Hallo. Welcome to the life update blog. My name’s Alex Anderson, I’ll be your guide.
There’s a whole lot to talk about so it might be a longer one.
I been back on a Stardew Valley kick. It’s this neat little farming simulator that offers very zen-like tasks, growing crops, raising livestock, selling goods, mining, fighting monsters, you know, regular life stuff. It’s cool because it doesn’t require my full attention and I’m able to listen to things as I play. I’m all caught up on all my writing podcasts, Writing Excuses, I Should be Writing, Ditch Diggers. If you’re an aspiring writer or find the literary industry fascinating, they’re definitely the best ones I’ve found.
Stephanie also turned me on to And That’s Why We Drink. It’s two ladies in LA with cool jobs, like one of the hosts Em was one of the people who made Thor’s hammer for the movies. They drink milkshakes and wine and talk about spooky stuff. It starts with them hanging out, you should start from episode one if you’re interested because they slowly reveal stuff about their lives and if you listen to later episodes you miss out on some of the inside jokes and stuff. Then Em tells a spooky supernatural story and then Christine tells a true crime story, mostly murders and stuff. It’s good. Stephanie and I vowed to make every day Halloween and it keeps things spooky. Stephanie gets real creeped out in the dark woods in our neighborhood when she takes Klowie for walks. It’s good. I recommend it. We also started My Favorite Murder, just crime, and stuff. It’s all very… terrifying that people like that exist in real life. We’re convinced that three-fourths of the people we see on the street are secretly murderers now. It’s great.
It’s been good relaxing after that heavy job. I finished the book last week and we went on vacation to the beach, and that was wonderful. I’ve never started a fire on the beach before. It was a cool upped difficulty rating than what I’m used to in the woods. It was the greatest. I wish I could end every day with beers and fire on the beach. It’s wonderful. We went to a little beach town called Long Beach, not to be confused with the famous Long Beach in California. They’ve got this shop, Marsh’s Free Museum, and there’s a whole bunch of taxidermied animals, trinkets, and nick-nacks from olden days and Jake the Alligator Man. He’s like this celebrity fake stuffed oddity of a half-man, half-alligator in a tank. Apparently, they throw him a party every year where he gets married to someone. Google him, it’s cool.
I started the process of finding an agent first thing Monday morning and really overwhelmed myself. It was a full-blown imposter syndrome, fraud-police sort of day where I pretty much curled up into a ball when Stephanie got home from work. I’m fine now. I’m balancing work and play. I’ll go hard and research agents, work on my query and synopsis and stuff one day, then I’ll give myself a day off to zen out to farming and podcasts. Today is a zen-out sort of day, plus I’m the hangoveriest man, so that’s why this blog is coming sort of late in the day. It’s good.
I have this terrible condition where I need to feel like the most productive person on any given day. I’ve written about it before. I used to struggle to give myself even a second to relax and do nothing. I’m much better now. I had a crisis about it last summer and I think everything I got out of that really stuck. So, day on, day off. I gotta balance life out. A big part of me feels like I could be should be dedicating every waking moment to the querying process, but I can’t drive myself crazy. Once I get it all done and send everything out, I gotta practice patience really hard. It takes anywhere from one to four, or shoot even upwards of eight months, for an agent to finally get around to your e-mail and get back to you. Once I have the stuff I need to send done, I’m probably going to send out about four queries a week until I get a bite.
I thought that writing the book would be the hard part. I was wrong. I look back on that year and a half (that ended a week ago) with fond memories of a simpler time in my life. It’s the anxiety of getting my name out there, working that last step to get my book into a publisher’s hands. It’s scary but rewarding. I can’t rush it. I’d feel like a dope if I just never got anyone to read my amazing book because I rushed the synopsis and never caught anyone’s attention to read it in the first place.
That being said, I sent my first query letter out yesterday. It was a long-shot, but I’m really glad I did it. I don’t know if it’s taboo to name any names or anything, so I won’t. It’s a woman agent who represents an author I’m really fond of and may or may not have their series coming out as a show on Fox later this year. She belongs to an agency that’s won so many “best of” awards that I was almost too intimidated to stay on their website. But, I did it. I queried her. It was good. It made me look at my letter critically and I found myself making it a lot better in a half-hour time frame knowing that someone was actually going to read it. She’s a big wig, but she does take on emerging writers, so that’s a thing. It’s like, I could just be the luckiest dude or actually have written a good enough query letter that I get her attention. Or, it’ll be my first rejection letter and that’ll feel great too. Once you get that first rejection letter, you’re a real author. They’re super professional and timely and say they get back to everyone in under thirty days, so yay! That’s like, the least I’ll ever have to wait. Then I send her my manuscript and she e-mails me back, “I ALREADY SOLD YOUR BOOK FOR TEN MILLION DOLLARS! MEET ME IN BRAZIL!”
