Know When to Hold ’Em, Know When to fold ’Em

Matt Coyle Revisits Crime Writer’s Chronicle…

His first novel, Yesterday’s Echo, won the Anthony Award - Best First Novel, the San Diego Book Award for Best Published Mystery and the prestigious Benjamin Franklin Silver Award. Rick Cahill now stars in Matt’s second novel, Night Tremors. We welcome Matt again, and his yellow Lab, Angus. They both live in San Diego - Matt, does Angus also write???

T. J. Straw

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It took me eleven years, from first words on a floppy disk to actual pub date, to become a published author. During the wilderness years, a very nice agent who had given me a close rejection on my first book told me that she'd heard Jonathan Kellerman wrote nine novels before he was published. I think she meant to encourage me. It might have worked if I'd been in my thirties or even early forties, but I was fifty. I did the math. At the pace I was going, I'd be dead before I was published. I didn't want to be the next John Kennedy Toole.

However, I intended to write a series and thought the first book was essential in laying the foundation for the main character and his future development. After more revisions and another year of rejections, I began to wonder if I'd written, and rewritten, a story that nobody wanted to read. Was I going to be that writer who just kept writing his first book over and over while his life passed by? Over a four year span, I'd received almost one hundred agent rejections or ignores. I was running out of agents to reject me. I sent the manuscript out to the last few agents on my list and then closed the book on that first book.

Finally, I started writing the next book in the series. A few chapters in, I received yet another rejection for the first. The closest rejection I'd gotten to date. The agent told me what she thought the book lacked and agreed to look at it again if I addressed her concerns in revision. When I'd started writing the second book, I had finally given up on the first. I convinced myself that the first was the book I needed to write to learn my protagonist but it would never be published. People were living longer these days and maybe I'd be luckier than Jonathan Kellerman. Maybe it would only take me two novels to get published.

My writers group told me they liked what I'd written so far in book two better than book one. Still, I'd put so much time into the first one, I wasn't sure I could let it die. I finally decided to send it, along with the agent's notes, to Carolyn Wheat. She'd read earlier versions of the book in writing novel classes she'd taught and I'd attended. I asked her if was worth her time (and my money, of course) to look the book over and worth my time to revise it, yet again. Yes on both counts.

Weeks later, Carolyn sent me back twelve single-spaced pages of notes. She found even more weaknesses than had the agent. Her suggestions for improvement were good, but I didn’t know if I could rip and rewrite the book for the fourth or fifth time. Besides, book two now had my interest, my energy. Book one was an anchor, a reminder of failure. But I still thought it was a story worth telling. I decided to give it one last try.

It took another two years of revisions to get the book exactly were I wanted it. The agent who’d given me the last rejection had faded away from publishing. I sent the book out again and still got rejections. I sent it to agents who’d rejected or ignored it before. The title had changed and so had the book. But maybe not enough.

Finally, Kimberley Cameron said yes. Six months later so did Oceanview Publishing. Yesterday’s Echo was born.Two years later, it won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel. Eleven years to publication. Close to one hundred rejections. And I'm thankful for every one of them. If an agent had said yes earlier, the book would have been inferior and probably never been published. And I wouldn't have met Kimberley Cameron, the perfect agent for me.

I’m not sure I’d advise other writers to follow my path. You have to be very stubborn or very stupid. Or maybe just convinced that your first story is worth telling.

That second book? I had to revise it, too. Just not for eleven years. Night Tremors hits the shelves on June 2nd.

© 2015 Matt Coyle

The Cocoon

Matt Coyle presents Yesterday's Echo

A board member of MWA-Southern California, Matt Coyle reminds us he owes part of his writing career to Raymond Chandler. But insiders know it is the inner starch and talent that makes a good writer.

In his debut novel, Matt pulls us right in with his first sentence: "The first time I saw her, she made me remember and she made me forget."

How could we not read on?

Then he gives us a picture of his future writing with his last sentence: "Now strangers come to me with their problems and I try to solve them. I do it for money, not for love. it's easier that way. Fewer people get hurt."

This writer will want you to do what I'm going to do when I finish this intro… run out and buy his next book!

Thelma Jacqueline Straw

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Last May marked the long awaited (by me) launch of my debut crime novel, Yesterday’s Echo. It was a lifetime goal achieved and never would have happened without the help of many people, most of whom I mentioned in the book’s acknowledgments. But I never would have had the chance to thank anyone if I hadn’t been willing to break out of the comfy confines of the Cocoon.

I knew I wanted to be a writer ever since I was fourteen when my dad gave me The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler. The hard part was actually doing the writing and that didn’t really start in earnest for about thirty years. I’m a slow starter. However, even when I buckled down and consistently put my butt in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard, I still had a lot to learn.

Being a fledgling author is a fun and exciting time. You’re finally doing something you really enjoy and, dammit, you’re pretty good at it. You start each day reading over the literary gold you spun the day before and realize that you’re home. You’ve found your niche. If you stay with it, you’ll have a draft in around a year, give or take. Then it will only be a matter of time before your brand new novel is on the bookshelves between Connelly and Crais.

Or so I thought. But why wouldn’t I? I read what I’d written every day and it was genius. The couple members of my family whom I’d let read the book even agreed with me. Now they might have just been happy that I’d finally started writing instead of just talking about it, but they wouldn’t lie. Would they?

Still, I’m Irish and with that comes self-doubt. So, I decided that before I quit my day job and found an agent to get me the big contract, I’d better vet the work with a professional. Let someone outside the warm, snuggly, cocoon of my family and myself read what I’d written. That is the point of being an author, isn’t it? To have strangers read your work?

So, I took some night classes at UC San Diego taught by Carolyn Wheat, mystery author turned writing teacher. Well, apparently Carolyn wasn’t that good of a teacher because she failed to recognize my genius. I was shocked and disappointed. I’d paid good money and I got some flunky as a teacher. It was a beginner’s novel class and most students never really began writing so my stuff was on the whiteboard each session. It was ugly. Carolyn asked me questions that I’d never thought of, like what does your character want in a scene and what is he thinking.

It took a while, but I started to realize that Carolyn wasn’t stupid and I wasn’t a genius. It hurt. I’d jumped out of my cocoon and let strangers see my work and been slapped in the face. Hard. I lost some of that confidence earned writing in anonymity. Maybe I couldn’t do this. Maybe I wasn’t good enough and never would be. But after I stopped feeling sorry for myself (in just a few days… okay, a month) and started revising through the Carolyn’s prism, the book got better.

Then I joined a writers group and exposed my work to other writers. Like Carolyn, they tore the work apart and helped me put it back together. Stronger. After years of tearing and mending I finally felt that my manuscript was ready for an agent and then a publisher. Ten months later Yesterday’s Echo was on the bookshelves somewhere between Connelly and Crais.

Writing in a cocoon will make you feel good. Breaking out of it might get you published.

Matt Coyle