Top Ten List: Why I Was a Bad Criminal

The truth is, I was a bad criminal: sloppy, careless, greedy, sorely lacking in all the skills that make for a good criminal. I wasn't devious enough.  Nor was I cautious. I was also overcome by remorse and guilt soon after stealing the cash.  A good criminal must be hardhearted and welcome wrongdoing with open arms. He must think clearly and always stay one step ahead. I did what I did as if in a dream, stumbling and bumbling. While I can remember everything, when I look back it seems as if I'm watching another person. 

The fact is, I have no one to blame buy myself for getting caught.  I would give credit where credit is due, but I was not caught through good police work or the oligarch's vigilance. I was caught because I screwed up, got greedy and tried to take more, even though more was the last thing I wanted or needed. If I didn't know better, I'd say that I was doing it for the thrill and really wanted to be caught. 

These thoughts nagged at me at first after my wrongdoing came to light.  I blamed myself for my stupidity, considered all the 'what if's'.  Not any more.  Although I would gladly take back what I did, I'm actually glad that I got caught. Getting caught helped me to turn my life around and live honestly once again. Getting caught helped me get sober. Getting caught made me realize how deluded I was. Getting caught helped me recognize my weaknesses and failings.

I did wrong and I have been more than ready for a long time to pay the consequences.  What I most regret is the pain I caused to people close to me.

So now, as these top ten lists have proved popular, I decided to come clean with my stupidities in this wholly factual but partially tongue-in-cheek list: 

Top Ten Reasons Why I Was a Bad Criminal

1. Incriminating evidence: I left piles of incriminating evidence in my office and at home, modern-day treasure maps, that led investigators straight to the buried treasure.  Good criminals don't do this.

2. Forged Documents: I did not compare forged signatures to the originals or try to make them look the same.  I was lazy and sloppy and my forgeries look like shit.  Good criminals are careful and sneaky.

3. Blabber mouth: I told people what I had done. Good criminals keep their mouths shut.

4. Greed:  Not satisfied with my first theft, I went back to the very same place for more. Every good criminal knows you should never hit the same place twice.

5. Sloppy work: the documents I prepared were full of inaccuracies and mistakes, leading people to question them. Good criminals are careful and sneaky.

6. Transfers to the U.S.: my crime was committed entirely abroad.  The U.S. would not have had jurisdiction if I had not transferred a bunch of the money for no good reason through a bank in San Francisco. Good criminals know the law and use it to their advantage.

7. Lies upon lies: I continued to tell lies even after my scheme was discovered.  I should have come clean sooner and tried to lessen the harm.  The fact is, I wanted to - I felt tremendous guilt and remorse - but I was scared.  Good criminals keep their mouths shut - they don't lie or tell the truth.

8. Spending the loot: the cash burned a hole in my pocket and I spent it on stupid, frivolous things.  I should have saved it untouched and continued to live my regular life or, at the least, tried to assuage my guilt by doing some good with it.  Good criminals hide their newfound wealth.

9. Hubris: I thought the victim, the oligarch, if he ever found out, would shrug it off and leave me alone. Good criminals don't underestimate their adversary.

10. Delusion: Because I hated the victim, I convinced myself that I deserved what I took, that I was some sort of modern-day Robin Hood, that I was doing it all for my family. How wrong I was. Good criminals don't let their feelings rule their actions.

And in line with past lists, one more for good measure:

Foggy Brain: My crime was fueled by my addiction and, though at the time I thought I was thinking clearly, looking back I feel like I'm watching a bad scene from Cheech & Chong. Good criminals think clearly and soberly in order to stay one step ahead of anyone who might be on to them. 

The Curse of Empathy

I have always been blessed (or cursed) with an overabundance of empathy.  For whatever reason, I can look into someone's eyes and get a pretty good sense of what they are feeling.  I can't read minds, mind you, just understand what emotion a person happens to be feeling at any given time.  I then - and this is where it gets confusing - adopt their feelings as my own. If they happen to be happy, than I am happy. If they are sad, than I am sad.

My best guess is that this is some innate quality, not something I learned or developed.  As a child, I clearly remember reading emotions in my toys.  I was often fearful for them, afraid they were upset.  If they were jumbled in my toy box I would neatly arrange them so that they would be comfortable.  I was appalled when other kids beat or broke or threw their toys, certain that they were crying beneath their plastic. This quality expanded as I grew, shifting from toys to animals - pets, strays, any animal, really - and then to people.  As a result, I've gone through life as if walking on egg shells, bombarded from all sides with emotions that demand my attention.

