Saturday, April 26, 2008

Reading instead of sleeping

Yesterday evening I finally picked up Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik, the fourth book in the Temeraire series, which I bought last fall and never got around to reading.

At 3:15 this morning, I finished it. I read straight through without stopping and enjoyed it thoroughly--my bet is that Our Heroes end up in the Americas in the next book, incidentally. I even enjoyed the novelty of reading while the dog and cats slept heavily and a cool night breeze blew in through the open bedroom window.

I intended to sleep late, of course, but the dog got me up at about 8am wanting his breakfast, and while I was getting it, my mom called and asked if I wanted to go run around town with her. So by now I am feeling glaze-eyed and vague. It's an early bedtime for me tonight.

I got the usual form rejection from F&SF today, only one week after I mailed the story. You can't tell me that Mr./Ms. Slush Reader Intern did more than scan the first page. In fact, I'm willing to bet they didn't get further than the word count. I'm disappointed (if not really surprised) after my nice personal rejection from IGMS, but I'll send it to Asimov's next as I'd originally planned anyway. Let's hope they like it a little better, because there aren't many markets for 13,000 word stories, and also it costs a good three bucks all told to mail the damn thing.

4 comments:

Cate Gardner said...

Sorry to hear about your rejection and good luck at Asimov's.

K.C. Shaw said...

Thanks--that reminds me, I need to get that sub ready so I can mail it tomorrow!

Eric James Stone said...

FWIW, the slush reader at F&SF is not an intern and is well-respected in the field. He has a fast turnaround time because he doesn't let the slush pile up before dealing with it. (I'm not mentioning his name so your blog post won't show up if he Googles his name. But he's the current assistant editor listed in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%26SF .)

K.C. Shaw said...

Yeah yeah, whatever.