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I never considered myself a particularly spiritual, or for that matter, a religious person. But I’ve found that in writing The Osgoode Trilogy, particularly the third, A Trial of One, that compassion has become very strong theme which runs through all three novels.

I just found this quote from Thomas Aquinas &ndash “I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it.” Surely, this must be the difference between the understanding of the head and the heart.

In the first novel in the trilogy, Conduct in Question, we have a man dubbed by the media as the “The Florist” who is a serial killer &ndash so named because he tries to capture the easy flow of the line of the master painter, Matisse, in his carvings on his victims. He is a sadistic killer with an artistic bent.

You may feel [as I do] that the world has plenty of novels with serial killers and so, rather than detailing his rampages, I wanted to add some provocatively human touches to the character of the “Florist.” More than anything else, he wants to experience the emotion of compassion.

When he speaks to his mother, who is long since dead, he says in frustration &ndash “I know what the word compassion mean, mother, but what does it feel like?”

As the story nears its conclusion, the “Florist” gets his wish &ndasha fleeting sense of compassion. About to murder his next victim, John, who is a truly simple soul &ndash the church caretaker &ndash the “Florist” is overcome with a compassionate sense and decides to spare him.

When the Florist silently stepped into the room, a strange sensation passed over him. Was this what Mother spoke of? As if disoriented, he stopped and shook his head. Was this compassion?

“It’s you!” said John, his smile radiating a sweetness the Florist had never seen before. He saw the muscles of the huge man flex; John’s damp white shirt was matted to his skin. He saw the thinning but baby-fine hair, neatly combed in place. Suddenly he saw the simple man as more than an obstacle in his path. He thought that life could not have been easy for such an imbecile. He should be spared. Mother would be proud of his act of compassion.

In Final Paradox, our hero, Harry Jenkins learns that compassion means stepping into another’s shoes and understanding what it feels like. Easy to say &ndash hard to do! When Harry was eight, his father withdrew from almost all contact with his family after the death of Anna, his daughter &ndashHarry’s sister. Now, years later, while his father is in surgery for a brain aneurysm, Harry waits in the Quiet Room trying to understand how his father could have abandoned him as a child.

At the very moment of his asking, Harry gets his answer as he witnesses the following played out before him.

Harry caught his breath. An unearthly wailing came from the hallway. The door to the Quiet Room flew open. A tall, bony woman, wearing a mauve dress and yellow shawl, clung desperately to the arms of two men. One was old and hunched and the other muscular and attentive.

The florescent lighting illuminated the woman’s face raw with agony.

“No! No!” As if possessed, she shook violently and her voice slid up octaves. “By the blood of Christ, no!” Clasping her hands to her ears, she began to moan, her eyes ricocheting about the room.

She screamed at the ceiling. “Why have you cursed me? He cannot be taken so soon.”

Harry pressed his hands against his face. With all his heart, he wanted to pray. He had just witnessed the unholy wrenching of the spirit at the loss of a child, caused by blind hatred. As he touched the tears on his face, he began to understand. “God forgive me,” he whispered. “I have known nothing! My father died along with Anna. I did nothing to help.”

And that’s exactly where Harry begins to understand his father and compassion &ndash by actually experiencing his pain and loss. True, you may study compassion and quote clever sayings about it, but if you never feel another’s pain and suffering in your heart and your gut, as if it were your very own, you do not know what it is.

Do you think some people are naturally more compassionate?

In A Trial of One, Harry’s beloved, Natasha has her own struggles with compassion. She is forced to choose between two people she loves &ndash Harry and her friend Sheila. Natasha recollects a conversation, years back, between her mother, Renee, and her Aunt Mila. The boss has demanded that Renee sleep with him so she can advance in the business.

“Oh, Renee! You poor kid!”

After a long silence, her mother said softly, “Once we’d done it, his eyes looked so sad and ashamed, like being him just wore him down.”

Mila was aghast. “You felt sorry for him?”