That’s the thing. Who knows in this industry? I straight up told her, “You’re my first query ever,” so maybe she’ll be like, “Aw, how sweet,” and give me a chance. I don’t know any of these people. She looks nice in pictures but she could very well be sipping wine in her Beauty-and-the-Beast sized library and scoff at the nooby’s attempt at going for a big-time agent like her. Oh, well. We shall see. I’ll definitely keep everyone updated. Lord knows the first thing I’ll do is jump on Facebook and tell everyone excitedly that I got my first request or my first rejection with equal enthusiasm.
Speaking of Facebook. I’m taking a break. I’m still checking my notifications, I’m still active on Facebook messenger, but I’m going to stop scrolling through my feed for a while. I had a really rough morning yesterday because of social media. I know it’s important not to ignore all the terrible things happening in the world, but I think it’s okay to take a break from thinking about it every once in a while. Especially if you’re a sensitive artist like me who can’t help but feel a mixture of sorrow and rage for the state of the world. I’m gonna be on my farm for a little bit until my heart feels less broken.
Washington is great, just saying. I know when we left we said, “We’re just gonna be gone for six months or so.” Turns out it’s going to be on the “or so” side. It’s been about six months and it really has been a great experience, but there’s just way too much to see out here. It would be dumb to miss a summer in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. It might be a little while longer until you see us again, but absence makes the heart grow fonder my loves, we will meet again.
Living with the family has been wonderful, especially since they were gone from Colorado for so long. Missing your family is a rough thing. I really missed Matt and Katie and the boys and didn’t really know how much until coming out here and spending so much time with them.
Matt is Matt, eccentric, always excited, always has ideas and projects, never a dull moment.
Katie is my sister. She’s wacky, goes through existential crises that I can relate to and we like to drink and talk about ghosts and life and everything else.
Griffin’s going through a phase where you sort of want to smack him sometimes, but he’s also an adorable little monster who you forgive easily. He’s whacky too. Apparently, he knows ninety-nine ghosts and makes the sun rise every day with his magic powers. The Earth is truly in his debt.
Haven is a little gentleman. He’s always trying to keep the little brother in check and he gets frustrated sometimes, but he’s a great kid. I wish I read as much as he does.
Something a little new has been having teenagers in the house. They moved in a little bit ago. We thought it would be so crowded and noisy because there were already six of us, three dogs, two cats, three snails and a beta fish, and they have a little baby, but it’s been great.
Little Annelise is such a cool baby, she’s always so curious and she has something knowing in her eyes. She gets fussy and stuff, but that’s the perk of being the uncle, or great uncle I suppose, Grunkle Alex. You’re there for the cute times and then you getta go upstairs and watch Bob’s Burgers with your wife when the tears come.
It’s been really cool getting to know McKenzie and re-getting to know my nephew Trevor as a dad. He’s always been my nephew and I’ve seen him grow up and stuff, but it’s been a really long time since we’ve spent this much time together. He’s like, an adult now. It blows my mind when I think back to him as a baby, a toddler, a kid and on from there. It’s cool. Like, we’re buddies and stuff and I really love it. McKenzie is awesome too. It’s important when fitting in with the Andersons to be able to hang, and she can hang with the best of them.
Life is good, ya’ll. No complaints here. I miss you all in Colorado. I miss you all in Arizona. I miss everyone all over the country and planet. It’s one of the downsides to being a traveler, but we’ll always reunite in the end, and that’s what’s important.
I’ll keep you posted about the querying process and my life in general every week. This is when the writing side of life is going to slow down a bit. Like I wrote a bit earlier, months and months until I hear back from people potentially. I guess that just means I gotta go large and ho hard in my regular life to keep this blog interesting. I’m going to start back on my next book in June, but for now, I sit back and wait for my seeds to grow.
Love you all, thanks for reading. See you next week.
scruffymc 