Saturday, February 10, 2007

Self Imposed Deadlines and Roller Coasters

It's already a month and some change into the new year and already my self-imposed deadline is shot to shit. The reason being I've discovered two new special projects going on over at Samhain Publishing that I'm going to write something for. The first one is due on March 1st and is 25-30K long. I've got to get a move on to write the story to send, thus pushing back my other projects a bit.

Oh well. Can't win 'em all, but I'll get back on track in a few weeks. I might now send something to the second open call. It's for Valentines Day of '08. Nothing's coming to me for that one, but the first one, called I Dream of Dragons, gave me an inspiration immediately. So...I'm going for it. Wish me luck.

Well, I had some bad news yesterday. My pseudo-vampire novel was rejected by SMP. I did, however, recieve a brief yet nice letter from editor Monique Patterson. She actually said I'm a very talented writer. That's encouraging. I'll send her something else in a few weeks. Something that is not paranormal in nature. Who knows, I might get lucky. SMP is definately my dream publisher and I would love to write for them, but I'm also happy being published by my other publishers so getting that rejection letter didn't really hurt like I thought it would. I read it and was..."Oh, that's nice of her to say." But other than that...I was all right. Hmmmm....either I'm growing a very thick skin in this business or I knew deep down that it may have not been the best project to send to her. Well, I'm not going to worry or fret over it. My career at this point is what it is. And I'll do the best to promote and get my name out there as I can.

I'm going to add a few things to the story and send it elsewhere. I really want to make the distinction between what my main character Benito Achilles calls alchemy and what the actual practice of alchemy is to practitioners. Big difference. Huge. I'm going to do this through the eyes of the hero, Tristain St. Blaise. It won't take many changes or words to make it clear, I won't have to write a new scene. I'll be able to slip it in there unobtrusively inside another scene.

Then it's off to an editor. Cross my fingers and hope for the best.

-Kat

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

meer, just picked up fatal error...like you my time is very limited so I gave it to mom to read 1st but i told i definately want to read it. as for your other submissions and books you have, i'm surprised you aren't chained to the "goat-peter" 24/7. your family is proud and rooting for you!