This loooong weekend I spent scanning books into my LibraryThing account for absolutely no good reason, reading, grilling, walking (7 miles in the last couple of days), shopping (for new sneakers for the walking), and battling two of my nemeses: dandelions and carpenter bees. The yeller weeds appear to be toast for another season. And the bees, well, you can see what they wrought upon my house. I've replaced their favorite boards with "wood" made of PVC. Yummy! Eat that, you buzzing bastards.

A bird just flew into my house.

When I went to take his picture, he flew out.

Now that's how you do a season finale. [SPOILERS. Duh.]

I wouldn't have minded a little more in the way of answers -- the show was on a roll for a while, actually telling the audience actual information -- but I can excuse it for the way they pulled off the final two hours. Hurley to the rescue, Bernard giving up the goods to save Jinn, Jack finally beating the living crap out of Benjamin Linus. It was all good.

And finally, a Jack flashback that was worth watching. Of course, it helped that it wasn't a flashback at all, but a flashforward. (And, I'm astonished to say, I called it before the big reveal with Kate at the end. I said to my wife as Jack was in the car before entering the funeral home, "This isn't a flashback." My guess was based entirely on how modern looking his phone was. The stuff on the island takes place in late 2004 still, and the phone was just too fancy looking. This is coming from a boy who has never predicted the end of a M. Night Shyamalan film, by the way.)

I just wonder, how much easier things would be for all of them if Ben would just come out and tell them why the island is so... well, whatever it is. Important? Magical? It's certainly making people immortal, or close to it. No one on that island ever shares information. Must be Jacob wants it that way.

And who was it that was in the coffin? It looked too small to be an adult. Baby Aaron? The corporeal Walt? It was someone Kate didn't want to see tho, so maybe... Ben? He's short. If that flashforward was just one alternate timeline maybe not... but I can see Jack feeling like he eff-ed up and thinking he "owes" Ben, which is sick, but could happen. Will the next 48 hours of lost (16 episodes per year for the next three years before it ends) will all be showing the aftermath of Jack's phone call to the boat? It boggles the mind how that writer's room on LOST stays sane.

Prediction: Naomi's boat, the one that isn't Penelope's, those people are actually the Dharma Initiative folks, looking to reclaim the island after Ben and Co. wiped out those on the island a few years ago. (Though, if that's the case, it doesn't explain how/why Dharma food is still dropped there regularly... hurm. Okay, maybe not.)

Finally, there's Charlie, who stared down the barrel of many a gun, got smacked around by a woman named Bonnie (my sympathies dude) and then saved Desmond -- and maybe his fellow castaways -- with a door and a Sharpie marker. If you've got to go, go out saving the day. He did.

(But Charlie is short too... did the island bring him back like it constantly does for that Cyclopean Russian bastard, only to let him die of an overdose back in L.A.?)

After several weeks of dead-on perfect storytelling, at Chapter 23, the big finale, Heroes kinda fell apart. [SPOILERS ABOUND]

Certainly I looked forward to the big fight and seeing Sylar get his comeuppance at the end of Hiro's blade, but the plot holes and wasted opportunities have bugged me ever since I went to bed last night. Enough so that I even had a very literal dream of watching the first episode of next season (in which Eric Roberts character is still alive, and attempts to explain away some of the issues).

First and foremost, nice as it was for Nathan Petrelli to have a heroic, brotherly moment at the end... why did they need him? Peter Petrelli, his about to go nuclear brother, already had Nathan's ability to fly. Peter could have launched into the stratosphere anytime he wanted.

Second, was it just me, or did Hiro kind of screw the pooch when he stabbed Sylar? Was Sylar serious, that he was the "good guy" and planned to stop Peter from going ka-boom? Not that Sylar didn't deserve to be shish-kabobbed (and worse) for what he's done all season, but imagine the emotional impact if Hiro had been told immediately following that he shouldn't have done that, he may have killed them all... and then he got teleported out to meet his ancient samurai ancestor.

And as for the fight in Kirby Plaza: it could have been better. I felt like they didn't have enough in the budget for a really, really big knock-down-drag-out brawl that was called for. So Niki gets to hit Sylar once, Peter lands three punches, Hiro stabs Sylar... and that's it. That fight should have been at least 20 minutes long -- and could have been had they cut out that scene between Peter and Shaft in the dream/past. (Which also was spectacularly unclear on what/who caused it...my guess is that Peter's ability to see the future in his dreams is from his mom, but this ability to interact with the past was Shaft's.)

