Wayne Santos is the author of THE CHIMERA CODE, published by Rebellion Publishing. Recently, he reached out to ask if he could do a guest post as part of my new series. He wanted to talk about the book NOPHEK GLOSS, which is one of my favorite new SF books, so I was excited to have him on the blog.

And then we started talking. See, publishing is a small world, and as it turns out, Wayne had applied to Pitch Wars back in 2016. More specifically, he had applied to me and my co-mentor (and good friend) Dan Koboldt. The book he submitted to us? THE CHIMERA CODE.

That’s right. Dan and I passed on a book that went on to not only find an agent, but to get a book deal with a great publisher. So as a former mentor and somebody who fancies himself as a person who knows a bit about the SF genre, I had to ask myself: How the fuck did that happen?

So Wayne and I started to talk about it, and I went back to my notes from 2016, and when he said ‘you know, if you want, I could do a guest post about my experience with Pitch Wars and how I got to where I am now.’ And I immediately said not yes, but hell yes. We can write about NOPHEK GLOSS another day, let’s do this. (And we WILL write about that book another day, because it’s amazing.)

This is going to be a really long post. I’ll warn you now. Because when you’re talking about subjectivity and objectivity in publishing, I think there’s a ton to say.

So as to not spoil anything, let me turn this over to Wayne to tell his story, and I’ll come back after that to try to diagnose what happened from my point of view.

Here’s what Wayne has to say:

For people just starting their writing journey, the words “Pitch Wars” might generate a huge burst of excitement and daydreaming. After all, Pitch Wars is an event where seasoned, published novelists from all genres agree to become mentors and take on the role of Yoda to a Padawan writer hoping to become strong in the ways of writing fiction, and hopefully snag a literary agent and then go on submission to get a publishing deal. That’s the dream, the fun one. The one with the actual odds of success at… well, it’s less than 80%. It’s less than even 50%. We don’t need to go further, but the actual figure does.

For others, who have been writing a while, Pitch Wars may not generate that burst of enthusiasm so much as a slow burn kind of despair. As in, “Oh. Great. That time of year again? To get rejected by a bunch of writers who are all trying to find nice ways to say ‘you still suck this year?’”

Because like getting an agent, like getting published, Pitch Wars has a limited number of mentors and a lot of people applying to be mentees. And that means that with each mentor or mentor team only allowed to pick one lucky mentee, the rest will get rejected. And that is going to suck. And I know this because I have been through it.

Starting From A Low Place

I’d been trying to get published for a long time. I first started querying back in the late 1990s, kept getting rejected, kept writing more novels, and kept getting those rejected. The condensed version was that I spent years getting rejected. I’d written five books and wracked up nearly 300 rejections on them, so I was very familiar with getting the door politely shut, slammed in my face, or just having the entire building moved so I couldn’t even find it to get the door shut on me.

Then I heard about Pitch Wars, and in 2015, I decided to give it a try. I’d written an urban fantasy that I’d had a lot of fun with—up until this point; I was writing almost entirely urban fantasy—so I figured maybe a mentor could help me polish it up. It was already getting rejected by literary agents, but maybe a mentor could change the winds of my fortune?

So I submitted it. I even got requests on it from some of the mentors. That was encouraging!

Then they all rejected the book. That was not.

I did get some conciliatory comments about the writing itself and how they hoped I’d keep writing, but at this point, I’d gotten numerous rejections on full requests from literary agents that had also said the writing good… but not good enough to accept, so I probably didn’t get the encouragement the mentors had been hoping to impart when they said these things. It was the usual frustration of, “How can this writing be good if everyone keeps saying so, but no one wants the books attached to the writing?”

The Things We Do To Cope

We all have coping mechanisms for rejection. Or, at least, we should, if we’re serious about being writers, and we don’t want to end up hurling ourselves off a bridge as the rejections pile up. We are not punching bags, but after a few years in the query trenches, we can certainly start to feel that way, and we need to get through the fog of upset, anxiety, sadness, and/or despair any way we can.

My coping mechanism was to try to maintain control. To treat it like something where I could still affect the outcome. Like math, with a right answer and a wrong answer. The only reason I’d gotten rejected was because I got my math wrong. The book that would get printed was 2+2=4, but I’d submitted 2+2=5.

I kept sane, just by telling myself “the next book will be 2+2=4; you’ll get this right; it’s on you; you’re the only reason your book is not getting published. So get the right answer, you’ll get your book accepted.”

