Canadian Author's Association, West Coast Branch - Sam Hiyate

I love the Canadian Authors Association.  Each month a collection of writers gather to hear about the craft.  It’s a guild really.  Craftsmen and craftswomen participating in the ancient rites and ritual.  Tonight President Margot (grand wizard/authoress) introduced Past Pres, Robert Mackay who read an excerpt from his riveting submarine thriller, Terror on the Alert.  I couldn’t personally put the book down when I read it. He left the audience hanging  but I know the spoiler. It was all I could do not to shout out the next incredible moment in a story I so loved.
Then Sam Hiyate, Literary Agent took the stage.  He was Clint Eastwood in Lone Rider.  You could hear the music in the background.  His voice held a touch of Sam Steed as he told story after story.  I’d wanted to skip the evening, go home early, watch tv, sleep. I’d spent the exhausting day in a methadone clinic selling life without needles.  Yet here was this amazing story teller.  He’s an agent but really he’s a very special kind of  story teller. He sells the tales of writers to publishers.  He’s the pitch.
How would you like to make money doing what you love?
He explained just how he’d made this happen over and over again for one writer after another.
And I loved the story.  I bought the story. The man mesmerized me.  He was that good.  Really.
But then he is Sam Hiyate.  
“I like to think of my relationship with writers as a marriage and their books are our babies….It’s all about relationship….pick an agent you want a long term relationship with.”   And all the boys and girls unborn children cried in unison “pick me! pick me!"
He’s meeting next week with writers to review individually a sample of their work. He says it costs $75.  That’s the price of admission.  It excludes the uncommitted.
He teaches a writing workshop too. “I call it a workshop but everyone that attends calls it therapy.  Writers crying week after week.”
“You have to think of writing as taking your reader on a emotional journey. It’s got to make them feel something.”
He employs 5 editors at his agency.  Like agents they get paid down stream when the author does.  "I get a 15% for my work.”   He likes it when he get a book accepted by an editor in Canada then sell it in the UK  and US  then to 20 countries. after that.  “I know the editor’s personally. I know what they like.  They know me. "
He explained just how he did it.  We all leaned forward.   There was a hint of sandalwood, pine and just a touch of sulfur electrifying the air.  "Ah….so that's the alchemy the publisher wants".  "Who would have thought?"   "Interesting."  "Very interesting"
Harry Potter was rejected by 20 publishers.  The Hobbit was liked by just one.
"Mmmmm. I see now.  That’s what a literary agent does."
The editors don’t buy the books. It’s more what the salesman say.  The publisher more often than not doesn’t get to read since he’s caught up in politics  trying to get what's  best the company as a whole. He trusts the editors and salesman to work together. The salesman know what's already been sold.
It was over too soon.  The questions from the audience wouldn’t stop.  The meeting moved into the foyer.  
Stepping out into the rain I looked back to see one writer snip a locket of hair from the back of Hiyate’s head.  Another had distracted him with bright eyed brilliance.  Writers helping writers in the CAA tradition.

National Voices

I've just been reading "National Voices", the 2012 Anthology of the Canadian Authors Association, Vancouver. As a member of the Canadian Authors Association, knowing well most of these extraordinary and talented writers in person, I'm especially grateful to read their works in this delicious smorgasbord of sizzling poetry and prose. I've concluded , that hanging out with writers is like hanging out with a marvellous bunch of underwear models. In their street clothes they're delightful enough, but when they disrobe they're downright titillating with these shocking, exotic and surprisingly colourful undergarments. Sometimes too, when they strut the author catwalk, the band playing, "I'm too sexy for my words!", I hear the hallelujah choir ever so faintly in the silences of periods, commas and semi colons. How I love that well placed exclamation mark! It's good to be a writer among writers, especially writers helping writers.

Canadian Authors Association - Vancouver Branch - Oct. 12, 2011

www.robertwmackay.ca/
www.bennuttall-smith.ca/

It's October 12, 2011. The Vancouver Branch of the Canadian Authors Association is meeting tonight at 7 pm in the Alliance for the Arts building on Howe Street beside Waves Coffeehouse. I got an email from Ben Nuttall Smith saying that he and Bob Mackay were talking on publishing.

