Going Back in Time to Right Wrongs and Prevent Disasters
Time-Traveling Talking Animals, Anyone?
I recently finished writing a novel. This is nothing new, though. I have written many books, both fiction and nonfiction, but I usually self-publish them. When you do that, though, you have to do all the marketing and advertising and promotion yourself.
With this book, “Taterskin & the Eco Defenders,” I am hoping to interest an agent in pitching it to publishers (publishers are much more likely to listen to agents than to authors).
It seems as if my idea would appeal to a fairly large audience. After all, who doesn’t like animals, and who isn’t concerned about the environment and social justice?
Rather than rattle on further, I will just say that so far (as of 9/18/21) I have queried 42 agents (one per day since 8/7/21). Of those, thirteen have already expressed a lack of interest in my book. I say “already” because they can take up to several weeks or even two or three months before deciding. In some cases, simply not deciding is their decision. In other words, if you don’t hear from them in X number of weeks or months, you are advised to consider them as having “passed” on your project.
I am slightly confused or surprised about this lack of interest, though. After all, what is more topical right now than climate change (which used to be called “global warming” and before that, when I was a young pup, was just termed “pollution”) and social justice (inequality and prejudice of all sorts)?
9/30 Update: I have mocked up a cover:
…which shows, from left to right, top to bottom: Stripes the Bengal Tiger, Tubthumper the Elephant, Alexis the African Gray Parrot, Taterskin the Yellow Labrador Retriever, Rovette the Golden Retriever, Ulysses Calyptus (“Yookie”) the Koala Bear, Terri Wingfinger the Pterodactyl, and Drako Pagona the Bearded Dragon.
So what I am going to do now is paste my typical query below for any and all to view. Maybe you can figure out why my novel is not eliciting much enthusiasm from agents so far. Note that each agency requires a slightly different query (some want a short bio; most want a synopsis; some want to see the first 5, or 10, or 15 or more pages or a certain number of chapters; as well as many other combinations of various possibilities), so I am pasting below the “generic” query, short synopsis, and first 4 chapters or so.
Feel free to post a comment below or email me if you have comments about what you think is wrong, if anything, with my query (the date and name of recipient change each time, of course).
QUERY
9/18/21
Clay Shannon
axx3andspace@gmail.com
Dear Ms. Snappingturtle,
“Taterskin & The Eco Defenders” is an Alternative History/Social Sci-Fi work of 43,000 words. It is the first volume in a series.
In a nutshell, Taterskin & The Eco Defenders is about a few humans and several talking animals traveling through time and space to make the past—and thus the future—a better place. The improvements benefit not just the earth itself, but also mistreated humans and animals.
To be a little more specific, the adventures in which the Eco Defenders engage take place in: 1) Prehistoric Germany, where a Pterodactyl is added to the team, and where they leave behind a message for future Germans, warning about Hitler; 2) 1787 Australia, where the Eco Defenders protect the original inhabitants and preserve the Great Barrier Reef; 3) India in 1111, where a stop is put to Thuggee and the staged fighting of Cobras and Mongooses; 4) 1885 Africa, where the people of the Congo are saved from foreign exploitation, and the poaching of animals is stopped.
The story is told in “first canine” by the titular character, a Labrador Retriever. He and his human friend, Albert Spartacus Joad, lead the group of Eco Defenders, which is primarily comprised of animals.
It may also be helpful for you to know that the first draft of the next book in the series, Taterskin & The Eco Defenders: Tell it to Future Generations has just been completed. In it, the Eco Defenders follow up on their adventures contained in the first volume by 1) Preventing the American Civil War in 1861, after which a slave they free joins them; 2) Saving the Indians from being massacred at Wounded Knee in 1890, after which Chapawee, a Sioux Indian (daughter of Crazy Horse), joins the Eco Defenders; 3) Putting an end to the practice of vivisection (experimentation on live animals) in 1903; 4) Coming to the aid of exploited workers in 1911 Manhattan, meanwhile saving hundreds from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire; and 5) Traveling to the Amazon Basin in 1978 to protect and preserve the Amazon rainforest.
SYNOPSIS
Taterskin introduces himself and the Eco Defenders and explains why and how he wrote this book. The idyllic life that Taterskin, his best human friend Albert Spartacus Joad and his animal friends are living in remote California in the year 2525 is described.
The group (“The Eco Defenders”) determines to temporarily leave their perfect life in northern California behind to travel 150 million years into the past, to meet a Pterodactyl. Albert, with the help of the animals, attempts to “nip Nazism in the bud” by leaving behind “proof of his bona fides” and warning the future people of Germany about Hitler.
