Berating myself for having become suspicious of anything out of the ordinary, I decided that the students were probably on a midsemester break or had just finished a series of grueling midterm exams and had come to our idyllic town to shop in the hip boutiques, eat delicious food, or hike the beautiful mountain trails.
Back in my office, I picked up the first proposal in the tidy stack on the center of my desk and began to read. Within a few sentences, I was transported to an old house in New England. In a cobwebbed attic, a young woman knelt in front of an antique steamer trunk and was on the verge of setting free an evil that had lain dormant since the witch trials of Salem. Unfortunately, the suspense that grabbed me in the opening scene gave way to forty pages of dull backstory.
I reread the author’s original query letter and wasn’t convinced that the idea was marketable. The writing certainly wasn’t.
This didn’t mean that I would respond to the author with a firm rejection. Instead, I emailed her a short note saying that while I loved the beginning of her book, she would need to completely rewrite the remainder before submitting it to me again.
This done, I reached for the next proposal. It was so riddled with spelling and grammatical errors that it took me forever to read the first chapter. When the font size shrank and the spacing went from double to single, beginning with chapter two, I gave up.
“This was your big chance and you couldn’t be bothered to send me your best work.” I reprimanded the author as though he were sitting in my office. “With computers able to spell and grammar check, there is no excuse for such a sloppy submission.”
The email I sent out to this author was short and direct. I wouldn’t be offering him a second chance. I explained that his project was not for me, recommended that he revise his work before querying another agency, and wished him luck finding representation.
Shaking my head in puzzlement over the behavior of some aspiring writers, I pulled the third proposal in front of me and began to read:
The pine floorboards of the four-room house were stained with blood.
The stain was mahogany brown and had been there for decades. People had tried to cover it with straw, rag rugs, and at one point an avocado-colored shag carpet, but it remained—a persistent oval stain. It would forever mark the room with its gruesome presence.
Men had died in this house, in this room. Hundreds of them. Soldiers clad in frayed gray uniforms had lost their lives here, drop by crimson drop. Others had lost legs or arms or feet. Limbs chewed up by cannonball fire, appendages shredded by musket shot, flesh turned black by infection.
I could almost hear the men screaming. The smell of their fear hung in the house-turned-museum like smoke. It hovered over the daguerreotypes and weapons locked in glass cases, clung to the archaic surgical equipment and tattered flags.
Why did I keep coming to this place?
Did I feel empathy for the soldiers? Because they had sacrificed in vain? I had sacrificed, too, and there had been no victory for me, either. We were connected by loss, these men and me. We had wasted our future because others ordered us to do so.
My eyes kept returning to the stain on the worn pine floor.
Did I long to witness death? To see the blood running from another’s veins drop by crimson drop? Is this where my anger will lead me one day?
Only you will see that I am capable of taking what is mine.
Only you will know when I will choose the next victim.
I let the paper fall from my hands, unwilling to read more. This story was not for me. It was too dark and I had a hunch that the narrative would eventually become too graphic for my tastes. I also wasn’t sure what I’d been reading. It wasn’t a proper proposal. There wasn’t a single line explaining what the book was about, nor was there a letter accompanying the document. The author had sent an entire chapter without preamble and without following any of the guidelines listed so clearly on the agency’s website. The only note in the personal voice of the author was one line at the beginning that read:
I plan to pitch this project at the book festival.
The whole thing was bizarre.
Despite my lack of interest in the work, this author, Kirk Mason, illustrated a measure of talent. I decided to hand the packet over to Jude Hudson. He represented thrillers and was always on the lookout for a fresh voice. This voice was unique enough to give me chills.