Undead shark for the win!

I almost forgot to mention that my story "Red Teeth, Red Sails" has been accepted by Big Pulp! It'll appear in the March 2013 print issue. 2013! Dang!

Since I've been complaining about it so much, I'll give everyone an update on my Apex submission. I sent a note this week asking if I'd missed their response, and got back a note that I should have heard, but maybe my story had fallen through the cracks during a problem they'd had with their email, and did I want them to pass it along up to the new editor? *heavy sigh* No. No, I guess not. So I waited over a year for nothing.

And still nothing from Angry Robot. There's a lot of waiting in this game, isn't there? Sort of like baseball.

Short on sleep, short on words

It's Day Two of NaNo and I've written, um, 659 words. That includes the title and 'Chapter One.' But I work ten hours on Tuesdays and I'm still short on sleep, so I didn't have time to write last night. Tonight will hopefully be different!

Still no word from Angry Robot. Still no word from Apex. On Sunday, it'll have been my one-year anniversary of that story's shortlisting at Apex. I plan to write and ask if I maybe missed their response. A year+ on a 2,400 word story is just ridiculous.

State employees got a one-time bonus this month, so I have a little extra money. I think I'm going to buy a block of ISBNs and go ahead with some self-publishing. Everyone else is doing it, I feel left out! My goal is to make back the money I spend on the ISBNs.

There. Was that so hard?

I am amused to see on Duotrope that as of today, Apex started sending out responses to writers who've been waiting even longer than I have. I like to think that Cat Valente (is she still editor for Apex?) happened upon my yesterday's post, was consumed with guilt for leaving poor me hanging so long--or perhaps was filled with fury that I called her out publicly--and went into her files to reject me. Ha! You still didn't get mine! Mine's the one with vampires in it, which is why I knew full well going in that it would be rejected, and now a year later I'm still waaaaiting.

But I kid Ms. Valente.

I am happy to report that I have FINISHED THE DAMN WEREDEER EDITS. I sent the file off to my editor, who is way more patient with me than I am with, oh, you know, magazine editors who don't respond as soon as I think they should. I hereby swear most solemnly that I will never again be late with edits.

I guess I should get to work on those edits for Blood and Ashes, huh?

Tap tap tap

I haven't written many short stories in the last few years, I've managed to unload almost all of my older stories, novellas, and novels, and this summer has been crazy anyway so I haven't been keeping track of things as closely as I used to. But seriously, where are my responses? My Duotrope pending reports are all red.

I don't mean Angry Robot, which can keep Bell-Men as long as they damn well like--I enjoy the taste of hope, even if it isn't very filling. I mostly mean Apex, which has now had an entire year to decide whether they want to buy my 2,000 word short story (eleven months if you go by the shortlisting date). I also mean the other, less significant markets that have had various of my short fiction for months past their stated return times.

I don't bother to send status check emails for short fiction. If I don't hear back within a reasonable amount of time from a market--and I'm very generous about what's reasonable--I just figure I'll never hear and start sending the story somewhere else. That's why I have more than four listings on Duotrope, as it happens. Simsubbing, my friends, simsubbing.

But dammit if the markets I've simsubbed to are also not replying. I want to tap my email and say, "Hello? Is this thing on?"

When is impatience justified?

I know publishing is a slow process. I'm an impatient person, so I always remind myself that I'm being unreasonable to expect agents and editors to respond within days of my emails.

But sometimes I'm not being unreasonable. For instance, once a manuscript is accepted, I feel I should get A) a contract and B) edits if applicable, and I should get them in a timely fashion--within weeks for a contract, within three or four months for the edits. I'm not dealing with gigantic New York publishers here, where the waits will be even longer (and even then I'd expect the contract within weeks).

So I just sent off a couple of thisclosetosnarky emails to two editors. Both editors accepted manuscripts from me last October. I have the contract for one but no edits; for the other I don't even have a contract. At this point I'm frankly starting to regret signing the contract for the first manuscript, since I suspect the editor has lost interest and has moved on to shinier projects. And since I have no contract for the other, if I don't get a satisfactory response within two weeks from the editor, I plan to pull the story. Because ridiculous is just ridiculous.

(And don't even get me started about the wait time for Apex Magazine, which is getting close to a year, when I know whatshername is going to reject my vampire story instantly.)