How did everyone get to Kirby Plaza? Well, Niki, DL, Micah, Molly, Suresh -- they were already in the building after killing Linderman and smacking Candice the illusion girl (who lied... she wasn't fat. Perhaps she's got an eating disorder?). Parkman knew to go back there after he saw the painting in Isaac's studio. I'm willing to bet he called Noah Bennett (aka Horned Rimmed Glasses, or HRG), who dragged Peter Petrelli there, but if that call took place, it was off camera. Hiro could find it just cause he's Hiro, I suppose. But Claire? She ran all the way there after jumping out a window...why? Her grandmother took her phone! Was it just a guess because that's where she and Peter found her dad? Blarg. (I wish she'd met Parkman at Isaac's and they'd come together, he could have taken the bullets to save her, rather than die needlessly. Then again, Claire didn't know how to find Isaac's loft, either.)

On the upside... I thought Micah and Molly were very cute kids and I'd like to see them get their own Junior Heroes show where they solve neighborhood crimes.

It's pretty sad that emotionally, I found the season ending to 24 more satisfying.

But they were both better than a lot of the silly crap in Spider-Man 3.

Now the question is... can LOST top them all on Wednesday? Here's hoping.

From A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, the blog of author J.A. Konrath, who writes pretty damn good crime novels and also blogs A TON about how to market your books if you're lucky enough to get published...

Submitting manuscripts to publishers is one of the main reasons writers have agents. Agents know publishers, and the types of books they're looking for. They also know how to get the best deal.

These days, submissions are electronic. No more making copies and Fed-Exing or messengering them around NY. Agents send electronic files, and the editors print them up. This saves time and trees, and hopefully shortens the response time.

Responses do take time. Depending on the buzz around the book (your agent should have talked it up to editors before sending it to them) and the star-power of the author, it may take a few days to a few weeks (in some cases, even months) for the editor to read and respond.

Hopefully, a publisher will make an offer. This usually involves an editor bringing the manuscript to an acquisitions meeting, where her peers (fellow editors, bosses, marketing people, sales people, accounting people) decide whether or not to try to acquire a book.

These meetings (called "ax" meetings) rarely result in offers. Even if an editor adores a book, the house can still vote no. This depends on a variety of factors: author sales record, publisher sales record with similar books, new and passing trends, buying habits of chains, and many other things. I've heard that 4 out of 5 books brought to ax meetings die there. So even if the editor thinks your book is wonderful, there's still a 80% chance they won't offer a contract.

In the meantime, the author waits. Chewing fingernails. Jumping whenever the phone rings. Dreaming of huge deals and fearing no deals at all.

If you aren't normally neurotic, being on submission will make you so.

Can't wait for season 2 already....

163 hours after I should have seen Spider-Man 3 -- a true fan would have gone to the midnight showing last week -- I finally went last night.

Initial impression: Meh.

[Spoilers abound, but they probably won't make sense if you haven't seen the movie.]

SM3 is far from the worst super-hero movie every made in modern times (still Superman 4: The Quest for Peace and/or Batman and Robin). It's probably about as good as the first Spider-Man flick. There was no way it would out do the greatness of the second. The train rescue scene alone is probably the most heroic thing any super-hero has done on screen, ever. (Superman saved a plane, sure, but who ever doubted he could? Dude can lift a kyrptonite continent when he's juiced up. Spidey saving that train is in a different league.)

SM3 is hampered from the start by using the worst villain in the 40+ year history of Spidey's rogues' gallery, Venom, who they played exactly in character... underscoring why I can't stand him. Convenient that the black-suit goo happened to land in the park right next to Pete and MJ making out... but others have written more about how this film wouldn't work at all without an amazing amount of coincidence. For example: Pete's lab partner just happens to be "dating" the guy who wants his job? One line could have made Brock more sinister, if he'd been using Gwen Stacy to get closer to Pete and learn his picture taking secrets. Then, Brock just happens to be in the same church Spidey is in when he takes off his symbiotic suit? Worst use of a church in a super-hero flick since Daredevil. Obviously, they sandwiched Venom in for the young fan-boys of today, who probably don't even realize the importance to the Spidey mythos of who Gwen Stacy was...

Oh, and if there's anything an old fan-boy can truly enjoy, its that this time, Gwen gets saved. I almost teared up.