“No, not really. But I can see how loneliness can make you crazy.” Afterwards, we talked a bit, sitting on the bed in the motel. He was living all alone there because his wife had run off with the kids.”

Natasha’s compassionate nature makes choosing between Harry and Sheila so difficult for her. Hurt and angry, Sheila has betrayed Natasha who now considers her next step as she wanders the beach.

Natasha turned and walked slowly past the riot of weeds and up to the cottage. Soon she would drive back to the city. She knew Harry was her passion, the one who had awakened her to herself. But she still heard Sheila’s cry &ndash one of all humanity &ndash because it hurts! Sheila’s pain, from fear of loss, was a pain shared by the whole world. She did not reach it by reason, but she knew there was only one thing she could do &ndash act with love, care, and compassion.

Talking about love and compassion… having to decide between two people who love her, [Harry and Sheila] Natasha must find that balance between passion and compassion. Easy to say: hard to do!

I never considered myself a particularly spiritual, or for that matter, a religious person. But I’ve found that in writing The Osgoode Trilogy, particularly the third, A Trial of One, that compassion has become very strong theme which runs through all three novels.

I just found this quote from Thomas Aquinas &ndash “I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it.” Surely, this must be the difference between the understanding of the head and the heart.

In the first novel in the trilogy, Conduct in Question, we have a man dubbed by the media as the “The Florist” who is a serial killer &ndash so named because he tries to capture the easy flow of the line of the master painter, Matisse, in his carvings on his victims. He is a sadistic killer with an artistic bent.

You may feel [as I do] that the world has plenty of novels with serial killers and so, rather than detailing his rampages, I wanted to add some provocatively human touches to the character of the “Florist.” More than anything else, he wants to experience the emotion of compassion.

When he speaks to his mother, who is long since dead, he says in frustration &ndash “I know what the word compassion mean, mother, but what does it feel like?”

As the story nears its conclusion, the “Florist” gets his wish &ndasha fleeting sense of compassion. About to murder his next victim, John, who is a truly simple soul &ndash the church caretaker &ndash the “Florist” is overcome with a compassionate sense and decides to spare him.

When the Florist silently stepped into the room, a strange sensation passed over him. Was this what Mother spoke of? As if disoriented, he stopped and shook his head. Was this compassion?

“It’s you!” said John, his smile radiating a sweetness the Florist had never seen before. He saw the muscles of the huge man flex; John’s damp white shirt was matted to his skin. He saw the thinning but baby-fine hair, neatly combed in place. Suddenly he saw the simple man as more than an obstacle in his path. He thought that life could not have been easy for such an imbecile. He should be spared. Mother would be proud of his act of compassion.

In Final Paradox, our hero, Harry Jenkins learns that compassion means stepping into another’s shoes and understanding what it feels like. Easy to say &ndash hard to do! When Harry was eight, his father withdrew from almost all contact with his family after the death of Anna, his daughter &ndashHarry’s sister. Now, years later, while his father is in surgery for a brain aneurysm, Harry waits in the Quiet Room trying to understand how his father could have abandoned him as a child.

At the very moment of his asking, Harry gets his answer as he witnesses the following played out before him.

Harry caught his breath. An unearthly wailing came from the hallway. The door to the Quiet Room flew open. A tall, bony woman, wearing a mauve dress and yellow shawl, clung desperately to the arms of two men. One was old and hunched and the other muscular and attentive.

The florescent lighting illuminated the woman’s face raw with agony.

“No! No!” As if possessed, she shook violently and her voice slid up octaves. “By the blood of Christ, no!” Clasping her hands to her ears, she began to moan, her eyes ricocheting about the room.

She screamed at the ceiling. “Why have you cursed me? He cannot be taken so soon.”

Harry pressed his hands against his face. With all his heart, he wanted to pray. He had just witnessed the unholy wrenching of the spirit at the loss of a child, caused by blind hatred. As he touched the tears on his face, he began to understand. “God forgive me,” he whispered. “I have known nothing! My father died along with Anna. I did nothing to help.”

