Anne Hawkins is an agent with John Hawkins & Associates, which was founded as Paul Reynolds Literary Agency in 1893, and makes it the first literary agency founded in America.

Anne is not only a highly respected, and beloved agent with a list of best-selling authors in her stable. She is a consummate professional with impeccable instincts, a devoted advocate for her authors, but she’s also a blind hoot. It is with great pleasure that I welcome Anne here as my guest on The Kill Zone.

John Ramsey Miller

Why do Agents Turn Down Good Books?

By
Anne Hawkins, Literary Agent
John Hawkins & Associates, Inc.

Rejecting authors’ projects is one of the least pleasant aspects of my job. It’s no fun to feel that I’ve ruined someone’s day, even though I always try to be gentle and courteous. How much nicer it is to call or e-mail and say, “I love what I’ve read. Please send more.”

Of course, the most common reason for rejection is a perceived lack of quality, a natural reaction to a misbegotten query letter or sloppy sample pages. Sometimes, however, I have to turn down projects that are actually quite good. Subjective judgment plays a large role in that sort of decision, but so do other business considerations. Let’s take a look at some of the factors that influence an agent’s choice of books for representation.

PERSONAL TASTE: A literary agent sinks or swims professionally because of her taste in books. This taste impacts the kinds of books she represents (her list), her contacts among editors and publishers, and ultimately her success in the business. Good agents learn to trust their taste and only represent projects that inspire them, because those are the books they’re likely to sell.

Most of us concentrate on the areas we enjoy and where we consequently have the greatest knowledge and expertise. If we don’t “get” it, we don’t handle it. You may be the next Dr. Seuss, but if the agent you query doesn’t fancy children’s books, she’ll almost certainly turn you down.

Authors can minimize this kind of turn-down by researching the kinds of books each agent does represent. Jeff Herman’s GUIDE TO EDITORS, PUBLISHERS, AND LITERARY AGENTS (most recent edition) is the premier print resource, since each listed agent states specifically the sorts of books she does and does not handle. Some of the best on-line resources are the searchable databases on Authorlink.com, Publishers Marketplace.com, and the Association of Authors’ Representatives (AAR) website. Sad to say, certain other writer-friendly sites perpetuate information is that is either out of date or downright wrong. (One has me listed as a top agent for horror fiction, even though I have never represented a single book in the genre.) There is good information on the internet, but do yourself a favor and cross-reference. Don’t rely on any single source.

PASSION: For me to take on a new book by a new author, especially a novel, I simply have to love it. It’s not enough to “like” it or “admire” it or consider it “salable”. We’re talking about real passion here. Even at the very beginning of the submission process, editors can sense when the agent is on fire about a book — and the feeling is contagious. Chances are, that’s the book the editor will choose to read first. Later on after the sale, down the long, bumpy road to publication, an agent needs this kind of wild enthusiasm to continue to be a strong and persuasive advocate for the author and his work. “Lukewarm” just won’t go the distance.

KNOWLEDGE OF MARKET: An agent needs to keep track of the markets for the kinds of books she represents. This knowledge may be as general as the track record of an entire genre or as specific as one publisher’s immediate needs. In short, agents need to know what’s hot — what’s not — and who’s looking for what. Market factors are a huge topic, so here are just a few examples:

Publishing is in the business of selling books, lots of books. If an agent wants to place a book with a major publisher, she has to believe that book has the potential to attract a substantial number of readers. If she judges that its market is too small or too specific, she’ll most likely decline.

The existence of a recent, successfully published book (or books) can make a similar project extremely hard to sell. Even if your book is better, somebody has beaten you to the punch. The concept is no longer “new news.” This is particularly true for non- fiction, but it applies to novels as well. If the market appears saturated with a certain kind of book, an agent will be reluctant to take on a new project in that category, knowing that her chances of placing it are slim.

Sometimes, an agent will know that the market for an entire genre is on the decline, so she’ll be hesitant to take on any book of that sort. At other times, a market will be on an upswing, so she’ll be champing at the bit to land an author in that genre. Historical fiction, for example, was a tough sell for many years. Recently, however, its popularity has surged to the point that agents who wouldn’t have touched the genre five years ago are now actively looking for it.

EDITORIAL CONTACTS: To put it bluntly, if an agent doesn’t know the right editors for a book, she has no business representing it. From time to time, every agent reads a wonderful project that she has no clue how to place. Believe me, she’s doing the author a favor by declining.

