The Seven Wonderfuls

I love LA STORY with Steve Martin and Victoria Tennant passionately. Along with Steve Martin's Roxanne, most movies with Cary Grant; and Casablanca, you've pretty much got my Best Of All Time list.

The scene when Harris and Sara walk along Melrose and his voice over is "wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, most wonderful and yet again wonderful" is one of my favorites.

You'll notice Harris says "wonderful" seven times.

I think there are Seven Wonderfuls of my job. Here's the list:

1. Wonderful clients. I am blessed beyond reason by clients who are fiercely talented, funny, smart and hellaciously good writers. That I get to work with them day in and day out makes this simply the best job in the world. Please don't ever tell them I'd do it for free.

2. Wonderful godsends past and present. These young up-and-coming publishing pros keep me on my toes. They are a delight in every way. I literally love going to the office to be around them. They are fiercely talented, funny, smart and hellaciously hard workers. Frankly, they're starting to frighten me they're so good.

3. Wonderful book designers. When a book goes from electrons to pages to book, there's a magician at work called a book designer. They're the ones who make it beautiful, easy to read, and nice to hold. The really good ones make it look effortless. I have no clue how they do this, but I know magic when I see it.

4. Wonderful query writers. And that's every single query. Every single one. The ones who don't follow directions. The ones who are rude, or clueless, or needy, or demanding, or so shy you want to smack em with the gumption stick. All of them: no exceptions. There are days my patience is less than zero, but there's never a day I don't want to hear from an author about his or her book. Sure, I wish they paid more attention to QueryShark.blogspot.com, but I'm grateful for every single time someone says "hey, I'd trust you to be my advocate."

5. Wonderful (slithery) competitors. Agents who work for the competition are frequently the first source of news and the last voice of reason. From advice about contracts, clients, conferences, and the hurried "no you can not defenestrate yourself over ebook rights" they are an extraordinary resource. I'm profoundly grateful they are my friends.

6. Wonderful readers. Readers who find and love books my clients write. Who blog or tweet about how much they loved them. Nothing beats that feeling of knowing another person read and loved something I love too. It's even better when they say it better than I can, and I get to cut and paste their comments for my own nefarious publicity purposes.

7. Wonderful volunteers. The people who organize conferences, judge the Edgars, organize ThrillerFest, Malice and Bouchercon. These are events I think of as a fun escape. A lot of people work very very hard to make them happen. A lot of them are behind the scenes doing things no one ever notices (cause it's only when it DOESN'T happen that you notice!) They work very hard to pull off events the rest of us tend to assume will just run well cause ..yanno..they always do.


Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you again, and thank you always.