Sandman wasn't bad, and he looked great, but the schmaltz factor for the film was already pegging the needle. Giving Flint Marko a dying daughter didn't help. Though I did appreciate he wasn't a total douche-bag: even in the comics, Sandman reformed once, tho some short-sighted writers undid that bit. The retcon of having Marko kill Ben Parker was also unnecessary: under the influence of the black suit, Spidey would have "offed" Sandman anyway, even without the personal history.

The director subscribes to the theory that every big bad has to have a personal connection with Peter Parker (Goblin was his surrogate father, Doc Ock was a trusted mentor, etc., and they all go after perennial kidnap victim MJ, who should take a self-defense class), but I personally don't see the point. Spidey's initial fight with Sandman was for no other reason than to stop the bad-guy. That and his ever residual guilt over not acting to stop his uncle's killer has been enough reason for Peter Parker to put on the suit for longer than I've been alive. Now, this film says 1) great power + sense of responsibility * crippling guilt aren't enough, it's got to be personal and 2) why feel guilty? Flint Marko killed Uncle Ben, not the guy Peter let walk. It's not his fault!

And then there's "New Goblin" as Harry Osborn is called in the closing credits. (Would it have killed them to say "Hobgoblin?" They can't possibly be holding that name for the future...) Harry coming to the rescue at the end, that was nice. But the whole "I have amnesia and I'm your friend again" subplot in the first half was too convenient. Harry could have just as easily gone into hiding to lick his wounds after the initial fight, and still forced MJ into breaking up with Peter (it never came out, but my assumption is she did it to "protect" Peter. As if he needs help in a fight). Good thing the butler saved the day with his little retcon to push things along. Sigh. Harry should have just had a fight in his mind with his ol' pa and realized Peter wasn't lying about Norman killing himself in the first movie. But that would have cost Willem DaFoe more than a couple of hours time on the set.

So, time for an update to my Best Super-hero Movies of All Frickin' Time list (additions in bold):

1. Superman: The Movie
2. Spider-Man 2
3. Batman Begins
4. Superman Returns
   
5. Spider-Man
6. Superman 2
7. Hellboy
8. X-2:X-men United/X-men 3 (tie)
   
9. X-men
10. Batman (tie between the 1960s Adam West and Michael Keaton version)
11. The Rocketeer
12. Blade/Blade II
13. Fantastic Four
14. Captain Marvel (1940's serial)
15. Spider-man 3
    
16. Daredevil

If your favorite is not here, sorry, it sucked, or I haven't seen it, which by extension means I'm not interested so it probably sucks.

Honorable mentions go to Unbreakable and The Incredibles since they're not based on comics, but are actually better than most of those movies. It helps not to have built in expectations. Heroes gets the same benefit.

My parallel-universe self is a big fan of Joss Whedon's Wonder Woman.

I can't believe I am not at a movie theater right now watching Spider-Man 3. 

It is a travesty, but what is there to do? The wife is out of town and I've got to work. My agent -- have I mentioned that I have AN AGENT?? -- is still waiting on me to deliver some stuff to her so she can try to sell my book. And I feel like I'm late with it, even if I never got a deadline.

I'm not staying up until 2am to write stuff again tho... I did that earlier this week and most of what I wrote is indecipherable gibberish. So... 1am, tops.

I just did something I never, ever do. I had no meat with my lunch.

Seriously, the only meal I ever go without meat in some form is usually breakfast. And even that involves eggs or bacon half the time.

Lunch for me is all about the left over meat -- steak, pork, chicken, whatever's on my pizza -- and if I don't have some left overs, I turn to the frozen dinners.

Recently I read that nutritionists say meat should be the side dish of a meal, not the other way around. A sentiment at which I laughed. Ha ha. Funny. Tell that to the menu designers in every restaurant in America.

But today I had no meat! I had left over roasted potatoes, and asparagus, and a container of celery and carrot sticks and as I contemplated what animal flesh to put with them I decided, "eh. I'll try it."

I won't say it tasted better than having some pesto chicken or a burger. But it filled me up and made me feel good about myself.

At least until tonight when I down two grilled pork-chops. Yum.

Let the news ring out. Let the angels sing. Strike up the band.

I have an agent.

This isn't like Ari Gold, he's a talent agent in Hollywood and also, FYI, a fictional character. (Albeit a damn fine one.)