Heavy sighs all around

For about half a year, Jim C. Hines has been running First Book Friday, which I've really enjoyed reading. They're posts by various authors--usually fantasy authors, but not always--talking about their first sales and how they came about. In my memory, all the stories are atypical--no one ever does what we're supposed to do: writes a good book, finds an agent, and the agent sells the book to a publisher. This afternoon (because, you know, I don't have enough to do) I went through all 33 posts and reread them, and actually kept track of how each author got his or her first book sale.

It actually was pretty surprising, although admittedly it's a small sample. I made very broad categories as I went, and here they are:

Got an agent, got a publisher - 14
Approached publisher directly - 5
Tie-in novel/revived career in different genre - 3
Helped by established pro - 8
Self-published/got small publisher first, then agent - 2
Self-published only - 1

Where there was a year mentioned, I jotted it down--1985, 1987, 2000 (three reports), 2003 (two reports), 2004 (two reports), 2007 (two reports). A few authors mentioned how much easier it was to find a publisher ten or fifteen years ago compared to now.

So after reading all those accounts, I'm now bitterly depressed (although breaking the stupid lawn mower earlier today probably didn't help). While many authors said that they'd written lots of books before they sold their first one, I don't think anyone has written as many unpublishable books as me.

Seriously, here they are--and these are just the ones I can remember, and doesn't even count the awful books I wrote when I was in middle school, high school, and right after college:

late 1990s - The Ghost in the Snow, The Rooftops of Simminee Soo, some book about a dragon I can't remember the title of, Weaver's Shroud
early/mid 2000s - a different book about a dragon, Evil Outfitters Ltd., The Weredeer, Jack of All Trades
late 2000s - Stag at Bay, Stag in Velvet, The Taste of Magic, Blood and Taxes, The Dragon Whisperer
2010/2011 - The Trickster Society, Shadows over Oakhill, Bell-Men, Bloodhound (well, Bloodhound will be finished this week, anyway)

That's 17! And yes, I've sold three to small publishers with two more under contract to other small publishers. But where's my big payoff for years and years of hard work? I've queried 43 agents about Bell-Men, which is easily my strongest work, with only two partial requests and no interest whatsoever. Yeah, Angry Robot still has the full, but the odds are very slim that it'll make it to the next tier of reading. Meanwhile, I'm writing more books and editing/revising old ones, and working hard all the time to improve. I know I'm not a bad writer. I know I'm writing at a professional level. I just wish someone else would see that.

Hmm. I didn't actually mean to end up ranting. I really, truly meant to just give some interesting statistics about those First Book Fridays. Oh well.

Halfway through 2010

Here we are halfway through the year, and I have made exactly zero sales in 2010. I was kind of hoping I'd get one of those miraculous last-second saves before midnight, but it's after ten and all I've gotten today is one rejection. Still, that's better than nothing, especially since half my Duotrope listings are red.

I have to work tomorrow even though it's Thursday. Usually I have Thursdays off, but this week has been really weird schedule-wise. I get Friday off, though, and Monday. Unfortunately, on Saturday when almost everyone in the United States is celebrating July 4, I'll be working. Dammit.

My mom started writing a new story today. It's titled "We Are the Members of the Sunshine Club. We Are Spies, and Mean Girls." It's a little wordy, sure, but why can't I come up with titles that awesome?

Slow no matter what

Writing is a slow process, beginning to end. It's been several days since I blogged about needing to know about reptile diseases for the story I'm working on, and while I've finally decided to change the disease to an injury (it makes better sense with the plot), I'm only just now actually writing about it. It's amazing that a book that will take me months and months to write will only take a few hours to read when it's completed.

Of course, I didn't write at all today. Instead, I repotted a billion pepper seedlings and planted a few of the biggest plants outside. I also accidentally bought eight tomato plants and planted them. I didn't intend to grow any tomatoes this year, but the nursery that I stopped by today in hopes of finding tabasco pepper plants didn't have them but did have some really cool heirloom tomato varieties. I got 'black prince' tomatoes that are purply-black when they're ripe and the Cherokee purple variety that turns sort of a purply-magenta color. I also bought some black pansies, because I didn't even know pansies came in black!

I'm considering setting an hour aside every evening to use solely for writing. I'm not sure if it would work on Tuesdays when I don't get home from work until nearly 8:30 pm, but every other day I should be able to manage an hour. Hmm. Maybe I should hold myself to a schedule of "write one hour every day" without designating a particular hour. If I write over my lunch break, I can have the evening free; if not, I have to write an hour in the evening. And I get Tuesdays off. That should speed the writing up.

*smack smack* Wake up!