The next stop on their itinerary is 1787 Australia, where the Eco Defenders train the animals of that country to protect the indigenous people. They also instruct the animals how to prevent the ruination of the atmosphere, with a special emphasis on protecting the Great Barrier Reef.
The Eco Defenders next go to India, where they assemble animals from all over that country to put an end to Thuggee and fights to the death between Cobras and Mongooses.
Their final stop prior to going back home is in Africa, where the Eco Defenders band together with the local animals to prevent King Leopold of Belgium from taking control of the Congo, following which they put an end to the poaching of animals throughout the continent.
FIRST 4 (or 5, if you count the Preface) CHAPTERS
PREFACE
Many people and animals have been after me to record the events that occurred in connection with a small band of humans and an innumerable group of animals who joined forces to protect the oppressed of both humankind and animalkind, as well as the earth and its atmosphere. We call ourselves Eco Defenders. I, Taterskin, was an eyewitness to, and often a participant in, many of the events recorded in this book; other details were related to me by close friends who were on the scene of other events.
Albert Spartacus Joad, my best human friend, who has known me from a pup, transcribed my telling of the tale using his Doolittle device, which generated a bark-to-text version of what I related to him. This is our story.
CHAPTER 1
We had settled into our new life in idyllic Zenia amid the mountains of far northern California. It was the year 2525. I was so happy that I would sometimes run around singing, Nothing could be keener than to be in Zenia ... (in the morning, or any other time of the day).
Of course, the humans equipped with Doolittles knew what I was crooning, and agreed with me as to that. But for those without these human-to-animal auto-interpreting devices, or who weren’t wearing them at the time or had them turned off, all they heard was barking—but they could surely tell it was a happy barking.
The animals all knew what I was singing, especially my fellow mammals; But even those who spoke Reptilian or Birdian or Fishian got the gist of it. They, too, agreed with my sentiments.
The only creatures who took exception to my expressions of joy were those who, speaking the Insectian lingo, also got the general idea of my song, but did not always entirely agree with it.
This was partly because my good friend Drako Pogona, the Bearded Dragon, would sometimes invite them to luncheon, a meal at which they turned out to be Drako’s main course.
For that reason, the insects in general—and especially the crickets and grasshoppers and other orthoptera— learned to decline Drako’s invitations. In fact, they never got over their resentment of him and would hide any time they saw him in their vicinity.
Drako was a wily one, though—and quick! Once she spotted a cricket, grasshopper, locust or roach, she was on it in a flash and within milliseconds she would be crunching away with delight, her eyes closed and wearing a self-satisfied grin on her scaly face.
The Bearded Dragon also ate various worms and such on occasion (when she was extra hungry and the hoppers were hiding exceptionally well). She wasn’t a dyed-in-the-scales insectivore, though; She would often eat vegetables, such as endive, kale, butternut squash, even bell peppers and many other plants. She even toyed with becoming a vegetarian once, but it didn’t last long. It may have been just a ploy to get the crickets to trust her again; if it was, it didn’t work.
Albert (most people just call him Al, he told me) isn't always thrilled about Drako trespassing in his garden and gleaning from it at will, but he was very happy when he discovered that Drako also loves (eating) termites.
Once Albert knew about that part of Drako’s diet plan, he considered the trade even. He is more than willing to share his vegetable garden with Drako, as long as the Bearded Dragon continues to keep his house termite-free. Besides, Albert likes Drako on a personal level, and so, even if Drako didn't eat termites Albert would still tolerate her self-invited forays into his vegetable garden.
CHAPTER 2
My name is Taterskin, by the way. I am what is called a Labrador Retriever, but I don’t know why. I have never retrieved a Labrador in my life. I don’t even know what a Labrador is. I do retrieve tennis balls, though—especially when they are thrown into the lake! There are few things better than fetching tennis balls thrown into a lake. I could do that just about all day long.
Albert got me when I was a puppy. He named me “Taterskin” because he thought my coat looked like the skin of a potato. It was a compliment, he told me, because an Idaho Gold potato is a thing of beauty (so he says, anyway). I think the main reason he likes the look of them is because he loves to eat them; he tells me that the skin is the best part of a potato. Unfortunately, potatoes don’t agree with me, especially the uncooked ones, so I leave them alone.
Anyway, friends, I already told you about Drako the Bearded Dragon. She’s a lizard, in case you didn’t get that from what I was saying earlier. I should introduce you to some of the other Eco Defenders now. I will tell you about our closest friends (Albert and mine, that is) in chronological order from when I met them.
