I now have an agent!
I have written a book for a popular audience, and it has been a long and interesting process. I'll probably write about it in detail when things have moved farther along. For now, I am very pleased to have signed a contract with an agent. The book is about two projects I directed near Cuernavaca, Mexico. It tells the story of the residents of these sites (Aztec provincial peoples), and also about how archaeology gets done: everything from screening dirt and identifying faunal remains to my random sampling disaster involving broken glass, beans, and peso coins, to getting excavation permits to trying to keep our kids safe and healthy in Mexico. As I started writing the book, I went to the website of Norton press, figuring that would be an ideal publisher. "We don't deal with authors, only with agents." Hmmm, that led to a big search of agents, and instructions on how to find an agent, what does an agent do, etc. I sent off a bunch of book proposals to agents, and got a...