Selling My Soul (In a Good Way) is a weekly journal
about my efforts to get a debut novel published.
The blank screen I try to fill with good enough words to create a novel have often grappled with faith. Which means I live in the borderlands.
Of the novels I’ve written and tried to get traditionally published, the most recent ones involved faith-related issues. Religion. Christianity. Ministers. However, the novel I’m currently seeking a publishing home for has none of that “troubling” subject.
Around 2010 or so I was in the midst of writing a potential series of novels with a minister as an amateur sleuth. When the first one was finished to my self-doubting, never-satisfied satisfaction, I began the search for an agent. While pursuing literary representation, I worked on the next story featuring my curious, resourceful, fictional pastor.
After close to a hundred queries, I found an agent! She was new, eager for clients. She initially (that’s a key word, by the way) seemed enthusiastic about my writing and understood my novel’s potential audience. She began sending samples of my novel to mostly small and a few large publishers. Of course, there were rejections. Searching for agent and then having that agent search for a publisher always includes the high likelihood of the fun two-letter word NO.
What I began to realize as she sent me copies of the rejections was that a high percentage of the publishers she had a relationship with were Christian.
Isn’t that okay?
Well . . .
The Christian publishers that agent knew were all somewhat “conservative.” Back in 2010 or now, that’s not surprising. If you looked for agents and/or publishers that handled Christian themes, the bulk of them would likely be labeled “conservative,” “traditional,” or “evangelical.” There is, indeed, a large market for that brand of Christianity. And I say to that: Great! But it didn’t match well with me or my “liberal” fictional pastor who’d be engaged in stories with subjects like: pro-choice abortion and the acceptance of (gasp) homosexuality.
Conservative I am not.
Are there examples of successful novels with more “liberal” (or less “conservative”) clergy as amateur crime-solvers? You betcha. When I was sending out queries in 2010, I used Julia Spencer-Fleming’s mysteries for a comparison. She has an Episcopal priest helping to solve crimes. In 2023, Margot Douaihy released Scorched Grace, with a rebellious, troubled Roman Catholic nun as the protagonist. I had Douahiy’s book as a “comp” with a trio of novellas (with ministers as key characters) that I tried to get traditionally published. Spencer-Fleming and Douaihy represent good choices, but they are rare in mainstream publishing and would be rejected by all “small” or “large” Christian publishers with a conservative bent.
The literary agent and I quietly parted ways after a year. Maybe my writing wasn’t up to snuff. Maybe she was too focused on the wrong places for a publishing home open to my novel’s perspectives. And maybe, who I am (Christian) and what I write (sometimes with “liberal” or “progressive” religious themes) doesn’t match well with most publishers’ interests. Thus, life in the uncertain borderlands.
FINDING JOHN MUIR, except for a brief mention of prayers by a couple of characters, has little about any direct and obvious aspect of faith, religion, or Christianity. Nonetheless, I’m still an old, white, straight geezer who is a retired Christian pastor. Does me being a Christian raise any concerns?
I dunno! I just keep on keeping on . . .
Since last week’s Selling My Soul, I haven’t sent any new query letters nor have I received any rejections.
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“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.” – Isaac Asimov