The plan was to jump off the Golden Gate bridge.
It was the Ides of August. The first week of the month where I traditionally feel especially suicidal (it would take too long to fully explain the history of that). A lot of things kind of came together at once. I quit my job suddenly. Continue reading
Now that I’ve looked into it a little more thoroughly, my suspicions have been confirmed and I’m now faced with the undeniable fact that the manner in which I launched my two novels was all wrong. All. Wrong. So I’m doing what I can to play catch up and do what I can with them. Worst case scenario, they become entries in the all-important backlog. I’ll try to launch Plague in a more professional, knowledgeable way and hopefully I’ll have a little more success with it. Due date, by the way, is tentatively set for January 2012.
So yeah, I’ve been trying to blog a little here. By the way, BIG big thanks to my production assistant Chloe (just one word, like Madonna) for all of his (that’s right, his) help in conducting the character interviews. I hear he’s got some good ones coming up. Understandably, though, there’s only so much he can do for me and I’m still coming to terms with the idea that I’ll have to start really, seriously using Twitter (@eucaine) as a primary means of getting a little bit of attention. Soon I’m going to try to get some reviews for No Night and AP, though I don’t know if I’ll get many because they’ve already been released and reviewers don’t tend to like that. I’m really going to have to do some serious digging and poking around the online literary community to find people who seem like-minded; people who would be receptive to my work and the way I think. It’ll be made all the more difficult due to my extremely antisocial, insular, SHY demeanor that makes it very difficult to approach people I don’t know and to think of interesting things to tweet about on a consistent basis.
Here’s the thing that’s really impeding my progress: I don’t really have a target audience.
Literary agents who read No Night all seemed to say in their rejection letters that I had basically invented a genre – too mature for YA, too teenager oriented for the adult literary crowd. And when you’re a complete unknown, that’s not a good thing. They didn’t even TRY to make it sound like a good thing. It’s not salable. As for AP, which was the book I was immeasurably confident about, nobody requested reading that one. I guess the premise seemed too unpleasant or silly or both.
The point is, though, I don’t write with “target audiences” in mind. I kind of intended No Night for around the 17-25 age range, and AP for people in their 20s and 30s, but really any adult or adult-minded person could read my stuff. I explore a lot of general themes and there’s usually something for everyone to identify with on some level. But there’s a whole lot of cursing. And illicit drug use. And sex. And of course, graphic violence. There’s NO sentimentalism, very little comic relief, and almost never a happy ending. At the same time, though, my books are always thoughtfully written. I pour everything I have into them and if I’ve done anything right, I’ve hopefully come up with some memorable scenes, well-drawn characters, poignant moments and stories that will stick with you long after you’ve read them. Basically everything you’d look for in a good work of literary fiction, only wrapped in a package of highly stylized transgressive surrealism that can’t accurately be compared to anything else.
It’s not a good pitch.
I just read on someone’s blog talking about Lady GaGa at the VMAs that “insane is the new mainstream.” Fucking…I WISH that were the case. If that were true, my shit would be flying off the shelves. No one writes about insane, sociopathic people better than I do right now. I’m just the best one doing it. But maybe if I have Rachael Mercer wearing a dress made of meat at some point during Plague, it’ll give the book that little extra appeal to push it over the top. Because that’s what the people want.
But anyway. The biggest problem I’m having right now is the CONSTANT back and forth going on with my motivation to write this thing at all. It doesn’t just change from day to day, it can change from hour to hour. One moment, it’s “I’m definitely writing this thing and it’s going to be great because there won’t be anything else like it and it’s going to be the best thing I’ve ever done etc etc etc.” Then in a matter of minutes, it’s “Forget it, there’s no way, this book has no appeal, this is will be a pointless waste of 4 to 5 months and who the hell tries to make the THIRD part of a series their debut novel?” And then back to positive. And then back to negative. And back. And forth. In a never ending cycle.
You don’t understand what this is like.
Ultimately, though, like I’ve already said in previous thinking-out-loud posts about this book, it will probably get written because a) I’ve got no other ideas and writing nothing at all will be an even bigger waste of time and b) the “you never know” factor. At this point in my life, Writing A Novel isn’t the huge, big deal, life-altering undertaking that it’s supposed to be for most people. I’ve said the phrase “I just finished writing my book” so many times that the words have lost all meaning. So I guess I just need to get over any hang ups and do it. It’s impossible to predict what will happen or how successful something will be. Sometimes you just have to write for the love of the game and hope for the best. But the motivational back and forth is driving me crazy. I guess that’s all I’m trying to say.
GAAAHHHHHH. I do not recommend this choice of lifestyle.
I have two basic options for my fourth project. Continue reading
Jeremy Hurd 