Tag Archives: agents

But our intentions were good

Posted on by under Audio, Authors, Books, Business, Commerce, Creativity, Culture, e-books, Fiction, Internet, mystery, Novel, Technology, tourism, Writers, Writing

Our writers’ group had a discussion this morning about the use of AI to generate content. Is it a high-tech form of plagiarism? Does the work to which it is applied constitute original art? Digitally generated voices have already rendered obsolete the narrators of audio books. Will AI do the same to writers?

To illustrate the dilemma, one of the authors said he was astonished at the accuracy and sophistication of the answers he’d received after asking Microsoft’s AI assistant to summarize the chapters of his memoir. He’s about to pitch the book to an agent and was looking for a convenient way to describe the work.

Another writer said she’d used AI to generate a summary for the back cover of her memoir and felt pleased with the result.

I’ve used AI for research but never for pitching or publication. So, when the meeting ended, I uploaded the text of my first novel and asked Microsoft’s Copilot to write a summary for an agent. It might have taken 18 seconds to get an answer. It wasn’t what I’d expected.

I’ll let you judge whether it’s appropriate. But first, some background.

Peak Season is the first in a series of crime novels featuring a former police officer turned real estate agent and a retired state trooper who virtually lives on his boat along the Gulf Coast of Florida. It is a mystery novel, popular fiction that tackles a number of contemporary issues such as property rights and the environment.

I pitched the manuscript to a number of agents. This was before ChatGPT and other large-language models came into vogue, so my email was entirely human-generated. Here’s what I sent:

Dear [agent’s name redacted]:

She’s the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Responding to a domestic disturbance, CW (Candace) McCoy is forced to shoot a fellow police officer to prevent the death of his wife and child. Internal affairs rules the shooting justified. CW can’t and fears she’s inherited the killer gene from her father. Refusing to carry a gun, she quits the force and escapes to Southwest Florida to sell real estate, care for the grandfather who took her in after the murder of her family, and silence the demons that threaten her new life. But even in paradise during peak tourist season, there’s no outrunning bad blood.

Original book cover

Declared dead by the courts, Bobby Lee Darby appears in CW’s office to demand the family friend clear his name in a scheme to bilk millions from investors. When CW refuses, the fugitive financier kidnaps her grandfather and triggers a chain of burglary, assault, and murder that convinces local police the former cop has gone rogue.

Racing to find Darby and her grandfather, CW must confront her violent past, risky affairs, and love-hate relationship with Florida before those personal demons turn her new-found paradise into hell on earth.

A former journalist with Dow Jones, I am the author of The Spirit of Swiftwater and other books, with an eponymous website (jeffwidmer.com) and an extensive social network.

Since you look for new voices in women’s suspense and represent [authors’ names redacted], I think the CW McCoy series would make for a good fit with your agency.

I’ve included the first three chapters below. Would you like to see the complete 72,000-word manuscript and the first chapter of the second book in the series?

OK. Despite my heroic effort, that letter didn’t work, and I wound up independently publishing the novel in 2014. But what if I were to pitch a rewrite and use AI to generate the query letter? When I fed the text of the entire manuscript into Copilot, I got this:

Dear [Agent Name]:

I am thrilled to introduce Peak Season, a novel that captures the electric tension between fleeting beauty and the transformative impermanence of life. Set in a sun-drenched coastal town where every summer day burns with both promise and poignancy, this story follows [Protagonist Name], a determined soul navigating the dizzying interplay of desire, loss, and rebirth. As the town swells with the vibrant energy of peak tourist season, long-hidden family secrets, unexpected romances, and personal reckonings emerge, forcing our heroine to confront the true cost of chasing a dream—even when that dream burns as bright as the midsummer sun.

AI-generated cover

At its heart, Peak Season is a deeply atmospheric exploration of the human spirit. It invites readers to savor the bittersweet cadence of relentless change: the ephemeral thrill of new beginnings and the heart-wrenching inevitability of endings. Through lyrical prose and raw, immersive storytelling, the novel paints an intimate portrait of individuals who, like the turbulent coastal tides, are in constant flux—seeking meaning in moments both fleeting and profound.

I believe that Peak Season will resonate with readers who appreciate literature that not only entertains but also challenges them to reflect on the impermanence and intensity of life. Its richly woven narrative and authentic emotional depth offer a fresh voice in contemporary literary fiction—a voice destined to captivate audiences in today’s dynamic literary landscape.