Here’s why. As a general rule, an agent can submit a project to a particular publishing imprint once — and only once. If the original editor declines, it’s very difficult to get another editor at that house to reconsider the book. Obviously, the key is to get the submission into the hands of the right editor the first time around, since you usually don’t get second chances.

SUITABILITY TO GENRE: Some kinds of books have specific conventions as to format, word count, style, content, etc. If a book strays too far, it may be unsalable – no matter how good it is. Of course, authors can cheat this unhappy fate by doing some homework on the particular requirements of their chosen genres.

Mixed genre books are another dicey situation, since an agent or publisher needs to feel that there is a definable market for a particular book. When an agent reads a book that is “kinda mystery, sorta horror, with strong romance and science fiction elements,” she’s going to wonder just who the audience might be. Projects like this have a history of falling through the cracks in the marketplace, so an agent will have to think long and hard about her chances of placing it.

LENGTH: A related subject is the matter of length, or word count. For adult fiction, most books range from around 70,000 to 130,000 words in length. There are exceptions of course, but very short or very long novels can be problematic to sell because of pricing, production, and distribution issues. In the case of books for children and young adults, the length must be appropriate for the targeted age group. There’s a bit more leeway for certain kinds of non-fiction, but even there inappropriate length can be a deal-breaker.

AUTHOR: Generally speaking, an agent takes on an author and his project because she is interested helping him build a long-term career. This is almost invariably true for fiction, where the name of the game is to increase readership over the course of many books. Agents may shy away from a novelist whom they believe to be a “one book wonder” because of the enormous investment of time and energy for only a single book. (This is not necessarily true in non-fiction, where one-off books, such as celebrity biographies, are more common and can be quite profitable.)

It goes without saying that if an agent has reason to suspect that an author might be the “client from hell,” she’ll have to carefully consider whether representation is worth the hassle. Then again, everybody’s different, and what’s poison to one agent may be ambrosia to another.

CREDENTIALS AND/OR PLATFORM: For certain types of non-fiction, an author needs relevant professional or academic credentials. For example, to write a credible diet book, it’s best that the author (or co-author) be a physician or a nutritionist with demonstrated knowledge and experience in the field. Agents know that publishers aren’t likely to go out on a limb with a book that can’t speak with some kind of authority.

“Platform” is a different animal. It’s usually defined as the existing audience that an author can bring to his book. Authors often develop their platforms through such vehicles as speaking engagements, syndicated columns in magazines or newspapers, media exposure, or a very strong internet presence. Platform is essential to selling some kinds of nonfiction. Without it, an agent will surely turn down the project, no matter how good it may be.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST: Weirdly enough, this situation comes up much more frequently than anyone would suppose. If a new author approaches an agent with a project that is uncannily similar to one she’s currently representing, the agent has to turn it down. There’s simply too great a chance for misunderstanding or possible legal action if one author suspects that his agent has discussed his ideas with a competitor. This is the kind of situation that can ruin an agent’s reputation, and no book is worth that.

SUITABILITY FOR AGENT/AGENCY: This is somewhat of an odd-ball issue, but it does happen. Once in a great while, an agent will have to turn down a project simply because representing it could cause hard feelings among her established clients or publishing contacts. To use an extreme and fictitious example, let’s say that an agent does a lot of business in the Christian publishing market. She’d be hard pressed to take on a book with raunchy or irreverent content that would be deeply offensive to the authors and editors with whom she works every day. Most of the time, agents are pretty eclectic in the projects that they choose — and authors and editors accept that — but there are some lines that just can’t be crossed.

IN CLOSING: Good books draw rejections for a variety of reasons, and many of these reasons have nothing to do with the quality of the work. I know for a fact that I have has turned down books that other agents subsequently took on and sold. Then again, I’ve had some major successes with books that quite a number of my colleagues had previously rejected. If a book is truly outstanding, it’s only a matter of time until the right agent steps up to the plate and offers to represent it. Don’t give up too soon!

By John Ramsey Miller

[Author’s note: John Gilstrap is at Thrillerfest, and I’m not, so I am filling in for him by appearing a day early. I feel like the lone Jewish staff member who is working on Christmas Eve. So, close the bar for me, JG.]

