Today is the fifth in a series of posts by San-Diego-based writer Thomas Shess who has decided to keep a journal on his journey to find a publisher for his novel.

WEEK FIVE

Dog Days. August arrived with precious little news impacting my search for a literary agent to represent my first novel and to use a baseball phrase this journal went oh-for-July. Undaunted, there is some good news. Two agents sent back notes saying they're heading out of NYC for vacation and will update me when they return. That was very courteous. Because of the attention this column has kindly brought, I'm grateful to have landed several non-fiction assignments that will keep me busy during the dog days of August.

Vacation Reading. My literary confident is a buddy, who is an ex-DA investigator and bodyguard to local politicos. On the side, he writes pulp fiction crime stories. Over the years he's done very well considering more and more paying detective mags have disappeared faster than kidnapped Tijuana business tycoons. He was skeptical of my latest "outreach" attempt to get the attention of a literary agent. I told him my advertisement in The New York Review of Books/Midsummer edition was now on newsstands across the nation.

"Why?" he asked and informed me every literary agent is outtatown on their yacht or beachfront palace in Maine or Miami. "Who's left in town to read your ad even if you bought the back cover?"

Actually, I thought of that. My classified ad is running on page 67 under the section Agency Sought. I figured Agents & staffers would take along some reading material en route to the Hampton's and my ad is now lounging on the sand next to an icy bottle of Corona.

For some reason (unknown to me), I used my pen name ThomMartin@aol.com as a contact. My buddy the public detective is sniggering. Maybe he's right, but who can take a consultant seriously with the following motto on his business card:

"...Tom Basinski, Detective &Writer:
If it didn't happen that way-it should have..."

If anyone has seen my NYRofB adv. kindly let me know so I can prove him wrong. All I need is one response. That's fairly good odds, eh?

Fine Tuning. Before our computer techie heads off to college, I've decided to give my in-house computer system an overhaul. We writers need to have up to date tools of the trade. My computer is five years old and it's time to shop. My intention is to create more storage as well as to create a web page that will do double duty for me as a freelance magazine writer and as a novelist. Because so many literary agents have made it clear they prefer a query first before sending hard copies, I decided to add my webpage address to go with the query. This way if they want to see 50 pages of my novel they can click on my site. I realize this is not a new concept, but as I'm learning on the run here it makes sense to give an potential agent access to the novel as they see the query. Also, it helps with non-fiction new business proposals as well.

So, all I have to do is wait until noon for Ace to wake up and we're off to shop for a new computer system. Mac or PC? Store or Internet? Build or buy? Next week, I'll post what we decided-complete with freshman reasoning. BTW: Ace built my last PC that has run without snafu for five years. And, no he doesn't want to build another because he feels there's so much more out there mixing on the shelf product with Internet accessory shopping. We'll see. August is a such good month to fine tune. Plus, bonding with your kid before college: priceless.

Jesus H. Krishna, What a Small Town. The unnamed novel I'm trying to get in front of an agent eyes is written in four main chapters, each about 20,000 words. Leading off each chapter is a small prologue or what I call a Cantina Psalm. Here's the opening to chapter 1 or...

Cantina Psalm 1:1
If you stripped San Francisco of its hills, cable cars, bridges,

bistros, urban weirdoes, politicos, skyline and saloons, you'd end up,

with seven miles by seven miles of nothing there, there. Bounded by

water on three sides and San Bruno Mountain to the south, the glory and

bluster of California's own Greenwich Village is merely 49 square miles

of mix and match, scratch and sniff.

No room for suburban sprawl here.

Geography saved the City's eccentric ass. San Francisco is jammed, squeezed together like fat farm habitués caught in the same doorway during a fire drill. It's a walk-around city of neighborhoods where humans touch, talk and even smell what's on each
other's stoves. You can walk to work or stop and have coffee and see
real people.

It's nothing like L.A., where you climb down from your building
and climb into your car and drive to your garage and never touch the
outside world.

San Francisco's cousins are Chicago, New York and Boston.

It has culture and heritage.

And next door to that is a wino bar.

The City's as old as American cities get in the West and,

despite its Spanish name, it's a white man's town that's run by

minorities.

And another thing. San Francisco is a woman

- the Bitch Goddess---

a limousine liberal in a right-wing state.

Tight.

You don't ever play around on your woman in a city this small.

It just doesn't pay. People get shot or knifed for being seen arm-in-arm in front of Macy's window - even if she's your secretary and she grabbed on to your arm because she's in high heels and doesn't want to fall on the rain-slick sidewalk.

Save your excuses - some shark attorney

has already slipped your wife his card. And remember she half of everything in this state, and the bloodsucker working for her gets half of yours.

This is San Francisco.

And maybe before the drugs wear off and the bullet holes heal someone can explain to the boys in the picture frame that only the bottles made of plastic don't break.

* Because it's a jungle out there.