rejection update

just a little update from me to the vast emptiness here.
i am a few rejections further into my quest for publication, and though i am not (as of yet) disheartened, i am unsure if the rejections are coming in based on the brief portions of my manuscript or from a less than spectacular query letter / synopsis.

i'm still plugging away though - in a sea of No, i'm searching for a Yes. There should be one out there, right?

in the meantime, i've been assuaging my woes with creative fancy rum cocktails for enjoyment in our new backyard tiki hut... rejections are so much better when combined with a variation on a Mai Tai or Painkiller.

a dash of bitters, garnished with a broken typewriter.

The First Rejection

it's official - i am now a rejected author. not dejected... yet. i know that most of my submissions will be rejected without any notice - if i don't hear back in 4 weeks it's a no thank you. but - i actually got a polite decline. It's all part of it, right?

Dear Author,

Many thanks for your email regarding your manuscript, which I am declining with my regrets.

Given the demands of running a boutique agency and continuing to best represent our current clients, we must make difficult decisions every day regarding what new projects we can sign.  I appreciate your thinking of "this agency", and wish you the best of luck in your search for representation.

Best,

Query Letter Number One

If you had to choose between living forever with the one you love or losing them in order to save the world, what would you do?

That's the beginning. Not of the Novel, but of the Query letter. Today I emailed my very first of probably many, and it was difficult.

All I had to do was hit "send". But I struggled with that little button click. Tougher than writing the last page of the actual novel. Trickier than telling people i have a finished novel. 

That's easy. But now? now it's officially real. It's out there. Not the book, as such, but I am beginning to let The Agents know that I am here, that I exist, and that yes... there's a new book waiting to be read.

I know that perhaps nothing will happen until I write book # 2, or book # 3... but without this, without book # 1, there is nothing else.

so, here we go. 

2013, and I'm hoping that there will be some people willing to listen to the Devil's Jukebox.

-M

It Never Used To Be Like This

It never used to be like this. I could sit for hours between the music and the bar, mixing my alcohol with cigarette smoke and nobody would notice me. If it wasn’t for the occasional question of a passing bartender, I’d have figured I was invisible. Now it’s different.

Now I feel like I’m really here, I’m solid, and I’m being noticed.

I glance at her, sitting alone with a notebook at the other end of the bar. I know she can see me, I can almost hear her thoughts. I can almost taste her heartbeat. I can feel her thinking about me, and I want to feel more.

When did this happen?

I hide a smile as I hear her catch a breath between smoke and exhale. There is a quiet glance caught in glass and then gone. I ask the bartender for another drink, and it seems as if my voice fills her drink until she spills, and she quickly looks away. It makes me feel hungry, this distance, this closeness, and I realize that I haven’t eaten in what feels like weeks.

There’s a soft blur on my memory, and I can’t remember where I was last night.

What happened?

I sketch her profile in my mind, reflected in the mirror, behind rows of bottles and slightly across from me. It’s a snapshot moment like a sip of red wine. She is alcoholic cute in shot glass style. The squint of an eye as I light a cigarette and the hint of a smile, a little sway. She’s moving as if the music was between us instead of nothing at all, but sometimes I can’t tell the difference between rhythm and alcohol.

She sits so close; her reflection is further than my arms can reach. I know I can get her closer, I know I can make her do anything.

How do I know this?

What happened? How can I be feeling these things?

Where was I last night?

I try to think, she distracts me. It’s not love, it’s not even lust.

It’s hunger.

I try to look away and I’m captured. I focus on what’s in front of me; my reflection. That can’t be right. I don’t look like that…

Do I?

I stare at myself, and I hear my own thoughts, remembering. I try to talk and end up alone. I am here, with broken hands. I can hold nothing. I shouldn’t be able to hear her heart beat; I shouldn’t be able to feel her thoughts. I want to be too close to her, and it frightens me, because I know that if I get that close, we’re both going to be lost.

I can’t help it though. I can just look at her, turn my head, slide a smile down the bar like an offering, and she takes it. She stands, moves closer, moves towards me, and I know that I can keep this going until it’s too late.

I need to eat.

I remember.

I didn’t want this, but I can’t go back now.

