What I Wanna Know

The First Magnus headquarters in Tucson, April 2007

A story on ere.net says that FMFC will be filing Chapter 11. (A news story out of Hawaii says the same, attributed to "sources.") They mentioned that the FMFC website now only has one page, containing a notice about no new loans and such. I went to the site to read the notice, but it stopped loading partway through. When I reloaded, the entire page (at least according to Firefox and my dial-up connection) was the following:

Employees looking for HR information should check back soon.

Another reload, and that was preceded by a single sentence aimed at borrowers. The page source lists the earlier notice as a jpg, but it doesn't seem to be online now.

It's not just morbid or idle curiosity for me. My effort to file for unemployment online today was hampered by two things: an Adobe updater for Acrobat deciding to reboot my computer without my permission, and my lack of knowledge whether my final paycheck from First Magnus Financial Corp, due on Monday the 20th but expected to be "delayed," will include any vacation pay, and if so, how many hours' worth. Heck, I don 't even remember what my annual salary was, although I can and should look that up in my 2006 TurboTax forms. An article in the Arizona Daily Star said to call FMFC's main number with HR questions. I did, and got a recording that routed employees to a voice mail box. John says I shouldn't expect a reply, but I'm not quite that cynical, even though so far there hasn't been one. It's only been an hour or two, and the HR people are all friends of mine. I always tried to keep them amused with little quips in my emails about payroll reports and stop payment requests.

Meanwhile, the Arizona Department of Financial Institutions filed a complaint against First Magnus over the closing. The article about this, from the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, says something about pulling FMFC's license and fining it for shutting down so abruptly, and not providing regulators with info on pending loans and financial condition. This all seems a bit absurd to me. It doesn't look as though First Magnus is going to have any need of a license, ever again. And fining a company that suddenly has no money, and for not providing info that it has no employees to prepare, doesn't seem very reasonable. Heck, I was in the accounting department, and now there isn't one. Who is supposed to prepare the reports? The company founders? The lawyers? This is exactly why it didn't make sense to me that we were all sent home yesterday. Even a company that's just gone under needs someone to do that accounting stuff. The only thing I can figure is that an outside firm will be brought in to do it, many one that specializes in bankruptcies and forensic accounting. But it still seems that people who know their own pieces of FMFC's accounting puzzle could be helpful in doing this.

I haven't accomplished much today. I've talked one of the temp agency managers, and started that unemployment app, and searched Google News, and done some dishes, and researched and written two paragraphs about James Thurber on Wikipedia. Where has the rest of the day gone? But I'm still trying to convince my brain to stop thinking about the July depreciation entry and the 1072 rec (no, you're not meant to know what that means). It seems to be a little hard at the moment to think about anything that's entirely unrelated to First Magnus or finding a different job.

But in the good news department (well, potential good news, but only if I get more bad news first), my friend Linda emailed me some leads on YA publishers. If DAW says no, I now know exactly where the manuscript is going next.

Aha! I just refreshed the Google News tab, and found a helpful news story just posted on www.azstarnet.com by the Arizona Daily Star. Although there's some question about whether paychecks will be mailed Monday as originally scheduled, and whether direct deposit is still set up for employees, it does sound like the payroll is coming soon, in some form. Meanwhile, Pima County’s One-Stop Career Centers has set up a hotline for former First Magnus employees. (The number is 243-6677, in case anyone from First Magnus happens to read this.) I've already called it and left voicemail with my number and email address.

First Magnus itself is going to host a job fair for former employees only on Monday, Aug. 27, at the Westin La Paloma. John is hoping I'll already be employed by then. It bothered me a little that it's being held at one of the high end resorts (although it is off-season), but it turns out the resort is donating the space, a pretty classy thing to do! There's also a job fair set for next Friday, sponsored by local mortgage industry folks, but that's for underwriters and processors and such, not, I assume, accountants.

Another Friday news article quotes from the bigwigs and gives better numbers and perspective on the company's history. The impression I get from this, and everything I've read, is that given their past success in the way the company did business, and the company's relatively responsible lending practices, the officers thought they could ride out the storm and keep everything afloat. Instead, the people who loaned the money and the people who bought the mortgages suddenly bailed out, leaving First Magnus high and dry.

Am I angry and bitter over all this? No. Am I saddened? Yes.

