Category: writing


In which the author takes performance-inducing drugs

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July 12, 2025

…by which, to be clear, I mean caffeine and sugar. Mostly caffeine, really. So much caffeine.

I know this is ultimately unhealthy, and I know that Brando Sando (allegedly) doesn’t even consume coffee, but he’s the unattainable ideal of us writers. (The man wrote a bunch of full-length novels in secret while writing his regularly scheduled books during the lockdown.)

On the other hand, there’s Stephen King and Philip K. Dick, both of whom abused hard drugs with gusto. King said there are entire novels from that part of his life that he simply doesn’t remember writing, and PKD’s output was legendary – until he died of stroke at 53. (To be fair, even goody-two-shoes folks can get fatal strokes, and it can’t be proven that the drugs played a part.)

And then there’s me, chugging an extra-large black coffee with a Tim Hortons donut, which had been preceded by a passable cup of coffee and an above-average slice of chocolate cake at a fun little coffee date… The nature of my creative fuel is almost hilariously geeky by comparison, but hey, if it works, it works.

During the long walk home (the damn bus strike – still – but also, the weather was perfect), an old seed of an idea finally sprouted and, well, I aim to spend the rest of the night typing up the first draft of my first foray into a horror story. (With heavy sci-fi elements, of course, because come on…) Then I’ll sleep on it (after binge-watching a few more episodes of Alone), apply several coats of edits and shoe-shine – and then it shall join the ranks of my as-yet-unsold short stories and start the big bounce between the genre magazines looking for this sort of thing.

And now… Time to type, eh.

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On symbolism and lack thereof

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June 16, 2025

A while back, I wrote that I personalize my social media to absorb only interesting factoids or insights from folks who are experts in certain topics. That doesn’t always pay off (I’ve had to mute a lot of politicians’ names), but when it does, it’s beautiful. Today was one of those days.

Recently, there was a big debate about symbolism: someome made a webcomic where they mocked a Literature professor and implied that Poe’s raven was a happy accident, not a deliberate choice. I’m not going to repost the webcomic here because it turned out its creator was 16 when they made that cringeworthy (but surprisingly artistic!) masterpiece. What folks do before their 18th birthday ought to be a sealed record.

In the aftermath of that online debate, someone posted a link to a fascinating article on the topic. In 1963, a teen asked top writers about their use of symbolism. Here’s what they said…

The article, which is already great all on its own, also mentioned an amazing essay by Mary McCarthy, “Settling the Colonel’s Hash.” She’d published a non-fiction piece that sounded like short story: her train ride amd debate with an antisemitic colonel. Far too many people assumed her story was fiction, and proceeded to over-analyze it, hunting for clever symbols when there were none.

In her “Settling the Colonel’s Hash” essay, years later, McCarthy dived deep into the dangers of looking too hard for symbolism, even when the author’s intent is right there. Enjoy this PDF version of her essay.

Some of my favourite bits:

1. “from the Middle West” is such a posh way to say “Midwesterner”

2. “A surprising number wanted exact symbols; for example, they searched for the significance of the colonel’s eating hash and the autor eating a sandwich.” (I love this weapons-grade snark.)

3. “If the colonel had ordered a fruit salad with whipped cream, this too would have represented him in some way; given his other traits, it would have pointed to a complexity in his character that the hash did not suggest.” (The fact that it’s true makes it that much funnier.)

4. “He declined to be categorized as anti-Semite; he regarded himself as an independent thinker, who by a happy chance thought the same as everybody else.” (That describes folks – especially men – today every bit as much as 60 years ago…)

There are many more amazing bits, but I don’t want to spoil that beautiful essay for you. Enjoy that 10-page read, and take your time – it’s worth it.

…and as for me, sometimes I find so beautiful that I simply must include it in my short films. Other times, it’s only at the very end of the editing process that I find a tiny detail that ties in perfectly with my theme – but had sneaked in right under my nose. And then, of course, there are lots of tiny little jokes in my short stories. Some of them are more noticeable than others, but I don’t deliberately sprinkle symbolism all over the place. (Though, as McCarthy wrote, everything we do is symbolic, which means that’s ultimately inescapable.)

And now I’m off to put a couple of more layers of polish on my new short story. (Technically, this whole symbolism foray – both reading and blogging – has been procrastination on my short story, which is, in turn, a way of procrastinating on my not-yet-started new novel.) The story is my first attempt at fantasy, or at least urban-ish fantasy. “Some Notes on Becoming a God” will end up around 3,000 words, and it touches on some mighty topical modern issues. Let’s see who’ll want to publish it, eh?

