At 1,793 words my first blog entry may be a little long, but each of the following letters is like one blog post, hopefully easily digested.  They came about some time ago as I was battling my way through a staid query letter for my novel Sortmind, then finally decided to let it all hang out in a series of experimental letters.  Each represents a different ego approach, from the breathless newbie to the exalted master, addressed to “Mitchell Emerson, Publisher of the Gods.”

The letters are geared to the not-quite-outmoded process of mailing paper copy letters, synopses, and SASE.

1.

September 1, 20__
Mitchell Emerson
Publisher of the Gods
112 West Doomboat Ave.
New York, NY  10001

Most Glorious Sir!

I’m actually submitting my novel, Sortmind, for your consideration!  I think it’s not very good, and I’m just starting out, and I wonder if you’d publish it?  It’s sort of a mixture of literary and science-fiction things, and Nancy says it’s funny, all about whether tiny triangles should be removed from buildings?  Also about the Telepathic Database at the public library, which starts Mindwiping everyone, and aliens monitoring everything.  Some of the main characters are Oliver and Sam, these two high school art students and their fathers who’re fascists‑‑sort of‑‑you find out later‑‑who started this Citizens Against Triangles thing!  But don’t think I’m wasting your time because I know I’m not very good at this sort of thing.  This is actually a query letter!

It’s 2,200 pages, 550,000 words and way too long I know, the whole book that is, not this letter!  You probably don’t want it for that reason alone, all books tell me.  Very, very long, would take you forever to read and it took me forever to write and I know you a lot more important authors and a lot of money than me.  But look Sortmind is on my computer and you could just print it straight off!  Nancy thought I should send it to you, so finally the books told me to send sample chapters and then get an agent and negotiate with you, so I am sending this query letter now to save you as much trouble as can possibly be saved.

Enclosed are my table of contents, my list of characters, and my Sortmind first three chapters.  Although Nancy told me not to send this stuff because it’s boring and would prejudice you into hating the novel before you even know me.

So I’ll see my Snortmind in all your bookstore in a few month!  Don’t steal my idea though!  You can send the check directly to me so we can get started on our big farm in the Texas Hill Country.  Take your time but I could really use the money before the end of the month?  Also on interview tours anytime but give me a call so I know, Oprah would be the perfect choice and I will be the next Oprah book if she ever will be an Oprah book again!  She is very nice!  I am sure you are very nice too.

Sincerely,

Michael D. Smith

 2.

September 1, 20__

Mitchell Emerson
Publisher of the Gods
112 West Doomboat Ave.
New York, NY  10001

Dear Mitch:

Here are sample chapters from my latest novel, Sortmind, Mitch.  When can we get together and discuss publishing it, Mitch?  Sure I’m a complete unknown, coming out of left field, but look, Mitch, I’m a whirlwind coming out of left field.  There isn’t a writer in town who can touch this piece, Mitch!!!!

I’ll level with you, Mitch.  We writers, and you publishers, we’re all involved in a great enterprise: writing and publishing.  We rely on each other so we can bring out the great art the world needs!  I express the deepest aspects of human nature, and you guys take that expression and package it so everyone can drink from this neverending fountain!  It all comes together in publishing!  Say it again: publishing!  There’s nothing like it!

So where do we go from here, Mitch?  Let me get into the novel itself now.  Sortmind–fantastic title–mixes superb high level literary and science-fiction techniques, and covers two months in this completely fictional city’s architectural war: weirdly enough, it’s about whether tiny triangles should be removed from post-modern buildings; is that amazing or what?  Meanwhile you’ve got this new library invention, the Telepathic Database, which is not only Mindwiping people right and left, but is also taking in all this insane random data which the librarians finally figure out means: alien contact!  Wild!  Then we have Oliver and Sam, these two high school art students but they have these fascist fathers who run the fascist Citizens Against Triangles, and meanwhile the boys have to figure out who they really are, Mitch, with all this urban warfare and aliens and this reality-altering Telepathic Database running amuck!  I mean, we really get heavily into a kind of religious view of adolescence here.  The combined effect of all of this is really quite striking–and could really make a lot of money!  Imagine it!  Mitch.

Especially now that I’m ninety pages into the sequel, Tactics of a Barefoot Pleasure Garden, which updates the boys in this infinitely large spaceship they’re riding (and building on the way!  Wild!  With superintelligent nanomachines!) to where the aliens from Guacoazezama live in Galaxy M31, Mitch, to try to sort all this insane crap out!  I’m really very creative, Mitch, these ideas just roll out of me all day long like thunder!

Sure, Sortmind’s a bit long–5,600 pages, 1,400,000 words–but it’s a big novel, a Bildungsroman, it needs to express all the possible facets of human nature, and–get this, Mitch–it’s all ready to go and so what do you say, Mitch?  Give me a call and let’s talk publishing!

