Secret Agent Man @ MindSay

 A husband leans over to his wife in a bar and says, "Do you remember the first time we had sex together over 50 years ago? We went behind this very tavern where you leaned against the back fence and I made love to you." "Yes," she says. "I remember it well." "OK," he says, "How about taking a stroll around there again and we can do it for old time's sake?" "Oh Charlie, you old devil, that sounds like a crazy, but very good, idea!" she says. There's a man sitting in the next booth listening to all this, and having a chuckle to himself. He thinks, I've got to see these two old-timers having sex against a fence. I'll just keep an eye on them so there's no trouble. So he follows them behind the tavern. The old lady lifts her skirt and the old man drops his trousers. As she leans against the fence, the old man moves in. Suddenly, they erupt into the most furious sex that the man has ever seen. This goes on for about 40 minutes. Finally, they both collapse panting on the ground. The man is amazed. After about half an hour of lying on the ground recovering, the old couple struggle to their feet and put their clothes back on. As the couple passes the man, he says to them, "Excuse me, but that was something else. You must've had a fantastic sex life together. Is there some sort of secret to this?" The old man says, "Fifty years, ago that wasn't an electric fence."

So let me fill you in on what exactly went down in my agent meeting.

We had five minutes to meet with an agent, but the person slated to go before me never showed, so I got some extra time. Lucky me.

Most people spent their five minutes pitching a book, but I didn't want a tuna steak, I wanted to learn how to fish, so to speak. So instead of just pitching him one of my books and hoping for the best, I asked if I could briefly describe the three that I thought were the most sellable, and wanted him to let me know if he thought there was a market for any of them. He obliged.

So I went to work describing Angel of Life and The Fall of Paris. Then I got to Running Electricity, and led with, "The main character suffers from a neurological condition that makes him associate colors with people."

"Wait, let me stop you there," he said.

"Uh, okay."

"Is this a real condition?"

"Oh yeah, it's called synethesia, and the colors can work for people, numbers, whatever. Some people who have it know their phone number as red blue green - orange blue whatever."

A head nod. A wave of his hand. "Go on."

So I finish, and he leans in and says, "Okay, so you're obviously very creative, I love your imagination, but here's the thing. The first two books, they could be anything. Are you making everything up? I don't know. But this synethesia thing, that really catches my eye. That gets me excited."

He asked me if I had heard of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and talked about how it's just a mystery, and a mundane one at that - it's about a dead dog - but that it has a great hook, and that hook is that the narrator has Autism. He told me that when he heard that, he thought, "now that's a six figure deal."

He said my other books sound like everything else. "Yeah, the one takes place in Hell, and that's different and that's cool, but it still sounds like other things. I've never heard of another book with synethsia. So I would view those first two books as practice for you. They were stepping stones to hone your craft and build your imagination."

And then someone came to tell us our time was up, and before I stood, I said, "So you're saying the synethesia is the pitch?"

"Absolutely." And then he shook my hand and said, "And you can send me that book. Since I'm requesting it, you can send it to me," and he handed me his card. And that was that.

So I'm going to send it. I've printed the first three chapters and I'm going to send it to him. And while we wait for a response, I'll spend the next few posts relaying cool tips I learned at the conference. You guys in?