It was last night, it was someone else. It was another bar, and instead of me watching her there was someone else watching me. The woman in the shadows, and she called me without words. She smiled, and her teeth stayed with me until I fell asleep, until I woke, and it was another night.

She moved right through me.

I wanted her, then, like someone else want me, now. Like the minutes that slipped away, right through me. Like her smile that let me know that she could see me. I felt that even with my arms outstretched I couldn’t touch, reach, or hold her. It was like another love poem to be torn up and thrown away. It was nothing but distance.

Until I was too close to get away.

Now it’s my turn. She killed me.

I remember.

I don’t want this.

I can’t do this; I can’t do to someone else what has been done to me.

I let her go, she passes too close to me, and I become a shadow of who I could be. These broken hands shake. My eyes close, my heart pulls and aches, and I can feel the air she moves but I don’t want to move her closer to me. So I sit in silence, and I’ve never felt quite this far away.

I stare through the alcohol, the cigarette smoke, for the longest second. I’m still hungry, and I follow her out into the night.

The Girl At The Bottom Of The Glass

There is a space between completion and beginning. This space overflows with work, friends, time spent living. I've never been in this place before.

The book is finished, and there is emptiness.

Focus breaks. I have fragments of what i am currently calling "Book 2". not the most original title, but for now it works. I have a growing pile of Query letters waiting for the right addressess and contacts. I have a full-time job, a wife, and 4 dogs. I have a little space where I can go and play drums, but I'm not making music, I'm just releasing some noise. Noise with a beat.

and sometimes....
sometimes there's poetry.

The girl at the bottom of the glass

Memories fade through

Like torn photographs

Edges burnt

Always in black and white

She tilts her head

Closes her eyes

Sighs

And slightly smiles

He used to be there

Solid

Now it’s like music, fading

You know the song

… there’s a ghost…

She sits like static

Between cigarette smoke

And another pint

And she breathes

Slight ache

Missing the nearness he used to bring

But the absence holds strength

Like the reflection of an empty seat

Next to her

This is not loss

This is learning

This is not failure

This is future

This is movement

The DJ moves into another

Slow sad country song

     …I fall to pieces…

And her smile fades

Like a Polaroid

left in the sun

sometimes    more light

isn’t the answer

it only makes the shadows

harder to see

and she smiles again

against candle glow

and another pint

brushing red hair    out

of her eyes

feeling like it’s a little symbolic

an annoyance gone

and it was so easy

she stands up

holding a cigarette

to her lips

and she stumbles

alcoholic

across concrete floor

until the night

finds her

moving into the future

a crumpled photograph

left on the bar

forgotten

behind her

Jukebox Outtake 1

Found on the cutting room floor. Perhaps this will be reworked into something else, perhaps it will live only on these virtual pages...

A Jukebox Cut:

She still feels a wall of tears behind her eyes, and it almost breaks when she hears Martin’s voice.

 “I know, me neither. Johnny and Sebastian are coming up, and we’ll all go to Vancouver together.”

Iris hangs up, pours another glass of wine, and looks out her apartment window. It’ll be good to see Sebastian again, Jonathan too. She still feels him in her heart. But Iris knows there’s a reason they aren’t together. That’s why she left. She couldn’t be there when he found the other woman. Iris doesn’t know who this woman is, but she knows that Jonathan needs to be with her.

The headaches have been hitting hard again, and this time the images aren’t good. There are blood and flowers, black roses—not blue ones. There are the long hallways of an empty school, shuddering in scratched black and white, and there is Charlotte. Standing alone by the Planetarium, whispering something, but the sound doesn’t match. It’s scratched and skipping, like a needle playing the wrong record.

In The Beginning

It's been a long time coming, and now it's done.

Pushing together and tearing apart words and ideas for the past couple of decades, not sure what would happen with them, but knowing that something would happen.

Too many poems to mention, too many little paragraphs and stories edited down into oblivion.

Life and love and travel and work slipping in all the time. Everything is distraction, and there is fear in completion.

But now, it's done.

Step one, at any rate. 

Step one: Write A Novel.

okay, got it.

The Devil's Jukebox.
79,000 words.

Step two.... well, working on that one right now.
Publish that Novel.

it's January, 2013. Let's make this the year of the Devil's Jukebox.

-xo-
  Marcel