While this ability makes me a more caring, compassionate person, the truth is, I would gladly give it up. It is a tremendous distraction, even a hindrance.  Instead of thinking about my feelings, I think about everybody else's. In my experience - in our society - this ability is often more of a curse than a blessing. In our dog-eat-dog world, it is unfortunately much more conducive to success to consider the emotions of only one person in the race to the top: your own.  How far would Frank Underwood get, after all, if he stopped to consider others' feelings at every turn?

This view of empathy as impediment was compounded by a misguided choice of profession: I became a lawyer.  Honestly, I don't know what I was thinking.  I should have become a therapist or a psychiatrist or a novelist, a profession where my ability to empathize, to understand others, would be useful and valued. Instead, I entered a profession where empathy was a crippling disadvantage.  As a lawyer it is helpful to be able to read minds.  But what you need to do is divine a person's inner feelings and then turn them against the person and use them as ammunition.   For example, as a lawyer if you are sitting across the table from someone who you deem to be vain, or pompous, or insecure, you pounce on those 'weaknesses' and manipulate them to your own ends.  This I was never able to do; it is the antithesis of empathy. 

That is why, facing prison, I am so concerned. I suspect that, as in law, empathy is also a terrible impediment in the lord-of-the-flies world of prison.  In prison, as far as I can tell, you must be tough, focused, worried only about Numero Uno - yourself. I wonder whether I can be calculating enough, tough enough, to tune out the despair and frustration and anger that I'm sure will surround me.

Will I be able to say 'fuck you', it's all about me? 

I'm not sure that I can do that.  

And that is what scares me. 

The Wimp's Top Ten List: Why I'm Scared of Prison

As I count down to day one of confinement, I'm kept awake each night wondering and worrying about what awaits me on my new adventure in the wilds of federal prison.  The fears are amorphous and confused: I feel like Columbus embarking on his trip into the great unknown.  As we all know, what we don't know is what really scares us.  And the fact is, I don't know enough about prison to know if I should be scared or what I should be scared of.  I scour the internet but even in this information age the facts are few and far between. 

Should I be scared of the bars and the wire, unwanted attention in the shower?  Could the stereotypes be true?  Or do I have nothing more to fear than the mushy peas in the commissary?  The fact is, I'm a quiet, mild-mannered guy.  I watched Orange is the New Black and came to the unwanted conclusion that there's no way in hell I could defend myself in the same way as the lead character.  The facts: I've never even been in a fight, never hit anyone.  I can count the number of times on one hand that I actually broke down and yelled.  

Ok, I'll go ahead and admit it, the evidence is clear: I'm a wimp.

So to combat my wimpiness and turn my amorphous fears into the concrete, I decided to write this list of my greatest prison fears.  Please bear in mind that these are my most concrete fears, not the global issues that we all know and expect such as loss of freedom, loss of rights, separation from friends and family.  Those are all givens.  I know of them and can try at least to prepare for them.  What scares me are the stereotypes, the tall tales, the day-to-day aspects of life as a prisoner that I can only imagine.

I hope that some day, when I'm released back into freedom, that these fears will seem stupid and overblown.  But what I'm scared of is that I'll look back and see that my fears were justified.  I guess only time will tell.

The Top Ten Reasons Why I'm Scared of Prison

1. Big tough guys who will beat me up, take my pie and make me grovel

2. Dropping my soap in the shower

3. Ignorant prison guards with eighth-grade educations and billy clubs

4. Inadvertently touching an electric fence or pricking my finger on barbed wire

5. Breaking a rule I didn't know about and being sent to solitary

6. Being awakened by a siren

7. Dirty bathrooms last cleaned during the Nixon administration

8. Unidentifiable, worm-filled slop in the chow hall.  Mushy peas.

9. Getting beat up for changing the television channel

10. Being placed on the warden's shit list

Oh, now I realize that I have one more:

11.  Loving prison so much that I become a career criminal, an incorrigible recidivist.

There, now we have it.  My greatest fears of prison.  Maybe now I'll be able to sleep tonight. 