Sincerely, Mitch,

Michael D. Smith

3.

September 1, 20__

Mitchell Emerson
Publisher of the Gods
112 West Doomboat Ave.
New York, NY  10001

Listen bloodsucker let’s lay it on the line: I see through all your bloodsucking publisher BS!  I know you won’t dare publish my novel, Sortmind, but I’m going to fling it into your face all the same!  I’m so sick of the real writing being ignored in favor of all the money-grubbing, mediocre crap you people put out, all because you’re afraid of going out of business!  Sortmind’s the best stuff you’ll ever see, but right now you’re reaching for the SASE to return the sample chapters!  You’re a damn coward!  I could make you stinking rich, but you don’t see it!

Or even worse, I bet you’re going to take my table of contents and my list of characters and the synopsis and the first three chapters, and that within the next few months there’ll be a blockbuster novel, MindSnort by some famous damn sci-fi author, movie rights, T-shirts, you name it, and I won’t see a damn dime of it and you know that’s true!

Well, good luck trying to reconstruct all 21,600 pages (5,400,000 words of pure genius, dammit!) from this outline.  You’ll never figure out all the intricate relationships between the War Against the Triangles and the Malfunctioning of the Telepathic Database, you’ll never begin to see the subtlety of the characters of Oliver and Sam, or the fantastic, thought-provoking satire about the Citizens Against Triangles!

And you’d better watch out because I’ll sue you blind.  I’m so sick of dealing with jerks!  All you know how to do is reach for the SASE because I’m not some stupid damn famous author or some stupid damn agent who knows some stupid damn famous author!

Yeah, I’ve published in the dinky literary magazines but I was disgusted by the kinds of stupid changes they made to my work without even telling me and besides, I didn’t have time to fool with submitting little stories to all these damn places when all along I’ve known I have dozens of metaphysical novels ahead of me.  Yeah, I’ve written a helluva lot of novels and I’m trying to get ‘em published now but what’s the damn use?  The odds are stacked against real talent from the beginning, you all know that and you manipulate us unmercifully!  Well, one day your empire will fall, and you’ll be finished, and even though I’ll be wasting sixty hours a week at my damn computer tech support job I’ll still be writing novels, surviving nobly–dancing on your grave!

If you are interested in seeing more of Sortmind, please contact me.

Sincerely,

Michael D. Smith

4.

September 1, 20__

Mitchell Emerson
Publisher of the Gods
112 West Doomboat Ave.
New York, NY  10001

Dear Mr. Emerson:

I am really, really sorry to have bothered you with this submission of my novel, Sortmind.  Enclosed are the table of contents, a list of characters, a synopsis, and the first three chapters.  Please just put them all back into the SASE and return them to me.

Sorry to have troubled you,

Michael D. Smith

5.

September 1, 20__

Mitchell Emerson
Publisher of the Gods
112 West Doomboat Ave.
New York, NY  10001

Sir:

It is time to undertake the publication of my novel, Sortmind.  During recent years various spiritual forces have channeled to me, through the medium of my Creative Spirit, the novel which you now hold in your hands.  After my perusal of various handbooks and writer’s guides, these forces also dictated that your firm shall be the one to handle my literary affairs henceforth.

Sortmind is the Revealed Word of God, or, if you prefer, the Revealed Word of the Buried Forces Within.  They are in fact the same.  In view of this revelation, you may wish to refer to the enclosed synopsis, list of characters, table of contents, etc., etc., so as to be able to impart to your various minions a sense of the importance of the task which awaits them.  It is not permissible at present for anyone, including you, to read the entire novel.  You will need to simply download Sortmind from the enclosed CD into your firm’s computer, and begin printing immediately–100,000 copies for a first printing.  Your marketing department, sales representatives, legal and accounting personnel and so forth should have no prior knowledge of the Revealed Word of God until the books are safely transported to bookstores.  No reviews in the national media are likewise to be allowed until the day of publication.

I do not require a large advance at this time: $500,000 should cover the expenses of transmitting the Revealed Word of God/Buried Forces Within.  As soon as Sortmind begins transforming the various religious, cultural, social, and political structures of the world, we shall be ready to undertake the publication of my other twelve novels, miscellaneous short stories, essays, meditations, and diaries I have authored in pursuit of the Truth of the Buried Forces.  These writings are to be bound in leather, in a manner similar to that of the collected works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in a series entitled “Collected Works of Michael D. Smith.”  At that time, further advances and royalties, estimated to be in the billions, will be channeled into the Sortmind Foundation for the Investigation of the Universal Mind.  In the meantime, be thinking of a suitable author for the composition of my authorized biography.

Sincerely,

Michael D. Smith

copyright 2010 Michael D. Smith