The one question people ask me most, and I’m sure this is universally true, is the origin of my ideas for my books. I usually tell them I get ideas from running reality through my own “what if ?” and “paranoia” filters. When an author needs inspiration for a character, a scene, or a plot, all they have to do is to look to real life.

The inspiration for my first published novel, THE LAST FAMILY, originated from a story I read in the early 90’s about how the DEA confiscated property of a Florida doctor whom some informant––a drug addict––said was dealing drugs. They took everything the doctor had, based on the word of a liar paid for each name he gave the DEA. There was no evidence whatsoever except for the word of a man who was paid to hand drug dealers over to the DEA. He was a relative of, and had a grudge against the physician for throwing him out of his house for abusing drugs. The doctor was never tried for the alleged drug dealing. He lost all of his worldly possessions, his practice, and his wife left him. It was a typical case of government gone wild without any worry of normal consequences. Ah the arrogance of power, and the innocent bones crushed to powder in the exercising of such power. The feds do not usually apologize or acknowledge mistakes because it’s bad for bureaucratic careers.

I thought about the real doctor from my perspective. I went farther wondering how innocent pediatrician who had been in a similar situation––except maybe his wife was upset and was in a car crash that killed her and his kids––would react to such a perfect tragedy. Would he hate so much that he would become unbalanced and homicidal? How would he get back at the DEA? Might he pay them back by murdering their families in retribution. As I constructed the story the doctor became a character played by the man who’d lost his family and blamed a specific DEA team. In fact the team had not been responsible for the man’s loss of family and position, but he blamed them. Over time, the doctor evolved and was replaced by a sadistic, CIA-trained psychopath and master of disguise. More believable adversary, I thought. But I saved the “understandably” demented pediatrician for another story some other time.

Just the past two weeks, we’ve had:

1) a whacked out media circus surrounding the death of a performer, who, as usual is being rehabbed in death. For the past few years, the media had no interest in portraying this performer’s positive side, because, until he was good and dead there were more ratings in keeping his weird and controversial alive. Am odd emotionally immature, wildly extravagant “and flawed was again joined by an amazingly brilliantly talented angel” side. Plus he’s got a new album that will be coming out very soon. NOTE: After he died, James Brown lying in his casket toured several cities (complete with costume changes). If I’m not mistaken, that was the “Say it loud, I’m Dead and I’m Proud” Tour. Last I heard his casket is still in is living room. Use your imagination. Is a comeback tour in the works? Maybe a “This is a Dead Man’s World, but it wouldn’t be nothing…

2) A spree killer here in the Carolinas. A man with hundreds of arrests, out of prison five weeks and killed at least five and maybe as many as seven people in a few days before police shot him after they caught him partying in an abandoned house.

3) A governor (a presidential contender no less) who lied about his whereabouts over a Father’s Day weekend so he could shack up with a mistress in South Carolina. A governor who isn’t resigning, by the way.

4) A man driving while intoxicated and speeding who it turns out has a dead body in the back of his van. The body was that of a woman shot multiple times. The murder weapon was one of four guns found in the van. The killer’s wife was in the passenger seat. I guess he was one of those guys who won’t let a woman drive his vehicle.

5) Famous pitchman Billy Mays died and they are advertising today that he will be in one last ad promoting a new product (purportedly filmed before he died, but who knows). It isn’t merely ghoulish, it’s seemingly greedy of the company to use the ad, much less advertise the fact of the ad is on its way to a tube near you. It’s called creating buzz for a new product. Lots of material there.

6) How about LA doctors who write narcotics prescriptions for any celebrity who asks and is willing to pay. Doctors lead dull lives, so they worship heroes and glamorous people and they love the almighty dollar. It’s a recurring story in the news, and a great plot with hundreds of possible spins.

So that’s just a few off the top of my head, and each of those news stories had hundreds of possible tangents. Those are just news stories. Each of our lives are filled with things we see and hear that we can use later in a story to add texture, accuracy, or personal touches that resonate with readers, or maybe just a reader here and there out of all the readers who pick up our work. Everyday we absorb things we may not even pay attention to. As one who walks in a self-absorbed fog most of the time I can attest to that.