Bye Bye Doggy

Here I am, a former upstanding, forthright, law-abiding citizen in the purgatory leading up to sentencing and incarceration.  Everyone I talk with who has been through this process says that this is the most difficult time, that in comparison prison is much, much easier.  At least there, they say, a distant light at the end of the tunnel will magically appear.

I hope so.

I don't expect sympathy - I brought my plight on myself after all by stealing money I had no right to - but it is very hard to count down the days while pretending to go on with normal life, knowing full well that life as I know it is almost over. It's the convict's version of the waiting game as sung so long ago by The Squeeze.  As they sang: I wasn't in the mood for laughing, I sat silent on my chair.  In my version, I sit waiting for my life to end, waiting for my judgment to be read, waiting for my freedom to be taken. In my version, I sit up nights thinking thoughts of giving up my house, saying good bye to my children one last time, selling my car, donating my furniture to Goodwill.  Then, with reference to The Crying Game, another fitting song, I cry myself to sleep.

One of my great comforts in this period as I sit home alone and await my fate has been my dog, Sorbet. So in a sense, this post is an ode to him.  A good bye.  A cry for forgiveness.  I have failed this little guy.  I only hope he will not suffer as a result.

Honestly, I was never a huge dog lover, inclined as I was in my own temperament more to the independence and wiliness of cats.  But I agreed to adopt the already-named Sorbet from a local shelter at the persistent behest of my children on their stay with me last summer.  He is a very cute but also very deaf little Dachsund, with blue eyes and mottled brown and white fur.  I have taught him hand-signs which he struggles to obey and he keeps me company on my long days alone at home. Most importantly and unlike almost everyone else I know, he does not judge me or my actions.  Unlike many of the people that remain in my life, he does not cry when I come around or stare uncomfortably at the floor, unable to meet my gaze.  He does not tiptoe on eggshells or look at me with sorrow or judgment. He does not shake his head sadly at a life gone wrong.  Rather, he looks up at me with love and affection.  He smiles (I would swear to that).  In short, he is his usual little self: peeing on the rug, snuggling on my lap, craving attention, chewing on everything he can find.

That is what makes this next part of the waiting game so hard, why too often it becomes the crying game.  The day will come very soon - it should have, in fact, come already - when I place an ad on Craigslist in search of a happy home for a cute little puppy unlucky enough to have a future convict for a master.  Every evening I make a solemn vow to myself that the next morning I will do it.  The next day, I inevitably procrastinate.  I know that the days of procrastination are over.  But I can't help it.  It was hard enough to look my innocent children in the eye and tell them that I would be going off to prison.  They did nothing to deserve this punishment of being deprived of their father.  But at least with them I have the hope of infrequent visitation. With Sorbet, there will be nothing but a final good bye.

When I think of my situation I have trouble believing that it has come to this, that I am unable even to care for a little dog entrusted with me.  If I can't even care for my dog, than what hope do I have of taking care of my children, my family.  So I procrastinate, grasping at this one last thread attaching me to my previous life, my life that is about to end.  So this in an ode to you, Sorbet, even though you understand not a word of it.  A cry of thanks, of gratitude.  Through your devotion and love you have helped me through a difficult time.  I only hope that your future is brighter than mine, that it does not include the bars of a cage.

Good bye, Sorbet.  Be well.

Dislocation: The Strange Limbo of a Criminal Defendant

I spent the past week helping my ex-wife prepare for her move with our kids from Moscow to Los Angeles.  We toured schools, visited neighborhoods and viewed apartments.  By the end of the week, we had a pretty good idea of what to do and how to do it.  

I am overjoyed that she has decided to take this step.  In fact, I have dreamed of it for years.  The move promises a better life for the kids: better schools, better environment, not to mention better weather. It also means that they will be able to visit me in prison.  Yes, prison.  

As background, several years ago I stole money from a Russian oligarch.  Hell hath no fury like an oligarch scorned and when he found out I had to flee Moscow in fear for my life.  My wife decided to stay behind and has remained there with the kids ever since while I tried to rebuild my life in the Midwest. We managed to create a semi-normal, albeit itinerant, life for them: they visit me here in the U.S. on every school break. But for all those years, I dreamed constantly of their return to the U.S. and all that it promised: the ability to see the kids on weekends, to visit them on my days off, to meet with their teachers.  In short, I dreamed of once again playing an integral part in their everyday lives. Divorce is one thing, exile quite another.