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Losses and wins

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June 3, 2025

My desert adventure ended early. I wrote about it in depth on my trail journal. Short version: my legs got several injuries, the trail was a lot less developed than advertised (at least 10% included walking on the side of a highway…), and it was soul-crushingly lonely. It was considered normal to walk 3-4 days without seeing another human being. This year, in particular, there was a shortage of hikers, especially from other countries. (Probably due to the politics and the ongoing harassment of foreign tourists.)

The loneliness bit may have been partly due to bad luck. There was one experienced hiker (she’d done the Triple Crown (hiking all three major trails) twice) who managed to form a trail family of eight people around her by the time she reached the first town, 83 miles from the border. Impressive, that. Others ended up walking outside such bubbles.

The desert was beautiful, though… I’d never seen the Milky Way so bright, not even in the Sierra-Nevada mountains during my PCT thru-hike in 2022. Along the way, I explored the ghost town of Old Hachita – or what’s left of it. Those ruins were some grade-A Wild West Americana.

In the end, I made it 155 miles before calling it quits in Silver City, NM. The downtown Palace Hotel was incredibly hiker-friendly, and there were quite a few of us there. Many were recovering from their own injuries, most of them less serious than my own. It was a bit like a hiker-trash field hospital in that respect. My initial (and very very ambitious) plan had been to do the entire Triple Crown by completing the Continental Divide Trail this year, followed by the Appalachian Trail in 2026. But over at that hotel… Yeesh. Yeesh, I say. Multiple thruhikers (who had saved the CDT for last) I met would complain about how much they disliked the AT, and how they were forcing themselves to do the CDT.

I listened to their woeful laments, and nodded, and sympathized – and also asked myself, “Self, is that what I sound like?”

There comes a point when pursuing an overly ambitious quest becomes not merely eccentric or quixotic, but self-destructive, with not much fun along the way. A lot of that desert section was beautiful, and I met some unique and interesting people, but hiking on the side of the highway, alone, with coal-rolling trucks spewing exhaust in my face… That doesn’t count as a “National Scenic Trail” in my book.

…though to be fair, if my legs hadn’t decided to fall apart (should I have done more ThighMaster exercises beforehand?..), and if it had been just a bit less lonely, I might have carried on, if only out of sheer stubbornness.

Ah well.

The unplanned return back to Quebec was pricey: a flight from Silver City to Albuquerque (a very cheap, very tiny propeller plane; great experience!), from there to New York, and from there, an all-night bus back home. My apartment lease was still good until June 30th, so that’s where I’ve been for the past two weeks. No furniture (still in storage), only my sleeping bag, the contents of my hiking backpack, and a big bag of “welcome home” stuff I’d packed away for easy access. (The initial plan had been to finish the hike, get an AirBnB, and hunt for apartments.)

It makes no sense to hire a moving truck, move my stuff back here, and then move it back to my new apartment (just found one) on July 1, soooo here I am, trapped in the midst of strange logistics. Just an empty studio, a sleeping bag, a few books, my phone, and my laptop. (I use the phone as a hotspot when I need to do laptop-specific things.)

It’s a hilarious parody of a bachelor’s life (though fortunately, my girlfriend was glad to see me back early!), but on the upside, I’ve gotten quite a lot done. I’ve already finished a couple of new short stories, caught up on a lot of reading, and done some other productive stuff. If I’d returned to my TV, gaming computer, and unlimited internet, my productivity would’ve been a whole lot lower, eh.

I’ve got some good news, too. I always juggle a lot of different projects, and a few of them paid off:

My essay “A Hierarchy of Apocalypses” has been published in Phano, making it my first-ever non-fiction sale. (I’m not including my Kindle e-books.) Also, the pixel art the editor had picked to go with my essay is a thing of beauty.

“If Time Travel Were Possible…” (a short story set in my OTTO-verse) has been published in Black Cat Weekly, which also resulted in my first-ever fan mail!

“Murder of the Orient Express” (of, not on!) has been published in Pulp Asylum. The title is a bit of a funny story: a couple of podcast hosts had a blooper moment when they mispronounced the title of that classic novel, and they laughed it off. But that got me thinking… Who would want to kill an actual train itself? Why? And how? And thus this story was born!

