This book is taking place in a tiny village in England. It is not some made-up hamlet; it is an actual village. In any event, the hero–who was born in this tiny village, but who has been surrounded by the hubbub of London and other, louder places for the last two decades–is standing in the middle of the Market Place, and observing to himself that nothing has changed. Part of his observation includes him making a mental wager with himself that the market stalls–big heavy benches made of wood, with tile roofs overhead–haven’t changed since medieval times.

Of course, we know that everything is about to change for him, when the heroine, who is very new, swans by.

But I wrote this line about the market stalls being medieval and then stopped. You see, to a modern reader–and especially to a modern American reader–I’m afraid that will come off as unbelievable at worst, or weird hyperbole at best. That’s because we are used to impermanence. Old houses are houses from the 1900s–maybe dating from the 1860s. There are old houses. Maybe, we understand old houses.

But market stalls? Those are flimsy things that get erected and then torn down the next day. They aren’t made to last ten years, let alone a hundred. It doesn’t make sense to a modern reader to have market stalls that have been there since medieval times.

The Medieval Shambles (photograph by Frank James Allen; now public domain)

But, in point of fact, these market stalls did date from medieval times. The medieval stalls were in use up until at least the early 1900s. Think about that: four hundred and fifty years of using the same market stalls.

My hero would have no way of actually dating the stalls. He’s not an expert in medieval construction. He can’t say “these date from the 1450s,” and it would be awkward authorial intervention if he did.

I thought about sliding this under the rug so it turns into “much older than I am” rather than “medieval stalls still in use.” But I think that the “medieval stalls still in use on a biweekly basis” captures the character of how slowly this little town changes in a way that “old” simply doesn’t. My heroine is not just jolting my hero out of his ways; she is unmooring him from traditions that are literally centuries old. Those centuries matter to the story, and the whole point (well, one of the whole points) of setting it in this village is to give my hero’s inertia mass.

And so my job as an author is to convey the reader into that moment, to make the reality feel natural instead of awkward. My job as an author is to make  the modern reader forget that she lives in a world where the things that she uses will be relegated to the junk heap after three or four years. My job as an author is to make the reader forget about a world that is IKEA-disposable–and to do it all so quietly that she doesn’t even notice it’s happening.

I do not yet know how to do this. Maybe I will figure it out before I reach the end of the book.

But I have something to say about entitlement, and I don’t even have to think about it to write it down, so here goes.

In the last handful of weeks, I saw an instance in which an agent accused a writer of “entitlement.” The agent in question is Lori Perkins; the post is here if you are interested. I mention this, but I don’t mean to single out Lori Perkins in this post as the sole source of bad behavior; there were a number of people who have done similar-ish things in the past that have grated on my nerves. This is just the one that pushed me over the edge.

In any event, in the post in question, this agent labeled a writer as “entitled” because he sent two polite inquiries about a partial sent out in July. One inquiry was sent in November, at which point he was told that he would get a response sometime in December. The second inquiry was sent in February.

“Entitlement” is one of those words that has a certain morality embedded in it by implication. That is, if you say someone is “entitled,” in modern times we mean “this person is acting as if they are owed something, when they in fact are not.” In other words, when we say someone is “entitled” we usually mean that they are falsely entitled. Leaving off that modifier in regular speech means that certain things often go unspoken. That is: if you say someone is “entitled” you should also explain what is false about their sense of entitlement. Because there is nothing blameworthy about someone acting as if they are owed something, when, in fact, they are owed something.

In this case, the gentleman in question had not heard anything on the pages he sent to the agent for over six months. He did not insist that the agent in question read them instantly; he asked instead for an update on his status, and was roundly berated for that. And I just want to take a step aback and say… wait, what? In what sense is a person ever not entitled to ask about partials sent at the request of an agent, and not answered? How is asking for a status update, in a polite manner, ever indicative of a false sense of entitlement? And what does it say about the agent in question, that she thinks that the author did not deserve even this bare courtesy?

So let’s start with the basics. No, you are not entitled to be a diva. You should not expect agents to drop everything to meet your every need, before you’re signed as a client–but we’re not talking about that kind of person. We’re talking about the average writer. We’re talking about someone perhaps like the gentleman featured on Lori Perkins’s blog, or maybe someone like you.

You wrote a book. You submitted it to an agent. Now you’re getting a little worried. Maybe your book isn’t there yet. Maybe your characterization is not zipping. Maybe your plot could be more original. Maybe your query letter has a howling clunker in it. Maybe it does. The last I checked, those things didn’t turn you into a piece of granite, unworthy of basic human civility. And an agent–a good agent–knows that even if this book isn’t there yet, you might move on to book #2 or #3 or #4, and one day, your book will be there. In any event, at a bare minimum, you are one of the very few people who had the courage and stamina to write a whole book.

You are entitled to someone who thinks of you as a potentially valuable asset, who starts off what might be a long, profitable relationship with a sense of professionalism and respect. It is not too much to ask that if an agent says she will get back to you in ten weeks, that at the end of ten weeks you can send a status update asking for more details. And if she responds, “I haven’t gotten to it yet; give me another month,” it is not completely beyond the pale to ask for another update several months later, and if that person fails to respond that time, to e-mail her boss to see if she is still around. You are entitled to civility and professionalism.

