Publishing Karpa Talesman: A Long Journey to a New World

 What a blessing, it turns out, to be born on Earth where – at least in some places, at some times – concepts of justice, fairness, and protection of the weak are honored in both law and practice. What a joy, the novel’s hero Karpa – returned to his former existence as Copper Drey – discovers, to be home again. Life on Earth, with all its flaws and disappointments, is still worth living.

            This book has turned out to be a kind of life’s work. Though I only began it until well into middle life, it was the first of my efforts I judged worthy of a serious push for publication. And, remarkably, I found a literary agent willing to take it on, for a short time. His efforts failed, fortunately, in retrospect, because the manuscript I gave him proved to be only a first shot at the bull's eye. 

I went on to other projects, and my next effort to achieve publication was undertaken in behalf of the history-based novel Suosso’s Lane, which tells the story of the Sacco and Vanzetti case and wraps an invented tale about a contemporary search for ‘lost evidence’ around it. Though the effort succeeded, that book’s publisher turned out to be a very poor choice, and only my own speaking efforts generated sales.

            Some time after my Suosso’s Lane, tour of Eastern Mass. libraries, while I flirted with other projects, something caused me to take another look at Karpa. What the book needed, I decided then, was second storyline – not a subplot, so much as a focus on the ongoing, but deeply fractured life on Earth (not Urth, where Karpa struggled to stay alive) endured by Karpa/Copper’s wife and daughter. I had to show why Karpa’s efforts and, it was to be hoped, the ultimately successful conclusion of his mission, mattered to people – real people, potential readers, and not simply people like me who enjoyed the head games my narrative voice was indulging in.

            So I added these back-on-Earth encounters, developed the characters of Copper’s wife and daughter as they struggle with what’s happened to their husband and father on top of what’s destroying the coherence of their world, and upped the ante on the long odds against Copper/Karpa’s successful retrieval of the wisdom needed to allow Earth to right itself. Then, satisfied with these improvements, I wondered what I should do with the new MS. I had tried hard to find to find an agent for Suosso’s Lane – a story with an attractive hook: a genuine tale of injustice committed by the strong against the weak – but in the end failed and was left with an uncomfortable bond with an ill-fitting publisher.

            Maybe this time, I told myself, I should focus directly on finding an appropriate publisher.

            Searching for a publisher, in case you’ve never tried it, is a lot worse than, say, looking for a job. Other distractions took precedence. A novel based on working for a local newspaper. A novel about young people fresh out of college and sharing a house. A novel about a would-be dictator trying to take over the country.

            Then one day, reading a writing/publishing industry mag, I came across an ad by a publisher seeking entries for manuscripts in various genres: mystery, adventure, women’s fiction. Oh, I thought, and here’s an interesting genre: speculative fiction. Well, said self to self, I think I have one of those.

            I’ll just give the MS quick brush-up and proof-read, I told myself. If you’ve ever sat down with a book length MS to proofread, you may think it’s going to take a couple of hours, but it ends up taking a couple of weeks. Or months.

            Eventually, I traveled to the ends of the Urth with Karpa sufficiently comfortably (and often) to judge the novel MS was ready for prime time consideration. Months after I submitted the MS, the publisher called me up to say that my novel had won the competition, if it was still available for publication. I did not pretend that other publishers had been food-fighting over the right to publish it. 

           Shortly after publication rights were secured, Covid walked among us. The world seemed to stop turning. (Maybe Copper/Karpa should have been dispatched to the stars again to see what was up.)

           I cannot say how happy I am that my speculative fiction travel narrative has finally seen the light of day. 

           It's almost enough to make me want to write another one.