…and I have a few more waiting in the wings.

It’s a bit funny: in the short-story biz, an “emerging writer” is defined as someone who has three or fewer publishing credits. I guess that makes me an emerged writer, eh?

One particular cool piece of news is that my short film, “Please Don’t Send Help,” got accepted by the first-ever Worldcon Film Festival! Worldcon is the biggest annual sci-fi convention in the world, and this will be their first addition of a film festival alongside all the author-related events. This year, it’s held in Seattle, in mid-August. I’ll get to attend it for free for one day when my film screens, and it’ll be a fun experience, being there as a sci-fi creator, but not (or at least not yet) a published novelist. Just like with my one-day visit to the New York Comic Con last October, I’ll have to make the most of it!

And speaking of film festivals… I’ve got at least two dozen major film fests I’ve applied for. (Why yes, I do have a problem.) All of them are famous for their hospitality, hard to get into, and/or will get me sponsored by Quebec if I get picked. That’s mostly for the European festivals, but I really like my odds with the Finnish Tampere fest! We’ll see.

If even a few of those festivals accept me (and I submitted four films to each one, to boost my odds), that’ll result in more partying within a single year than in my entire life up to this point. All those submission fees have cost me a pretty penny (even with the carefully timed early-bird discounts), but a) parties! and b) unforgettable experiences and c) possibly new grand adventures stemming from those new connections?, and d) once you get accepted, you usually get a lifelong alumni discount, meaning no more fees ever again.

And so, while my dream of becoming an elite professional thru-hiker has gone bust, the upside is that I’d be able to attend my film’s screening at my dream sci-fi convention (that would’ve been impossible if I kept hiking), and I’ve used all this free time (and utter lack of distractions) to double-down on my artsy endeavours. Let’s see how this plays out, eh?

…there’s a distinct possibility that a year from today, I’ll be completely frazzled, drained of energy, filled with way too many conflicting and overlapping memories of far too many events (what folks in the biz call “the festival brain”), but that kind of fatigue will be a good problem to have – or, as I call these things, #GrigoryProblems

I hope all y’all are about to have a fun summer too!

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In which the author gets agented!

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April 11, 2025

I spent a very long time anticipating the day when I’d be able to use this header. And, of course, then I wrote it three days too late. But hey, time is a flat circle, right? (In my defense, I’ve been doing a lot of celebrating, and even more editing and rewriting.)

My awesome new agent is Brandy Vallance of Barbara Bova Literary Agency. (The same agency that brought us “Ender’s Game” – wooo!) Brandy is an author-turned-agent, an expert in the craft of writing, and the best advocate and supporter an author could ever ask for. Together, we shall find the perfect home for “The Patron Saint of Unforgivable Mistakes.” (And then, afterwards, for “Time Traveler’s Etiquette Guide” – and many more to come!)

Brandy was one of the very first agents I queried when I started agent-hunting over a year ago. The query odyssey was long and convoluted, and this post is not about that. Some other day, perhaps. Suffice to say, I’m not merely happy that I’ve leveled up as a writer – I’m ecstatic that I won’t have to deal with query trenches ever again!

Being agented is… wild. It’s a wild feeling, eh. I don’t have the numbers (and I don’t think anyone does), but I guesstimate that only 1% (if not less) of the folks who finish their novel ever end up agented. From what I’ve heard, it’s gotten even more difficult after covid. Some think that’s because millions of people had a chance to finally write their novel during the lockdown. Others blame ChatGPT: when anyone can generate a bunch of slop in a single afternoon, the number of queried novels goes way up, resulting in severe bottlenecks.

Whatever the case, it feels so strange – though in a good way – to be an actual agented writer. That’s not something you can buy, not something that’s awarded based on your looks or height – that’s based on merit. I’d started tinkering with my first novel way back in 2015, and didn’t finalize it till 2024. The novel Brandy and I will focus on had taken me just eight months to brainstorm, write, and edit. (Yes, that timeline is pretty symbolic, I know.) Between 2015 and now, I tried my hand at quite a few short stories, some of which actually got sold. I’ve been writing non-fiction Kindle e-books since 2011, and while they are, well, not fiction, that also gave me a fair bit of practice.