And that’s exactly where Harry begins to understand his father and compassion &ndash by actually experiencing his pain and loss. True, you may study compassion and quote clever sayings about it, but if you never feel another’s pain and suffering in your heart and your gut, as if it were your very own, you do not know what it is.

Do you think some people are naturally more compassionate?

In A Trial of One, Harry’s beloved, Natasha has her own struggles with compassion. She is forced to choose between two people she loves &ndash Harry and her friend Sheila. Natasha recollects a conversation, years back, between her mother, Renee, and her Aunt Mila. The boss has demanded that Renee sleep with him so she can advance in the business.

“Oh, Renee! You poor kid!”

After a long silence, her mother said softly, “Once we’d done it, his eyes looked so sad and ashamed, like being him just wore him down.”

Mila was aghast. “You felt sorry for him?”

“No, not really. But I can see how loneliness can make you crazy.” Afterwards, we talked a bit, sitting on the bed in the motel. He was living all alone there because his wife had run off with the kids.”

Natasha’s compassionate nature makes choosing between Harry and Sheila so difficult for her. Hurt and angry, Sheila has betrayed Natasha who now considers her next step as she wanders the beach.

Natasha turned and walked slowly past the riot of weeds and up to the cottage. Soon she would drive back to the city. She knew Harry was her passion, the one who had awakened her to herself. But she still heard Sheila’s cry &ndash one of all humanity &ndash because it hurts! Sheila’s pain, from fear of loss, was a pain shared by the whole world. She did not reach it by reason, but she knew there was only one thing she could do &ndash act with love, care, and compassion.

Talking about love and compassion… having to decide between two people who love her, [Harry and Sheila] Natasha must find that balance between passion and compassion. Easy to say: hard to do!

The press release bills this book as a love story, I disagree, it is a story about love. Specifically one man’s search for an everlasting love. We meet Wayne Cavanaugh as a sophmore attending the rather blue collar Drexel College where he is studying engineering. Through flashbacks author Rob Costelloe explores Wayne’s young life and his fascination with the concept of love. More specifically his quest to take love to a higher plane, an aesthetic that few people can appreciate, let alone achieve.

In a chance encounter following a purse snatching Wayne meets pretty Penn State junior Nancy Hammond. This launches Wayne off on his odyssey to find that elusive perfect love. Although he is convinced that Nancy is the one, and Nancy certainly reciprocates the feelings, they have many hurdles to cross, not least of which is the disparity in their social backgrounds. Nancy comes from a rich and influential family, while Wayne is from a very working class one. Of course this problem matters little to the young lovers, however their families and to a certain extent their friends are a whole different situation. Some view Wayne as an opportunist while others are less kind and lean towards thinking him a gold digger.

With grit and determination the couple weather the storms and as time passes most of the protagonists grudgingly accept the pair and their love for each other. The families though remain at loggerheads with their children. One thing that popped into my head while reading Coinage Of Commitment was had the roles been reversed with him being from an affluent family and her the poor country girl the relationship would have been viewed as charming, how strange our society is. We have become conditioned to a set of rules, or mores, and when we stray outside the boundaries the walls come up.

It is interesting to watch as this couple matures, Nancy gradually working on elevating Wayne’s social status, and Wayne while not openly resisting makes attempts, if not to actually stem the tide of change, at least slow its relentless progress.

The question is, is this perfect love, and can it last a lifetime? To discover the answer you will have to read the book. Rob Costelloe has created a very thought provoking book that plays on many levels. Part love story, part social commentary, and part exploration of one mans quest for perfection. The standard of the writing is of the highest quality. He states in his biography that he has been writing since he was 8 years old, and that does not surprise me, he is a skilled and splendid wordsmith.

The ending of the book comes with a very strange twist in the tale, and one that will surprise the reader.

About Rob Costelloe: After college, besides pursuing an engineering career in the Gulf Coast region, Rob Costelloe wrote more stories, a teeth-cutting, first novel, and a little poetry. By now, his interest focused on the question of what romantic love can achieve in people’s lives. To pursue this theme, he studied the work of many authors and filmmakers. He and his wife live near Houston, TX.

