Newsletter #60 — Do You Know a Tapir When You See One?
June 15, 2023
Newsletter #60 — Do You Know a Tapir When You See One?
Tapir Early Chapter Book — Back in 2005 I wrote an early chapter book that I titled The Missing Caber. It featured Upton, a pet store owner, and Agatha, a tapir mistakenly shipped to his pet store. Upton was studying for a detective license and while doing so was hired to solve a mystery. Agatha, having a better sense of sight, smell, and deduction than Upton, helps him solve the mystery.
The Missing Caber was 3,000 words long, divided into six chapters of about 500 words each. It was an early early-reader, appropriate for second graders.
Random House sent me a contract and also an advance, and asked me to write a second Upton-and-Agatha story, which I did. Inspired by a Sherlock Holmes story I wrote the sequel, titling it The Big Noise. But I never got a chance to send this off to my editor because her department acquired a new editor-in-chief, and he felt kids didn't know what a tapir was, so he cancelled my contract.
A lot of time has passed, and I have now taken both tapir stories out of the virtual filing cabinet and am starting to market them again.
2023 Edgar Awards — For much of 2022 I served as one of five judges for the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery, awarded in April 2023. The five of us judges read every book submitted by publishers (almost 90 titles), analyzed each book, discussed the books via Zoom meetings, and, in late December, ranked our choices. Working with the four other judges was a super-rewarding experience. And we were all very happy with our list of the five finalists and winner.
Marketing the Mule — My fifth rewrite is now finished, and the next step is marketing: always a very, very tough job. I might try a few agents, but I haven't had much luck with those, and many take a year to answer. I've been going directly to editors/publishers lately, so that's the route I will probably take with the mule book.
It so happens that in addition to the story part of the book (let's call that the Art), the book is strong in Geography (a Natural Science) and Math, which means I could and probably should market it to STEAM publishers. STEAM is the acronym for the educational approach of stressing Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. Not only are educational publishers looking for such books, but so are traditional publishers. Getting through to these publishers is the difficulty: they don't reply to letters, and I have my doubts if they even bother reading the letters. But I will see what happens.
Assonance— Read about it here.