Anyone ever spoken with/had their work read by a "famous author"?

If anyone 'famous' has ever read my work, they've never told me. I certainly haven't approached anyone; the authors I know are too busy for it, and I wouldn't presume on our friendship enough to ask. Maybe when I have a mms in their genre, I'd ask.

The closest I've come is reading an original urban fantasy story aloud to an audience at a SFF convention, and having Harlan Ellison tell me later, 'You know, kid, that wasn't completely full of shit.'

I've had a few pages of my work read at conferences, once by Terry Brooks (author of the Shannara books), and once by Jane Espenson (who has written for such television shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Serenity, Battlestar Galactica, Dr Who, etc, etc -- she's the most lovely, approachable person with the most insanely intimidating resume).

They both had highly complimentary things to say about my work, and both said they thought I was writing publishable work, but y'know, neither of those projects ever went anywhere.

So their praise was great for my self-confidence but not a good indicator of whether I was close to catching my big break.

Not quite famous, but...

My creative writing professor in university is a fairly successful Canadian author, with I think three adult novels published and a trilogy of YA fantasy--some of his books have won awards and such. I was the only person in the class he gave an A+ to as a final grade, and he told me I was a good writer and offered to read my novel MS when I told him I was working on one. He never got back to me about it, though, and that was nearly a year ago.

In any case, it's definitely a cool feeling when someone with some measure of experience and success in your chosen field reads your work and sees potential in you.

Yes. Twice. It was nail-bitingly frightening.

But the feedback and encouragement I got has spurred me onward, boosted my confidence, and made me a better writer.

This will be my hope if I get into Viable Paradise one day!


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Stacia Kane included one of my sex scenes in "How to be a Sex Writing Strumpet."

Thirty-some years ago, I had John Gardner (Grendel) read three of my stories at Bread Loaf. He picked one to publish in his magazine MSS. Two weeks later, he and his motorcycle went off a cliff.

Back when I first started, I had a couple of relatively famous writers, one one very famous writer, read one of my short stories. All three said the story needed serious revision before it stood a chance of being published.

I submitted the story anyway, and it sold first time out to a top national magazine. That soured me on critiques.

I did have a famous writer read that story after it was published, and he's the one who convinced me that my decision to quit my day job and write full-time was the right one.

I won a Skype chat with Beth Revis a few years back after Across the Universecame out. She was sweet and encouraging and prodded me to refine my concepts.

Sarah Dessen taught creative writing at my university while I was there and popped into my kidlit and YA courses along with being on the judging panel to pass us along to higher level classes. I can't remember anything specific though, except her undying gratitude toward Mandy Moore.

Charlie Stross has retweeted a few of my articles, so I assume he's read them. And Alex Wellerstein retweeted my subterrene article.

I was a student at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, with John Irving as instructor/supervisor. I also had the good fortune, many years ago, to have a coffee sit-down, along with three other students, with Kurt Vonnegut.

Too bad none of it rubbed off on me.

caw

Madison Smartt Bell is a kind of famous author who has read some of my work as a professor of mine. He's a nice guy, and he's said some nice things about my writing, and he's also given me really helpful feedback.

The thing about writing professors, though, at least at the undergraduate level, is that I think they're required to say something nice before they really criticize your work. We've had really bad stories that have been workshopped in class, and he's said nice things about them as well, and so it's hard to know when any creative writing professor is really being sincere. And it's even harder with him, because he can be a difficult man to read a lot of the time in general.

I am in an MFA program. My professors are all writers with a substantial accomplishments. Listening to them and learning from them has been a dream. We also have guests come to the class. The one coming next week is quite well known. He wants to take part in our workshop. I am up. Story has been emailed to him. I am quite nervous but at the same time excited to get his take on my writing since I am such a fan of his.

I have always wanted to meet my favorite authors, so what I did was this: I started my own writers' conference. I've met and worked with several famous authors, editors and agents, including Jo Beverley, Jim Butcher, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Jay Lake, Ken Scholes, Jacqueline Carey...so many I can't even list them all here.

In addition, though my work in the literary community, I had the opportunity to have several famous authors at parties at my house--including George RR Martin, Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon.

I can't recommend volunteering at writing events enough. It's a great way to meet authors.

Yep. It was by accident, really. My co-author and I had just completed our first urban fantasy (which genre didn't exist at the time) and had been accepted by a small e-pub. We were very excited because we'd just been given our cover and a release date. It happened that Laurell K. Hamilton was in town for a signing. My co-author and I took off work early so we would be first in line to get our books signed. We were HUGE fans and she was only signing the first 100 people in line because it was a fly-over stop and she had a plane to catch. She wound up arriving late because of an allergy attack, so we sat on the floor in the hallway of the bookstore, waiting. The lady next to us was listening to us talk about the book were had sold and started asking questions about it. After chatting for a bit, she asked if she could read it. We said, "Sure!" and promised to send her one the next week, which we did.

Fast forward a few weeks. New friend from the signing emails us and says she's sorry she deceived us, but she was really Laurell's personal assistant but didn't want to promise she'd show the book to her boss (she got a lot of such requests) but that she loved, loved, LOVED the book so much that she was, "hoping we didn't mind that she gave it to Laurell to read."

Um. No, we're heartboken!

Fast forward another few weeks of pins and needles and we hear from Laurell herself!! She liked it so much that she told us, "I hope you don't mind, but I overnighted the book to my agent. You need to be represented."



She even gave us a cover quote for the book and we still stay in contact.

Just last month marked the 10th anniversary of that signing and email exchange and our representation by Laurell's agent.

Dreams can come true!

The closest I've had to any of this was the, dare I say, honour of looking up from the urinal to see Terry Pratchett.

NRoach said:

The closest I've had to any of this was the, dare I say, honour of looking up from the urinal to see Terry Pratchett.

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Let me guess: He greeted you with my sig line.

caw

I might possibly have trampled Neil Gaiman on the way to the nacho bar.

In my defense, HE WAS BETWEEN ME AND THE NACHO BAR.

I'm not sure how famous she is but Teresa Edgerton edited my first book. She was fabulously supportive and knowledgable. The editor of my second book had one of his critiqued by Patrick Rothfuss.

I used to work in a large book chain as a manager and met loads of writers at signing events, including Sir Terry, who was lovely, and Maeve Binchy who was so, so very warm, and loads of others. Most, I found, incredibly down to earth. It was good fun.

Wayson Choy read my first published novel. Of course, he's kind of a friend. He's an incredibly generous man who is loved by all who meet him. He enjoyed my book. (-:

blacbird said:

I was a student at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, with John Irving as instructor/supervisor. I also had the good fortune, many years ago, to have a coffee sit-down, along with three other students, with Kurt Vonnegut.

Too bad none of it rubbed off on me.

caw

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One of my biggest regrets is that I had the chance to sit down and have coffee with Ray Bradbury, but I passed it up because I had a super tight deadline, and the drive there and back would have taken too much time. Or so I thought at the time.

I took a rain check, and finished the novel. Between one thing and another, I couldn't work out another time to meet with him, and when I finally did manage it, he up and died.

I promised myself I'd never again let a tight deadline interfere with the rest of my life.

asnys said:

Charlie Stross has retweeted a few of my articles, so I assume he's read them.

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I did a reading on Saturday in front of Charlie (though maybe he was snoozing, who knows?)

It involved an octopus orgy

But I have had a fairly famous (in the UK, not sure about the US) author blurb my book, Adrian Tchaikovsky. So I'm pretty sure he read it...he gave me a lovely blurb anyway.