The press release bills this book as a love story, I disagree, it is a story about love. Specifically one man’s search for an everlasting love. We meet Wayne Cavanaugh as a sophmore attending the rather blue collar Drexel College where he is studying engineering. Through flashbacks author Rob Costelloe explores Wayne’s young life and his fascination with the concept of love. More specifically his quest to take love to a higher plane, an aesthetic that few people can appreciate, let alone achieve.

In a chance encounter following a purse snatching Wayne meets pretty Penn State junior Nancy Hammond. This launches Wayne off on his odyssey to find that elusive perfect love. Although he is convinced that Nancy is the one, and Nancy certainly reciprocates the feelings, they have many hurdles to cross, not least of which is the disparity in their social backgrounds. Nancy comes from a rich and influential family, while Wayne is from a very working class one. Of course this problem matters little to the young lovers, however their families and to a certain extent their friends are a whole different situation. Some view Wayne as an opportunist while others are less kind and lean towards thinking him a gold digger.

With grit and determination the couple weather the storms and as time passes most of the protagonists grudgingly accept the pair and their love for each other. The families though remain at loggerheads with their children. One thing that popped into my head while reading Coinage Of Commitment was had the roles been reversed with him being from an affluent family and her the poor country girl the relationship would have been viewed as charming, how strange our society is. We have become conditioned to a set of rules, or mores, and when we stray outside the boundaries the walls come up.

It is interesting to watch as this couple matures, Nancy gradually working on elevating Wayne’s social status, and Wayne while not openly resisting makes attempts, if not to actually stem the tide of change, at least slow its relentless progress.

The question is, is this perfect love, and can it last a lifetime? To discover the answer you will have to read the book. Rob Costelloe has created a very thought provoking book that plays on many levels. Part love story, part social commentary, and part exploration of one mans quest for perfection. The standard of the writing is of the highest quality. He states in his biography that he has been writing since he was 8 years old, and that does not surprise me, he is a skilled and splendid wordsmith.

The ending of the book comes with a very strange twist in the tale, and one that will surprise the reader.

About Rob Costelloe: After college, besides pursuing an engineering career in the Gulf Coast region, Rob Costelloe wrote more stories, a teeth-cutting, first novel, and a little poetry. By now, his interest focused on the question of what romantic love can achieve in people’s lives. To pursue this theme, he studied the work of many authors and filmmakers. He and his wife live near Houston, TX.

My publishing journey has been unusual enough that friends and publicists alike have suggested I write about it, especially the part about being a man writing love stories in a woman’s genre. But it’s not just the genre. The whole publishing and agency world I encountered was dominated by women. Sound interesting enough? Okay. There’s just one little hitch. Now that I’m sitting in front of the keyboard, I find that there’s not much to tell that’s dramatic. Most of the women editors treated me fairly, and I worked well with the ones who gave me room to turn in.

If anything, being a man may have given me a certain advantage, you know, from a novelty standpoint. Not only was I a male engineer (of all things!), with no detectable writing credentials, daring to show up with a love story, but I was touting it as a love story unlike any other, one written of love at a higher level. Well, at least it made them look up from their keyboards. Even from clear across the Internet’s vast ether, I could feel their skeptical smiles.

I did have advantages related to temperament. Women have always been my epitome of beauty, and I have long admired the feminine spirit and disposition, the nobility of her biological calling, the sophistication of her romantic instinct. As a result, I have always worked well with women. Plus I am grateful. Everything I ever learned about romantic love at a higher level I learned from a woman.

The other advantage I had was acquired: I had studied love stories for decades and I knew the intricacies and jargon of the genre. At one point, an editor who was intrigued by my sample chapters started an e-mail conversation that escalated to a phone discussion. I knew this was curiosity bringing opportunity to my door. She was a Romance novelist as well as a Romance editor, so I was nervous as I dialed her office number. I could tell that she was surprised then delighted to meet a man who could discuss nuances of love story plot and characterization ranging from risk factors in portraying heroines as less than physically perfect, to pet theories for best lead up to denouement. I knew before the conversation was over that she would offer a contract. Not only did I address some reservations she had about my characters, but I had done so in the professional jargon she knew. As a result, she knew she could work with me for the editorial portion of the project.