After Drako came Yookie. His legal name is Ulysses Calyptus, but everybody calls him Yookie. He is a Koala Bear. He’s not really a bear, though. He’s more like a wombat. If you don’t know what a wombat is, it’s kind of like a sloth. If you don’t know what a sloth is, well, I don’t know what to tell you. You’ll just have to see him, and decide for yourself what he is most like.
Yookie climbs trees well, and can spend hours and hours, even a whole day, in a tree—if it’s the right kind of tree, that is. To Yookie, the “right kind of tree” is a Gum tree. By gum, I don’t mean those thin flat chewy rectangles that humans eat, which stick to the roof of your mouth—humans have the weirdest food preferences! The Gum tree that I’m talking about sprouts eucalyptus leaves, and this is the food that Yookie is just crazy about. He likes eating eucalyptus leaves as much as I like chasing tennis balls. Maybe more, even.
Yookie is a clumsy walker (to put it bluntly, he’s uncoordinated). That’s OK, though, because he spends most of his time at the top of the Gum trees, chewing and sleeping, chewing and sleeping.
But Yookie is no longer with us. By that I mean, he doesn’t live with us here in Zenia. He had to go back to Australia, because—you guessed it! He missed his Gum trees too much! You could say he absolutely pined for his Gum trees. Too bad he didn’t pine for Pine trees, because we’ve got plenty of those here, along with Redwoods, Oaks and Maples; but—alas!—there are no Gum trees here.
The other three of our best animal friends who were living here with us at the time this story begins were Stripes, Marmalade and Tubthumper.
Stripes is a Bengal Tiger from India. He’s a great guy, and just who you want around if you need to intimidate someone—he can roar like nobody’s business! He makes my angriest, loudest growl sound like a soft throat grumble. He’s somewhat of a loner, but he does enjoy having Marmalade hang out with him.
Marmalade, by the way, is an Orange Tabby—a kitten. She joined us when we were in Switzerland dropping off a lady named Marianne Trieste-Trench (now Trieste-Kollenborn, as you will find out later). I didn’t know Marianne that well at the time, but she was a Security Ex-pert, whatever that is. I guess, based on the word, a Security Ex-pert is someone who is secure in the knowledge that they used to be pert, but are pert no longer; I don’t know for sure, though.
Marmalade thinks that she looks like a smaller version of Stripes, so she calls him her big brother. It makes sense that they look somewhat alike, as they have a distant relative in common, or so they say.
Some people are surprised that I, a dog, get along so well with Stripes and Marmalade, who are cats, but that old superstition about dogs and cats not getting along is an old husband’s tale. Canines and Felines just have to accept the differences between each other, and then most of the misunderstandings are cleared up. Mainly, we just need to keep in mind that we Dogs growl when we are angry and wag our tails when we are happy, whereas Cats are just the opposite—they wag their tails when they are angry and growl when they are happy.
Finally, there is Tubthumper, an Elephant who decided to join us when we came home to Zenia after we met her in her native Africa.
A man named Ward, who was Warble McGorkle’s “right-hand-man” and “Image Consultant” (whatever that is), stayed behind in Africa. I never liked Warble. Truth be told, I pretty much hated him. We even got into some scrapes with each other—violent disagreements, I guess you would call them. Since Ward was Warble’s friend, or seemed to be, I wasn’t all that fond of him, either. But, he left me alone, for the most part, so I left him alone (for the most part).
But getting back to Tubthumper. She is a lot of fun to be around. She’s very smart! Once she learns something, she’s got it down pat. She’s friendly, too. She eats mostly grass and hay and stuff like that, which nobody minds, but when she gets into Albert’s (and other peoples) gardens and decimates their carrot crop, she becomes Pachyderm non grata!
The humans have learned to hide their carrots in green tents they put up, wherein they grow vegetables and herbs and stuff away from the main garden. The roofs of these green tents are too low for Tubthumper to squeeze into. Of course, she could easily just walk right in and knock the tents down if she really wanted to, but Tubthumper is basically a mellow and gentle soul and doesn’t want to cause trouble that way.
Tubthumper’s skin looks kind of like Drako’s: gray and scaly; more wrinkly, though. Of course, she’s about a million times bigger than Drako (when at her normal size, that is).
