THE TUNNELS

by

Michelle Gagnon

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Clicking on the author's name will take you to her website.

The crime scenes are both grim and otherworldly.  The bodies of two female students are found mutilated and oddly positioned in the dark labyrinth beneath the school—haunting symbols painted on the walls above them.

In her decade tracking serial killers, FBI special agent Kelly Jones has seen some of the worst humanity can inflict.  Yet the tragedy unfolding at her alma mater chills her to the bone. 

Evidence suggests that the connection between the victims—daughters of powerful men—and the cryptic message behind the killings is rooted in dark, ancient ritual.  As the body count rises, so do the stakes.  The killer is taunting Kelly, daring her to follow him down a dangerous path from which only one can emerge.     

From the Author:

After working a variety of odd jobs in my twenties, ranging from dog walker to Russian supper club performer, my boyfriend persuaded me to relocate to San Francisco with him. I caught the wave of the dotcom boom and became a freelancer for websites and magazines, specializing in interviews and articles on health, fitness, and travel.  One magazine paid me to spend the day with Arianna Huffington, another had me profiling a young girl incarcerated for killing her lover’s husband. It was interesting stuff, the pay was decent, and I enjoyed the work. But part of me was itching to write fiction again. I started slowly, compiling a series of humorous short stories that featured the same main character (a character who was remarkably similar to me: same age, same basic life experience.) After a year I managed to string the stories together and handed the finished product off to my friends, all of whom gave it glowing reviews. They were convinced I had a bestseller on my hands. Basking in their approval, I promptly submitted the first thirty pages to ten agents that I’d found in a guidebook. Wouldn’t be long before my phone was ringing off the hook, I surmised. I debated how I’d narrow the field, and jotted down the questions I’d grill them with. That was on September 10^th, 2001.

The next day’s events threw the world into turmoil.  The ten agents I’d queried were all in New York, and their response time was understandably delayed. The few agents who eventually answered claimed that they had found my book humorous, but didn’t feel like laughing just yet. Many other packages were returned unopened, victims of the anthrax scare that followed.

And so I waited. Six months later I tried again, sending it out to some of the original agents who had never responded, along with some new ones. Weeks turned into months, and the rejection letters started filtering in. Some were quite kind, others mere form letters.

Unabashed, I queried ten more agents. Then ten more. By the thirtieth rejection letter I was starting to lose faith. By the fortieth, I was completely disheartened. The last ten letters I sent out with the kind of sad resignation reserved for the condemned.

And so two years after I started, I gave up. I filed the last rejection letter and sat down at my keyboard again. I had in mind a coming of age story set on a college campus. But the novel kept petering out at the fifty-page mark. I tried telling it from different characters’ perspectives, altering the setting, and changing the timeline; all to no avail. And then one night, ten pages into the story, I suddenly killed off my main character. I sat there, shocked; that had never been my intention, but I looked at the screen, debated for a moment, and decided to let the story take me where it would. Three months later I had the rough draft of my thriller, The Tunnels.

This time I waited before showing it to anyone. I set it aside and started working on something else. When I dusted off the manuscript a month later and re-read it, I was alternately despairing and hopeful. There were some great passages, and the skeleton of a story, but it was still rough. Three drafts later, after incorporating comments not just from family and friends, but from the moderator of my writing group, I queried ten agents. One of those responded immediately, asking to see the first thirty pages. A few days later, she emailed and asked if her agency could exclusively review the manuscript. I agreed, and waited. Months passed; I became convinced this was going to be a repeat of my initial experience. But lo and behold, a week before Christmas 2005, I received the phone call extending an offer of representation.  Better yet, my wonderful new agent managed to secure a deal with MIRA Books for a series of thrillers starring the same main character.

Just the other day I took out that first manuscript and flipped through it. Now I can see why it was roundly rejected. There’s a lot of good raw material there, and someday I might take another crack at it. But there isn’t a doubt in my mind that the end product will be dramatically different.

So my best advice is this: don’t send out anything until it’s sat in a drawer for at least a month. Then take it out and read it through again. Give it to someone that really knows writing, preferably not a friend who will try to protect your feelings. Don’t be afraid to go through five, ten, fifteen drafts, whatever it takes, before you send out those query letters. And of course, above and beyond anything else, persevere. I only know of one writer who had absolutely no trouble getting an agent. A college professor passed his manuscript along to a friend at a well-known New York agency, who immediately called him with an offer of representation. “Gee,” my friend said when we compared notes. “I had no idea it was so tough. I must’ve just been lucky.”

Don’t worry. I’m planning to kill him off in my next novel.

This is actually an excerpt written by Gagnon from the forthcoming book, “How I got Published: Famous Authors Tell You How In Their Own Words,” by Ray White and Duane Lindsay 

About the Author

Michelle Gagnon has worked as a bartender, dog walker, Russian supper club performer, model, personal trainer, and writer. She lives in San Francisco with her family. Her second book, Boneyard, will be published by MIRA Books in 2008.
 

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