Publishers Marketplace: Rick Wasserman

This writer is looking for an agent.

Are you special? Have you mysteriously gone from rags to riches or you life plagued by improbably coincidences. Does it seem you that on some days all of the problems in the universe are centered on you? Do you careen from mishap to misadventure narrowly escaping by the slimmest of margins only to be plunged into an even deeper mess? In other words, is your life excessively interesting and noteworthy? It could be that maybe, just maybe, somewhere in the myriad of mainlines that are found in the vast near infinity of the Interweave where every story is the seed of a new universe, there is a Medium who is writing your story. More than likely, your life is too boring for that.
William de Planetate is very special, and unfortunately for him, he has been noticed.
I am looking for literary representation in order to help me publish my first book “De Planetae: The Book of the Wanderer” My first book is a 111,000 word cross genre work of fiction which could be classified as science fiction, fantasy, urban fiction, historical fiction, and otherwise. These works are colored with alternate versions of history based on the broad spectrum of literary fiction and challenging the stereotypical black and white roles of good and evil. The first book details William’s rediscovery of himself after losing his memory of the last 500 years and his attempts to escape the clutches of a madman who seeks to learn the secret of his immortality. The second book “Wandering the Interweave”, 92,000 words in its 6th draft, is at first a quick romp detailing the rules of traveling, and then becomes a desperate attempt to prevent the eradication of the classic Dickens tale “A Christmas Carol” from all of living memory. The third book “Lords of Chaos and Entropy”, 102.000 words in its 5th draft, has William attempting to bring the five Archetypes of the Interweave together in one location in order to wage war on the remaining sixth Archetype. All to prevent the events of the events of book two from transpiring a second time.
I have been writing since early child hood. As might be expected, those early works were nothing spectacular. What does a child know to write about except the world he or she is discovering, the supposed “unfairness” of parents, the secret cruelties of other children that adults always seem to turn a blind eye to? While I have had years since then for my stories to percolate in my head, in 2010, I began writing seriously. The stories in my head had grow too numerous for me to contain them, and they were too deep and complex for one to simply describe over a cup of coffee. They demanded context, narrative, and far worse, the luxury of time to absorb them. I feel very strongly about the value of my works and I have made them as good as I think I can on my own. I have been attempting to find representation for a while now and even though my wife and friends tell me I should just self publish and put my books on Amazon, I am a believer in legitimate publishing as the only way my work can become something more.
Besides, that other way simply seems like either an ego trip or a cheat to me.
While I have drawn from many literary classics, they are merely a foundation for my springboard of imagination and logical extrapolation. In addition, in this series, every book ever written is considered to be both fact and fiction interchangeably. In this I include Darwin's The Origin of Species verses William Paley's Natural Theology, or Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time verses the Bible… authors unknown. Since all science is theory that can be rewritten at any time, and all faith is simply based in personal stories that we have created in order to have answers to those questions for which we have no provable answers.
We live in a world where almost nothing is truly original and everything seems to be a derivative of something else. I would be the first to admit that my works may seem so from the first superficial glance, but you would be wrong. I have re-imagined literary classics, to be sure, but in such a way that I have to drop an absurd amount of hints so the majority of people will get the joke. Such helping a dwarf fix his steam engine and then giving him a copy of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Which he can’t read because English as a language dose not exist in his universe. Some worlds of mine are also unrecognizable purely because they were based on stories written in other universes that you will have never heard of, seeing as how we are fairly stuck in this one.
A more detailed overview of my works to date can be found here or on my website found at Celticsmith.com.
However, since I seem to still have you attention, let me give you a brief synopsis of the existing books.
