SE Literary Properties (Stephen Everett)

Frustrated writer turned agent. No apparent publishing industry background. No fees or anything as far as I know, but I've been getting questions about him for years, and in that time he does not appear ever to have made a sale.

- Victoria

I e-mailed him once, to see if he was as big a spoofer as his site would indicate. He's an extremely rude person, very unprofessional. I suspect he should be avoided like the proverbial plague.

My God...is this Everett guy still hanging out his shingle?

Over seven years ago, I and a former best-selling author briefly considered co-writing a book. At the time, a movie based on one of her novels had just been released.

Her agent had retired, and I didn't have one, so I did a quick on-line search and found SE Literary...located in nearby Connecticut at the time.

I dropped the guy a brief email, describing my and my collaborater's credentials with an off-the-cuff one-line description of the project. You know...the "high concept" description, along the lines of saying that Moby Dick was about a crazy one-legged guy chasing a whale.

He replied to me a day or so later, claiming he'd run the project past some editor at Bantam Spectra (whose name I've forgotten but was definitely female) and since that editor wasn't interested, he was passing on representing us.

Puzzled, I responded with the query of "What 'project' could you have possibly run past the editor beyond the undetailed one-line description in my email? That wasn't a project--that was a sentence."

Furthermore, I asked him if his only contact in publishing was that aforementioned Bantam editor and that if he accepted clients on the basis of whether she expressed interest in their projects or not?

I mean, I really wanted to know. The set-up seemed pretty peculiar.

Everett shot a reply back, telling me he'd never have lunch with me.

Uh...okay. Since I'd never brought up even the hint of sharing a meal, his response was a classic non-sequitor.

When I emailed him back, asking him for clarification, I found he'd blocked my address.

I see by the link Everett has moved his basis of operations to St. Pete, FL. Somehow, that town seems a more appropriate place for him in that melting pot of a community that is just sloppin' over with publishers.

Publishers of Penny Saver newspapers, that is.

I won't be weeping into my beer over that one.

Everett is still active--despite never, apparently, having made a sale. I recently heard from an agent (yes, an agent, not an editor) whom he'd approached with a truly dreadful cover letter for several properties he's apparently representing.

- Victoria