With all this said, let me offer an opinion based on what I experienced. To the question about whether the bar is higher for a man writing in this genre, I would say yes, at least in a certain sense. If you are a man who writes mediocre romances, then I think it will be harder for you to get published than a mediocre woman writer. But if you are a man producing material that matches the top ten percent of the genre, then the reservations that woman editors naturally have about you won’t matter. You will get the consideration you deserve. Know the audience you are targeting. That counts for a lot. And be sure you can defend the theory you have chosen for how you spun your characters and how you wove your plot.

Authoring as a Risk-Taking Endeavor

Being an unpublished novelist poses all sorts of dilemmas. Writing is entrepreneurial in nature, more than most people realize, and it is fraught with make or break decisions. Which side of the political spectrum do you show yourself? Do you embellish this or that social issue, perhaps the one most fashionable, or do you hide from them all?

If your goal is publication for its own sake, and you’ve decided to write, say, Gothic romance number 214,386, then you do need to follow the Gothic template. But you also need to make it stand out from most of the 214,385 Gothics that came before. The burden to distinguish is higher for unpublished writers because they have no track record to give their work advanced credibility or benefit of the doubt. Yet if the novice distinguishes herself too well, then her originality may be viewed as too risky in itself.

This need to balance risks even extends to things that look simple and straightforward on paper. Take the question of how good your manuscript should be before you query it. The reference books are all unanimous in urging that your manuscript should simply be the best you can make it before submitting it. But it’s not that simple in real life. First off, many amateur writers don’t know how good their writing is relative to their own potential. This is especially true if you are trying to achieve a literary end that’s new or different, say, push a new frontier in poetry, or achieve new levels of fright in horror.

In my own case, in writing Coinage of Commitment, I was bent on writing a love story unlike any other, a mainstream tale of love at a higher level. That made this project so different that even the style I adopted needed to be distinctive, a vivid way of expression that leads readers through the characters’ souls to glimpse romantic love at breathtaking heights. That’s not exactly stock stuff, making it risky to submit and hard to know when it was good enough to send out.

Not realizing what I was getting into, I polished the manuscript as best I could, then sent it out. Two months of querying later, when on a whim I sat down to reread it, I was shocked to discover that it was not the greatest love story ever written, something I suddenly discovered was important for me to achieve. Important enough that I pulled the ms off the market and sent it to not one but two independent editors in series. Three rewrites and seven months later, I resumed the query campaign. But by then, I wondered about the stability of my improvement progress.

Sure enough, despite best intentions, my writing ability kept jumping ahead of itself. I simply couldn’t keep my hands off the ms for wanting to make it better. That meant that the sample chapters I sent out kept changing. Even after the ms was accepted for publication, I could not quench my hunger for better prose. My publisher, Saga Books, in a fit of artistic benevolence, held the presses for the extra weeks it took me to equilibrate at deciding, finally, that I could not improve a single word.

Yes, I realize that this is an unusual account. But it shows that every publishing journey is bound to be unique. So when you read simple instructions like: submit only your best work, don’t be surprised if the path in execution is more tortuous than you ever dreamed it could be.

Today, Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor of Bookpleasures.com is pleased to have as our guest, Rob Costelloe, author of Coinage of Commitment.

Good day Rob and thanks for participating in our interview.

Norm: When did your passion for writing begin? What keeps you going?

Rob: I wrote earlier in life, including a teeth-cutting first novel, then I abandoned writing altogether. But I continued to study romantic love as a potential source of fulfillment in people’s lives, and I enjoyed studying love stories in books and films. In 2005 I read an otherwise well written novel whose denouement was so suddenly despairing that I felt outrage on behalf of all the women readers who were disappointed by this disjointed outcome. Within twenty-four hours, I started writing Coinage of Commitment.

