After my sixth novel failed to sell, I knew it was time to get serious.

My Rejection Book was filled to bursting, bong slips divided into agent and editor categories. Close to four hundred of them. With the baby’s first birthday approaching and a new house recently purchased, my friends and family were beginning to wonder when I was going to give up this ‘hobby’ and get a real job working nine to five.

I made my living waiting tables. The flexible schedule allowed me plenty of time to write. My wife worked in the same restaurant, and I would often trade shifts with her if the muse was in overdrive. She’d always been supportive, even when we were dating and I had my BAD AGENT EXPERIENCE.

Rewind to three years earlier. I was fresh out of college, where I majored in Television. I’d switched my major to TV from Film, because I heard it was too hard to get a job in film.

I found out it was just as hard to get a job in television. Though I had good grades, and a killer show reel, I’d graduated in the middle of a huge recession, and was going up for entry level positions against people with years of experience.

I tried my best, failed, and then wondered what the heck my education was good for, other than teaching me how to make my own beer bongs and how to add watermelon Jolly Ranchers to a bottle of vodka for killer shots.

Since writing is what I wanted to pursue in both Film and TV, and since I had a love of books and had already written dozens of short stories, I decided to take the plunge and write a mystery novel.

It took a few months. When I finished, I picked up a Writer’s Market book, picked out six agents, and sent them copies of the book, figuring it was only a matter of time until one of them called me.

Believe it or not, one did.

He was a respected, well-known agent with some big name clients, and I immediately signed on the dotted line. I drove to New York to meet him soon after, and he took me to a five star restaurant and filled my head with promises of fame and riches while I fought a losing battle trying to match him martini for martini.

Life was good.

When I came back home, I considered quitting my job. After all, the sale would come quick, and the money would roll in.

A week passes. A month. Three months.

I call my superstar agent, and get an assistant, who explains that sometimes it takes a while to sell a book.

That hadn’t been what Mr. Bigshot told me over Grey Goose, but I still trusted the guy.

Six months pass. A year. By this time, I’ve written a sequel to the first book, and I send it to Mr. Bigshot.

A few weeks pass, and I call him to see if he’s read the new book.

His assistant explains that he’s really busy.

Another six months go by. Finally, I call up Mr. Bigshot and insist on speaking to him personally. The assistant won’t allow it. So I insist on getting a lost of all the publishing houses that have rejected my book.

The assistant sends me a list. A list of two houses.

In nineteen months, he’d shown by book to two editors.

Even though I was ignorant about NY publishing, I knew this was bad. There were dozens of publishing houses who bought mysteries. Only going to two of them proved this guy wasn’t doing a thing for me.

I fired him, deciding to look for a new agent. After all, he was easy to get. All I had to do was buy the latest Writer’s Market, pick out a few more agents, and wait for them to call.

No one called. I tried every agent in NY, and couldn’t get anyone interested in my series.

This lead to a bout of depression. My girlfriend (who later became my wife) offered to cheer my up by buying me a unique gift. A tattoo.

"That’s very white-trash of you, honey," I told her.

But she explained that she had 100% faith that I’d someday be published, and a tattoo would inspire me to keep trying.

Well, we went to Jade Dragon in Chicago, and I had them put a little frowny face on my right shoulder.

But now, after six unpublished novels, all the frowny face did was depress me even more.

Should I continue pursuing the dream of becoming a published author? Or should I do the responsible thing and get a well-paying office job?

"You aren’t allowed to give up," my girlfriend (now my wife) told me. "You’re a writer, whether you get paid for it or not."

She was right. I’d be miserable doing anything else.

So I decided to write a blockbuster.

My previous approach to writing was very free-form and unstructured. I’d write when I felt like it, about whatever I felt like. My growing pile of form letter rejections was testament to how well this worked for me. I needed to regroup.