In my first book, a man is rudely awakened to discover himself in an unfamiliar world with no memory of how he got there. He is surprised to find that approximately 24 hours before that, he was the only survivor of a supposed airline terror attack (if crispy and more than half dead can be considered “survival”). As such, his currently unscathed state has understandably raised some eyebrows. The only clue to his identity is a page torn from some unknown booklet with nothing but the words “This is the journal of William De Planetae” written on it in a spidery script. This paper had been found in his mouth so its provenance was not in doubt. However, William has no other answers, and on initial comparison the handwriting on the page is not the same as his. Then the writing on the page does something unexpected, it changes, but only when he isn’t looking. In this way it begins to speak directly to him and tells him what he needs to do. William finds he has little choice but to embark on a quest to recover a mysterious and cursed artifact called simply “The Book” in order to reclaim his lost identity, with the aid of a young and untried trauma nurse named Emily, whom he has only just met, and a 3000 year old Jewish “I’m NOT a fucking vampire!” who shows up out of the blue claiming to be his oldest friend. William eventually comes to discover that he has lost more than 500 years of memory, the great love of his last 150 years, and a unique power to travel between worlds. Along the way he also has to save this particular world from a sociopath scientist, and his gleefully murderous mistress, in order to prevent the eradication of The Book from all of Nona-dimensional space/time and ensure his own existence. No big deal. Unfortunately, it seems that the only way that he can succeed is by failing to stop the bad guys from learning all his secrets… the same secrets he doesn’t actually know… to the very same bad guys who, it seems, have already killed him once. In this game, success requires a degree of failure, but real failure means oblivion. He does escape the trap, but at a terrible cost.
The second book in its 6th draft set in a relative timeframe of two years later establishes some ground rules for traveling the Interweave with a brief wild romp though the “mainline” universes of Tolkien 200 years after Frodo sailed away, A Torchwood/Doctor Who type shadow time line, Orwell’s “1984” as it grinds down to an entropic death, and a quick stop at a place that might be the Leaky Cauldron, but isn’t. Instead, neglected fan fiction saves the day. This last is to illustrate the dangers of breaking the Prime directive of Interweave travel: Never visit a mainline where the Medium (aka author) is still alive and writing, because they might notice you and take control of your life as though you were just another character. To that end, the rest of the story resided primarily in three worlds of my own devising: The Randian world of “Anthem”, The Home of the Goddess Gaia with her great Fractal Tree, and the mainline for all the literary variations of “A Christmas Carol” By Dickens, but set in the city of Las Vegas rather than London. As it turns out, in the latter mainline a pair of trans-dimensional monsters threatens to eradicate that particular classic story from all universes. William assembles an army of specially trained Randians to destroy them, a plan which fails utterly, and he ends up captured and killed, a lot, and repeatedly. Fortunately the villain scientist from book one rescues him…. only to kill him again for a secret agenda.
The third book in its 5th draft opens us up to the full broad pantheon of the “Interweave”, a nona-dimensional construct of multiple realities. William, none the worse for wear for being made dead several times over, embarks on a quest to bring the great powers of the Interweave together to destroy the enders of worlds know as the Dark Masters. Despite the odds against it, he succeeds only to have the Dark Master’s ultimate boss convince the assembly of Interweave Archetypes to leave them alone in favor of an alternative path. Here we see the Color wheel of prime world archetypes with the society of Muses from deep Red, The Professor of Science from deep Orange, The Tesseract Knights (Randians) of deep Yellow (Order), Gaia, the Goddess of Nature from the deep Green, The Arch Mage of deep Blue, and of course, Lord Chao from the Chaos realms of deep Violet. In the end, all’s well that ends well in Portland Oregon, only not as smoothly as William would like.
The rough draft of book 4 is in process currently at 22,000 words with plans for 5 and 6 in the wings along with the other projects.
As is the case with all of these stories, I write large portions about particular cities while I am in them, so that I may walk in my character’s footsteps as the story progresses. Much like James Joyce, it allows my readers to do the same and discover the little things that I weave into the narrative in person. Like the English double-decker bus in the city of Asheville, that has been transformed into coffee shop, or an opportunity to sample artisan chocolates in detail till you feel queasy.
Still with me?
As you may note, I also tend to break the fourth wall as well in my writing.
My qualifications as a professional writer, other than a passable skill with the English language, are not numerous. I am a novice in this world, no doubt. However, consider this. I have a bachelor’s degree in fine arts, with an emphasis on sculpture, and yet I work as a bomb squad robotics technician. I build, maintain, and train others in the same regarding military and police bomb squad robots quite literally around the world for a military contractor….with an art degree. I have done so for more than a decade, and I am well regarded for my expertise.
So you see, I am no stranger to being a fish out of water.
All I need, is an opportunity to shine.