Karen

Update: The web site now has a FAQ for FMFC employees, with more info said to be "Coming Soon." That's a step in the right direction!

The Right Angle; Evidence of a Promise Kept

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Snap a picture of something at an angle. Don't tilt your camera, take a picture of something at an angle to your camera. Tilts, slopes, angles, inclines, downgrades -- they're all up for a picture.

What, you mean like this?

Probably hit by a truck at some point

The truth is, I've been overthinking this particular photo shoot concept. What does it mean, "at an angle to your camera?" Assuming the camera is aimed more or less parallel to the ground, then anything that isn't perpendicular to the ground, such as poles and buildings, is at an angle to it, or on a curve. And anyway, what about a right angle? That's an angle, too, the most famous angle of all. So perpendicular to the ground is at an angle, too. It's just not an unusual or unexpected angle.

Yep, overthinking.

Parking lot markings and curbstones at Cherrybell Station

I've taken something like 45 pictures over the last couple of days, many of them attempts to do something interesting with this angle theme. But I've decided to only use photos taken in and around Cherrybell Station at lunchtime today.

Speed bump and handicap access / crosswalk

Regular readers may remember the name Cherrybell Station on Cherrybell Strav. (Strav, in case you're wondering, is someone's bright idea of combining the terms "Street" and "Avenue" to denote a street that goes at an angle relative to the city's N-S-E-W grid.) It's the main post office, down off 22nd Street near the railroad bridge.

And this is why I was there. In that box on the counter, coincidentally at an angle relative to the camera, is the full manuscript of Heirs of Mâvarin, addressed to the Submission Editor at DAW Books. Also in there are my much agonized-over cover letter and a packet containing a return label and $9.00 in stamps, sufficient to cover postage on a Flat Rate Priority Mail box. Not enclosed: a return box (wouldn't fit) and a synopsis (they specifically say they want the full manuscript instead). The address label on the box is the one I printed off the USPS web site on Saturday; it's not dated so it should be okay - I hope!

Notice that just the little bit of an angle here has a huge effect on the perspective, and the apparent angles that the camera sees and, it seems to me, exaggerates. Really, you can have a camera straight on relative to something, and it's still not going to look parallel to the lens. Vanishing point, anyone?

Tonight I edited Chapter Five of Another Mâvarin, which is Chapter 16 of Mages of Mâvarin overall. I managed to complete an unfinished scene and fix some timing issues (again), and discovered another, major dating discrepancy that I have to fix in upcoming chapters. At the moment it only takes Cathma and Rani Lunder two days to complete a three day journey. Oops! Actually, it may be that the actual scenes are right but my date headers are wrong; I'll have to see. I use a "dateline" at the beginning of each chapter and whenever a new day begins, to help me (and possibly the reader) keep track of things. It's possible that I just failed to put one where a new day began, throwing off my subsequent datelines.

Still, I'm really, really happy with the way it's going.

A friend of mine occasionally sends me emails about what's "hot" in publishing right now, and asks me whether I can position the Mâvarin books accordingly. Is it supernatural romance? Is a tengrem a kind of werecreature? The answer to these questions tends to be "no." So it amuses and cheers me to stand in a theater hallway, looking at posters for several upcoming fantasy films, having just watched one of those films and seen the trailers for three others. Harry Potter sets records, and now suddenly every other fantasy series with kids or teenagers as protagonists is being made into a movie. And that professional writer at church, the one who read Harry Potter in Italy, referred to fantasy trilogies themselves as "hot." Heck, I have one of those. Kevin points out that the granddaddy of all fantasy trilogies, the one about that Frodo fellow and his friends, isn't really a trilogy at all, but just a really long novel in three volumes. Well, so is mine. Funny how that works.

Karen

A Quick Note Before Bed

Not much to report tonight, and I don't want to take the time anyway, losing more sleep to craft some long rant or photo essay. I mostly just have a few updates for you:


1. So That's "What!"

My friend Kevin told me today that someone told him that a section of roof had blown off my neighborhood Taco Bell. That's why they suddenly tore down a store that had been doing decent business.

2. Reporting as ordered.

Largely on Scalzi's recommendation in Whatever, I went to see Stardust today. I give it a B+. Good actors (De Niro was especially fun to watch, and the relative unknown in the lead role was delightfully Brendan Fraserish), likable characters and amusing moments, but somehow it didn't quite have the oomph for me.

