Does anyone here hate fireworks? I know, I must sound positively un-American. I never used to hate fireworks. This new loathing came about for one reason and one reason only.

I have kids.

Two delightfully little and innocent kids who are as scared of fireworks as they are of, I don’t know, say thunder, and who–if they aren’t well enough into that blissfully deep, impenetrable sleep of childhood–are likely to wake up screaming in fear. Since fireworks tend to take place well after bedtime, this throws off the whole night (grown up time), the next morning, and sometimes even…nap.

Probably this doesn’t sound worth mentioning…unless by chance you also have wee ones you’ve worked like the devil to get into a good sleeping rhythm.

In that case, you, like me, might hate a big, loud burst of green and red, too.

So…how was everyone’s fourth

I just posted a review of The Secret Sisters, by Joni Rodgers on amazon.com.

I was thinking about posting the review here, but at this point amazon has a few more readers than I do, so I figure it will help Joni more if I post it there.

It’s easy to forget (not for me, of course, but I don’t flatter myself that you all are holding onto these details) that I began querying with a 180,000 behemoth.

And remember that I deemed every one of those words crucial.

Barney Karpfinger, the agent who ushered Jonathan Kellerman to fame, asked to see the first 100 pages of my ms. I sent them out, sure that I was about to be signed. And by about to be, I figured maybe a few weeks, a month at most.

During this time Jonathan Kellerman gave a reading at the Sixth Avenue Barnes & Noble. I went to it, having no idea that Mr. Karpfinger would also attend. But sure enough, there was the great man himself, introduced and pointed to in the crowd by his client.

Kellerman told an amusing anecdote about how Karpfinger read the first Alex Delaware ms and said something like, This guy is going to make me rich, to which Kellerman responded, Well, that’s great, because then I’ll be ten times richer. He explained to the crowd how agents got a ten percent cut–which dates this whole story–of their clients’ earnings. He also played guitar. Kellerman, that is, not Karpfinger.

Anyway, I stood in line to get my book signed and mumbled something to the author about his being an inspiration, and then I forced myself to walk up to the man himself.

Barney Karpfinger was a very dignified looking gentleman with peppery hair. How nice to blah blah, I said. You actually have a partial of my ms now.

Do we? he responded smoothly. Well, I’m sure we’ll get to it just as soon as possible.

Oh, I have no doubt! I said, horrified that he took my introduction as nagging.

A month or so later Karpfinger sent me a rejection. It said a few glowing things, however. Better, it had almost a full page of single spaced text explaining where the novel fell down.

Among other things, Karpfinger talked about the “neurotic style” of my protagonist whereby she thought about things too much and kept going over them in her head.

I hadn’t realized Dara–my main character–did this at all! It was a completely unconscious typing out of probably what my own head looked like much of the time. Well, I could deal with being a neurotic over thinker myself, but that wasn’t what I intended for my kick ass heroine!

Over the next two weeks, I sat down and slashed 60,000 words from my previously uncuttable baby.

At last I had a ms that could be considered saleable, at least in terms of length.

Thank you, Barney Karpfinger.

And thank you all for reading. This will be it until after the holiday…Happy fourth, everyone!

Colleen Thompson and Joni Rodgers, in addition to being wonderfully talented writers, have a blog called Boxing the Octopus, where they tell it like it is every day in the writing business. I’ve come to depend on them to keep me informed, entertained, and always thinking.

The other day Joni wrote about whether commercial is a bad word–or at least a declassé one–when it comes to fiction.

In my writing, commercial is the goal. I want to appeal to a large number of people. To entertain them and carry them away to my story world. This has been true ever since Dorothy suggested the possibility to me.

I’d love to hear from somebody who disagrees! Is fiction that is non-commercial better in some way? Can literature be commercial? What is literature anyway?