I’ve never taken a writing course, though I do have a growing collection of books on the craft of writing. (My top two recommendations are Chuck Palahniuk’s “Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different” and Damon Knight’s “Creating Short Fiction.”) I don’t know a single person even remotely close to the publishing industry. I’ve never been to writing workshops or retreats, and I can’t even imagine what goes on in MFAs. I’ve never been to a writing conference, and the only real-life pitch I’ve ever done was during a small panel at last year’s New York Comic Con – something I’d found completely by accident. (The feedback I got after my 60-second speech? “…I like the title.” Oof.)

I’ve been a lifelong reader, though, and a careful learner, with lots of time to think and brainstorm.

My method was simple: I just sat down and forced myself to overcome my hesitation and my self-doubts, and then I started writing. Perhaps not every day (though I tried to), and with a lot of outlines, powered by stubbornness and perseverance – because waiting for a muse didn’t prove to be a reliable strategy. And then… I developed a very thick skin: some of the rejections were hurtful; many queries just got ghosted, without even a token reply. I spent a lot of time spent querying, and revising my novels, and keeping the wordcount below 100,000. And I was patient. Very, very patient.

And even then success is never guaranteed. The nudge for my new novel (think “Ender’s Game” x “Chernobyl” x “The Umbrella Academy”) came from the most unexpected and unlikely source, though that’s a whole different story. If not for that, “The Patron Saint of Unforgivable Mistakes” might never have been written.

So if you’re currently in the query trenches, and you’re reading this… I don’t have the secret recipe, or the secret sauce, or a $9.99 book of advice that would boost your chances. You almost certainly already know all the advice I’ve mentioned. There’s nothing I can do to actually help you with your query, but I hope you will find some solace and encouragement in my words. I was just a guy, and then I started writing, and it took me a very long time, but I got signed. I’m not so insensitive as to say, “If I could do it, then anyone can do it” – but I hope my example will give comfort to other outsiders, to other folks who have no credentials beyond their love of fiction and their penchant for writing.

Onward, eh.

Ever onward.

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In which the author’s stratagems bear fruit

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April 5, 2025

There’s a fairly old video game, Red Dead Redemption, and it has a beautiful theme song… The lyrics are beautiful, but this bit in particular always resonated with me:

“And all the storms you’ve been chasin’
About to rain down tonight.”

The sum total of long-term plans, all coming to fruition at the same time. This week has been like that for my writing endeavours.

First, the Pulp Asylum magazine bought my short story “Murder of the Orient Express” (of, not on). After that, Story Unlikely bought the reprint rights to my very first sold story, “How to Prepare for Time Travelers in the Workplace.” And last but not least, I’ve sold my first-ever non-fiction work! My essay “The Hierarchy of Apocalypses” will appear in an upcoming issue of Phano. It’s about my video game escapism during the pandemic, and the many, many ways we as a society have chosen to outsource our humanity to machines. I’ve written quite a few non-fiction Kindle books before, but this is the first actual non-fiction essay sale. Hopefully, the first of many!

Also, I’ve finished yet another short film! That particular project is still top-secret, but it is – for once – not sci-fi, and it deals with a quixotic astronaut. Gonna add a few finishing touches and then try my luck submitting it to some A-list festivals. (The odds may be against me, but I have infinite time and optimism.)

Needless to say, this week has been one long series of celebrations. It’s a good thing I’m trying to gain as much weight as possible for my upcoming Continental Divide Trail adventure. (I fly out in just 17 days, wooo!) And on top of that, I have a very very enthusiastic agent reading my new novel (“The Patron Saint of Unforgivable Mistakes”), and a few more stories submitted to anthologies – which have not yet been rejected on sight. (That’s always a good sign!)

I can’t quite describe how great this feels: after months of rejections, receiving three acceptance emails (and on the same week!) is an unbelievable dopamine boost.

I track all my story submissions (and rejections) in a plain old text file – that’s fast and easy. At this point, I’m starting to run low on the unsold stories, which is an excellent problem to have! I’m currently reading the wonderful “Creating Short Fiction” by Damon Knight – reading it slowly, because (unlike so many writing guides…), it’s choke-full of advice and food for thought. The goal is to read it and internalize its lessons (or most of them, anyway) before my big CDT hike. I won’t have a lot of free time on my adventure, but I’ll have some – and I’ll have many many hours of nothing but hiking, and thinking, and brainstorming. This isn’t one of my primary goals for the hike (and not even in the top-5), but I suspect I’ll finish it with quite a few new short stories and poems. We’ll see, eh.

Here is to more acceptance letters from editors!

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Short story level-up!

