What happened to the book proposal mentioned in that post of April 25? Ah, well you might ask. Despite the aid of the Author's Questionnaire and a fair amount of work, my agent, in her quest to make the strongest case we could, kept thinking of new additions and refinements. We need a punchy Sales Handle to lead off. A couple of sentences that will make an acquisition editor hunger for more. Refined sales points. Can you get Neil deGrasse Tyson to accede to having his name used as at least considering to write an introduction? You say it is important that you have the broad perspective of space and time of an astronomer? Justify that in pungent prose. Say something about the James Webb Space Telescope, a hot new topic that is in the public's eye. Iterate on the title and explain your choice. Name some "comparable books," not necessarily on the same topic, but related best sellars to imply that my book is too, if only given the chance. Expand the list of competitive books, sort them into old and newer, explain how your book is different. Compile a list of of potential blurbers. Among a dozen others, I listed Elon Musk, an Austin businessman, and Jeff Bezos, a Texas businessman. If anyone has contact info, please let me know. List all 107 companies you mention by name in the book in case some might want to buy copies. Do you have as many Twitter followers as Beyonce (answer: no)? Write an annotated table of contents giving a synopsis of each of the 15 chapters. Re-write all that; you sound like a college professor! This is a sales pitch. Title all the subsections in each chapter and hence in the sample chapters.
This may sound like I'm complaining, but the fact is while the work was taxing, it was also stimulating. My agent made me dig deep into what I was writing and why. In any case, it took several months of intense work that then slacked off in midsummer and continued until today. In the meantime, I found bits and pieces to add to the book, another 8000 words. The draft is now 128,240 words.
My agent debated whether to submit the proposal over the summer or wait until after Labor Day when people were back at work. She finally elected the latter. When things slacked off on Brains, Genes, and the Cosmos, I worked on the biography of my father, tentatively entitled Eniwetok. There is a connection. I mean this to be not just the story of one man, but a reflection on the technology that developed over his lifetime. He worked on inertial navigation and ICBMs, a solar eclipse, the first hydrogen bomb, a proposed atomic airplane that could fly forever (at 200 mph 200 feet above the ground; it was destined to be heavy and slow. JFK cancelled it), weather satellites, and finally on the Apollo Program.
We are now in what I hope are the final iterations on the proposal. Double spaced with now four sample chapters, it comes to 41,000 words and 147 pages. There is some chance it will go off to publishers next week.