You get what you see with agents. If someone doesn’t treat writers with respect on her blog or on twitter, chances are she doesn’t magically morph into someone who treats her clients with respect once she signs them. And yes, you can tell. My agent? She respects writers–even the ones who aren’t there yet. You can tell from her blog, and the effort she goes through to educate people about the query process and the business of publishing. She’s not the only one. Take the late, lamented Miss Snark (aka Janet Reid, aka the Query Shark). She respects writers, too, and you can feel it, even though her tone is quite different. Nathan Bransford? Ditto. Jim McCarthy? You betcha.

Want to know how to judge an agent? Pay attention to how they make you feel as a writer. And anyone who makes you think you’re an insignificant worm, and you’re falsely entitled merely because you think you deserve common courtesy?

Run away. Run away now.

Because if there’s one thing you are entitled to, it is an agent who thinks you have something to offer her.

What they didn’t do was post slides with the negative reviews. I don’t know if they even mentioned them. [ETA: Angela James tells me that they did mention them.] But those negative reviews were very valuable for me as an author. Here; go read the full spectrum of reviews. They range from one extreme of hyperbole (“This is one of the best debut romance novels I’ve ever come across”) to the other (“This is the single most trashy novel I have ever subjected myself to”).

This is not going to be an “I am a delicate flower” post. It’s not going to be about my feelings at all. No matter what my feelings were about these reviews (and yes I read them all, because even though I am not a delicate flower, I am an antsy debut author who is searching for meaningful data in a world composed entirely of anecdote; and no, I did not ever respond to any of these, nor am I going to now), I realized something halfway through.

Many of the people they were offering my book to were not romance readers. They said so outright in their reviews. This was initially a source of consternation for me. But the non-romance readers split into two crowds. Half of them said, “I do not read romance, and this book did nothing to change my mind about that stance.” The other half said, “I do not read romance, but maybe I should reconsider, because this was a fun read.”

The number of those people who would have read my book had they not had it forcibly shoved down their throats? Zero. The negative reviews were a sign that my book was getting into the hands of a diverse population, not just the regular romance readers who were most likely to purchase my book. The only way for me to forgo those negative reviews would have been to make sure that my book just landed in the hands of the easy readers who already adore this particular type of historical romance. And while that would have been great for my authorial ego, in the long run, it probably wouldn’t have been great for growing my readership.

If nobody hates your book, that means your book hasn’t found its way into the hands of enough new people. And, from an author’s point of view, that is never a good thing.

Then there are subtle nightmares. They start out like a regular dream: the full color spectrum. Nobody’s chasing me. Nobody’s threatening me or my loved ones. Instead, they start out so subtly normal that I think nothing of it. For instance, in one of my recurring subtle nightmares, I could be anywhere: walking through the town where I grew up, applying for a job, checking the mail. And then something happens: Maybe someone comes up to me and hands me a notice, or maybe it arrives in the mail, or maybe someone makes a phone call at the job where I’ve applied. For whatever reason, the nightmare part starts like this: “Well, Courtney, we just noticed that you never took the Public Health segment in high school. You’ll have to go back and finish it, or we’re going to rescind all your degrees.” And then, before I know what is happening, I’m being pushed back into high school, I’m turning seventeen again, I’m back among all those people, back when people cared more about the name on the jeans pocket than they did about what you might have to say…. NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

I wake up, my heart pounding, glad to be back in reality where I desperately need to do laundry and I’ve still forgotten to pay that parking ticket, but by God, at least I don’t have to go back to high school. This is not very fun, as you can imagine. The subtle nightmares are in many ways more insidious, because they feel so much more real.

In any event, this is all by means of saying that in the last week or so, I’ve developed another subtle nightmare. And, yes, it will make you think I’m slightly neurotic as authors go, but hello. I should think you’d have figured that out by now. In any event, my agent, who is wonderful, has been sending me weekly sales reports gleaned from Bookscan. And those sales reports tell me how many copies of my book sold (although Bookscan is not complete, it is the only thing I have, and so I cling to it with irrational force) throughout the US. So far, the only reports I’ve gotten have been reports about the anthology–and I’ve been fairly blase about that in a sense, because it’s not one-hundred percent all the way mine. To be honest, most people bought it because it had the words “Mary Balogh” on the front, and I am totally cool with that.

But this… this one is all mine. And that makes it five hundred times scarier. In my subtle nightmare, I open my Bookscan report, and peer, frightened, at the number.

The number changes. Sometimes it is 6. Sometimes it is 7. It is never any greater than 8. And I say, “Wait. I bought every last mother-loving one of those copies!”

So yes. That’s my current neurosis. I don’t see how authors back in the day survived, not knowing if anyone at all had purchased their book for months and months and months.

I sometimes think that these subtle nightmares are my subconscious’s way of making me feel good about reality by managing expectations. Yes, I may be behind at work; but hey, at least I don’t have to go back to high school! And yes, maybe I am getting far too angsty about meaningless numbers on Amazon–but at least more than 6 people will have bought my book (I hope–I actually will not see these magic numbers until, maybe, tomorrow, so there is one more evening of absolute neurotic panic).

In any event, if you bought my book, thank you for saving me from my worst neurosis. Thank you.