3. Harry Potter in Italy

An acquaintance at church, a writer, told me today about his recent Harry Potterised vacation in Italy. He was staying in a medieval house in Tuscany with his wife and daughter, and they had nothing better to do at night than read the last Harry Potter book aloud to each other. Sounds like fun, especially in a house that, in his words, "looked like it would fit right in at Hogsmeade." He also reported seeing the English version of the book for sale in a number of stores, and one or more people reading it wherever he went. Neat! Personally, i just finished rereading the third book in the series.


4. No, I haven't forgotten. Not when I've just finished editing two chapters from Another Mâvarin (Chapters Three and Four, or Fourteen and Fifteen in the trilogy as a whole). My main issue with it at the moment is that four years ago at least, I moved a key scene from Chapter 19 or later all the way to Chapter Fourteen, causing serious continuity issues. I thought it made more sense for Lorsuma to start messing with Carli a few days earlier than previously established, but it doesn't seem worth all the collateral damage to the storyline. I think I'm going to give a plausible reason to delay her actions back to the later chapter.

And yes, I'll mail the package, and no, I really didn't have what I needed to mail it yesterday.

Good night!

Karen

What I Accomplished Today...And What I Didn't

The weird effect here is from a dirty window and accidental flash.

It's been an interesting day. I tried to mail my manuscript to DAW, took some amazing photos of clouds and mountains, called two friends long distance for no reason, and spent pretty much every other waking minute on Mages of Mâvarin.

Cherrybell Station, on Cherrybell Strav.

I expect you caught the word "tried" in the paragraph above. No, I didn't get it mailed. I packed it up, found a way to print labels (on plain paper, unfortunately) from the USPS site, and drove down to Cherrybell Station, the main post office here in Tucson. But there were two problems. One, I couldn't get the right Priority Mail box or envelope from the self-serve lobby, and two, anything over thirteen ounces now has to be given to a postal employee in person. My package will weigh over six pounds. So I'll have to do it on Monday.

22nd St. near Cherrybell, looking west

Cherrybell and 22nd again.

But I got it weighed properly, anyway, and I really enjoyed the drive down there and back, because the sky was as gorgeous as I've ever seen it. Most of the photos in this entry are unedited except for size and cropping and a "sharpen lightly". A few are lightened a bit, but really, the sky was pretty much like that. The monsoon isn't quite over yet, despite the fact that my car thermometer said 101 degrees. And clearly, it wasn't really a "dry heat".

On the 22nd St. railroad bridge, looking west

22nd St. railroad bridge, looking east

Back at home afterward, I moved some scenes around so I could end An Adept in Mâvarin with Chapter 11, and rewrote two scenes to give them more closure. As it stands now, Rani take a moment to consider the fact that if he walks in the Palace, terrible things are going to happen to him, because he's been warned and he knows his enemies are inside. Then he walks in anyway, because he's a hero and he has to try to save the country and the people he loves. The End.

The scenes that follow, in which Rani and Cathma and Crel are all kidnapped, Darsuma loses her battle for self-determination and Fabi encounters a mysterious man from his past, are all in Another Mâvarin now, where they belong. I even managed to even out some chapter lengths a bit, renamed two chapters to keep then thematically relevant, and did my first complete word count in probably about five years. The word count file, which has stopped crashing since that MS Office update, now reflects each individual volume of the trilogy, and every one of the 35 chapters is now labeled and paginated for the volume it's in, not just the trilogy as a whole. All my specialized formatting styles are now in use in each document, the two spaces after periods are now single spaces, and tabs at the beginnings of paragraphs have been replaced by indents. Ta-dah! And it only took all evening and half the night!

That's all right. It needed to be done; it's all stuff I've put off for years. Now I can concentrate on the actual text, the continuity and half-written scenes and such. And Adept is essentially done ready to go. With an ending, even! Hooray!

Karen

Not This Time, Thank You

Yes, well, I'm not surprised that it happened again, although at one point I had my hopes up that this time, the input would be less contradictory.

You see, as of draft #5 of the cover letter to DAW, two beta readers think it's fine, one thinks I should go back to draft #4, and the fourth reader pretty much wants me to scrap it and start over.

Last time I worked on this letter, a major revision of last year's letter to Tor, pretty much the same thing happened. The more I revised it based on my friends' suggestions (and my own judgment and insecurities), the more my friends complained it was getting farther away from acceptability. Unable to reconcile the contradictory advice, I got discouraged, and completely lost confidence in the letter. So I put it away for two months.