Norm: Will you share a little bit about Coinage of Commitment with us?

Rob: Sure. Coinage of Commitment offers a different kind of love story, a drama of characters who love at a higher level than what we see all around us. But this is not portrayed as just a case of spontaneous feelings conquering all. Rather, our lovers develop a hunger and capacity for higher love by reflections and experiences they have before and after meeting. The story gives a glimpse into the unique challenges such a pair would face in striving to reach the zenith they seek. The plot does feature a love triangle, so the novel is actually two love stories that culminate dramatically in a surprise ending.

Norm: How did you get the inspiration for this book? Did you have a hard time fleshing out characters initially?

Rob: The inspiration, or at least the creative energy for the project, was driven by this concept of love at a higher level, one requiring a thinking basis as well as an emotional one. Some nonfiction books that offer advice for improving relationships deal with this issue extensively, but fiction has not risen to exploring love that’s anything higher than merely spontaneous emotions.

You asked about character development and, yes, it was difficult. These are not characters who would ever be mistaken for plain vanilla. The male protagonist had to be recast from the first draft to realistically portray the conflict he experiences before the lovers find union.

Norm: How much real-life did you put into your book? Is there much “you” in there?

Rob: My contribution was that I’ve experienced love at a higher level and for a long enough time that I could define its elements from experience and inject them into a story of lovers who have class, financial, and religious differences to overcome, as well as opposition from both families, before they can reach the destination they seek.

Norm: It is said that if you want to write a good story or novel you need to create struggles of powerful descriptive individuals and not just issues. Through their accomplishments and travail, we very much comprehend the issues. How is this applicable to your book?

Rob: I agree with your premise and that’s why I put a lot of effort into refining and, in some cases, redefining the main characters so that the story would center around them more than the plot elements. At the same time, they need to be believable and appealing to readers who want and deserve to be immersed in characters they can relate to. But as you’ve indicated, it is really the setbacks and challenges the characters must resolve that make them all they can be in a story. Watching them struggle onward, never losing that certain air that we ourselves admire, is what makes them memorable to readers.

Norm: What kind of research did you do to write this book? What are your hopes for this book?

Rob: I had to get acquainted with the Penn and Drexel campuses, where the story is set. In a way, the research was more difficult because the story takes place in the late 1960s, and many of the settings I used no longer exist, or have changed. Cavanaugh’s Restaurant, realistically set in the first chapter near 31st and Market in Philly has since moved. The movie theater used in the Chapter seven date scenes was real, and I used it because it was very popular at the time. But it has since been torn down. Recovering its address was quite an adventure. Little things can be challenging: like researching the legal driving age in California in the early sixties.

You asked about my hopes for the book. In a way, Coinage for me was a labor of love, an attempt to give something back for the life I’ve been blessed with. My hope for the book is that it will sell well, that readers will enjoy it, feel enriched and uplifted by it. So far, reader feedback has exceeded my expectations.

Norm: What motivated you to write a book pertaining to romantic love, and what is your definition of romantic love? How does it differ from other kinds of love?

Rob: Believe it or not, one thing that got me started on this journey was a case of bad science. Sometime during the sixties, a widespread notion got established that romantic love did not exist except as a trivial permutation of the sexual impulse. Instead of being viewed as a unique emotional capability that is obviously separate from the sexual impulse, romantic love was derided as this maudlin quirk of the sexual impulse itself that teenagers experience and then grow out of as they mature and grow up.

I kept reading these articles, by Ph.D.s who should have known better, claiming that romantic love was an illusion, produced as an unfortunate byproduct of sexual chemistry, and that the sooner one got over it the sooner one could settle into an “adult” relationship based on calculated mutual benefit and, of course, sex. Yes, this was a kind of underside of the sexual revolution. I grew alarmed that people were lowering their expectations about what romantic love could provide in their lives because of crackpot science. I also watched it affect our literature, as stories featured more sex and a more watered down, primitive sort of love, one based mainly on impulse and sexual attraction. I started writing, partly to contribute what I could in the way of damage control. It was painful to watch the needless harm that was done to millions of emotional lives. And it took another whole generation for science to finally condescend to legitimizing the same romantic love that flourished in the Middle Ages.