Thank you for considering this submission. I would be delighted to send you the full manuscript and discuss how Peak Season can find its place among today’s most compelling literary works.

Warm regards,

The transformative impermanence of life? I’ll accept raw, immersive storytelling. Even a fresh, contemporary voice. But literary fiction? A bridge too far, and an inaccurate reading of the tone of the book, which is more Chandler and Evanovich than Proust or Joyce.

But enough of my views. What do you think? Is AI the shortcut to greater productivity and happiness or a Trojan Horse we’ll live to regret?

Ask your computer or phone. They’ll know.

Author Anna Schmidt on why she writes

Posted on by under Books, Creativity, e-books, Novel, Writers, Writing

“There is only one reason to write,” says Sarasota author Anna Schmidt. “That is because you can’t not write.”

Anna, known to her friends as Jo, has written for therapy, but for most of her career, she’s written for publication. She is the author of several series of inspiration and romance, including ones set during World War II (All God’s Children), in Sarasota’s Pinecraft Mennonite community (A Sister’s Forgiveness) and in the Southwest (The Lawman).

She shared her experience this week with members of Sarasota Fiction Writers.

Her advice for emerging authors?

  • Build a track record in your genre and develop a following
  • Don’t chase trends (unless your agent and editor tell you to)
  • During dry spells, attend events and conferences outside your area of expertise (for Jo, that’s mystery and suspense)
  • Join book clubs and writers’ groups
  • Read outside your genre.

She ended the program by giving away copies of her latest book. Surprised by her generosity, the moderator asked why. With a sly smile she said, “The publisher sent me forty copies. What else am I going to do with them?”

For indie authors, publish or perish

Posted on by under Books, Creativity, Culture, e-books, Fiction, Novel, Writers, Writing

There’s a saying in the academic world—publish or perish. It means that if you want a tenured position, you must publish your research, or your dream of advancement will perish.

Writers who want to share their work face the same dilemma.

Years ago, people wrote books and sent them to editors who hired others to read through the pile of manuscripts in the hope of finding the next Updike or Jong. When editors ceded that job to agents, they followed the same procedure, acting as editorial screens to deliver works with literary or commercial potential. It was a respectable system.

Self-publishing wasn’t. People viewed indie authors with the same credibility afforded Donald Trump. Even the name of printers who handled the work, vanity presses, spoke volumes about DIY status. And for good reason. If a professional, an agent or editor, didn’t vet your work, you could bet the writing would look as amateurish as the cover design.

Joanna PennToday, indie publishing—uploading your work to e-book brokers and print-on-demand houses like Smashwords and Amazon—has gained a small measure of respect. Some proponents, Joanna Penn of the Creative Penn among them, count the followers of their blogs and podcasts in the thousands. Some writers like Bob Mayer, the former Green Beret and Area 51 series author, sell tens of thousands of units.

Self-publishing is not that onerous, they say. Gone are the days of loading up the station wagon with cartons of books and flogging them to libraries and stores. POD services print and deliver books as readers order them. Yes, with indie publishing, you won’t get the marketing, distribution or stamp of credibility offered by a traditional publisher. But if you’ve queried hundreds of agents with no takers, you need another option.

swiftwaterbigThrough the end of the eighties, that wasn’t necessary. When I last pitched a novel, I landed a series of agents who did the heavy lifting. A decade later, when I wrote my first non-fiction book, the Spirit of Swiftwater, I took the manuscript directly to the publisher, an academic press that wanted to start a business imprint. For the second book, the publisher called me.

Those were the days.

For Peak Season, my debut crime-fiction novel, I queried seventy-six agents and editors. Nada. For Mr. Mayhem, the first of the Brinker novels, due out this fall, I queried seventy-five. Zip. So I declared independence.

That proved simple but not easy.

Publishing is no longer a question of DIY vs. traditional. Today we choose between sharing our work and giving up. That means authors must not only learn how to write, we need to develop skills in editing, proofing, design, social media, marketing and distribution. Add persistence to the mix and we have the ingredients for a new system that, like the old, offers satisfaction but doesn’t guarantee success.

From a gatekeepers’ perspective, the traditional system makes sense. In this name-brand culture, editors and agents look for a sure thing. Paid on commission, agents don’t need to take a chance on the unknown. New authors present too much risk with too little guarantee of reward.

My advice to emerging writers is to ignore the stigma of indie publishing. If you want someone to take a chance on your work, there’s only one place to look . . . in the mirror.