That does nobody any good at all.

So this time, I'm not going to let that happen. After giving due consideration to the latest round of suggestions, I'm mostly going to ignore them. Oh, I may change the letterhead from color to black, and I've taken the tag line off the bottom, but that's the end of it.

I don't believe there is anything in the cover letter at this point that will actually prevent a first reader from proceeding to the manuscript itself. It doesn't have spelling, grammar or punctuation errors, it doesn't say anything stupid (either self-deprecating or self-aggrandizing), and it follows the publisher's guidelines, such as they are, as well as the standard advice about cover letters. And happily for me, DAW takes the whole manuscript, so it's a clean, one-step submission process. If the first reader gets to page 11 or so, they'll probably keep going from there. And I think the first ten pages are intriguing enough to make that happen. If they aren't, the cover letter won't make a difference, either way.

Oh, that's handy: M.S. Word was "not responding"

The next step is to go through the entire manuscript of Heirs of Mâvarin one more time, proofreading and tightening and tweaking, and updating the word count document accordingly. Tonight I cut about 30 words from Chapter One. I was partway through Chapter Two when my computer decided to only show me a blank page where my Word documents ought to be. So I rebooted (which takes about 15 minutes because of Norton and backups and such), and redid as many of my Chapter Two revisions and I could find and remember.

This probably isn't enough paper.

And when all that's done, the printing begins. We're right are the 16-month mark since I mailed three chapters to Tor. It's definitely time to try again.

Karen

WWQ: After the Fanfic

New Writer's Weekly Question #4:

Is fan-fiction a genre that is an acceptable form of expression, or is it just a version of finger-painting for adults? Explain.

Also:

Have you ever or do you currently write fan-fiction? If you yes for either question, why did you choose to do it, and what sort of benefit did you gain from this experience?

Extra Credit:

If you write fan-fiction, please leave a link either in your post or in the comments. Please link to something that's not R or X-rated, as this is a "family show."

This particular question grew out of a writing prompt involving Doctor Who, which has not generated much response so far. Given my current level of obsession with the Doctor, you might think this would be something I'd jump at the chance to do; but no, it wasn't. I couldn't make myself do that writing prompt at all, for a couple of reasons. The main one is that I pretty much deliberately left fanfic behind a decade ago; it just feels kind of wrong for me to do that now. The other is that I generally avoid fiction writing prompts of any sort. Given all the productive fiction writing I should be doing (and am not doing enough), the last thing I need is to take on an obligation to write fiction that doesn't add to my body of work with characters of my own devising.

Now on to the particulars:

Is fan-fiction a genre that is an acceptable form of expression, or is it just a version of finger-painting for adults? Explain.

Writing fan fiction isn't so much finger painting as the creative writing equivalent of riding a bike with training wheels, or starting with a paint-by-number picture and customizing from there. Most of your word building and character development is already done for you. All you have to do is add any customized characters you want, add plot and dialogue and theme (optional), and voila! You've got a story. Mind you, even that's not necessarily easy, and many fanfic writers fail to draft a competent story. Still, it does give amateur and beginning writers (and sometimes experienced ones) a leg up in writing the story, and it's good practice as well as being just plain fun. When you're a fan of a book series, movie, tv show or character, there's a definite allure to exploring what would happen if Character A met Character B and did C. Heck, as I waited for the Doctor Who story "Utopia" to air after seeing that preview clip, I found myself on several occasions running lines in my head for the Doctor and Jack to say. But I didn't write them down. No indeed!

Even so, it is certainly a valid form of expression, providing a creative outlet for writers and enjoyment to readers, and generally doing a franchise's copyright holders more good than harm. And it can lead to better things. Many fanfic writers progress to writing tie-in books, which are essentially authorized fanfic. Others move on to writing their own characters exclusively, incorporating what they learned while writing about Captain Kirk, the Doctor or whoever. And that's a good thing. Nor is fan fiction necessarily of less than professional quality. Most of it certainly is, but not all. Still, there probably aren't too many writers at that skill level who work exclusively in an genre for which they will never be paid for their work.

Have you ever or do you currently write fan-fiction? If you yes for either question, why did you choose to do it, and what sort of benefit did you gain from this experience?