Now, my wish is about to come true: my family is coming home.  Unfortunately, their move coincides almost exactly with my impending conviction and incarceration.  My sentencing is scheduled for March and then, about a month later (excepting a miracle), I will head off to prison.  A few weeks later, once their school year finishes, my family will move to California. It's the ultimate example of being careful what you wish for.

As a result, it was a strange, upsetting experience helping to prepare for their new life knowing that I will not be a part of it. We toured apartments and I dreamed of living in them.  We visited schools and I imagined dropping the kids off in the morning and picking them up in the afternoon.  We walked around neighborhoods that I wished I could call my own.  Alas, none of that is set to be.  At least for the foreseeable future.

This is, though, just an acute symptom of the strange limbo of being a defendant in the criminal justice system.  The wheels of justice turn oh-so-slowly and during this time regular life must be put on hold. I lost my job but was unable to look for a new one.  I rented an apartment knowing that I would have to ultimately break the lease.  For a long time, I tried to hide the whole thing from my friends and family, pretending that life was normal and things were fine.  

In most respects, life turns into a slow-motion version of Chinese water torture as you count down the years and months and days until you are charged, then sentenced, then incarcerated. The not-knowing - whether you'll be convicted, how long your sentence will be - gnaws at you as you imagine the worst. Those who preceded me say that this time is the worst; that in comparison, prison is almost a relief.  At least, they say, it provides a sense of finality and gives you something - your ultimate freedom - to look forward to.  In comparison, the time leading up to incarceration is a stressful, anxiety filled time as you contemplate the end of life as you know it.  

Despite my dislocation, the fact that I was able to help them prepare for their move does mean something.  Without my involvement, it would have been nearly impossible for my ex-wife to organize the move from abroad.  The project has given these last stressful months of freedom some meaning and worth.  It has also made the time move faster.  And of course, I do have hope now that come visiting day, I'll be led through the steel doors into the waiting arms of my children.  

Not Guilty. No, Guilty: My Day in Court

On a cold Sunday night I fly into San Francisco on a nonstop flight from Chicago.  No, this isn't a much deserved vacation, a voluntary trip to warmer climes.  My day in court is tomorrow, my turn to plead.  I've been dreading this day for months: it's the day I officially become a felon.

For those of you unfamiliar with criminal justice - and, believe me, I was definitely in that camp - there are many stages in the process from investigation to incarceration.  I am now at the pleading stage, more than a year after I first got wind that the feds were investigating me.  Since that time we negotiated a plea, and now I must appear before the judge to say those famous words: Guilty, your honor.  But before that - and I'll get to that in a moment - I must also say those other famous words: Not guilty, your honor. 

Oh, how I wish it were true.

I crawl into bed early but toss and turn for hours.  Unable to sleep, I wander the city’s neighborhoods: Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, Nob Hill.  I love San Francisco but take no notice of my surroundings.  I’m not a tourist after all.  I no longer bemoan my fate – it is what it is.  And I did what I did.

What I agonize over on this long walk is the fact that it’s now time to tell the world.  I’ve carried my little secret - that I'm soon to become a felon - for far too long.  My loved ones have to know. Why is it so hard to let the cat out of the bag, I wonder.  I should have told everyone ages ago.  But I can’t.  What I want to do is to crawl under a rock and hide from the world.  I open my mouth to come clean but the words won’t form.  Like a director preparing scenes, I imagine the entire film in my head: my stumbling, stuttering confession, the horror and upset on my [insert character here: mother’s, father’s, children’s] face.  

For a long time the uncertainty gave me an excuse to perpetuate the secret: why worry my family when I had no idea how things would turn out.  But the basic question – whether I would be charged – was settled months ago.  Yet I still procrastinate.  The reason, I understand, is that it’s such a horrible abasement.  I feel like the scum of the earth, like I’ve let the world down and failed to live up to expectations.  I’ve failed my family, my children, and it’s terribly difficult to admit.  I can’t think of anything that could possibly happen to a person, or at least to me anyway, more humiliating and upsetting.  The only fragile comparison that comes to mind is the anguish and heartbreak I imagine must weigh upon someone who comes out of the closet.  I feel as if I’ve been branded with a scarlet letter or, rather, eight of them: C-R-I-M-I-N-A-L. 