Even though she is normally docile, you wouldn’t want to get on Tubthumper’s bad side, that’s for sure! If you see her ears flare outward and hear a deafening trumpeting sound—which sounds as if the entire brass section of an orchestra is practicing scales and arpeggios with their amplifiers turned up to 11—watch out! She is about to go on the rampage! Wise persons (and animals) will get out of her way on those occasions. But that hardly ever happens with Tubthumper. She has a brother named Chumbawumba, back in Africa, though, who is a real Barnstormer!
CHAPTER 3
“I miss my brother,” Tubthumper said one morning, as we were gathered at the waterhole—something we animals normally did at that time of the day. Wanderlust had led Tubthumper to join us on our trip to Zenia. She had never been out of Africa before in her life, and had wanted to see something new.
“Chum irritates me sometimes, but still ...” she trailed off.
Tubthumper calls her brother Chumbawumba ‘Chum’ for short, just as he affectionately and teasingly calls her ‘Tubby.’ Truth be told, he is considerably larger than she is, but they are both rather svelte considering their bone structure.
“I know what you mean, Tubthumper,” Drako said. “I would like to go back to Australia to see Yookie again. I miss that old leaf-eater.”
At first, I had a hard time sympathizing with how Tubthumper and Drako felt. I had no yearnings to go back to Oconomowoc—I guess since I have no real memories of life prior to going to live with Albert. You can’t miss what you can’t remember. Albert and my friends around me here—that is to say Tubthumper, Drako, Stripes, and Marmalade—were all that I felt I needed at the time.
Marmalade’s mindset was very similar to mine. Her best friend was her ‘big brother’ Stripes. She just wanted to be wherever he was; location or geography didn’t really matter much to her.
As for Stripes, prior to ‘adopting’ Marmalade as his little sister, he had always kept pretty much to himself, and for that reason he had no burning desire to go back to India, either. He said so, in his calm, low voice, which made Marmalade happy. She was content to stay in Zenia forever, as long as Stripes was with her to keep her company.
On hearing India spoken of in particular, though, something stirred in me, although I couldn’t make out just what it was, at first. I stood there, kind of dazed, and gazed off into the distance, trying to figure out what it was that was bothering me all of a sudden.
“Oh my ears and whiskers, look at Taterskin!” Marmalade said. “What’s wrong with him? What is he looking at?”
Marmalade’s voice came to my normally hypersensitive ears as if from a long distance away, or from underwater. She sounded like fish do when they’re whispering to each other at the bottom of a lake. So it took a little while before what she had said sunk in, and for me to understand what she meant by it.
Still feeling a little day-dreamy, I finally answered, “I was just thinking ...”
“Yes?” Marmalade prodded me.
“Do you remember that female dog I talked to in India—the one who told us where to find Warble and Mary and the others?” I asked the group.
Marmalade remembered her, and thought she remembered that the dog’s name was Spotella, or Buddalina, or Fidette, or ...
That was enough for me to recall her name: Rovette!
Thinking about her, I felt something stirring deep within me that I had never before experienced. I didn’t know just what it was. It was confusing. I couldn’t tell if I was happy or sad when I thought about Rovette.
Do you know how it is when you try a new type of food, and you can’t tell at first whether you like it or not? When I have something new to eat, I know right away that I have an opinion about it—or will—but sometimes I can’t decide right away whether I love it or hate it.
Have you had that experience? That’s how I felt about this memory of Rovette. Was it a sweet memory, or a bitter one? If sweet, then why did I feel this confusing terror of possible impending loss? If bitter, why could I muster up no humanosity against her?
By the way, ‘Humanosity’ is the word we animals use when a human would say ‘animosity’ (by which they mean strong hostility). After all, it is humans, not animals, who are unkind to one another in that they lie, cheat, pollute the environment, and wage wars.
I tried to explain these feelings to my friends, but realized I wasn’t making myself clear as I groped for the words to express myself.
Never before had I felt so confused. Surprisingly, it was the loner Stripes, of all animals, who figured out what was going on with me.
CHAPTER 4
“You’re falling in love,” Stripes told me.
“Falling in love?” I said, perplexed.
“Yes, falling in love. ‘Twitterpated,’ as Friend Owl called it.”
“Twitterpated? Friend Owl”? I asked, cocking my head to the side and scratching my left ear with my right paw.
“Yes, haven’t you seen Bambi?” Stripes asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Bambi? You mean George Herman ‘Babe’ Ruth, who was nicknamed ‘The Bambino’?”
(That was my reaction when I heard the name ‘Bambi’ because I was a pretty big baseball fan back then—I loved to see those people chasing balls: running after them and scooping them up, plucking them out of the air ... even hitting them with a long stick and giving the other guys a chance to chase the ball for a change)
“No! I’m talking about the nature show about the Deer and his forest friends,” Stripes said.