I wrote one 14-page script in junior high or possibly high school, in which a friend and I saved the Enterprise. Pretty standard Mary Sue beginnings, really. A few years after that I wrote satirical fiction about Paramount lawyers, but not about Star Trek itself. I didn't write a full-fledged fanfic story until 1990 and 1991, when I serialized a Doctor Who / Quantum Leap novella in TARDIS Time Lore, with the pun titled Paradox: Two Doctors in Time. Other than that I wrote

• a short story for Julie B's Quantum Chain, about a disabled student filmmaker trying to stop a knife fight;
• a story about Sam Beckett getting home overnight, which I don't think was ever published;
• an unfinished story about one of Al Calavicchi's daughters, discovering she didn't exist in the original history;
• an April Fool's fragment for TARDIS Time Lore, "Time and Tide Melt the Snowman", involving the Seventh Doctor with Ian and Barbara; and
• the first installment of an unfinished serial about Ace being the Doctor's daughter.

None of it's online, or even on my hard drive. It was all well over a decade ago. But I enjoyed doing it, and the ones I actually finished helped me to avoid getting stuck as I turned to writing original fiction. Eventually the fan stuff fell away. I'm not ashamed of it, but I'm not going back to it, either. These days when I need a literary crutch, I bring in Black Rose Kate or Ariel Allegra to help me out.

If you'd like to participate in the Writer's Weekly Question, write up your answer in your own journal, and post your link here. Have fun!

Karen

P.S. I forgot to mention that I did get back to work on the DAW cover letter, finally. The main thing I did was tone down the pretentious and defensive sentence about a "hidden royalty trope" without removing it entirely. If my beta readers don't absolutely hate the letter as it stands now, I'll probably print out and mail the novel this week - and start count months since sending the novel to DAW, instead of the months since sending three chapters to Tor, which are pretty much irrelevant at this point. KFB

Two TV Shows and Three Books

Aww, heck. I forgot this was Weekend Assignment night. Time to shoehorn something tv-related into my already-posted entry. I'll fix it up some time tomorrow.

Weekend Assignment #167: You watched some bad TV as a kid. Tell us your favorites. Now, this doesn't mean you realized at the time it was bad. Just now, in the fullness of time, you recognized that your viewing choices left something to be desired. For the purposes of this assignment, try to stick with shows that were aimed at kids, although if you can't think of any, prime time shows are okay as well.

Extra Credit: How much TV did you watch when you were a kid? A lot? A little?

Y'know, I don't really remember watching anything all that bad. The Bullwinkle Show and George of the Jungle are still great stuff, and even The Jetsons had their moments. Quick Draw McGraw is still surprisingly good, whereas I never liked The Magilla Gorilla Show (except for the theme song). The animated Star Trek series wasn't great visually, but the scripts were mostly decent, and anyway I was in high school by then.

The low key live action series Captain Kangaroo I haven't seen in decades, but my memories say that it was something extraordinary. I was bored by the Mickey Mouse Club reruns, but they weren't actually bad tv, and they weren't a favorite. The George Reeves Superman holds up surprisingly well today, so that doesn't qualify, either.

I guess if I have to choose something (and that's the game, isn't it?), then I'll go with one live action show and one cartoon series. Let's face it: The Munsters is bad. I'm sure I watched it, and had a certain fondness for the characters, but the actual stories are pretty awful, and the premise doesn't make a lot of sense. Exactly how are a vampire, a werewolf and a Frankenstein monster related? The Addams Family wasn't much better for actual plot content, but Morticia, Gomez, Uncle Fester, Thing and Lurch were wonderful characters, series composer Vic Mizzy's music was outstanding, and their "house is a museum" - a true Museum of the Weird.

On the animated series end of things (and this was pre-Scooby Doo, a show I never liked much), my big favorite one year was Wacky Races. The darn thing only had one plot: the same group of gimmicky, ill-defined characters race each time, with Dick Dastardly and Muttley cheating in an attempt to win. Their machinations backfire, and some other randomly-selected character wins the race for no particular reason. Yeegh. Can you believe that Michael Maltese, the great writer of What's Opera, Doc? and other classic cartoons under Chuck Jones, is one of the writers credited for this travesty? Well, he is. The only reason I liked this show, other than a certain weakness for Muttley and for Penelope Pitstop, was that my neighbors the Stockwell kids and I were heavily into Hot Wheels cars at the time, and the cereal box character Quisp, who appeared during the show's commercial breaks. These considerations do not good show make. But you know what? I have a Hot Wheels-style Wacky Races car floating around here somewhere, so you know I still have a small soft spot for the show.