I'm a blogger. Who needs a publisher. Ha! I don't even use an editor.  Ha! Ha! And no deadlines either. Ha! Ha! Ha!

I don't get fan mail like a Published Author.  Only comments. I have to respond to comments or the comment might overshadow the piece I've written.  Commenters are often more pithy than bloggers.  They're the blogger world's equivalent of the critic. But I even get to censor the critics in blogger world.  Published Authors don't have that luxury!

Bob and Ben, however,  since they published their books last year have had women chasing them.  Bloggers don't get swarmed, like Published Authors. You'd think it was the Vancouver Sun Run the way the Published Author Groupies charge, whenever Ben and Bob make a public appearance.

Bloggers don't have to do those public appearance things, either.   It's highly unlikely that Harper, Obama or Oprah are going to phone up this blogger. In contrast Ben and Bob live at daily risk of having CBC call them and ask them to talk about their books.
Published authors.  I'd not be surprised to see those letters after their names.  Bob Mackay, PA.  Ben Nuttall-Smith, PA.

As a blogger I don't have to re write. I don't even have to 'proof' my material.  It's a bit like going to the opera in one's underwear, mind you.

Ben and Bob's writing is so much more presentable and polished.   A bit posh really.  Complete sentences. Actual story lines.  Meaning.  Big words and catchy sly bits.
Apparently people liked their story telling even  before they  got published.

As a blogger I could go from an audience of none to the whole internet of billions, not that anyone needs to take notice of a blogger.  Blogging is democratic and subtle that way. Not in your face like a real hard book you could hold in your hand. Not even something that would get on Kindle.

Bob and Ben's books, Soldier of the Horse and Blood Feathers and Holy Men, respectively,   actually have beautiful covers and jackets.
 I might be able to spiff up my blog a bit but it's never going to adorn a coffee table, unless it were a virtual coffeetable.  Everyone has been gifting their friends with Bob's book or Ben's book but I don't even know if I can give my blog away.

Google doesn't pay at all like a real publishing house does,either.   My on line income from blogging has a certain elusive quality like the media itself.  Money always did have that here today, gone tomorrow aspect to it for me. But Google's not actually given me any real money.  Keeps telling me I have to score 100 before they'll give me the 20's they owe me. A bit like Los Vegas.

I was kind of hoping to hear from Ben and Bob about all the real money Published Authors make.  It's a paper business. Those publishing houses should be able to print their own money.

Now that Bob's a real Published Author and Ben is too, I expect they'll be telling us about their yachts and lear jets. Maybe I'll go tonight and hear what it's like to "get your money for nothing and your chicks for free'. I keep thinking there must be life after blogging.  A Published Author's life, perhaps.

PS
I went.  Jean Kay, Perry Wilson, Anthony Dalton, Bernice Lever and all the other "usual suspects" were there. The room was packed.
Jan Furst had died just short of 100 so stories were already being exchanged about this delightfully remarkable Norwegian Bowen Island character, much loved in the author community.

Patrick Taylor, author of the Irish Country Doctor series, read from his latest in that series, A Dublin Student Doctor, set in 1930 and just out for publication this week. http://patricktaylor.ca/ 
It was a glorious night.  Ben and Bob both humbly shared that if they could get published so could we.  All it took was a good idea, a draft, a manuscript, editting, rewriting, an outside editor, perhaps, a good query letter, maybe an agent if he wasn't a complete dodo, a willingness to self promote, and a powerful publicity machine helped. Then a publisher would likely consider your work if that publisher  actually published romantic goth fiction. In Canada no author ever admits to sleeping with the editors of Pen and Porcupine but it's been considered.
Blogging was recommended as was a web site. The Surrey Writer's festival was coming in 2 weeks and it was also recommended. As was the CAA December social and AGM as well as a 500 word Letter to Santa contest.

Dear Santa, I want to be a Published Author but I'd also like a Lear Jet even if my publisher can't afford one. My character isn't developed as much as the characters of the Published Authors I heard tonight so you might want to add that to the list. A plot would help too.  I'm still not sure you can get from here to there.  The CAA is truly inspirational and it's evident that Authors Helping Authors works.  But Santa I could really use a bit of extra help from you.  Has Rudolf got out of celebrity rehab yet?  Bill