I am known to occasionally throw a weird character or two into my novels. My agent calls those characters “Miller People.” These are people I build from bits and pieces of people my mind collects. I see low cut Ostrich cowboy boots on someone. A year or two later I remember those boots but I put them on a rail thin RV salesman. It says something about the salesman, adds a dimension, puts questions about the salesman in a reader’s mind. The boots are a story the reader doesn’t get to know, but they know there’s something of a complexity of a personality in the boots. Maybe the salesman can’t see how people see him, and he thinks the boots make him a man of style and mystery. I’m off on a tangent here. It’s the bits and pieces that add flavor.

So open your eyes and start running things through your own filters. I’m sure most authors do precisely the same thing in their process.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

by guest bloggers: Thomas Jefferson & John Adams

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

(Note)
I wrote several blogs for the 4th of July that turned into political diatribes, and, as I read this document for inspiration, I realized that it was more important simply to allow people to read and consider the most important document penned in modern history. Life, liberty, and the right to pursue happiness without undue interference. Heavy stuff, freedom, and it comes at a great cost. Being free is something we all have to work hard to maintain.
Happy 4th & God bless America.
John Ramsey Miller

By John Ramsey Miller

Statisticians are working overtime to furnish us with statistics. The world runs on numbers and those numbers types are never going to slow down. As long as things happen, they will continue to crunch and spout. Long after we tire of listening to the results of their crunchings, they will be sitting in cubicles around the world comforted by their calculations. Even if they have to re-crunch old numbers and regurgitate them. And the numbers are always changing even as society changes.

In my world, Yahoo is the largest publisher of insipid crunchings. The top ten anything you want to know about will appear there on the home page along with the most frightening news available, the cutest animals, or just plain boring celebrity news they can accumulate. Want to know the top ten worst-smelling cities on earth? The top ten friendliest hell holes, The cutest kitten’s top ten favorite planets? How many dogs just like Obama’s people will be sell to people who want to be just like the President, but without the ears. The top ten best smelling decaying objects? It’s all there because somebody thinks we want to read the lists in order to improve our lives. They’ll never give you the names of the stat-crunchers until they want to list the top-ten-most-beaten-up statisticians in the United States. I’ve had way too much of this endless top tenning. It’s time for about 90% of statisticians to be in the unemployment lines.

Here’s another one that has stuck in my mind for eight point three percent of my adult life. A few years ago some scientists somewhere announced that fully ten percent of the matter in the Universe was unaccounted for. I still can’t wrap my mind around that one. How many scientists did it take to go out and weigh the mass of the Universe, to count the atoms and decide that a full ten percent was simply gone? Maybe it’s in the pants pockets of God, like so much dryer lint. Or maybe he made Paris Hilton’s ego with it. I don’t know a lot about science, but I have a God-given bullshit meter that goes off several times a day. I guess the scientists who made that statement will eventually sober up, or they will discover which Black Holes have sucked up the missing matter. I didn’t take it and I don’t really care who did.

I guess everybody has a calling in life, but list compilers are called from the ranks of accountants and actuaries who want more excitement, some way to introduce creativity, into their dull, number-generating careers.

Okay, I’m being unfair to statisticians. Some people need the comfort of numbers to make decisions. Me, I just run blindly from one situation to another, flying by the seat of my pants. I’m an emotional creature and I don’t generally make sound decisions based in reality, or on numbers. My wife will attest to this seventy percent of the time.

My business partner and I once hired a full-time statistician for our ad agency. I can’t remember why. It was doomed from the start. Perhaps it is like the time we got loaded and bought a quarter dozen pythons for our reception area. Seemed like a good idea at the time. We often did things like that. I guess we hired him because we were trying to kill the party reputation created by the festive snakes our clients were greeted by. That boy flat bubbled over and lit up like white phosphorous when he had new numbers to present to us or to a client. Clients love numbers that show growth. They hate numbers that point to stagnation or a reversal in sales. A good statistician can make the numbers sing his tune. Instead of ninety-nine-point nine percent of the readers of the newspaper didn’t act on our ad. Our guy explained that one-point-one percent of the people who read the newspaper acted on our ad, so it was amazingly effective. Stats were made to be spun like a drunk square-dance girl. Okay spinning stats could explain why one day coffee drinking is good for you, and the next it will shorten your life.

The truth is that I have no pressing use for that missing matter, so I vote we stop funding scientists to look for it and ask them to do something more constructive with the 90% of matter we have. One thing’s for certain, if it was my matter, I’d never be able to find anything close to ninety percent of it at any given time. Right now, the top ten things I can’t find [to save my life] would include my cell phone, phone book, car keys, and my electric razor.