On the Extra Credit: are you kidding? I watched a heck of a lot of tv growing up. I don't regret it one bit.

And now for the books:

The Last Colony by John Scalzi

Last night I got sufficiently sucked into John Scalzi's The Last Colony that I stayed up way too late and finished it. I don't want to write about the book in any detail tonight, but I have two quick points to make on the subject:

1. This final volume of the Old Man's War trilogy is probably the best of the three. It's certainly the best in plotting and pace, and matches the others in likable characters and clever dialogue.
2. Although this is intended to be the last book in the series - Scalzi said that night in Scottsdale that he metaphorically "blew up the universe" at the end of it - a further sequel would be much more doable than the author believes. If Sherlock Holmes can return from Reichenbach Falls, John Perry, his friends or relatives can certainly have interesting further adventures in the brave new world in which they find themselves at the end of the trilogy. I'm not suggesting that the author should be trapped by popularity into writing more of the same for the rest of his career. I'm just saying that he can write at least one more, in the fullness of time, if he chooses to do so.

Doctor Who: The Inside Story by Gary Russell


I've met Gary Russell several times over the years, but that's not why I bought this. Billed as "The Definitive Guide to the Making of the New Series," it was the best of the Doctor Who books at Borders this evening, and only two dollars more including tax than the $25 gift card I came across in my wallet the other day. I was kind of hoping for a recent Doctor Who novel that looked good, by an author whose name I recognized - Gary Russell for example - but they were all hardbacks, and none of them looked very promising. So I picked up this "making of" instead, and yes, I'm enjoying it.

Heirs of Mâvarin by Karen Funk Blocher

Last night's cover letter has gone to a second draft in response to suggestions, and I think (hope!) it's nearly good enough send out. One of the bits I worked on added started out something like this:

Nominally for adults, this bildungsroman, with its teenage protagonists, should have crossover appeal in today’s young adult fantasy market.

Oh, yeah. By all means, let's work in the literary term bildungsroman, and talk about what "should" be. And how about this?

The genre’s hidden royalty trope is just one of several ways in which the novel explores how external influences affect who we become.

Actually, the original sentence was even worse than the above, but I don't remember exactly how it went originally. But it was wordy and pretentious, I can promise you that, and it repeated much of was said in another sentence, two paragraphs away.

The current version still mentions YA appeal, but not with the weasel word "should," nor the borrowed German term for "coming of age novel." But yes, I did keep the word "trope." Is that a bad thing?

Karen

Step One and Step Two

You'll be pleased to know that I took a few steps tonight in the general direction of submitting Heirs of Mâvarin to another publisher, since the alternative is to play the diminishing odds associated with resubmitting to Tor. I've been nervous about the cover letter; it's always the part that makes me insecure about submitting, not the novel itself but the ancillary material. But earlier this evening, on the 15 month anniversary of the submission arriving at Tor, I did a "save as" on the old Tor letter, revised it to fix the DAW guidelines, and sent it off to the usual suspects for beta reading.


Step Two is to make the manuscript itself conform to DAW specifications. I couldn't find anything in their guidelines to indicate that anything less than a full manuscript is desired. Unless I missed something, it doesn't even call for a synopsis. This could work to my advantage. I have confidence in the book itself, certainly more so than in the narrative shorthand of a synopsis. If someone will just read the actual novel, I've got a good chance of selling it. But first it needs to have the address and word count in this particular place on the first page, and the title and page number in this other place. I think the rest is okay; they don't specify Courier over Times New Roman, and the margins are already adequate. But I edited a word or two of the text itself; I expect I'll give it another once-over before I send it out.

While I'm at it, I'm probably going to submit to a certain agent who wants a manuscript rather than just a query. It means no simultaneous submission, but if it works it will be worth it.

Karen

Same Game, New Rules: How Do I Play This?

I could make a metaphorical connection between Tuesday's sunset (above) and the text of tonight's entry (below), but let's not.

As many of you know, for the past fourteen months I've been waiting for Tor Books to respond to my three chapters and synopsis for Heirs of Mâvarin, with a yes, and no, or a "Let us see the rest." I've sent a follow-up letter, and a friend has asked in person; but still there's been nary a peep, apart from word that Tor editor PNH was familiar with the submission.