I only have four stories out right now. Unless I write some new ones or rewrite some retired ones, that's all I've got. It's not urgent to me that I sell them--I've made a lot of sales this year and I'd be churlish to complain--but dayum editors, wake up!

I've got one story subbed to Weird Tales. WT seems to have imploded with shock after they won a Hugo, and they don't appear to be replying to subs at all. Since I'm now way over the response time for them and don't have much hopes of selling to them anyway, I simsubbed the story to an anthology. And now that antho is not responding either. Is it me?

And I've got another story out at the only market that might want it, a market that does not actually even pay. I'm basically just dumping the story. And--yes, wait for it--they too seem to have stopped responding to subs!

And what's up with Everyday Weirdness? One of my stories is out to them too (and has been for a few months), and yesterday when I tried to go to their website, Firefox told me no way Jose, they're covered in viruses. Or whatever. And according to Duotrope, they haven't responded to anyone in about a month.

I don't know what's up with all this, but I'm getting kind of fed up. The main reason I write short stories anymore is for a quick egoboo. If these editors don't snap out of it, I won't even have that.

New month, same as the old month

I can't believe it'll be May in a few hours. We're 1/3 of the way through 2009.

I had one acceptance in April, two rejections. So far I've made one sale every month of the year. It'd be cool if I could keep that up, but since I've pretty much decided to stop writing short stories--unless the mood just takes me--that's probably not going to happen. I've only got four or five active short stories out in submissionland now, and two of those need to be reworked before I send them out again.

Still haven't heard back from the agent who requested my full last fall. I think I can safely stop expecting to hear back from her ever. I'm pretty sick of the whole agent thing right now anyway. The whole #queryfail, #agentfail issue recently did two things for me: it humanized agents, when before I sort of thought of them as an abstract collective entity, and it also made me realize that agents, like a lot of other humans, are jerks. Add to that the zero interest I've gotten from agents about The Taste of Magic--which, dammit, is an extremely good book--and the fact that fully half of the agents I've queried about it haven't never bothered to respond at all (eight rejects out of fifteen queries in February and March), and I'm fed up with having to deal with a middleman anyway. Agents can go jump off a bridge.

Still haven't heard back about my novella, either. I sent a status query to the editor this afternoon, since it's been three months and the editor said it would probably be two months before I heard back. I hope the attachment wasn't eaten by the internets.

And I haven't heard back about the rewritten time travel story, although I no longer care. That was the story that killed short stories for me.

So basically, the last month has been just like the previous several months: I hear nothing from nobody, and the ringing silence makes me doubt my worth as a writer. Do you know, that time travel story derailed me so completely that I think I've written maybe 3,000 words all month? I really need to stop brooding over things I have no control over and just damn well write--but what's the point, if sending the new stuff out means even more editors/agents ignoring me?

These end-of-month posts make me grim. Maybe you hadn't noticed.

How much is too little?

I decided it was time to get back in there and try and hook an agent for Evil Outfitters, Ltd. That's a book I wrote in, hmm, 2006? Gosh, it may have been late 2005. It still remains one of my favorite novels that I've ever written, and I think it's probably my strongest. That was the same one that the editor from Wizards of the Coast Discoveries said (informally, after the imprint was shut down) that she had planned to make an offer on. (I still *headdesk* whenever I think of that, so I don't think of it often.) Anyway, I'd sent it out to an agent last summer who asked for a full but who never responded (so I guess that's a no either way--No, she doesn't want to represent me, and no, I don't want her to represent me).

So I sat down with my old list to see which agents I'd sent the manuscript out to before I'd tried to sell it directly, and here's the result:
2006 four agents
2007 one agent
*wrote new query and synopsis in 2008*
2008 one agent (who requested that full)
2009 two agents

Add to that: 2006 one publisher, 2007 two publishers (one of which never responded), plus WOTC Discoveries, and you see that although I've been thinking of the manuscript as sadly All Used Up, it's hardly been out to anyone.

I'm bad about doing this, though. I'll send a story or book out three or four times and give up, because unless I actually sit down and count the rejections, I think I've sent it out to way more places than I have.

Off to make a new list of agents for Evil Outfitters, Ltd.

Long day

Mundania finally bothered to get back to me with a rejection this morning, with some advice for revisions and an invitation to resubmit afterwards. Um, yeah, I'm just dying to let you hold my manuscript for another 442 days.

