Guest blog by client Ransom Stephens.
I met Laurie McLean, one of our founding agents, for a drink about 14 months ago. My second novel was accumulating rejections, despite unanimous and more-enthusiastic-than-necessary praise from my sample audience. You can tell, right? The difference between, “I really liked it, here’s my list of suggestions.” And “Wow, this is it. This is the breakout novel! It’s awesome, I wish I’d written it.”
The premise of The Sensory Deception balances on the relationship between the senses and the mind. When the brain is saturated with sensory input, reflective thought becomes impossible, consciousness is so overwhelmed that people experience reality with the immediacy that animals experience. No time to reflect, no time for coherent deliberation, just reaction. Now, if you experienced the reality of a polar bear struggling to find the next ice floe, would it alter your perspective? Would it change the way you feel about nature? Could it change your politics?
Not really science fiction, more like scientific fiction.
Laurie and I have been bumping into each other several times a year since the two of us went into this racket about eight years ago; she as agent-savant and me as novelist-who-will-give-up-only-upon-death. She’s read every book I’ve written, including the memoir that will never be published.
She had also rejected The Sensory Deception months before our meeting.
She understood what I was trying to do. With plots premised on cutting edge, accurate science, and with that science woven into the story, sort of like Stephen Hawking meets Nick Hornby. My first novel, The God Patent, was sex, drugs, and quantum physics meets artificial intelligence, faith, and free will. The Sensory Deception is Silicon Valley takes neuroscience to virtual reality and collides with Somali Pirates, Moby Dick, and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.
Even when it’s ultra-friendly Laurie McLean, meeting with an agent who has rejected you is an exercise in masochism. My nerves showed. She waited until I made eye contact and said, “I get it. I know what you’re trying to do.” And then described the big publishers she works with closely and why my brand of scientific fiction, in particular this eco-techno-science thriller didn’t seem like a good fit. I probably asked, “Yeah, but what’s wrong with it?” a dozen times and, every time, she said that she liked it, “enjoyed” was the word she used.
She said she’d keep looking and if she found a market she’d send me a contract. I said I’d find an editor and try to mainstream it. It didn’t feel like a lie until it got out of my throat. She knew it too. She put her hand on my wrist and said, “Keep doing what you’re doing. It’s good, you’ll find a market.”
A couple of months later, I got an email from someone who had just finished reading The God Patent—my first novel which was a self-uploaded ebook before being picked up by a tiny boutique publisher. I get these notes now and then. It went on about how he loved the story, the characters, the premise and so forth. So I’m patting myself on the back, “Yes isn’t this nice, another love letter from my adoring pu—“ and the letter concluded with “…by the way, I’m an acquisition editor with 47North, the science fiction imprint of Amazon Publishing. Do you have any other manuscripts we could consider?”
We talked the next day and I told him about The Sensory Deception, that it’s a novel with science—but it’s a novel first! Its success depends on how you empathize with the bad guy. Like lots of nature writing, it depends on how you enjoy those pages you spend as a polar bear or a sperm whale. Like popular science books, it depends on how accessible I make the science and technology. The 47North editor asked to see it today, right now! I emailed the manuscript, it had been ready for six months.
Then I called Laurie and asked her to represent me. A lot of agents, I mean hundreds, have read one or more of my manuscripts. Laurie has read every one and she knows what I’m trying to do—easy choice.
Today The Sensory Deception comes out from 47North. It’s somewhere in Amazon’s figurative shelves between science fiction, science, and thrillers. Please let me know how you like it, I’m ransom@ransomstephens.com.
Thank you,