Well, the procrastination is now at an end.  My hand is forced.  With my guilty plea tomorrow the case will go public.  Better that my family hears the news from my mouth than from CNN.  I’m meeting my family several days later in Los Angeles; they think I'm on a business trip.  Although my gut churns at the prospect, I realize that I have to tell them.  And everyone. 

I meet my lawyer early the next morning and we drive to the Federal Building, a hulking, square behemoth that rises up from the slums of the Tenderloin like Tolkien’s Mordor.  I’m dressed in my best suit, my hair carefully combed.  The day is scheduled with a series of – to me anyway – meaningless bureaucratic shuffles. The sad fact is, I don’t know an arraignment from an orange.  I’m embarrassed to admit that as a budding lawyer I avoided all law school classes even distantly related to criminal law.  Everything I know about criminal law I learned from reading Presumed Innocent.  Knowing I would become a corporate lawyer I had decided that they were not, and would never be, relevant to my life. How wrong I was.  

The entire experience is bizarre and disorienting.  I feel as if I’m having one of those childhood nightmares we’ve all had, the one where you’re sitting at your desk in homeroom and look down to see that you’re wearing only underpants.  Or the one where you’re soaping up in the communal shower after PE and suddenly get an enormous hard on.  After so many years on the right side of the law, I can’t quite comprehend that now I’m on the wrong side.  

“Is this really happening?” I wonder.  “Is this really me?”  At the same time, I’m strangely intrigued: the process is interesting from an academic perspective.  It’s just too bad that it’s my life on the line.   

First, I appear before a magistrate judge, the purpose of which I cannot fathom.  The narrow courtroom is packed with friends and family, the fetid air filled with the sour stench of desperation.  Prisoner after prisoner, dressed in shapeless orange jumpsuits, are paraded in cuffs from a steel door at the rear.  They stand, abject, before the judge while the charges are read.  Drugs, drugs and more drugs; an endless loop.  An ounce here, two ounces there.  Only the substances differ.

I turn to my lawyer.  “Are there always so many drug cases?” I ask.

“That’s all there are,” she says.  “You’re the exception.”

I’m also an exception in that I’m still a free man sitting amidst the onlookers.  In my fancy suit I look like what I am: a lawyer.  During a break, another criminal lawyer come over to speak with mine.  She fumbles when introducing me:

“This is Eli.  He’s a corporate lawyer.”

“Oh, are you taking a tour?  Checking out the exciting life of the criminal bar?”

Now I fumble.  “Well, err, I’m, um, you see….”

Once she leaves we turn to each other and smile.  “Well, that was awkward,” I say.  “You might as well just tell people that I’m a criminal.”

Finally, my name is called.  I stand and everyone stares.  I am the first defendant the entire morning not escorted from the back.  The proceedings are short and uneventful.  For whatever reason, at the arraignment I’m told to plead not guilty.  When prompted, I shakily mouth the words.  Oh, if only it were true.

Following that, I’m escorted to the FBI offices on a higher floor.  A young agent leads me through a warren of cubicles to a small room filled with antiquated photographic equipment.  She takes my prints on a wheezing, decrepit machine and then begins to stick white objects onto a small black board.  I glance over her shoulder and see that she’s preparing a board for me, the same type of board I’ve seen in movies and mug shots.  She hands it to me and I read: “FBI San Francisco, 12/19/13,” followed by “LEIGH SPRAUGE” in capital letters.  I point out her spelling mistake.  She frowns but nonetheless fixes it.  I’m instructed to hold it to my chest and look at the camera.   No one says “say cheese.”  I don’t know the protocol: do I smile?  In the end, although I alternately want to laugh, cry and scream (in that order), I force my lips into a thin line.

Now it’s time for the U.S. Marshals.  Prior to today, I never even knew such an organization existed. Now I see that they seem to be in charge of getting prisoners from point A to point B.  Looks like a dismal job.  Apparently the FBI photos are proprietary, because for whatever reason the marshals want their own set.  I’m beginning to feel like a model at a photo shoot.  I sit on an uncomfortable metal chair abutting a cinderblock wall as a marshal fumbles with the camera, a basic press-and-shoot model tethered to a computer by a cord.  The unmistakable prison-house clang of steel on steel filters through the wall.  I hear the din of prisoners’ shouts and calls somewhere in the distance.  