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March 25, 2025

This has been quite an eventful week for my writing career. I’ve just made my second short story sale of the year! (The first sale is currently in limbo: I’ll post about it once it finalizes.)

My short story “Murder of the Orient Express” (of, not on) will appear in the June issue of Pulp Asylum. Also, that officially makes me a pulp fiction writer. Heh.

There’s a funny story behind the title… “Murder of the Orient Express” was a blooper on the great “Ex Urbe Ad Astra” podcast hosted by Malka Older & Jo Walton. They misspoke, then laughed it off and moved on, but it got me thinking… How do you kill an actual train? And why? What kind of person would even do such a thing? You’ll have to wait till June to find out!

I’m very very glad to get my third paid publishing credit (2025 has been quite kind to me so far), and I hope this will inspire all y’all to do what I did: seek inspiration in the weirdest places. You can find a kernel for a fun story just about anywhere – as long as your eyes are open and your mind is imaginative.

Good luck, eh.

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In which the author finishes his second novel

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March 24, 2025

Short version: HUZZAH!!!

Longer version: I stayed up all night, adding last touches to my final edit of “The Patron Saint of Unforgivable Mistakes,” a dark-academia Young Adult sci-fi novel. It’s quite different from my first novel, “Time Traveler’s Etiquette Guide” (which is still in the query trenches) in that it actually follows the three-act arch, and has recurring characters and the big showdown and all. Heh.

Stylistically, it’s Chernobyl + Ender’s Game + X-Men. It explores a very simple process: if the environmental pollution in the 1990s Russia reached the point where children started getting either cancer or superpowers, how would the government react?

It was partly based on a true story… I was born and raised right next to Seversk, aka Tomsk-7, aka one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. It wasn’t as bad as Chernobyl, but it was bad… Widespread birth defects. High rates of cancer. A lot of weird stuff happening… When I try to tell my childhood stories to my friends, whether in the US or Canada, they usually think I’m making them up, or at the very least embellishing them. So, I figured, why not go all the way? Why not actually embellish them and turn them into a very strange, very dark sci-fi novel?

Throughout the novel, there are short interludes: real-life news reports, excerpts from military dispatches, think-tank analyses on Russia’s plunging health rates, etc. I like to think it’ll give the readers something to chew on: educational as well as entertaining.

I set the action in the 1990s because that was the last decade without advanced technology: cellphones already existed (there’s a Nokia phone that features prominently), but they were very very rare. And that’s also the decade I know best. My family left Russia in 2003. I never went back. Probably never will. Whatever the hell it’s become now, I’m not familiar with it – so I wrote about what I knew. About corruption. About ineptitude. About horrifying accidents. About cruel teachers who would watch you get pummeled right outside the school and then do nothing.

There’s some levity and romance there, as well, but… Let’s just say Disney won’t base a children’s movie based on my novel. And that’s all I’ll say. Spoilers, eh.

The last thing I did before passing out at 7am was put together a nice-looking query and a synopsis (it took some work to condense it from 2,500 words to 850!), after which I sent the whole thing to one very special agent, who will have the first dibs on the manuscript. Toes and fingers crossed!

But perhaps most importantly, this giant psychic weight is off my shoulders now. I’ll fly off to New Mexico less than a month from now, and I’ll be able to start my big Continental Divide Trail thru-hike with a clear conscience. If I hadn’t finished this novel, it’d always be on my mind, if only a little. (And before you ask, writing and editing on your phone is possible, but it’s the least convenient of all possible options.)

And so… Done. Done at last. Might goof around and write a short story or two, but I’m definitely not starting the third novel’s draft in the coming weeks. Time to have some well-earned rest, eh.

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New e-book! “Delays, Denials, Deposals: the Devolution of America’s Healthcare”

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February 5, 2025

Great news! My new e-book is out – and it’s free for the next few days. “Delays, Denials, Deposals: the Devolution of America’s Healthcare” was inspired by Luigi: the more I kept digging into the history of America’s healthcare, the more disturbing facts I found… This book collects 13 historical documents, starting with 1912, that detail what kind of compromises, bad choices, or outright capitulations happened along the way, to bring us to the here and now. This book isn’t about Luigi or Brian Thompson: it’s about the origins of this twisted situation. It’s about the choices not taken. It’s about us.

The e-book will be free to download until the end of Sunday, February 9th: click “Buy now with 1-Click” right underneath $0.00.