By John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com

My home city, Washington, DC, is blessed with a vast community of writers. Every three or four months, my dear friend Dan Moldea pulls a bunch of us together for an Authors’ Dinner at the Old Europe Restaurant in Georgetown. The one requirement to be a “member” of the otherwise non-exclusive group is to be a published author.

As you might expect for Washington, non-fiction outnumbers fiction ten-to-one, and the politics of the room lean decidedly to the left. My own lean a bit to the right, as do those of a few other members, and this is a group that loves to talk politics. And you know what? It remains civil throughout.

Most writers I know are intellectually honest; they understand that two people can easily view a set of facts and draw entirely different conclusions. It’s refreshing. People accept that a well-reasoned position is at least, well, reasonable. Discussions get heated from time to time, but the heat is 99% passion, not anger. I’m certain that few minds are changed, but at least people listen. How rare is that in this day and age?

I’ve been an avid debater of issues for as long as I can remember, and here’s what a lifetime of political discussions has taught me: Most “liberals” and “conservatives” are actually “moderates” whose political outlooks hover somewhere between 47 and 53 on my imagined 100-point political spectrum. Why, then, are the airwaves filled with take-no-prisoners extremists on every significant issue?

Come to think of it, when did it become so offensive to discuss politics among friends? Why is it so offensive? Could it be that too many of our fellow citizens don’t truly understand what they think or why they think it; that they are merely parroting what they hear from Keith Olbermann or Rush Limbaugh or Oprah Winfrey and know that they can’t possibly defend their positions? I know a lady who routinely asks people at nearby restaurant tables to stop talking politics among themselves because the discussions make her feel “uncomfortable.” In her mind, it’s rude to discuss issues within earshot, but it’s not rude to inject herself into an eavesdropped conversation. How’s that for an interesting social compass?

Hey, look, I’m not suggesting that anyone be rude to guests at a dinner party by putting them in an uncomfortable position, but it seems to me that silence on issues comes with a heavy price. When reasonable people don’t afford themselves the opportunity to vet their thoughts, the issues themselves get hijacked by extremists, and the debate becomes polarized by gas bags who make their living by filtering and shaping the “truth” into something that in fact bears little likeness to it. Comity and compromise become the first casualties.

For the sake of votes or ratings (the common denominator in either case being money), the gas bags assign labels wholesale to people on the “other side” of issues. People stop listening to ideas yet start parsing phrases to perpetuate presumptions. In legislatures throughout the country, I worry that what used to be the loyal opposition has simply become the enemy. Majority control is becoming a license to bully.

It’s scary, it’s bipartisan, and we’re allowing it to happen in part, I believe, because we’re afraid of speaking our minds.

A friend of mine, whose politics rest around 48 on my imagined political spectrum while mine hover around 52, put it best when he told me, “John, we vote for different candidates because the crazies in your party scare me more than my crazies in mine. But only by a little.”

What do you think? How do we bring civil discourse back into fashion? Is it even a good idea? Can a democracy (or even a representative republic) continue to exist without it?

John Ramsey Miller

My wife’s bank was purchased by this other huge bank with offices in San Francisco and she was in that fine city all week, while I was at home with the chickens and dogs. Monday she went to Alcatraz Island and took the tour. She called me to say that she couldn’t believe how bleak the place was and how small the cells were. I knew that already since I’ve been in prisons before. And I reminded her that she had been there too, albeit only in the visitors area.

When I was photographing country music artists for album covers and magazine features I went to “The Walls” in Nashville with Tammy Wynette and Mel Tillis to photograph their concert for CBS Records. I got pictures of Tammy walking around in a huge room filled with a few hundred inmates armed only with a microphone, and she was a safe as she would have been sitting at home, where she actually died some years later. One of the inmates was also taking pictures and I talked with him about photography. The walls was a gothic prison where Burt Reynolds filmed the Longest Yard. Tony M., the inmate with a camera, was there doing 54 years for armed robbery.