I sit quietly and try to rid myself of this disorientating sense of displacement that’s dogged me throughout the day.  And I sit.  And I sit.  The marshal can’t figure out how to work the camera.  Soon, reinforcements are called. Over the next thirty minutes marshals continue to arrive until a small crowd is huddled over the equipment.  Based upon their confusion and clumsy fumblings, it’s clear that somehow this isn’t customary procedure.  I wonder if I should offer to help - it looks so simple - but following the reception by the FBI to the spelling mistake I decide to keep quiet.  Finally, after an hour of increasingly frustrated attempts to take my picture, the marshals give up.  I’m escorted through a locked steel door to my attorney, who whisks me to the day’s highlight: the hearing at which I will plead guilty.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL

Well, I have news.  And, unfortunately, it's not good.  

How I wish I was telling the world, as I have at various times in the past, that I'm the proud father of a new baby, or that I married my sweetheart or that I published a novel.  But no.  Not today.  Today, my news is bad.  Thankfully, I don't have cancer, nor is a close family-member sick.  News related to death, dying and sickness is always the worst.  But among the various sorts of non-medical bad news, this is about the worst that I can think of.  Worse than getting fired, worse than divorce.  Worse - dare I say it? - than having your dog die.  In fact, my news ranks right down there with a burning house or a broken leg.  On a bad news scale of one-to-ten, my news is about a zero.  One if I'm generous.

Sorry, I didn't mean to drag this out, especially since I already more-or-less gave the news away in the title. But now that it's time to announce my news to the world, or, in any event, to my own limited readership, it's surprisingly hard to say.  It's bad, it's embarrassing, it's pathetic.  If I had a rock to crawl under, I'd be doing it right about now.  But here in sub-zero Wisconsin, all I've got are snow drifts.

So here goes....Scrunch up my face, open my mouth, force the words from my throat:  

I'm going to jail.

There.  Putting it in tiny type helped a bit.  As did the fact that, for me anyway, writing is easier than talking.  But it was still hard.  The truth is, I can hardly believe it.  I know it's true but it seems a bad dream, like I'll wake up and it will all be gone.  I'm not saying I'm exceptional, or that I don't deserve punishment.  But as bad as it sounds to say, I always thought jail was for someone else. Which, come to think of it, is probably what most convicted felons say.  Or wish.

The announcement is not exactly cathartic.  I didn't really expect it to be. But I decided to put it up here for all to see as a way to, at the least, explain my failure to post these past several weeks.  As far as excuses go, this is much better than 'the dog ate my paper'.  Once I knew where I was going, posting tips on writing just didn't feel very important.  My friends and family all know already anyway.  I sprung it on them as a wonderful Christmas/New Year's present.  Now they are diligently drafting me letters of support, telling the judge that, despite my misdeeds, I am still a good person.

In this post I am not going to discuss my crime or my punishment.  That's all for later. But I do want to emphasize that my crime was a nonviolent one, committed while I was a lawyer in the Wild East (Russia) for a notoriously corrupt oligarch.  That said, it was still a crime, a federal felony no less.  And I in no way intend to try to justify myself or blame others.  To paraphrase Popeye: "I yam what I yam and I done what I done."

I don't intend to leave you hanging.  Or not for long anyway.  In coming posts, I will chronicle my experiences as I wend my way through the criminal justice system and face my punishment.  I know that that's not the original intent of this blog, but to me it somehow seems more worthwhile.  While there are millions of blogs on writing, only a very few are devoted to a first-person POV look at crime, incarceration and the criminal justice system.  Let me take you along with me on a vicarious trip I hope you will never have to take.

There are several moving, heartfelt blogs out there written by ex-cons, but, maybe unsurprisingly, the thoughts and experiences of this population are underrepresented on the internet.  As an eternal optimist, I decided to try to make the best of a bad situation and use my gift for writing to chronicle my journey.  In so doing, I  hope that maybe I can open hearts and minds, and raise awareness of important issues related to incarceration and the criminal justice system.  I hope too that I can help others going through the same thing as me.  Being labeled a felon can make you feel awfully alone, upset and confused. Knowing that you're not the only one can be of some comfort.

As I like to say, just because I did a bad thing doesn't mean I'm a bad person.  Unfortunately, we as a society are often too quick to categorize, placing people into baskets of good or bad, worthy or not worthy.  I hope that I am able to bring some subtlety to the topic, to open eyes, and to further debate.