It gave me comfort, knowing the only factor I needed to control was me. Nothing else. But it was not right, or wise, or sane.

Moving On

In 2016, I’d finished another book, and this one would be my last book. By this time, I’d spent years as a professional writer, working in advertising, writing for magazines, television, and even a stint in video game journalism, making a living playing video games and writing about them. Novels were the only area where I just couldn’t get it right and get that 2+2=4 equation that I’d managed to crack in other areas. So I started to think maybe this was it, and I should just concentrate on the writing that was getting accepted and hang up the novelist’s hat even though I’d been chasing it since I was a teenager. If this was my last book, I figured it should at least be the book I’d always wanted to write. I started writing urban fantasy, thinking it would be my training/safety area. It took place in a modern setting, so I didn’t have to worry about world-building or explaining the “lore” or “tech” behind a labor union or a cellular phone, but because it was fantasy, I could have crazy stuff happen and hand-wave it away with the explanation, “It’s magic, dude, just go with it.”

But one of my big passions had always been science fiction, especially cyberpunk. William Gibson’s Neuromancer had been one of the novels that made me want to become a writer in the first place, and I’d always wanted to write a cyberpunk book. But I still loved my magic. So for my final book, I “smooshed” magic and cyberpunk together into a novel where magic erupted into our world just as the cyberpunk age was starting to take off, and the story itself took place a few generations after that uneasy co-existence was established.

I put my bad-ass combat mage front and center as the main character, had a non-binary hacker named Zee ride shotgun with her, and took them on a heist involving multi-national corporate conspiracies, emulated personalities, and questions of identity, both digital and organic, in a world where the definitions were less clear cut than they are today. I really enjoyed writing it. It wasn’t perfect—what is—but I’d put all the things I wanted to into it.

By the time I was finished with it, another year had gone by, and Pitch Wars was looking for new applicants.

Round 2

I was already querying the book and getting the expected flood of rejections. But, being a masochist, I saw all those notices of Pitch Wars gearing up and figured, “Hell, why not?”

So with my rejections on the book already into the dozens, I stopped querying and submitted the novel to Pitch Wars, hoping that maybe someone would think it was worth salvaging this time. I’d had a few people request the previous novel, so I knew I wrote at least good enough to get a request. I was hoping the same would be the case here.

It wasn’t.

Where in the last Pitch Wars, at least some mentors had asked for the book, no one wanted it this year. That was extremely demoralizing and, coupled with the pile of rejections that were already sitting in my inbox from agents, convinced me that I was completely on the wrong track with the book. I’d gone from submitting 2+2=5, which, at least, was close, to 2+2=some random quote from Joyce’s Ulysses scrawled out, left-handed, with crayon.

It was quickly becoming apparent that if my theory of one objective answer to getting published was correct, then I was becoming worse as time went by, not better. If no one wanted this book, not even mentors, to try and get it up to publishable quality, then I guess all comments about “You have promise as a writer, keep going” had just been form replies to not discourage talentless schmucks like me.

So for this year’s Pitch Wars, I had an even worse response than I had the year before. This was perhaps a sign to me that giving up might be the right call.

But I’m a completionist if nothing else. So since I’d started querying the book, I decided to close out that list and get a full collection of rejections. Once Pitch Wars was done, and I had nothing to show for it, I resumed my trudge through the query trenches.

The Divergence Of Expectation

This is where things got confusing.

I’d already decided that the fates were trying to tell me I should give up as being novelist due to the horrendous Pitch Wars reception. If even mentors thought there was no hope for this book, then the agents sure weren’t going to bite.

Except that some were.

My querying habit was to send out five queries per week. I had over a hundred to choose from, so I figured this would string out my hope for a while instead of sending out all of them on one day and getting a flood of rejections that would drown me. I usually mixed up those queries with one or two Dream-Agent picks, a few Seems-Good picks, and some random I’m-Not-Even-Sure-My-SF-Is-Their-Idea-Of-SF agents. Because of that, I was always getting a steady trickle of rejections over the weeks, although not every batch of five got a response from all five agents right away.

But as I queried, I noticed that I was getting requests for partials, some even dating back to my first queries, but taking months to get a response. And that was weird because Pitch Wars had already objectively defined my book as trash in my mind, so why were these agents even asking? Still, I shrugged, baffled, and dutifully sent off those partial requests.