You asked about a definition of romantic love. Well, let’s see. Romantic love is that affection between the sexes that augments and usually stimulates the sexual urge. Often an initial sexual upwelling serves as an emotional attractant, and the couple falls in love. It is more volatile than others kinds of love–such as maternal love–and it has been known to change from adoring affection to murderous hate in a matter of minutes (given the right kind of adulterous news). It can burn brighter than any other kind of love, and often does, but it is hard to maintain. The higher love I write about is an attempt to examine how that brighter state might be enhanced and sustained by intellectual and behavioral means, while also giving readers a good story to enjoy.

Norm: I read where Dr. Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love believes that romantic love is a universal human feeling that produces specific chemicals and networks in the brain. Do you agree with Dr. Fisher?

Rob: I agree, but really…how could romantic love not be a universal human feeling? From literature, we’ve known about it since ancient times. The Bible even has a book of poetry dedicated expressly to it. And on top of that, from the Middle Ages through the nineteenth century, a well developed and very feminine-flavored form of romantic love was a feature of Western culture that distinguished it from all others. The Russians ridiculed it during the cold war; the Japanese adopted it as one of the first things they copied from us after World War II. As far as chemicals and networks in the brain are concerned, I am happy to see this kind of quantitative progress. I am especially happy to see the scientific community catching up to reality and verifying a feature of our basic humanity that many of us have long viewed as indisputable.

Norm: Can you tell us how you found representation for your book? Did you pitch it to an agent, or query publishers who would most likely publish this type of book? Any rejections? Did you self-publish?

Rob: I never did come close to landing an agent. The agencies tend to be hidebound conservative, and I was peddling a love story unlike any other. And it is written in a more emotionally vivid style than is currently fashionable. The sales figures tell me that that works well for readers, but the agencies wouldn’t touch it. I went through five hundred rejections in three months until I came across a group of small royalty publishers who have sprung up in the last five years. They do not accept returns, they provide little in the way of promotional help, and they sell mainly through Internet outlets–although their books are carried by the major distributors. Among this group, I ended up with three contract offers. I went with Saga Books because they offered the best contract, and they thought the book good enough to publish it in three months on a fast track basis.

Norm: How have you used the Internet to boost your writing career?

Rob: Without the Internet, the publisher who produced my book would not exist. Many of the watchdog groups that have sprung up to protect writers from shadier elements of the publishing universe are Internet-based. They helped me greatly, and I offer them my thanks, especially Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware. The Internet has helped create an environment closer to a truly free market festival of ideas and expression than we have ever had.

Norm: Is there anything else you wish to add that we have not covered and what is next for Rob Costelloe?

Rob: I will be writing fulltime starting next month. My next project, another love story, is about one-third drafted and should be ready before mid next year.

Thank you for this opportunity to reach out to my readers. This was my first interview as an author, and you made it fun as well as educational.

Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors.

My publishing journey has been unusual enough that friends and publicists alike have suggested I write about it, especially the part about being a man writing love stories in a woman’s genre. But it’s not just the genre. The whole publishing and agency world I encountered was dominated by women. Sound interesting enough? Okay. There’s just one little hitch. Now that I’m sitting in front of the keyboard, I find that there’s not much to tell that’s dramatic. Most of the women editors treated me fairly, and I worked well with the ones who gave me room to turn in.

If anything, being a man may have given me a certain advantage, you know, from a novelty standpoint. Not only was I a male engineer (of all things!), with no detectable writing credentials, daring to show up with a love story, but I was touting it as a love story unlike any other, one written of love at a higher level. Well, at least it made them look up from their keyboards. Even from clear across the Internet’s vast ether, I could feel their skeptical smiles.