What I have is a literary agent. She has looked upon the book I wrote, decided she liked it, in fact seemed to like a lot, and most important, she thinks she can sell it. (As the writer, I am required by law to say: "For me, it's all about the writing! I don't do this for money. Keep your filthy lucre." Which is hard because my brother is already trying to cast himself in the movie version of the book, and he hasn't even read it yet.) If my agent didn't think she could sell it -- even if she loved it and considered it the greatest piece of English literature since Ahab crossed a poop-deck -- she wouldn't touch it.

Here's how the whole process went down, for those interested. It should make it clear that I don't know what in hell I'm doing. I'm either lucky or good, maybe both, but that's arguable...

Last year, I decided it might be time to start querying agents. That is the process of taking your novel, distilling it down to a couple of paragraphs in a "hook" that will make the agent want desperately to request the book --either a "partial," usually the first few chapters, or a "full," which is the whole manuscript.

In December I posted my query and part of the first chapter online for a look-see by an agent who blogs regularly with advice for writers. She looked at something like 500 of these things, I was lucky to be picked out of a lottery. I expected some snarky feedback on the letter and the sample, hoping to use it as a jumping off point to hone my pitch... but she threw that idea out the window when she LOVED IT. That was Euphoria 1.

Back in early February -- less than three months ago -- I finally started sending actual query letters to agents in the wild.

By my count, I got dinged by 23 agents in that time. A few just never replied, which is fodder for the imagination (do I suck? are they reading it now? Now??), though after a time you just have to give up. Usually, a writer is just told, "it's not for me" when they get a rejection letter... agents have learned through time immemorial that if they say more than that, they'll be subject to stalking or worse by morose, dejected writers. The mantra to writers is, "don't take it personally," and I didn't, or tried not to, which is easier said that done when the returned letters pile up (yep, it's not all electronic). Still, all it takes is one yes.

I was fortunately from the get go: the first agent I queried, the very first, asked me for a full. (That was Euphoria 2.) The request was so unexpected -- I thought it would be a few months before I heard anything from him, let alone get a request -- that I didn't really have the manuscript in good shape for someone to read. So I made my wife -- whom I call the Squantitor! -- proofread the whole thing over the next few days before I sent it out to him. (And that after a hapless night of trying to find a place to print it on the cheap, before I came home and printed it on my own laser. Toner be damned.) I was lucky enough to have some requests for partials from some others, too.

A month into querying I sent a e-mail query (e-query, to those of us in the bid-ness) to my new agent. Two days later, she emailed me back asking for the first three chapters. I snail-mailed them out the same day. She had mentioned her reading time was running six to eight weeks, meaning I'd probably here back from her by June...

On April 11th, she e-mailed me again asking for the FULL manuscript. A very good sign.

I was not, however, letting it go to my head anymore. I was beginning to think it was time to move on to a new project, write something totally unrelated so I could start this query process all over again later on with something new when this book got no takers...

The agent got the manuscript on 4/16, according to the US Post Office. 12 days later, AKA this past Saturday, she emailed me and said she'd be "happy to represent" it and me. The sweetest words in the English language next to "chocolate" and "sex."

Euphoria 3 hit so hard, I barely slept that night. I didn't get her message until 11:30pm -- I don't know why I decided to check my e-mail at that hour. I stared at the ceiling for hours. I giggled occasionally thinking of Ted on Scrubs. I was up by 5am and pacing and thinking and pacing.

I had to address one minor sticking point -- I still had a full out to that first agent. I spent time on the message boards trying to figure out how best to handle this without slighting anyone -- the protocol is to let everyone with real interest know about the offer, so they can respond. Eventually I emailed both, asking the guy if he could get back to me about his interest level by Friday, and telling my (soon-to-be) agent I might have to wait until then to say yes. Which was killing me. She was fantastic about it and said I could ask her any questions at all in the meantime. Which I did, and she answered.

Eventually, the first agent wrote to say congrats, but he'd pass. Whew.

I'm not sure I could have handled the stress of picking between two interested agents. I know it's a great problem to have, but I still question whether I took the right job back in May 1994 when I had two great choices. I don't need another 13 years of self-doubt in the face of my advancing success!

By yesterday afternoon, I was official.

I have an agent, people!

And it feels great.

Now the work begins anew. She's got a few changes she'd like made to the book. Specifically, make it less boring in the opening and change the title -- things that might very well have been what got me rejected by others, he said with 20/15 hindsight. And even some work on the sequels.

Then she'll shop it around to publishers. And the whole waiting/rejection thing starts again.... or it sells immediately and I become the next JK Rowling. Only hairier.

Dare to dream big, that's me.