Hey, you're the sort of psycho I'd like on my side.

Hee.

t pokes head in

Hi writer people! I suppose I could have posted this in Press, but figured I'd get a better response in here. DH has a book in search of an agent, and I was wondering if anyone could get me Agent Kate's info so I could pass it on?

I don't know how much I'm allowed to say about the book in public, but it's nonfiction, entertainment-industry related. Not a gossipy memoir. My profile addy is good.

Jess, insent.

Barb, you rock! Thanks so much.

This may be too long to post, but I'd be interested in hearing if any of y'all would buy a book started like this.

Where were you…?

That’s the eternal question whenever anything big goes down, isn’t it? Where were you when Paragon saved Kennedy? Where were you when Tehran disappeared into Dimension X? Where were you when Todesengel killed half of Chicago?
Where were you when they announced Paragon was dead?
I was in a bar, naturally. Between gigs I spent a lot of time in bars; shady ones with no signs and big metal doors with an armored view slot or a closed-circuit camera. Bars with sound dampeners and lead shielding, holographic vision bafflers, walls packed with radar-spoofing chaff. Bars where guys like me could meet other guys like me without any capes listening in. Hopefully.
Wouldn’t know it now, would you? Me with my shiny black boots and spotless black uniform and bright gold badge? But back then I was on the other side.
The name has always been Grim. Now it’s “Captain Grim”. But back then they called me “Professor Grim”, because I’d earned a Masters in History while doing my time under the sea.
Shimmer’s Place, the bar in which I sat and hoped for a gig, ran a wall of TV’s, all of them constantly tuned to the various news outlets. Rumor was that Shimmer had a thigh-sized run of fiber optic buried under the foundation that ran to a couple dozen cable boxes and three or four discreetly hidden satellite dishes around Detroit. Not that it mattered. Shimmer had become a true info-junkie after he busted out of St. Lawrence Meta-Medium; he was convinced that Maximan was able to find him through data-mining all the news sources in real-time using Professor Highbrow’s Ultimac computer. His wall was his way of seeing if he was being tracked. Which was stupid, because Shimmer wasn’t exceptionally bright to begin with and no way could his staring at a couple dozen cobbled-together video monitors in between slinging cheap drinks equal the raw computing power of Ultimac. If Ultimac was even how Maximan found the bastard, and not Shimmer’s own incompetence, which was more likely.
I was working my way through my fourth beer and a shot and thinking about trying some other bar, one that wasn’t dead, when Shimmer let out a low “Whoa.”
“What?” I said, not looking up from doodling on a napkin.
“They called it. They finally fucking called it.”
“Called what?” I growled, and turned around. And there it was, plastered across every network: the famous gold star on red, the short blond hair. The man who won World War II and ended the Death Angel and and and…heroics too numerous to count. Paragon.
They’d finally declared him dead.
It was seven years and one day since the last reported sighting of the World’s Most Powerful Man. The Titan of Triumph. The White Knight of Right. The Globe’s Hero. Paragon, the pinnacle of heroism.
“Holy shit,” I breathed. I couldn’t believe it.
Shimmer and I looked at each other in shock. We couldn’t speak for a moment. Then Shimmer said: “Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow.”
“It’s…”
“…Yeah.”
We sat another couple of moments, staring at the TVs. Then Shimmer turned away and went into the back. I downed my beer, paused, then downed my shot. Shimmer came back with a dusty bottle.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Glen Garioch, 1958,” he answered, gazing at it almost reverentially. Off my blank look he said “It’s like the third most expensive whiskey in the world. Got it as part of a haul when I teamed with The Skulk. Was saving it for…”
“…a special occasion?” I snarled, and was surprised at the venom in my voice.
He lifted his gaze to me, unperturbed. “No. But a suitable one.” He cracked open the bottle and fetched two tumblers. He poured a couple fingers worth in each and set the bottle down. He lifted his glass, silent.
“Are we celebrating, or…?” I asked.
“No,” he answered.
So I lifted my glass and held it high in silent salute. We clinked them together and drank it down. It burned like honeyed fire down my gullet and hit my stomach with a whoomph.
“You ever (continued...)

( continues...) meet him?” Shimmer asked.
“Twice. He busted me once, sent me under the sea. Never saw it coming, man, he was just…bam! There, you know? And I just…Hemlock tried her power on him, but I just stood there and looked at him and…I gave up. What can you do against…?”
“Yeah. Saved my life once, he did.”
“No shit?”
Shimmer refilled my glass and we silently toasted again. After we drank, he said “Yeah. When we held the Empire State Building hostage, me and Alpha Dog and Jericho Jim. I was doing my thing, hiding us, when the Virtue Brigade crashes the party. Turned out the Insidious Nine’s take-over of the Mons Olympus observatory got taken care of pretty quick and they’d hitched a ride home on a nearby I’kularr cruiser.”
“When was this?”
“’85. So, we think we’re home free, nobody but second-rate capes in town and goddamn if Pallas herself didn’t come busting through the wall. Jericho blows his damn horn, walls are crumbling, glass everywhere, that weirdo StarTracker had blown through my illusions like fucking nothing and I ran for it.
“Just as I’m headed out the door, Jericho gives another toot and I’m blown out onto the observation deck. Except the barricades are rubble and on their way to the street below and half a second later, so am I.
“Man, I screamed like a little girl. 86 stories up, that deck, and I’m headed down without an elevator.”
“I’d scream too. Probably shit myself.” I shuddered, thinking about it. I hate heights.
“Anyway, all I see then is a quick blur of red, gold and blue and then there’s something hard around my middle and I’m going up. And he’s got me. He even says that: ‘I’ve got you.’ And I felt okay. You know? Like when you’re a kid and you get scared and your dad says ‘I’ve got you.’ Safe.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I don’t remember being a kid.”
“Oh. Sorry. Anyway, I knew I was going to be okay. Not great , because once He’s got you you’re got , man, and I knew I was gonna do time, but I wasn’t going to die. Not that day.”
“Yeah."
“Yeah.”
The red light over the door blinked. Shimmer checked a monitor behind the bar and buzzed the door open. King Kraken lumbered in, his scales rasping against one another. He blinked his yellow slit-irised eyes at us.
“You guys hear?” he rumbled.
Shimmer nodded toward the TVs. Kraken grunted and shambled over to the bar.
“What are you guys drinking?”
“Glen Garioch, ’58,” Shimmer answered.
Kraken whistled through his gills. “Heavy stuff. You celebrating…?”
“No,” I said, curt.
Kraken nodded his heavy head. “He took me out in ’93,” the fish-man rasped. “Defused a bomb I had no right using while he was at it. Probably saved my life, not to mention…”
“Yeah,” Shimmer said. And he produced another tumbler.

So it's ... sci-fi? I mean, it's not my kind of thing, but it seems like a decent hook for opening a novel like that.

It's...comic books. And sci-fi.

I don't know.

I love it! It's got a very Kurt Busiek feel, like that alternate perspective on the superhero world that he does in all his comics. Which I dig muchly.

One minor criticism: I think the paragraph that starts "Shimmer’s Place, the bar in which I sat and hoped for a gig...." runs too long. I mean the writing is terrific, but it's too much exposition, and adds very little to the scene. But that's just my opinion.