I did have advantages related to temperament. Women have always been my epitome of beauty, and I have long admired the feminine spirit and disposition, the nobility of her biological calling, the sophistication of her romantic instinct. As a result, I have always worked well with women. Plus I am grateful. Everything I ever learned about romantic love at a higher level I learned from a woman.

The other advantage I had was acquired: I had studied love stories for decades and I knew the intricacies and jargon of the genre. At one point, an editor who was intrigued by my sample chapters started an e-mail conversation that escalated to a phone discussion. I knew this was curiosity bringing opportunity to my door. She was a Romance novelist as well as a Romance editor, so I was nervous as I dialed her office number. I could tell that she was surprised then delighted to meet a man who could discuss nuances of love story plot and characterization ranging from risk factors in portraying heroines as less than physically perfect, to pet theories for best lead up to denouement. I knew before the conversation was over that she would offer a contract. Not only did I address some reservations she had about my characters, but I had done so in the professional jargon she knew. As a result, she knew she could work with me for the editorial portion of the project.

With all this said, let me offer an opinion based on what I experienced. To the question about whether the bar is higher for a man writing in this genre, I would say yes, at least in a certain sense. If you are a man who writes mediocre romances, then I think it will be harder for you to get published than a mediocre woman writer. But if you are a man producing material that matches the top ten percent of the genre, then the reservations that woman editors naturally have about you won’t matter. You will get the consideration you deserve. Know the audience you are targeting. That counts for a lot. And be sure you can defend the theory you have chosen for how you spun your characters and how you wove your plot.

Authoring as a Risk-Taking Endeavor

Being an unpublished novelist poses all sorts of dilemmas. Writing is entrepreneurial in nature, more than most people realize, and it is fraught with make or break decisions. Which side of the political spectrum do you show yourself? Do you embellish this or that social issue, perhaps the one most fashionable, or do you hide from them all?

If your goal is publication for its own sake, and you’ve decided to write, say, Gothic romance number 214,386, then you do need to follow the Gothic template. But you also need to make it stand out from most of the 214,385 Gothics that came before. The burden to distinguish is higher for unpublished writers because they have no track record to give their work advanced credibility or benefit of the doubt. Yet if the novice distinguishes herself too well, then her originality may be viewed as too risky in itself.

This need to balance risks even extends to things that look simple and straightforward on paper. Take the question of how good your manuscript should be before you query it. The reference books are all unanimous in urging that your manuscript should simply be the best you can make it before submitting it. But it’s not that simple in real life. First off, many amateur writers don’t know how good their writing is relative to their own potential. This is especially true if you are trying to achieve a literary end that’s new or different, say, push a new frontier in poetry, or achieve new levels of fright in horror.

In my own case, in writing Coinage of Commitment, I was bent on writing a love story unlike any other, a mainstream tale of love at a higher level. That made this project so different that even the style I adopted needed to be distinctive, a vivid way of expression that leads readers through the characters’ souls to glimpse romantic love at breathtaking heights. That’s not exactly stock stuff, making it risky to submit and hard to know when it was good enough to send out.

Not realizing what I was getting into, I polished the manuscript as best I could, then sent it out. Two months of querying later, when on a whim I sat down to reread it, I was shocked to discover that it was not the greatest love story ever written, something I suddenly discovered was important for me to achieve. Important enough that I pulled the ms off the market and sent it to not one but two independent editors in series. Three rewrites and seven months later, I resumed the query campaign. But by then, I wondered about the stability of my improvement progress.

Sure enough, despite best intentions, my writing ability kept jumping ahead of itself. I simply couldn’t keep my hands off the ms for wanting to make it better. That meant that the sample chapters I sent out kept changing. Even after the ms was accepted for publication, I could not quench my hunger for better prose. My publisher, Saga Books, in a fit of artistic benevolence, held the presses for the extra weeks it took me to equilibrate at deciding, finally, that I could not improve a single word.

Yes, I realize that this is an unusual account. But it shows that every publishing journey is bound to be unique. So when you read simple instructions like: submit only your best work, don’t be surprised if the path in execution is more tortuous than you ever dreamed it could be.