So this week I beseeched the Gods of Randomness to tell me what to pull out of my vast trove of rejection letters, and they told me, Lo! Thou must pick the sixth item in the folder for the letter M! So that’s what I did. But it’s not a rejection letter. It’s not even a form letter. It is, essentially, a brochure—an unsolicited submission, if you will—from the Scott Meredith Literary Agency:
The interesting thing here is that this is from so long ago, I apparently still had my name out there as “Jim Viscosi” rather than the ever-so-much-more-literary (or, as one disgruntled loser of a flash-fiction contest in which the prize was having a character named after you in a J.A. Konrath book* once claimed, only-won-the-contest-because-he-has-a-good-name-for-a-villain) “James V. Viscosi”. This was when we were living in Whitesboro, in upstate New York, where I had my little desk set up in the little space at the end of a U-turn hallway of our little basically two-room (three, if you count the bathroom) apartment, and tapped out my stories and books on a DOS computer running PC-Write. Yeah, those were the days.
Oh, wait, what was that? You would like to read more of the brochure? I can accommodate you!
Oh, and there’s also an insert!
Also: Holy crap, 350,000 words?!
Also also: When trying to peddle a 350,000 word first novel, it probably helps to be a semi-retired Hollywood lawyer who has contacts at motion picture production companies …
Anyway, a shuffle through the remainder of the items in the “M” pocket of my rejection letter file folder indicates that I never actually submitted anything to the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, or, if I did, they never responded. Because if I had, and they had, it would definitely still be in there.
I mean, after all, I kept this …
* Incidentally, I did buy the book in question, and didn’t see a character named after me in it anywhere. Meddling from the legal department, perhaps.
Viscosity 
You as a villain? Unimaginable!
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What a treasure of ephemera. I keep junk like that too and it’s interesting in ways that I appreciate and I know in ways that others do too. Thanks for sharing.
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This is a mini-mystery. It may be that you somehow obtained the brochure, perhaps when you were in an altered state of consciousness. The following morning, after the fog lifted, you clearly saw that the Scott Meredith Literary Agency was a fraud. You kept the brochure to remind yourself that any agency that asks for money upfront, which is what the criminal or criminals behind this scam would have done, must be avoided at all costs. Does this jog your memory?
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In fact, it does! 😂
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LOL, just wow, man. Neat to trail back through this ephemera as Henry astutely put it.
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I love your rejection file. It almost makes me long to submit again, so I can have one.
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