For nearly three years, his words of wit and wisdom graced the pages of The Nicholls Worth. Who would have thought that less than two years later, someone would actually pay him a lot of money for his words? Blake M. Petit, a May 2000 mass communication graduate, had his first novel accepted for publication by Publish America’s American House Imprint last month.
Publish America, which receives support from national booksellers like Borders and Amazon.com, was the first publishing house to which Petit submitted his manuscript, “Other People’s Heroes.”
“I saw (Publish America) was looking for heroic adventure fantasies and fiction. My novel is all of that, with a vein of comedy running through it,” Petit said.
“I thought, ‘I’ve got nothing to lose. The worst that could happen is I could get a rejection slip to put in my folder.'”
The original acceptance notification came to Petit through e-mail.
“I almost deleted it. It had an attachment, I didn’t know the sender name and I thought it was a virus. Luckily, my eye caught the subject line, which said ‘Acceptance of Other People’s Heroes,'” he said.
He vaguely recognized the sender’s name. He said he then thought it could have been a joke sent by one of his friends.
“I wouldn’t have put it past one of my idiot friends to try something like that, but they wouldn’t have known the name to use,” he said.
Petit, 24, said he did not expect much from his submission. He has submitted short stories to magazines, none of which have been accepted for publication. With this being his first work of this length, and with Publish America being the first place he submitted the work, he was sure nothing would come of it.
“At first I was surprised. But after the initial shock wore off, it felt really good just to know,” he said.
“Other People’s Heroes” centers around a world where superheroes exist, but are all actors portraying a hoax. Some characters are loosely based on famous superheroes like Batman and Superman, but all are Petit originals.
Petit, fascinated with comic books and superheroes for as long as he can remember, said the idea for the novel came from several places, including his love for the genre.
“The actual concept came from a friend who I still haven’t forgiven. He dragged me to see ‘Ready to Rumble,’ which is a terrible movie about wrestling. I’m still trying to wipe that movie out of my mind,” he said.
He said he does not know anything about professional wrestling, except that it is fake.
“I thought, ‘What if the superheroes were run like professional wrestling on a global scale, but everybody knows wrestling is fake, and nobody knows this is fake?'” he said.
In addition to being a superhero adventure, Petit calls his book a comedy. “It has more in common with ‘Ghostbusters,’ now that I think about it,” he said. “It’s really patterned after it. The situation is deadly serious, but how the characters react makes it funny.”
He said he draws some of his characters from real life, going so far as to make his main character mildly autobiographical. He said this practice is something many writers do, but he is starting to drift away from it.
“The (novel) I’m working on now has almost no autobiographical information. It’s just an easy starting place,” he said.
His next novel, while not a sequel, may contain some elements from his soon-to-be-published one.
“I have a lot of minor characters who may appear in other books,” he said. He also said he does not see himself writing any sequels, but novels which are pieces to a larger puzzle.
Petit mailed his contract in last week. The next step towards fame and fortune will be to go through an intense editing process. After the work is edited and revised, the publishing house will send him the final proofs. Once he has returned those with his approval and any minor changes marked, the book will go to press.
Petit, who wrote the novel last summer, does not know if it will be in hard cover or paperback, nor does he know the page length for his 90,000 words. The amount of pages depends on the size of the paper and fonts.
The actual press date is not known, but the contract states it will be within one year of the signing, which was Oct. 24.
Royalties will be paid according to book sales. “There is a climbing scale with the royalties. I don’t know how much exactly I will get, but I do know that I will start with 8 percent. It will climb as sales do,” he said.
His writing is influenced by many writers, he said. He draws on Stephen King’s style for the way King ties his information together, and Orson Scott Card for the way he, like King, creates universes for his stories.
For humor elements, Petit’s idols are Mark Twain and Dave Barry. He looks to classic writers like Shakespeare and J.R.R. Tolkien, and to modern writers like J.K. Rowling, of “Harry Potter” fame.
“I have never seen a writer as good as she is in establishing backstories,” he said. “In fact, after I read (the ‘Potter’ books), I went back to this story and changed some things around.”
Though he is about to be published, Petit does not think he is a perfect writer. “I’m still learning. It feels really good, and I was surprised that I managed to pull this off this early. But I don’t want to get complacent. I’ve doubled up production of my next novel. I want to prove that this wasn’t just a fluke.”
While at Nicholls, Petit was a staff writer, a reporter and Lagniappe editor of The Nicholls Worth. He also graced the stage in Talbot theater for many productions with the Nicholls Players.
A Virgo, he said he enjoys long moonlit walks on the beach and women who don’t play games.
When he is not writing novels, Petit is the managing editor of the St. Charles Herald-Guide. He joined the staff in May 2000 as a sports editor and staff writer. In May 2001, he moved to his current position. For now, at least, Petit will keep his day job.
