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    I don't take rejection well.  I think it's because I've never felt unloved. My wife of 35 years loves me, my three daughters  love me, my dad and mom love me, and my seven brothers...well I know six of them love me, and that's pretty good odds, so I'm not going to gripe about the one who's a brat and doesn't see how lovable I am.

    If I never feel unloved, I haven't built up any immunity to rejection.  I'm serious.  And that's why this writer who rarely procrastinates is procrastinating the search for an agent for his novels.  

    In January, I told myself I was going to spend as much time as it would take to find an agent for my self-published book, Worlds Apart, and my newly-completed and unpublished novel, The Plunge.  I even bought a book, 2010 Guide to Literary Agents, with encouraging banners like "Write a Killer Query Letter," "Wheeling and Dealing," "Play the Field," and "Improve Your Book Contract."  I read the whole thing.  And then I got to a section called "Self-Publishing and Agents" in the chapter titled "Perspectives." I figured it was going to be bad news, since it's the last topic before the list of all those wonderful agents.  First the writer writes, "Let's go straight to the good news: Many agents are open to representing self-published books and trying to see those books get a new contract."  A paragraph later, he writes, "As you might expect, some agents, on the other hand, won't consider self-published works of any kind."  

    According to Andrea Brown, founder of Andrea Brown Literary Agency, "A self-published book is already viewed as a 'used product.' There are so many great new manuscripts out there for editors to choose from, so why take on one that already has some community?"  Community?  One of Andrea's associates, Michelle Andelman, is quoted as saying, "I won't consider self-published books, because they deflate the great sense of 'discovery' for me.  I always feel I can most enthusiastically champion something brand new to editors, who I think are eager to feel that sense of discovery as well."  Discovery?  What's with these numbskulls?  Because it looks like a book and there's been 35 copies sold it suddenly has community and all potential for discovery has been ripped from its pages?  

    Translation: if the agent goes to a publisher with an unpublished manuscript, the publisher can feel like he's de-flowering a virgin; if they go to a publisher with a real bound book where the writer has sold a few copies to friends and relatives, it's just a damn whore with an STD. 

    Recently, I discovered a great (and very funny) Web site for writers seeking an agent.  It's called:

        EVERYONE WHO'S ANYONE
            IN ADULT TRADE PUBLISHING,
            NEWSPAPERS, MAGAZINES, BROADCASTING
            AND TINSELTOWN, TOO:

            A Writer's Guide to The All-Pervasive Propaganda Network

            http://everyonewhosanyone.com/other.html

    Gerald Jones is behind this monstrous compilation of over 20,000 agents, and he's listed not just their addresses and telephone numbers but their e-mail addresses.  Read what he writes to the agents.  If you look in the Agent's Dictionary under "Pain in the Ass," you'll find Gerald's picture.  He has a comically honest if not disdainful opinion of agents in general.  His Web site documents his quest to find an agent for the one book he wrote, Ginny Good.  A book that most folks who've read it seem to like, but one he can't seem to get an agent to represent.  He made this quest the theme of his Web site and the windmill that twirls his dream of disrupting agents who have become a bunch of tight-ass elitists and the pimps of the publishing world.  (Oh, my.  Did I just write that? Forgive me, Jesus, I don't wanna go to Hell.)

    After I spent a few hours looking at the long lists of agents and reading his written exchanges with these numbskulls, I wanted to listen to an old George Carlin record, and then blow my brains out with a nail gun.  In other words, I was laughing my head off at the same time I was realizing the futility of finding an agent for my books.

    And then not ten days ago I'm in FedEx Kinko's (that always sounds like a federal agency for ex-kinky government Wonks) and I run into an actor friend of mine who has written a novel for teens.  He sent out 185 e-mails to agents and got one response.  No, that's not a typo.  ONE.  And that one agent wanted him to re-write much of the book.  He told my friend, "The book lacks heart."  Oh, so the book lacks heart.  So Mr. Wizard of Oz of Agents is saying it's dead.  Without a heart, it's a cadaver, my friend.  So what do you think my friend did?  He spent several weeks trying to find a good heart for his book.  A literary-transplant-for-a-Cowardly-Lion kind of thing.  Then he sent it to the agent again, who said, "Okay, you got a heart, but it still needs this and that and the other."  What?  A spleen?  Maybe a new pair of testicles to tell you to get screwed!  

    Okay, okay.  The guy's ready to represent the book if my friend just works a little harder on it.  So he does.  And then he sends the book to the agent a third time.  Third time's the charm, right?  Yeah, a voodoo charm!  That's right.  Because guess what? The agent informs my poor, hard-writing friend that he's getting out of the publishing business.  

    I've been told that if I had a back-door contact into an agency I might get somewhere.  Early in 2009, I was talking with a good friend who told me in passing that his boy-wonder nephew (from an ex-wife--shoulda had a V-8!) was an agent in Los Angeles for Creative Management, one of the biggest agencies in the U.S.  He called his nephew-from-an-ex-wife and asked if he'd be interested in considering representing me.  The boy-wonder said he wasn't representing authors anymore but T.V. directors.  But he said if I sent him synopses of both books, he'd get them to the "right person."  I was ecstatic when my friend told me this and I set out to write two good synopses, which, for most writers--including me--are tougher than the great American novel to write.  But I did it and I sent them to my friend, who had told me that his boy-wonder-nephew-from-an-ex-wife couldn't accept them directly from the writer but he could from a personal contact...like a bragging ex-uncle-from-an-aunt.  My friend sent the synopses to boy-wonder.  And I waited and waited.  For months, I waited.  And I didn't want to bother the boy-wonder, because, you know, he's an agent, he's a busy guy.  But after six months of boy-wonder silence, I asked my friend to contact him and see what the status was.  And guess what?  Boy-wonder never returned any of my friend's (his ex-uncle, for cryin' out loud) calls or e-mails.  After three months of trying with no response, my friend gave up.  When I asked him what he thought was going on, my friend said, simply, "Maybe he doesn't like me."  Duh.  And we now know that the "right person" is a big blue Dumpster on Wilshire Boulevard.

    Here it is August.  Eight months after my self-published book came out and about four months after I finished the final draft of my new novel, I have not contacted one single agent.  I actually began, though, going over the alphabetical list of agents in the 2010 Guide to Literary Agents.  I got through the "A" section, checking off the agents I thought might consider representing my books.  But that's as far as I got: Check marks beside agents beginning with the letter "A."

    I expect rejection.  A lot of it.  I don't know if I can take it.  It's my wife's fault--my whole family's fault.  If they didn't love me so much, I might not mind it.