Attn Agent X:

I am seeking representation for my upcoming novel The Sexpats: Tales of International Relations and my research indicates your experience within the new, growing genre of Expat Lit.

The Sexpats follows a multinational cast of characters jump from story to story, continent to continent, and often bed to bed. The interwoven stories of these not-so-innocents abroad form a loose novel along the lines of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio but set in the Global Village or think a young Phillip Roth rewrites The Canterbury Tales for the 21st century.

The individual stories are also self-contained units that could be published and distributed independently, which entails potential for both greater promotion and selling inexpensive samples in the burgeoning ebook formats. Also, as Annie Proulx told me last year, short stories are better adaptable for film & TV than novels: it’s an easier, more rewarding job for screenwriters to add to a story than to cut it down.

The following tales are available upon request:

“Sex, Loopholes and Videotape” uses a scheme to launch a technically-legal bordello in Berlin to explain entrepreneurial finance and, as a bonus, quantum mechanics.

“Ward of the Ring” explores the relationship between a bachelor who, upon taking a job in a machista society and company, pretends to be married, and the Latina coworker who becomes his “mistress”.

“On Whom the Cell Rolled” shows a woman catch, thanks to today’s omnipresent technology, her husband in flagrante delicto ten time zones away.

“Return of the Gone Native” sends an amateur anthropologist first to live—and love—12 years in an isolated polygamous tribe and then abruptly into our own near future.

Sexpats appeals at several levels. People love to read about work, asserts Stephen King, and readers can relate to the protagonists of the above stories who have ordinary jobs: efficiency expert, auditor – which is “like an accountant, but not as interesting,” the character quips. But the international contexts render their lifestyles more exotic and well, sexier. Though more and more Americans are traveling overseas, to live and work their same job abroad still remains a fantasy.

While Sexpats focuses on business people, planned prequels/sequels focus on other professions: The Sexiles: activists, defectors, diplomats and other geopoliticians, The Sexpressionists: the worlds of artists, and The Sexistentialists: psychologists, theologians and other philosophers.

There’s ample potential to extend the Sexpats brand further through non-fiction guides to destinations and settings, food and drink recipe books, and a how-to of making the transition abroad.

Living and working abroad these past 15 years, mostly in Eastern Europe and throughout Latin America, I know of the people, places and dynamics of which I write. I have nearly 20 years of writing and editing experience, including as a business journalist, teaching writing in universities in the US and Europe, and publishing magazines for expatriates. I am now ready to publish – and promote -- my fiction, even in the current challenging market. In fact, I relish the challenge. With professional presentation and broadcast media experience, now working 100% remotely, single without kids I am ready, willing and able to tour.

I look forward to hearing from you, answering any questions, sharing my work and ultimately, a long-term professional relationship. Though still living abroad, I can be reached at the below US lines.

Sincerely,

[Stefan]

Stefan A. Bielski

[email protected] - or just [email protected], [email protected] (can add website later)

Work: XXX-XXX-XXXX

Personal: XXX-XXX-XXXX