A week later, I was approached by the warden at the prison (who later lost his job and, if memory serves, went to prison himself for borrowing money from inmates) who said Tony had asked him if I could help him set up a photographic darkroom for use by the inmates who put out the prison newspaper and I agreed. I looked at the space, which was across the main yard where the inmates spent their days. I designed a well-equipped darkroom, which Tony was to run. Tony was a very nice guy for an armed robber. In fact he was a nice guy period. The inmates liked him because he furnished them with pictures for their loved ones. In exchange they traded him things for the pictures, which is how prisons work.

For a period of a few weeks I would present myself at the gate and the guards would open the gates and let me in and I would wander to the designated darkroom space. I had nothing to fear because the inmates knew I was helping Tony, and I walked around unaccompanied by guards as safe as a newborn puppy. I went everywhere with Tony and being under his protection and I spent a lot of time talking with inmates. I taught Tony how to use the equipment I selected, and he was a natural. After Tony was moved to a newly built facility two years later I would take my wife and two-year-old son to visit him on Sundays and my son would sit in his lap.

Later I went to Leavenworth, Kansas to photograph Johnny Paycheck in concert in that federal facility, and it turned out that the warden was a nephew of Bill Monroe, the Bluegrass Icon. Bill Monroe was a casual friend of mine, and I had done a couple of his album covers. I was invited to go coon hunting with him. The warden gave me the celebrity tour, and I visited the rooms where the Birdman of Alcatraz had done his bird thing. The bird man was a cold-blooded sexual predator and murderer who had a soft spot for birds. The warden told me that the birdman killed several inmates after he’d raped them and that was the reason he was never released on parole. Hard to imagine Burt Lancaster filming a scene like that for the movie. I met well-known mobsters, a Brinks truck robber, killers of people with Federal implications, and other famous criminals. It was the kind of tour normal people didn’t get. That day I was with the warden, who walked around without an escort. I was amazed.

In 1981 I was living in New Orleans, and one night at a dinner for a mutual friend (Tony Dunbar, a lawyer who worked for Amnesty International). I was seated beside Sister Helen Prejean who lived in the projects and ran a ministry from her apartment. She worked with death row inmates. This was before she wrote DEAD MAN WALKING and I found her brilliant and totally delightful. She asked me how I felt about the death penalty and I said I was all for it. Long story short she said if I knew the inmates she worked with I couldn’t hold that belief. Two years later I found myself on Death Row setting up a formal portrait studio in the main hallway and loaded film in a cell on death row at Angola. During those two years I had spent untold hours negotiating with attorneys, inmates, and prison officials in order to do portraits of the men under sentence of death. In 1981 executions had been halted for a few years, and the big burn was in the works as cases wound through the courts. I met and photographed Elmo Sonier (Son-yay) one of the two men turned into one for the movie. The other was Robert Lee Willie, I didn’t photograph him. Elmo was one of an impromptu two-man team who raped a teen-age girl and murdered her and her boyfriend. The pictures ended up running in John Grisham’s The Oxford American in the largest selling issue in its history. The pictures, formal large-format portraits of smiling men dressed in street clothes ran years after the men in the pictures were executed. The handcuffs and leg shackles didn’t show in the portraits. If you saw MONSTER BALL, you saw Death Row and depictions of the guards. None of the guards were pro death penalty (at least they told me they were against executions) because they spend their days with the men they would have to help kill.

I have never written about prisons in my books, even though I am familiar with them and got to know more than a few inmates. After that series, I lost interest in photography, and began writing. When those men were executed it depressed me. I was depressed because I felt deep compassion and empathy for the victims, and I felt a sense of wasted lives of the inmates. I look at the pictures of smiling death row inmates and I try to imagine how their victims saw them in their last moments alive. It was impossible to imagine these men as cold-blooded murderers, but they were, and had done horrific things I won’t go into here. They did the crime and they each paid the price society exacted. As long as people harm others, prisons will be necessary. A lot of prisoners shouldn’t be there, but a lot should and have to be. The death penalty has the purpose of making certain that people who are executed never kill again. But the truth is that killers don’t think they’ll ever be caught, much less convicted and executed. It isn’t a deterrent. And it is certainly barbaric. Not much I can do about the people in there, but I can live my life hoping I can help someone make better choices, and know they are valuable.

