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[DD] A Bad Sentence, A Worse Segue (Or, Another Agent Talk!)
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:41 — 34.0MB)
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Matt and Mur come to you live from their separate yet equal tanning salons in Ditch Diggers Manor.
- Matt makes a very random yet amazing Yan Can Cook reference, although Martin Yan is NOT the topic of this episode.
- Mur disrupts the usual Ditch Diggers end-of-episode shilling format to boost Matt’s newly released middle-grade novel debut BUMP and plug his appearance on the Escape Artists’ Twitch stream.
- Matt and Mur talk about trying to be happy for yourself and your professional accomplishments while such a large quotient of the people you know are fairly miserable.
- A brief tangent about the Office Ladies Podcast and how The Office is intrinsic to Matt and Mur’s friendship.
- Matt remembers this is a show about writing as a profession, and Mur further remembers the goal of the show is to talk about professional writer problems and solutions to those problems.
- A brief recap of the last episode detailing Mur’s search for a new agent, which segues into the topic of this episode, finding an agent as a new author.
- How the author/agent relationship can and often does straddle the line between professional and personal, and how that can complicate the former aspect of that dynamic, especially for new authors.
- Matt rants briefly about how authors do not work for their agents and how no agent can “fire” you.
- Questions you should ask any prospective agent during your first conversation/interaction, and why you should ask them.
- Matt and Mur talk about the “harsh writing advice” meme, how other authors are not your competition, and the value of Twitter “main characters” and the ensuing discourse that evolves from them.
- No Q&A this week, but Matt does read some Twitter feedback concerning past episodes (the purchasing of corduroy jackets with library money if you are a British or UK author).
- A final reminder Ditch Diggers is eligible for this year’s Hugo Awards, as well as Matt’s debut epic fantasy novel, SAVAGE LEGION, and Escape Pod, which Mur edits.
Mentioned in This Episode…