The term ‘high-concept’ is often bandied around Hollywood, used to describe movies that have strong, central hooks. Blockbuster novels have hooks as well. "Shark kills swimmers on New York beach." "Little girl is possessed by the devil." "Science learns to clone dinosaurs." "FBI trainee interviews a captured serial killer." I wanted to write something like that; something that could be described in a brief sentence, but still perfectly conveyed the story idea.

Coming up with a catchy hook on which to base ninety thousand words was easier said than done. I took a break from writing to brainstorm. How could I put a new spin on an old concept? What topic could capture the public’s imagination?

I decided on something with universal appeal. The hook: Satan is being held and studied in a secret government laboratory.

It would be a cross between Jurassic Park and the Exorcist. A thriller that pits cutting edge technology against thousands of years of theology. Plus, it had the biggest monster of them all; an eight foot tall, cloven hoofed Beelzebub, complete with bat wings, horns, and a predilection for eating live sheep.

To do the story justice, I knew I had to research the hell out of it, so to speak. When I had a confident grasp of the science and religion involved, I worked on developing characters who would interact with the demon, and then a story line that would do the concept proud.

A year later, my techno thriller ORIGIN was completed.

Now what was I supposed to do with it?

I went back to my Rejection Book to review my previous queries, and was surprised to see how poor they were. The letters fell into two distinct categories; egocentric and desperate. Rather than succinctly pitch my novels, I had been begging for them to be read, or stating how rich I’d make the publisher once they bought me.

Plus, I was shocked to see typos and poor grammar, not only in the queries, but in the sample chapters I’d submitted.

For ORIGIN, I needed a different approach. I decided to do the same thing publishers do to sell books. Namely, an ad campaign.

Rather than a standard query letter and sample chapters, I put together a four page package. The first page was a two paragraph excerpt from the novel, when the hero first sees Satan sitting in a gigantic plexiglass cage. The second page was styled like back-jacket copy, describing the story and the hook in a few sentences. The third page was an author bio, with black and white photo. The final page was a simple note stating that the book was seeking representation, and my phone number.

No SASE. No return address. I didn’t even personalize the note.

I made one hundred and twenty submission packages, and sent one to every agent in the Writer’s Digest Literary Agent Guide.

I sent these on a Thursday.

By Tuesday, I had five agent phone calls, all demanding to see the book.

I was in shock. Usually, an agent response took between three and ten weeks. Now I had them fighting over me. What should I do?

Luckily, I had previous agent experience, so I knew how to approach the situation.

When I finished my first novel, I sent it to six NY agents, and one of them took me on. I sat back and waited for the money to roll in.

Eighteen months later, and the agent isn’t returning my calls. When I finally pin this person down, I find out the agent submitted my book to a total of two editors in a year and a half.

This time, I wanted to hire an agent who would work for me. I wanted to be involved in every aspect of the submission process. My next agent would keep me informed, be my biggest advocate, and help me build a career.

After several phone interviews with ultimately twelve agents, I decided on Todd Keithley from Jane Dystel Literary Management. Todd was my age, had a specific plan to market me, and most of all, loved the book.

There was rewriting. And more rewriting. And more rewriting.

Todd generated a buzz in NY about the book, and went out to the top fifteen publishers with an expiration date on the manuscript.

It was very exciting, and a thrill to be a part of.

The rejections were the hardest of my life.

On the plus side, many editors said wonderful things about me, and my book. I got many compliments, and finally vindication from the publishing world that I indeed had talent.

But ORIGIN was ultimately rejected because it slipped through the genre cracks. Editors didn’t know how to market it. Was it horror? Sci-fi? Techno-thriller? Comedy? Where did this book fit on the shelves?

To compound the injury, Todd then left the agency to pursue a law practice in Maryland.

I was devastated.

Luckily, his boss saw potential in me. Before Todd bid his final adieu, I received a phone call from Jane Dystel who succinctly asked, "What else have you got?"

I did have something else; another high concept idea that came to me while writing ORIGIN. I pitched it over the phone to Jane.

"Write it," she advised.

I did.

Another year passed, research and writing. When I finished, I gave Jane the same kind of ad campaign I’d designed for ORIGIN.