Here I go wandering again and not blogging about writing, but talking about my life. (It’s all about me). Everything is about writing because our sum totals go into everything we write. The fact is that people flat amaze and astound me. That’s a huge part of why I write, and the people I’ve been fortunate enough to know furnish parts of the characters I put on paper. It seems to me that we all have an amazing capacity for doing good things and being positive influences on people in our lives. At the same time we all have the capacity (hopefully unrealized) for channeling evil and destroying lives. Although most of write about evil, it rarely if ever wins in the end, and good triumphs in the end. I like to think life is like that and good will always shine through and prevail.

By John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com

It’s June, so another graduation season is drawing to a close. In high schools and colleges all over the United States, proud students are donning caps and gowns, and posing for pictures with even prouder parents and grandparents. Late spring is the time of unbridled opportunity. Those young men and women literally own the future—their own, to be sure, but also mine, by extension. Given the inherent joy of the season, I wonder why so many adults seem to take pleasure in screwing it all up.

When the announcement is made at the family dinner that young William or Wilhelmina has a computer science degree or a business degree, or that they’ve been accepted to the law school of their choice, the sense of approval is palpable. Everybody knows that those kids are set for life. Their future will be filled with money and material gain.

Have you noticed that music majors or creative writing majors or acting majors don’t receive the same universal acceptance? Is it because the presumed path to wealth isn’t quite so linear? Is it because liberal arts and social sciences aren’t as important to society as harvesting a new crop of lawyers? This bothers me.

I find it difficult to believe that at the doddering age of 21, every law school inductee is truly pursuing his or her passion. I could be wrong—I’ve spent a lifetime being wrong many, many times—but whenever I see a newly minted lawyer or accountant, I get the sense that in more than a few cases, their beaming smiles are reflections of just their own ambitions, but those of Mom and Dad as well.

Maybe I don’t want to see so young a person with so pedestrian a dream as being a lawyer or accountant. Age forty-one is the time for 12-hour work days and heavy responsibility, not twenty-one. Is this really their dream? For some, yes. For many, I suspect no.

You want to see lofty dreams? You want to be inspired by a youthful spirit? Sit down and talk to those creative writing students and the musicians. They know that the odds of success are stacked against them, but they don’t care. They’ve got a passion, and they’re going to pursue it to the end, until they either succeed or are forced by finances or a broken spirit to declare defeat.

If they beat the odds—and let’s face it, they are long odds—naysayers will pronounce them to be “lucky.” But that’s only if the success is huge. Like George Clooney or John Grisham huge.

Otherwise, in my experience, people will find a way to diminish true success and turn it into something less than it is. It’s only a TV movie, not a real movie. It’s only being published by a small press, not a major house. It’s only the Washington Opera company, not the Met. It’s only the touring company, not Broadway. Sure, he made it to the Chicago Bears, but he never made it above second string.

It’s a shame about William. He never really made it. Never mind that William is doing what he loves.

I feel sorry for the kids who have been career tracked by their parents. It’s foolish to think about becoming an artist, they are told, because it’s impossible to make any money at it. They’ll prove their point by reciting a litany of one hit wonders and abject failures from among their own childhoods. Give up now, son; you’ll never make it. This from the same mother or father who said never give up on the soccer field or in Math class. Those are important. Without the connections and the A-plus report card, Harvard is off the table, don’t you know.

I know that I am painting with a very broad brush here, but I’ve known these parents. I’ve had to justify why I was ruining my own son’s chances at success by not shipping him off to boarding school where he could start networking at age fourteen. (I’m not making that up. I turned the debate around, though, when I asked the overachievers why they were willing to surrender custody of their adolescent children at the moment in their lives when they most needed the steady hand and constant love of their parents.)

So listen up, graduates: It’s your life now. You have the God-given right to live it as you please. If acting like you’re forty when you’re 20 years younger is your thing, then go for it. But if you want to start a rock band or become a poet or set a new standard for sculpture, this is the time. If it doesn’t work, how much harm can you do to an accounting career that hasn’t started yet?

How do you even know that you want to be an accountant if you haven’t tried a dozen other things? I’ve got nothing against accountants, don’t get me wrong, but this is an important life choice. Suppose you hate being an accountant? Changing your mind becomes a lot harder after you’ve got kids and a mortgage, and I think that the seeds of doubt over what might have been if only you’d tried could be crippling.

I say if you’ve got talent and a dream, pursue the hell out of it. This is the time. Success only comes to those to endeavor to achieve it. Failure only comes to those who surrender.

And to surrender without trying, well, that’s just cowardice.