished or not. Except me.

The second book, though—that’s a different story. The second book has all kinds of people invested in it. It’s exciting, it’s life-changing. It’s scary as hell. It ought to be interesting—especially since, in this next year, I’ll also be spending time promoting Tallulah Falls. And of course working hard at my first love, veterinary medicine.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Reptile Love

It’s not every morning you get up and find a dead frozen mouse thawing in the kitchen sink.

Ah, yes. Sunday brunch for Snappy Tom.

Snappy Tom is my boyfriend's snake. A Western hognose snake, to be precise, and a beautiful boy he is, with a pert little upturned nose and intricately patterned brown scales.

I've never understood what makes people afraid of snakes. They’re beautiful. They feel nice to the touch: dry, cool, and smooth. And if you don’t bother them, they have absolutely no interest in bothering you.

Then again, I know the exact same things are true of spiders, and yet I’m deathly afraid of them. Even little ones. If the upcoming summer movie that’s getting great buzz, Snakes on a Plane, was instead called Spiders on a Plane, you’d never get me into the theater. I barely got through the Shelob scenes in Return of the King. Heebie-jeebies galore.

Snakes don’t bother me, but I have to admit that as a pet, ol’ Snappy T. doesn’t do a lot for me. I mean, he’s just not that…interactive. Beautiful, yes, interesting, absolutely. A pal to hang out with? Umm…no. I look at him and make admiring noises, and then I go play with my dogs.

Which brings me to the human-animal bond. People who work with animals talk a lot about the human-animal bond. This is the emotional attachment people have with their animals, that benefits the well-being of both the person and the animal. You’ve probably heard about studies related to the human-animal bond: people who own pets have lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, children raised with pets have higher self-esteem and are more likely to be involved in sports and other activities, etc. Most of us naturally assume that the animals in question are the traditional “companion” animals: Dogs. Cats. Horses. Birds. Goats. Cattle and sheep, even. Critters that can tell your mood, who interact with you, who recognize you as an individual apart from all other humans, just as you’d recognize Old Yeller apart from all other dogs.

Can the human-animal bond exist between a person and a snake? A turtle? A tarantula? Do those animals have the ability to recognize a particular human, and if they do, does it make any kind of difference to them? Or is it strictly a one-way street, with humans projecting their wants and needs onto a creature that has no more discernment than a potted plant?

Me, I’m not bonding with any arachnids anytime in this life. What do you think? Possible? Not possible? Or do you think the whole human-animal bond thing is a bunch of hooey, even if the critter involved is Lassie herself?

I’d post a picture of Snappy, but he’s eaten his mouse and has holed up under his driftwood to digest. No matter what the species, this I know for sure: if you pester a boy when his stomach’s full, and all he wants to do is nap, he'll become a very grumpy boy indeed.

A Question. A Contest. And It's Only The First Day!

OK, this is the thing. I was going to open this blog with a definiton of piccalilli.

Then I realized I could save everyone time and simply post a picture of myself with GEEK stenciled across my forehead. In red.

Which brings us to the question of the day, and possibly the theme for this entire blog: If you realize you’re being a geek, and you stop yourself in time, are you still a geek?

All comments welcome. Some possibly more welcome than others. Most welcome of all are those that reassure me that I am a hip, savvy individual. (I’ll warn the rest of you in advance that these people are either liars or they’ve never met me. At the very least, they’ve never seen the inside of my clothes closet).

If you want to know what piccalilli is, look it up. I will give a FABULOUS PRIZE to the first person who posts the correct definition.

Really? they ask.

Really, I say. I wouldn't lie to you about fabulosity.