Joshua's Memoir

February 24, 1986 - February 24, 2006

Twenty years.

The ad in the NY Times started out "Editorial Trainee. Read, report on fiction/non-fiction scripts." I was around six weeks out of college and looking for a job. I wanted to be in publishing, something on the editorial side of things, and this seemed to be a good fit. I called to make an appointment, and it was kind of exciting to find out it was the Scott Meredith agency. If you were reading sf/fantasy, and I certainly was, you couldn't read an anthology without coming across credit lines -- lots and lots and lots of credit lines -- for reprints by big-name authors courtesy of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency.

You got to take a test, reading a short story called "Rattlesnake Cave" and doing a report on it in an hour. I got called back for an interview. And I had a job. I think what I knew helped, but it's also entirely true that "it's not what you know, it's who you know." Betsy Mitchell (then at Baen Books, now at Del Rey) had given me my first break in publishing, and she was able to put in a good word. Stan Schmidt, now as then the editor of Analog, and whose encouragement and warmth toward a precocious teen such as myself was invaluable, was then a Scott Meredith client and could put in a good word as well.

So my career as a literary agent started on February 24, 1986.

Or maybe half-started is the better word. The Scott Meredith agency was famous, or infamous, for its reading fee service, marketed with the help of thousands of direct mail brochures every week. In exchange for getting almost instant responsibility for marketing work and being a real agent, I had to also spend a good chunk of time writing letters and answering phone calls from people taking advantage of this service. It's an apprenticeship shared with many of today's top agents in sf/fantasy, myself and Richard Curtis and Ralph Vicinanza and Don Maass and Russell Galen. Or today's top guy agents in sf/fantasy; I don't think anyone would say that SMLA was a nurturing environment for the female agent wannabe.

But it's safe to say that February 24, 1986 was an exciting day for the 21-year-old me. There I was in one of the most famous agencies in the world. Barry Malzberg, the award-winning writer whose essay collection ENGINES OF NIGHT I remembered, was one of the readers working across the hall. The next office over was Russ Galen, so I could hear one side of some of his conversations and learn a lot. That first day I worked until I was told to go home.

On February 28, I received a check for $175.06, what was left from $225/wk after taxes. Even then, this wasn't a lot of money; I got a subsidy from my parents, living with them rent-free for six months. And most days I got to use one of their cars to get back-and-forth from Pine Bush, NY to Middletown to catch the Shortline bus. It was a long commute; I'd get home 8ish if I was lucky, and try for six hours of sleep before catching a 6ish bus in. I remember reading Ronald Kelly's THE TOBACCO BARN on one of those bus rides in, a novel that I sold a year or two thereafter to Wendy McCurdy at Zebra. Published as HINDSIGHT, it was the first of eight horror novels Ronald would sell. My first sale was a mystery novel called MARY'S GRAVE by Malcolm McClintick, to Michelle Tempesta at Doubleday Crime Club. Another of my early triumphs was finding an article about The Man Who Saved Penguins (Pelicans? Some "P" bird), which I submitted over Scott's name to Parade; and Parade paid very nicely.

Of all the things I did in those first several months, there's no doubt that the very best turned out to be getting the OK to reach out to an author named Elizabeth Moon, who was starting to publish some wonderful short stories like "A Delicate Adjustment" and "ABCs of Zero G" in Analog. This did not work out quite as I had expected; Analog was known for its hard sf, and I considered myself more of an sf reader than a fantasy reader, and somehow or other this author of hard sf indeed had a novel for me to look at -- a 500,000 word high fantasy trilogy called THE DEED OF PAKSENARRION. But great is great. I had a lot of good reading from summer into fall as I got each new installment, reading it at the Rego Park Burger King, and reading it on the hill in Juniper Valley Park while the "Lets Go Mets Go" song from the '86 championship team played on the radios of people walking through. As with Ronald Kelly, Elizabeth wasn't an instant sale. But it's now twenty years and counting that Elizabeth and I have been working together, growing up together and making each other better through our shared experiences.

There were some things I did that are less intelligent; acting as if the letter I was typing (typing, on a Selectric) with a cc to Norman Mailer meant sending him a carbon copy; and there was plenty of carbon paper at SMLA, carefully doled out sheet by sheet. Malcolm McClintick and I had our moments together, and my first client to sell was the first I got to part with.

There are a lot of things that kind of blend together. There's such a lag in publishing between first finding someone and first seeing a book on the shelves that I can't remember in a lot of cases if my first encounter with an author was in 1986 or 1987. When did Simon Green send in that first query about BLUE MOON RISING?

My memories of 1986 aren't about the work alone.

I purchased individual tickets to just about every Mets Sunday home game, and a few games beyond that. I was there when they clinched the division, and if I looked through my scorecards there would be a lot of fond memories.

Seeing Top Gun on opening night at the Astor Plaza, and being young enough to think of Sbarro as gourmet pre-theatre cuisine.

I felt secure enough in my job, and a couple raises in just barely rich enough, that I sought my own place in the summer. I started looking just ahead of the word coming (I think my sister broached the subject) that it might be time for me not to be living at home indefinitely. I had to find a place in Queens so I would be near to Shea Stadium, and on August 16 I moved into a studio of my own on the Rego Park/Middle Village border with a bed, a desk, a dresser, some bookcases, a TV, and not very much more. I recall the rent being around $450/month. On August 17 I celebrated by going to the Thalia Soho to see The Shining, with lunch at the Pizzeria Uno on 6th Ave. in Greenwich Village.

Twenty years later...

I'm still in Queens. The apartment is bigger, but much more crowded. How do people ever move? The packing!! The Thalia Soho no longer exists, but I still go to lots of movies, 95-100 in each of 2004 and 2005. Pizzeria Uno still holds court in the West Village. Be my client long enough and you're almost certain to get an Uno's meal eventually. Elizabeth Moon's 19th novel comes out this year, and as I write her 20th should be in my hands within the next few months. Oddly enough, I don't think Elizabeth has been taken to an Uno's meal yet, and this is something I will have to try and work on.

And twenty years later, I still love what I'm doing more days than not. I get to go to London Book Fair each year. I like London! (If you're going, eat at Mandalay.) I'm delighted to still be working with key clients like Elizabeth, Charlaine Harris, Tanya Huff and Simon Green, all of whom first joined the team in the 1980s, and just as delighted that the world got to join me last year in discovering Brandon Sanderson, and this year in discovering Violette Malan and (at book-length) Tobias Buckell. Wait until you see the cover for Jack Campbell's DAUNTLESS, or Joel Shepherd's CROSSOVER. Hey, cozy mystery fans -- you want to discover THE BELEN HITCH. That Steve Mancino guy, first week on the job and he finds this fantastic novel by Kat Richardson called GREYWALKER, which you'll get to see this fall; you like Tanya and Charlaine you got a treat coming. And I think this is the year that several more of the writers he's been grooming will be getting their first contract.

I'm gonna love these next twenty years.