Jane loved it. She generated a buzz and went out to seventeen publishing houses.

The rejections mirrored those received by ORIGIN. What kind of book was this? Was it a thriller, or a comedy?

But one publisher liked it. There was a problem, however. The book was a hundred and thirty thousand words.

"Can you cut thirty thousand?"

I said I could. The effort was one of the most frustrating, and at the same time rewarding, episodes in my writing career. Because I didn’t want to affect the story, I delegated myself to trimming the fat.

And there was fat. A lot of it.

When I finished, the editor read the revision and said, "Cut another ten thousand words."

Now there was no choice; I had to cut story. It was very difficult to do. I was forced to confront my novel and determine what was essential to the plot, and what could be left out without disturbing the narrative flow.

But I did it. And it improved the book, a lot.

The editor read this version and said, "You know, I think I like your concept more than your execution of the concept. Can you start over from the beginning?"

Jane stepped in before I popped a blood vessel.

"We’ll move on to the next book, Joe."

For my third book with the agency, I decided to make sure I wrote in a specific, distinct, defined genre, the medical thriller. Also, because editors seemed puzzled by the amount of humor I was putting in my books, I completely cut out the jokes.

After another year of writing and research, I gave the results to Jane.

She HATED it, and refused to represent it. Jane liked my sense of humor, and a novel without jokes had no spark.

Back to square one.

Again, I took time away from writing to brainstorm. I liked Jane a lot, as a person and as an agent, but I didn’t think she’d keep me on as a client if I kept giving her books she couldn’t sell.

My last three books were failures, but they were important failures. They taught me how to rewrite. They taught me that I needed to use humor. They taught me that techno thrillers and medical thrillers weren’t working for me.

So what genre was left? What would be the best vehicle for my sense of humor.

I went downstairs and began perusing my library. A pattern emerged. Janet Evanovich. Robert B. Parker. Lawrence Block. Robert Crais. Donald Westlake.

All my life I loved mysteries. My favorites were series characters, especially ones that were funny.

Why hadn’t I thought of that before? This was a genre I knew and loved, and something that would allow me to zing the one-liners and have fun.

I created Violent Crimes Lieutenant Jack Daniels of the Chicago PD. I used every convention popular in successful mysteries; a flawed but funny hero, a recurring cast of oddball characters, a catchy title that instantly identified the series, a spring-loaded plot.

A few months later, I gave WHISKEY SOUR to Jane, along with proposals for the second and third books in the series, BLOODY MARY and RUSTY NAIL.

Jane loved it.

She helped me tweak the concept, and after two requisite rewrites, she went out with the book.

In the meantime, I started work on another high concept novel, so when WHISKEY SOUR got rejected, I’d have something else to pitch to Jane.

But the damnedest thing happened. A few days after Jane submitted the book, she gave me a call.

"We have an offer. It’s for six figures."

She named a number. I jumped around my house like a wind-up toy.

"That’s great! We’re accepting it, right?"

"No. Another editor is interested. I think I can get more. In the meantime, Leslie Wells at Hyperion wants to talk to you. Is tomorrow morning good for you?"

Leslie was a hero of mine, having edited two of my favorite authors, Ridley Pearson and Robert Crais. The thought of working with her awed me.

But what should I say? How should I act?

"Just be yourself," Jane advised. "I think you’ll like each other."

Leslie and I instantly hit it off. She loved my book, but more importantly, she had great plans for the series, and great ideas on how to make WHISKEY SOUR even better.

I got off the phone hoping Hyperion would wind up with the book.

The call came two days later.

"Joe? Jane Dystel. Are you sitting down? Hyperion made an offer..."

After ten books, twelve years, and four hundred and sixty rejections, my dream had finally come true.

My wife took me out to celebrate. But we didn’t go out to eat. We didn’t go to a concert, or a show, or to France.

We went to a tattoo parlor.

Now, on my left shoulder, there’s a smiley face.

To match the other smiley face I wear all the time.

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