If you like it, please leave a quick review or even just a rating. If you hate it, then hey, it was free. All feedback is always welcome. Happy reading!

…as a side note, Amazon’s algorithm is getting stranger as well as stupider every single year. The initial version of this e-book had “Delay, Deny, Depose” in the title. That met with the harshest possible opposition as they refused to publish it, refused to give a reason, and kept ignoring my escalations for weeks without ever specifying why exactly my e-book broke their rules. But lo and behold, if you just change those first three words and remove Luigi’s and Thompson’s names from the introduction, you get a near-instant approval. And that, friends, is how we’re gonna have to fight the artificial intelligence in the future: the gatekeepers may be tireless machines, but they’re also mindless idiots.

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Dear alphabet agencies…

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January 4, 2025

Dear CSIS, FBI, CIA, NSA, and other shadowy government agencies,

I’m about to watch a bunch of videos on assembling and disassembling an AK-47. Please rest assured that this is harmless research for my dystopian YA novel, and not in any way an indicator of any sinister intent on my part.

We cool? We cool.

Later, gators.

(…yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s gonna land on me on at least two new watch-lists. I need to have authentic details for that chapter, though, so YOLOLOLOL!)

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An update from the querying trenches

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December 18, 2024

My big adventure this year was to find a literary agent for my debut time-travel novel. That quest led me down some mighty weird rabbit holes…

After polishing, re-polishing, and starting all over again with my query letter, I got the attention of seven literary agents. One requested a partial (the first 100 pages) but then politely declined. One agent requested the full manuscript (full MS) sort of declined, but said she’d be quite interested in reading a dystopian YA novel based on something I mentioned in my query. Four more requested the full MS during the summer/fall (it’s considered impolite to nudge until at least six months have passed), and earlier this week I received a very enthusiastic reply from a literary agent I’d queried in October. He too asked for the full MS.

Normally, there are two outcomes to a full MS request: either a “thanks but not thanks” or an offer of representation. That’s the holy grail for writers, and it sets off a whole new domino chain… (Still, it typically takes a couple of years for the actual book to get published.) This was my fifth pending full MS request, and – thus far – the most enthusiastic one. I expect to hear back from him within a month…

I had some time away from technology two days ago (horrible, I know!), so I sat down and outlined the final 40% of my dystopian Russian YA novel, and split that outline into 22 small-ish chapters. Knowing that the end is in sight makes the whole thing a lot less scary, and far more manageable. If I go ahead and at least try to write up one chapter per day (no matter how poorly), then huzzah – my first draft will be finished in just 3 weeks. I’ve been knocking out a chapter per day for the past two days (today’s total: 2,667 words!), and I rather like this sort of architect-style self-imposed framework. It doesn’t matter how clunky the outcome is, because the first draft’s job is not to be pretty – it’s merely to exist. To serve as the foundation. And after that, you just keep piling more stuff on top of it, and improving, and brainstorming…

And last but not least, during all my research on the publishing industry, I’ve learned something very peculiar. Turns out, you need the full MS when you’re shopping around your fiction novel, but you do not need that when you have a non-fiction book – such as, say, a memoir/exposé about my 11.5 years at Amazon. (If any agents are reading this, drop me a line!) I honestly had no idea this was how things were done in the non-fiction circles. This entire time, I thought you had to sit down, produce a full-length book, much like with fiction, and then go agent-hunting. I really wish I’d learned this sooner… But oh well. What matters is that, after a great deal of research, I’ve assembled a professional-looking book proposal for my Amazon book. It includes the introduction, the first chapter, my self-promotion plan (podcasts and newspapers and all), the outline, and a whole lot more.

Querying a whole new project while the previous project is still in the querying trenches almost feels like cheating, like taking a brand new sports car out for a test drive. (Vroom vroom!) A whole new slate of agents to email… So far, I’ve identified and contacted the eight agents who have the best sales record in the memoir category and the fastest turnaround time when replying to queries. If my non-fiction query letter sucks, at least I’ll find out right away, eh.

…this is all so wild. I finished writing my sci-fi novel less than a year ago, at the very end of December, and I never would’ve imagined that a) a bunch of actual agents would show interest, and b) one of them would request a spec novel based on my dystopian Russian childhood, and c) I’d start querying an Amazon memoir. Oh, and, of course, that I would become a festival-going filmmaker. (More on that soon.) Huh. All that, in less than a year. Life is so random and beautiful…

And now we wait… And write. And write some more.

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