Some perspective: I wrote The Weredeer in early 2006. At the time, I hadn't published a single work of fiction. Since then, I've written five novels and a novella and have lots of publishing credits to my name, including my first pro sale. I wrote two of those novels and the novella after submitting The Weredeer to Mundania at the end of 2007. Since 2006, my writing has improved to a tremendous degree.

I have plans for The Weredeer. I'm looking forward to revising it; I intend to use the current manuscript as a framework, and I'll pour every ounce of my newfound skills into it. It's going to be the best thing I ever wrote when I'm done. And by the time I think it's ready to see the light of day again, The Taste of Magic will have hooked me an agent, and I won't need to bother with POD publishers.

If I sound a little overwrought, it's probably because I also saw Rigoletto today (an excellent performance by the Knoxville Opera Co. They don't, alas, sell T-shirts, but they should) and I just finished reading the awesome The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. Now I have to do (yawn) laundry and psych myself up for my annual performance review at work tomorrow (I have such a huge problem with authority, honestly, I go into performance reviews with black hatred in my heart). Life is boring. Thank gawd for books.

431 days and counting

A few weeks ago, remember, I posted that Mundania had emailed me saying that I'd hear their final decision soon. And I did point out that it was very nice of them to keep me updated. I still think that was an awesome piece of graciousness.

I say this mostly because I'm about to do some whining about how long they've taken to decide on my book, and I want to keep it all in perspective. It has taken them a long time, but they've been very nice about it. Plus waiting for the decision is kind of fun in a really weird way, like peeling dead skin off an old sunburn.

That said, after midnight tonight they are officially the publisher that's taken the longest to get back to me. I know because the only publisher that's ever taken this long was Baen, where I subbed (a different manuscript) on Dec. 1, 2006 and received a rejection on Feb. 4, 2007, which was one year ago today. I subbed to Mundania on Dec. 1, 2007 and, hmm, I haven't heard a yes or no yet. And actually, 2008 was a leap year so they've already passed that magical longer-than-Baen threshold.

Baen rejected me, yes, but they also sent a very in-depth and useful critique of the manuscript. That still floors me.

So I've decided that, since it's very easy to say NO to a manuscript, either someone at Mundania really likes my book and is fighting hard for it, which is awesome (except that that implies that someone else hates it just as much), or there's some other reason why I haven't yet heard back, such as:

1. They did actually send the email but my spam filter ate it.
2. The person who makes final decisions is in a) a coma, b) Sri Lanka with someone he/she met on the internet and the entire acquisitions budget for 2009, c) jail, or d) St. Fraught's Home for the Criminally Insane.
3. Someone at Mundania finds my impatience and anxiety...amusing.

Anyway, we're now in an uncharted territory of anxiety. Because, you know, the whole spam filter thing....

Do Not Want today

I was hoping the snow would continue and we'd have a lovely snow day today, and I could stay home and drink hot chocolate and write. Instead, the snow mostly melted and then froze and now it's melting again, and everything is mud-colored or gray, and I don't feel very good today anyway (but not bad enough to take a sick day), and I woke up to a rejection of my partial by the agent that requested it last week.

I did send out a query to the next agent on my list before I left for work. At least the agent who rejected me got it all over with quickly. *glares pointedly at the agent who has had my requested full since SEPTEMBER OF LAST YEAR* Also, no word from Mundania yet.

The snow must have slowed down those editors

It snowed a little bit today, enough to be pretty although it's pretty much all melted by now. It never did even cover the grass. With luck we'll get more snow in the next few weeks, although I don't plan to hold my breath.

I have the day off for Martin Luther King Day, so it feels like Sunday still. I'm making beef stew because it's cold out, and I've been alternately reading and writing. I'm over 50,000 words into Blood and Taxes and I think I've pretty much got it all worked out now. I'm also at a fun scene to write--Ana's at the blood parlor, which gives me lots of opportunities for creepy-but-sexy vampire interactions. No wonder so many writers write about vampires. They make awesome characters! Mine don't even angst, either.

Still no word from Mundania or the agent. The agent has until the end of January before I start querying other agents. She didn't ask for an exclusive, and giving her an exclusive five months to respond to a requested full seems more than a little generous on my part. As for Mundania, I've been waiting 415 days. No comment. And the 3-day novel contest winners won't be announced for probably a few more weeks too. Heavy sighs all around.

very short

I actually wrote a story today, out of the blue. It's only about 350 words, but it's still a story! I've sent it to EDF.

Work on Blood and Taxes has slowed to a crawl. I really like it and I'm still having lots of fun with it, but I can tell I need some time to recharge the novel-writing batteries. I'm cool with that. I am working on short stories, so it's not like I'm being lazy.