I'M GOING TO JAIL.  

There we go.  I said it again.  No turning back now.  

Guest Post on Writers Helping Writers

Hello readers.  Happy 2014!

Looks like I'm already failing in my primary New Year's resolution: to post more often.  

In my defense, my kids had a school break of almost one month so my days were filled with trips to the swimming pool and to the movies.  Not that I'm complaining: I love spending time with my kids and it's a real gift to be able to spend so much time with them.  But my posting suffered.

Watch for new posts soon. For anyone who missed it, I just wanted to highlight my guest post on colloquial speech published at Writers Helping Writers.  I was very pleased with the enthusiastic comments the post generated and hope that some of the readers of that piece have now ventured onto my blog.  Welcome!

A big thank you to that blog's founder and curator Angela Ackerman, who is a great editor, wonderful to work with and a tireless advocate for her excellent site.  Thank you Angela for giving me the opportunity to post.

Guest Post on Writers Helping Writers

I decided to give my readers an advance head's up on the exciting news that my guest post will be appearing January 4 on Writers Helping Writers.  The post will be about use of colloquial speech in fiction.  I'l add a link once it is posted.  For those of you who haven't yet checked it out, this site is a great resource for writers with hundreds of useful posts on all aspects of writing.  Personally, I check it out at least once a week, usually more often.

Forget Query Letters: Focus on the Query Sentence

As I was lying in bed last night I put myself to sleep writing a facetious ode to the bane of every writer's existence: query letters.  By the time I drifted off I had a pretty good poem going, but of course, when I woke up this morning all I could remember was the first sentence: "Query Letters, O How I Hate Thee."

If someone were to take a survey, I am certain that query letters would rank right up there with resume cover letters and Harlequin romances as the most hated forms of prose. That said, they are an essential step in turning a manuscript into a published book.

So what is there really to say about those wonderful nuggets of gold designed to open the magical world of agents, representation and publication?   A lot, actually.  But it just so happens that most of it has been said already.  So I decided to write from my own personal experience, which happens to be instructive.

First of all, I don't hold myself out as an expert on query letters.  But I am good at learning from my mistakes.  Lucky for me, I make a lot of them.

When my manuscript was finished, I joyfully set out to pack all its wonders into my query letter, hopeful that agents would take the time to wade through the dense prose.  This was their chance at the latest NYT bestseller, after all, and I extolled virtue after virtue.  How am I ever going to fit everything onto one page?, I thought to myself. My solution: smaller type.

With that, I sent out the letter to twenty or so agents specializing in my genre and waited with anticipation like a toddler waiting for Santa Claus.  And my wait was about as productive.  A month later, I had an inbox full of rejections and only one half-hearted 'hit'.

As I stared down at the densely-packed page of convincing arguments as to why my novel was 'it', I had a vision.  For those who have never had one, I imagine it will sound pathetically prosaic. My vision consisted of imagining myself as a poor, overtaxed agent struggling with an overloaded inbox and the unenviable task of wading through thousands of query letters each week.

You know what I realized?  That if I was that agent I would be skimming those letters with the skill of a speed reader, my mouse on the delete key, focusing on the very first sentence and nothing more.

So you know what I did?  I stopped thinking about the query letter as a letter and focused on the 'query sentence'.  What came after that sentence could be pure schlock but that first sentence had to be wonderful, had to demonstrate the potential for my book, and had to focus with a laser-eye on my concept and why it would sell.  Because you know what?  If I was lucky, the agent would read this sentence and - miracle of miracles - go on to read more.  The first sentence - the QUERY SENTENCE - is the all-or-nothing, hail Mary pass.  Nothing less, nothing more.

Translating vision into reality turned out to be easier said than done.  I struggled over my query sentence like Goldilocks and her porridge: too long, too short, too boring, too self-promoting.  But in the end, I had a sentence that was, if not 'just right', at least something I could live with.

So I sent it off to another twenty agents and I received ten requests for the full manuscript. Coincidence, you say?  Maybe.  But the difference was so dramatic that I doubt it.

I debated about whether to include my actual 'query sentence' in this post and ultimately decided not to. I may add it later.  But even without the example, I urge you to consider my advice to forget about the 'query letter' and focus on the 'query sentence'.  The goal is to catch an agent's attention and, if my vision was right, this is the way to do it.