It's been a few days

Life has been busy, however I am still making progress on the re-write sections of the book. After those are done, I am going to let the last half of it sit for a while, let myself get detached from it, then I will go back in and finish the last half of editting. I have some other projects that I thought I might work on (a couple of novel ideas)

Anyway - I have been trying to contact as many authors as I can - published authors - with high notariety, to get their take on using literary agents. The two biggest names to answer have been Jonathon Kellerman, and Anne Rice. Both of them seemed to recommend not using an agent to start with, but to go straight to the publishing houses first.

This makes me wonder why they would say that. Could it be that back when they were first published and had to struggle, editors accepted unsolicited manuscripts? Agents back then weren't really a necessary step to getting published, but helped afterwards to further the writers career. Or could it be that they really don't think that agents have the writer's best interests at heart? Anne said that agents are there to make money, while editors get paid their salary regardless. Jonathon said that agents are... well....'Most of them are jaded s.o.b.'s who need to be goaded to plow through the stack of submissions' - however he didn't say not to use them. He even offered his agent's name, although we are not in the same genre, and his agent is now actually his Ex-agent.

I am going to continue to try to contact some of the more established authors, and get a general consensus, keeping in mind the time frames that each other was published. The advice of those who have made it successfully is like gold to me, something that I value and treasure, but I have to remember that its from their perspective - the author's perspective....