In time, some of those partial requests turned into fulls. Now I was irritated because getting a rejection on a full request can be pretty demoralizing. Even more so when I already knew that Pitch Wars had said “Nope,” so these full requests were also going to be “nope.” That was just logic if a book could be objectively good or bad.

But I was getting a lot of requests for the full manuscript. More than I’d gotten on any of the other books, and that was baffling. The book was bad. Pitch Wars had already said so. What was going on?

The WTF Moment

The big surprise for me came when an agent who had rejected multiple books from me in the past requested a partial of the manuscript. Then the full manuscript. Then several months later, she asked me if we could schedule a phone call. On the objectively bad book. The call was The Call, and she made an offer of representation.

I could not process this.

I did my due diligence and notified other agents who were sitting on the full about the offer, but in the end, I liked what the offering agent had said. I signed with Jennie Goloboy, who is now at the Donald Maass Literary Agency. Then the book went on submission to editors at different publishers.

To my amazement, a year after the book went on submission, she told me there was an offer. Rebellion, a smaller publisher in the United Kingdom, wanted to buy the book. The objectively bad book. It was going into print. The Chimera Code was going to be read, even though it was objectively bad.

Viewpoint Realignment

Of course, this called for a major reassessment. How could a book that was bad by the supposed fixed units of evaluation and measurement I thought existed, get signed by an agent and then go into print? The whole time, what had kept me going was that the acceptance of my book rested entirely on my shoulders and my ability to write. I had control over this outcome.

Now I had to abandon that. Pitch Wars had called the book bad. Or at least, I had assumed the rejection at Pitch War was a universal, objective declaration of its quality. And yet that same book Pitch Wars had rejected was now going to be published. How the hell was that possible?

It was possible; I had to accept because I didn’t have control. There wasn’t a fixed, objective standard of measurement, a complex but cipherable mathematical equation to writing a good book that you just had to figure out to get the correct answer every time. It was possible for a book that was bad to get published. It was possible for a book that was good not to get published. Different decision-makers could have different conclusions about the same book, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to influence that evaluation.

The one-two combination of Pitch Wars rejecting my book only to have that same book get published anyway was the most baffling demonstration to me that I was wrong. I was really, really glad to be wrong since it meant I got a book in print, but at the same time, thinking a book’s acceptance was entirely within my own power to determine had been what kept me going. Getting rewarded for being dead wrong about that with a published book is something I still can’t quite process on some days.

I Salute You

For people who are thinking of entering Pitch Wars for the first time, or for the veterans who may already be on round five or six or even ten of trying Pitch Wars again, it’s important to understand this. A Pitch Wars rejection is not a death sentence for you as a writer or even that individual book you pitched. It is possible for no Pitch Wars mentor to think they are a good fit for your book, and that book can still get published.

I did not believe that before it happened to me, and then it did happen, and now I’m kind of screwed since that really messed with my worldview, and I am proof that my own argument sucked, which is both a relief and totally embarrassing.

Most agents still find their clients through cold queries. Pitch Wars is one way to get more visibility for your book, but even then, that’s not a guarantee of publication success either. Some Pitch Wars mentee books have not been picked up for representation, so it goes both ways, and even people mentored can’t expect their publishing life is now 100% easy street.

There is basically a flow of fate or destiny to your book where, at some point, you have to let go. You’ve done all you can for the book; you can no longer influence its outcome. A decision will be made, and that is not an objective evaluation of the book or your skill as a writer. It’s a combination of circumstance, preference, and a million other subjective conditions that you can’t “get right” just by checking off certain boxes on a list for “writing a good book.”

Trying to maintain control of every aspect of your publication process is something you can certainly try to do. But it’s not going to make your experience any easier or less painful. Accept that there are some things beyond your control, and perhaps more importantly, accept that your book might be good, even if no Pitch Wars Mentor took you on.

I took it as a sign that I was supposed to quit, and man was I ever wrong about that. Don’t make that same mistake.

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Hi there. Michael here again. So…how does this happen? How do I, a professional writer, miss on a book that goes on not only to get an agent with a very solid track record, but then go on to be published by Rebellion, a publisher that is putting out a lot of great books. In the past six months/next six months they’ve done John Appel’s ASSASSIN’S ORBIT, and are doing Ren Hutchings’s UNDER FORTUNATE STARS (in May) and Clay Harmon’s THE FLAMES OF MIRA (this summer). I’m a big fan of the work they’re doing.