Still no word from Mundania or the agent. I'm really hoping I hear from both by the end of the month, because this is just ridiculous.

And I have to get up in seven hours, too

I just got an email that my undead shark story has been shortlisted for the Dead Bait anthology. So at least I know they like it well enough not to reject it out of hand, but now I have to wait. And you all know how patient I am.

Actually, I am patient, but I complain a lot.

I'm reading Sarah Monette's Melusine, which I started almost two weeks ago but put down for a while since, after seeing "Slumdog Millionaire" on New Year's Day (an amazing but agonizing movie), I just couldn't face anything else grim for a while. It's beautifully written, and I don't even have to read it in a permanent flinch, because Monette starts off with absolutely no-holds-barred awfulness happening to one of the main characters. After that, I know she's one of those authors who detail wretchedness in loving detail, so every bad thing that I half-expect to happen is going to happen, at length. So I don't have to dread that something awful might happen, because it will happen. Does that make sense? Unfortunately, something that doesn't seem to be happening is a plot. Monette does a lot of walking in place, which is why the book is 500 damn pages long.

Anyway, I'm on page 176 now and only just met the character of Magnus in the last section or so. I have a character named Magnus in The Taste of Magic--not a big deal, except that I also have a character named Felix. No one will ever believe that it's a coincidence and not some half-assed attempt at an homage or whatever, so since I really can't change Magnus's name, my poor Felix will have to get renamed. That's a pity, since I love the name Felix. I already had to change another character's name, and I think that may have been a mistake--he was named Alexander, which was just perfect, but I already had two characters whose names begin with A and two characters whose names end with an "er" sound, so Alexander had to go. I renamed him Dominic. I don't know what I'll rename Felix.

I'm only yammering like this because I don't feel good. I hope it's something I ate and not a stomach virus. Every time I lie down I have to get back up, so now I'm just sitting here with Bunny the laptop, feeling grim and tired and unhappy. So I guess I should go back to reading Melusine.

Why I never throw writing notebooks away

Actually, I do throw writing notebooks away. One's in the trash right now. But I looked through it very carefully first.

Because the other day, I was flipping through an old writing notebook--one of those el cheapo spiral notebooks they sell at Walmart for a dime each around August--and I discovered part of a story that I hadn't yet typed. I typed it up and went through the rest of the notebook, and found two key scenes from a WIP novel that had likewise never made it from the page to the computer screen. And this notebook was from early October! If I'd thrown it away, those scenes would have been lost forever.

Still no word from any editors, good or bad. Hey, it's supposed to snow overnight! Maybe a whole inch!

Looking forward to...

Lots of things to look forward to in January.

I should hear back from Mundania Press any day now about The Weredeer, which they have had since Dec. 1, 2006 and which was still under consideration as of a few weeks ago. I just hope the internets didn't eat their final response or anything.

Around mid-January the 3-day novel contest results should be out, and I will find out how Hilda and Justice did. If I don't win, at least I'll have a new novella to shop around--although novellas are teh piss to sell. Any suggestions for good small presses that accept fantasy novellas?

Hopefully I'll hear back from New Fables, which has had my story "Bearskin" for several months and confirmed (back in November) that I'd made the next cut and should hear back in December. Hopefully they didn't mean December of 2009. I don't mind waiting a little longer, though, since that's a long story.

Hopefully I'll hear back from the agent who requested a full of Evil Outfitters Ltd. at the end of August. I just hope she actually got the email--so many spam filters swallow attachments whole. Once I hear back from her (and I am of course assuming a rejection), I'll start querying agents with The Taste of Magic.

Hopefully I'll hear from Alienskin, which has had "Realer Than Real" for a little over two months now and seems to be responding around the three-month mark.

Yes, I will be patient in 2009.

Hold on hold on hold on hold on forever!

Honestly, I think the second I submit something to a magazine, it stops responding to anyone. I shouldn't admit that I have this strange effect on editors. Other writers will start throwing things at me.

The editors, they taunt me with longer-than-usual response times until I think maybe I'm under serious consideration, and then I check Duotrope and realize there are no responses to anyone for the same amount of time! It's like the editors all fell off the side of the world. And then--rejection! And the whole process starts over again with the next magazine.

And no, I haven't received any rejections since Oct. 14. In fact, except for a hold request on Oct. 23 and an acceptance I can't tell you about yet on Nov. 6, I haven't heard anything at all about anything. Which is BOTHERING ME.