“Never heard of it,” I replied.
“Never heard of it?!?” said Tubthumper, raising her trunk straight out in front of her in an involuntary reaction of shock. “I find that hard to believe! I thought everyone had seen Bambi.”
“I haven’t seen it, either,” Drako said, quickly bobbing her head up and down. “Nor heard of it.”
“I’ve seen it, but I wouldn’t recommend it,” says Marmalade. “Too sad!”
“Well, that goes to show you,” said Stripes, “We always assume that other people’s experiences are the same as ours. Why, back in India, all of us used to watch documentaries and nature shows at the Jungle Bijou every Friday night. I would sit on a bough halfway up a tree to have a good view, eating popcorn that Brigitte the Monkey made for all of us. Good times! Bambi was a classic.”
I was bemused by this speech; I had never heard the normally laconic Stripes talk so long or animatedly on any subject before.
Anyway, I told my friends that I was still confused about all of this, and sat down—I have noticed that I can concentrate better when I’m sitting down. “Here I am, with all of you; how can I be falling?” I asked, perplexed.
“You’re not literally falling,” Tubthumper said.
That was a relief. “So what is it?” I asked. “What have I done wrong, to be falling in this ... twitter-painted thingy?”
“Don’t worry, Taterskin. It could happen to anybody,” Drako explained to me. “You could be out for a walk on a spring day, minding your own beeswax, and all of a sudden: Wham! It hits you!”
Drako sounded confident about this possibility, but she didn’t really know what she was talking about from personal experience; she was just passing on what she had heard others say.
“Hits you?!?” I asked, looking all around for any approaching assailants, tensing my muscles to go on the counter-attack, but seeing no one.
“Hits me?!?” I continued, “First you tell me I’m falling, now you say I’m going to get hit! How can I prepare myself for this, or prevent it from happening?”
“You can’t, and you probably wouldn’t want to, anyway” Tubthumper said.
I told my friends that it seemed to me they were all talking in riddles. I said, “Stripes, you are the one that said I was falling in twitterpation. What is that, anyway?”
“You described it yourself already, Taterskin,” the Tiger told me, with a leisurely flick of his tail. “And they are right,” he added, gesturing toward Drako and Tubthumper, “It is not something that can be—or even should be—avoided, necessarily. As Tennyson said, ‘It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.’”
I didn’t know who this ‘Tennis-On’ was, and didn’t really care at the moment—although I do like tennis, almost as much as baseball. Rather than pursue that thought path, I said, “Lost? I’m still a little lost, myself. What in the dogpound do you mean?”
“Wait a minute!” Drako interrupted me. “Do you mean to tell us that you have never experienced Puppy Love, Taterskin?”
“Not that I know of. I don’t think so,” I replied. “But remember, I wasn’t a Puppy for very long; I was quite the young whelpersnapper when I took my first trip in the Arodnap and got transmogrified into a regular-sized, full-grown dog. So I guess I missed out on some normal puppy experiences. In other words, I didn’t have much of a Puppyhood.”
“Let me put it this way,” Tubthumper said, “What made you think of Rovette, and then go all mooney-eyed?”
I couldn’t answer that. Because I didn’t know.
“That was love,” Stripes said, in his calm, low, confident voice, and then stared at me in his benevolent yet penetrating, seemingly omniscient, way. It was as if he already knew something that hadn’t quite settled in my brain yet.
== If you’ve made it this far, you might also be interested in knowing that the second volume in the series has been completed. The mockup of its cover is:
So, as you may have noticed, the African Gray Parrot (Alexis) has switched spots with Stripes, the Bengal Tiger on the top row, and the bottom row is all new, with Ooga the Gorilla, Rinky the Duck-billed Platypus, and Ocero the Rhinocerous taking the place of Ulysses Calyptus (“Yookie”) the Koala Bear, Terri Wingfinger the Pterodactyl, and Drako Pagona the Bearded Dragon.
Update 10/7/21
I have decided to combine the two books into one; instead of a first volume of 43,000 words and a second of 53,000, it will be a unified whole of 96,000 words. Thus, I came up with a new cover mockup:
Top row: Alexis the African Gray Parrot, Tubthumper the Elephant, and Stripes the Bengal Tiger
Middle row: Taterskin and Rovette
Bottom row: Ooga the Gorilla, Terri Wingfinger the Pterodactyl, and Ulysses “Yookie” Calyptus, the Koala Bear