As it turns out, Dan and I keep meticulous notes. Every year we mentored, we had a spreadsheet where we discussed the books we received. So I was able to go back and see my thinking at the time. And I wanted to look into it, because not only did we not select it as our book to mentor…we didn’t even request it. That year we requested about ten books, so by that logic, we didn’t even rate CHIMERA CODE in our top ten. Which…as far as I know, none of those ten books are published. So we missed.

Let me caveat by saying this: None of this is an excuse. I’m not sorry I didn’t pick Wayne. Dan and I made the best decision we could at the time. What I am is interested. Why does this happen?

Here’s why.

1. When I go back and look at our notes — and in 2016 both Dan and I read every submission, so we both made notes — we both noted that the writing was good. We both put the book on our maybe list, which was very short. So while it didn’t make our top 10, it did make our top 15.

2. My specific note from the time mentioned the style, which I thought reminded me of another author I’d read recently, and wasn’t a great match for me. I specifically noted that ‘I could work with this, but I’m not sure it’s a great fit.’ This, more than anything, is probably why we didn’t pick it. As a mentor, you’re going to read your mentee’s book multiple times. So you really have to click with it.

It’s important to note that this was also 2016 Michael Mammay, who was not nearly as good a writer as 2022 Michael Mammay. I’d written one book, and it hadn’t even sold yet, and at that point in my career I had a lot fewer tools in my kit bag than I do now. Today? I think I could work with a writer in just about any style (perhaps with the exception of something that was really literary.) Then? I had a lot more limits, and it was important to find something that would benefit from my strengths.

If I’m being honest, in 2016, I probably didn’t have all the skills to be a great mentor. I do think I was a good mentor. But I wasn’t a great editor. But back then, Pitch Wars wasn’t as big as it was now, and there were a lot fewer mentors applying, and a LOT fewer mentors who wrote adult SF. I did work really hard at it, but today I look back on what I knew then and it’s like…yeah…I’ve come a long way.

3. We had some really good stuff submitted to us. I’m not going to name names, because I don’t want to break the trust with the people who submitted to us, but I’ll give some general info. While our mentee from 2016 didn’t get her book published, she does now have an agent. And more than one author we requested from that year has a published book in the world. One of them with a publisher that rhymes with Mor. Several of them have agents. So, as with every year, there was a lot of competition.

4. A lot of this stuff is random, you know? No reason for it. I looked at the order we read our entries, and this was one of the first. Would I have still put it on the maybe list if I’d read it later, once I had a better feel for the rest of the entries? Who knows?

5. This stuff happens all the time. On a different scale, it happened to me. I’ve got two books coming out this year: THE MISFIT SOLDIER and THE WEIGHT OF COMMAND. I offered both of those books to the same editor…the thing is, I offered THE WEIGHT OF COMMAND to him first, and he didn’t want it. Which was fine. At the time, I thought maybe it wasn’t good enough. And I’d only written a few chapters of it and done an outline, and I had a lot more books I could write, so it was no big deal.

But it stayed in my head. Maybe that book just wasn’t good enough. That thought stuck with me even after another editor bought it (for the same advance that I got for THE MISFIT SOLDIER). It affected me as I was writing the book, and it took me a good while to get through it. Now? It’s a good book. I’m really happy with it, and I think people are going to like it. But there was a time when that doubt got to me and really had an impact on my productivity. I had to get past it.

This was a long story, but for those who made it this far, I think it was an important one. And a cool thing about it? You can read the book and see for yourself. I know I’m going to read it. I need to see.

If you need something done, Cloke’s one of the best; a mercenary with some unusual talents and an attitude to match.

But when she’s hired by a virtual construct to destroy the other copies of himself, and the down payment is a new magical skill, Cloke knows this job is going to be a league harder than anything she’s ever done.

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About the author: Wayne Santos has been an ad copywriter, a TV scriptwriter, a magazine contributor, an editor, and a freelance writer for too many things on the Internet to count. He grew up in Alberta, lived in Singapore, and settled down in Ontario with his wife and an ongoing rotation of two cats. He is a multi-disciplinary geek with a double major in science-fiction and fantasy, specializations in novels, comics, anime, TV, and film, and a minor in video games. Under no circumstances should he be approached to discuss 80s pop culture unless you are fully aware of the toll this will expend on your remaining lifespan.

Tags: Science Fiction