Quotation of the Week: Adam Langer

In an interview occasioned by the recent publication of his latest book, The Thieves of Manhattan (on my tbr list), Adam Langer was asked the following:

“Did you meet with early success, in terms of getting your first novel accepted for publication, or was it a long, hard road for you?”

Langer’s response offers this week’s “Quotation of the Week”:

“If I pretended that my first published novel, Crossing California, was actually the first novel I wrote, I’d say that it was easy. I’d say, yup, I finished the book, got an agent, got a contract, and started work on Book #2. But in saying that, I’d be ignoring the fact that my first novel, Making Tracks, a teen detective story written when I was in high school, is still in a drawer. And so is my second novel, It Takes All Kinds, a 300-page long screed about my first week at Vassar. Also, my third novel, A Rogue in the Limelight, a picaresque journey modeled on Huck Finn and The Confederacy of Dunces, never found the right agent, even though some people (well, my mother) have called it my best novel. One of my earliest agents said that my fourth novel, Indie Jones, a slacker comedy set in Chicago’s independent film world, would easily find a home at Doubleday, but that didn’t happen. And I stopped looking for an agent for my fifth novel, an existential thriller called American Soil, when I realized there was too much personal shit in it and I really didn’t want to deal with having it published. But yeah, once I finished Book #6, it was smooth sailing.”

Source: The Huffington Post

(Hat tip to Josh Lambert for the interview link.)

4 thoughts on “Quotation of the Week: Adam Langer

  1. deonne kahler says:

    This cheered me! Thanks, E.

  2. Kathleen A. Ryan says:

    Great answer ~ I love it!

    A fantastic quote of the week, Erika!

  3. Armand says:

    Thank you for sharing this one – a much needed reprieve from our pop culture's focus on success, success, success. Yes getting published is hard. And yes, that's normal. Makes me feel a little better.

  4. Erika D. says:

    It's a hit! The irony here is that I first got to know Adam's name when he was editing a magazine I repeatedly pitched…unsuccessfully!

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