The next stage...

So I finished the herms as well as I could and packaged that chapter as well as its completed fellows (sporting their brand new titles) and sent them out to the agent who began this flurry of activity in the first place. That was 2 days ago. Way to go, Cassidy! But there's little time to sit and obssess about what he's going to think of or do with the info. ("Now he's opening the attachments. Now he's reading. Now he's laughing. Now he's gasping. Now he's reaching for the phone...") It will be enough if I don't hear from him in a coupla weeks, to give everyone his email and we can have a mass-mailing campaign of support for this little-known author. (That ought to nail the project in its grave...)

Until then, I have a massive "to-do" list of self-imposed deadlines on the next stage of the book.

1) I've started the serious dig(both video and text) on the Saddam chapter. Right now I'm pretty sure I know what the focus will be (iconoclasm as propaganda), but considering what happened with the last two topics, I'm ready for surprises. This is the part of writing I love the most. The initial hunting-gathering, shoot-em-with-my-poison-spear stage where I bring a massive mound of facts and theories (not to mention pix and gossip) home and drop them in the middle of the floor to dig through on foggy evenings. After the Buddhas chapter, I could have sworn I had spent time in Afhganistan. Ditto Greece with the herms. Will I end up dodging bullets in Baghdad this time?

But I digress....

As a result of the "iconoclasm as propaganda" slant, I've decided that the next chapter after this will be the "art attacks against the patrimony" hype that France and Italy spread during WWII. There was even that famous exhibit of damaged art with the name of "Assassination..." that chilled me. I hadn't even heard of it before I started writing... I ran across some juicy hints in my initial research and I want to pluck them off the tree of history and suck them dry. I'll need an interpreter, of course, but will muddle on in the meantime...

2) I'm going to the Nieman Conference on Non-fiction in two weeks, and I want to rework the book proposal into a killer presentation that I can hand to anyone who sticks out his hand to me. Of course I'll download everything onto a flash drive, too, for instant printing access. I have my calling cards. I can print up a bunch of query letters and neatly bound press packets. Do I have time to make postcards?

3) For fun, I want to make a book trailer for the project and post it on youtube with links on my website.

4) I've decided to cast around for some speaking ops and will (maybe) have a couple of chapters bound by Lulu to hand out... Or something.

So, in fact, I'm all about the book these days. I have 3 weeks before my next dealine for the usual gig and I'm not angling for any other freelance work.