About two weeks ago, Wil pointed me to a blog entry by A.C. Crispin, which essentially advised against doing what I've been doing. Crispin said that rather than wait for "months and months" to hear from a publisher or agent, without a word in reply, a writer should at some point count the non-response as a rejection, and go back to querying. I sorta meant to follow that advice, except that I really felt that I owed Tor at least a courtesy letter saying that I would now be submitting it elsewhere. And frankly, I dread revising the cover letter yet again. So I haven't done anything yet. Yes, I know: bad writer, no biscuit!

Then a few days ago, the friend offered to mention it to Patrick again, and advised that Tor is kind of a "special case" with respect to that particular piece of advice. He felt I probably shouldn't give up on Tor yet, and frankly I found this advice more appealing than its opposite.

Well, then. Tonight I got a bit of a shock in the form of new information from Tor itself. No, they haven't sent me anything - nothing that I've received, anyway. But Sara (no h) told me that John Scalzi mentioned in one of his blogs that the Tor website had been redesigned. Sara had checked it out, and found something that wasn't there the last time I looked. In place of the submission guidelines I followed back in February 2006 are new and very different ones. They say, in part:

Generally we respond to unsolicited submissions within 4-6 months. Unfortunately, your manuscripts and our replies sometimes go astray in transit. Because of the volume of submissions, it's not possible for us to track down any individual project; please don't call for a status report. If you have not heard back from us after six months, please resubmit.

Great. That tells me three things I didn't know before:

1. Their policy is not to respond to my follow-up letter (or my friend's personal contact) asking about the status of my individual submission. This is very definitely not what the guidelines used to say. It used to say that after the 4-6 months one could send a letter referencing the title, date of submission etc., and that it would be responded to promptly. I sent the letter after a year and nothing happened - and the new guidelines say that nothing is supposed to happen.
2. Either they rejected the proposal months ago and the reply never reached me, or it's still under consideration, but way outside the time window. I have no way of knowing which, but the former now seems more likely than the latter.
3. If I insist on hearing back from Tor, my only option at this point is to send a new package, which under the new guidelines will not be returned. I am to enclose a standard SASE for the reply only. I actually don't mind not getting all that paper back. The question is whether it's worth the effort and expense of submitting it again to this publisher, as opposed to, for example, DAW.
   

If I go with #3, am I a total fool? 'Cause that's the way I'm leaning on this. Meanwhile, I've got to get moving again on submitting to agents. This slush pile business is a whole lot of no fun.

Let me hasten to add, since I'm not big on burning bridges (and because I really believe this), that I don't blame Tor's editors and publisher for changing the guidelines in this way. Rather than leave someone like me hanging, waiting for a response that may never come, it's better to tell people up front that certain things aren't feasible and not to expect them. They even explain most of the whys and wherefores. But oh! It is discouraging!

Karen

Okay, here's my plan....

I'm up too late again. Why are you not surprised? There was a new Doctor Who episode today, but aside from offering that as my excuse, I won't be writing about that show yet again tonight.

I got an email from Wil today, pointing me toward a particular entry in the Writer Beware! blog. In it, A.C. Crispin counsels writers not to sit around waiting for a single query, or even a partial-and-outline, to get a response. Her advice is to query widely (but targeted to the right markets and agents) and non-exclusively. She writes:

Waiting months and months on tenterhooks, without a word, figuring "no news is good news" is probably a flawed strategy. Go back to querying. Then if the agent or editor comes back at a later date with a positive response, you'll be pleasantly surprised, not a raving lunatic.

Well, of course, that "flawed strategy" is pretty much exactly what I've been doing, lo these 14 months since sending my three chapters off to Tor. I've sent a follow-up letter, and J.S. was nice enough to ask them about my submission, but basically there's been no movement in all that time, and no response other than a verbal indication that PNH was familiar with my slush bunny. And what have I done in the meantime? I've queried one--count 'em, one--agent, and been all crushed when I got a rejection back within 24 hours. I've messed around with the Mages trilogy, but mostly just in the early chapters, making no structural changes in the later parts where the work is most needed. I've written one scene and most of another for The Mâvarin Revolutions, written and posted The Jace Letters, and, um, well, I've written for Wikipedia, which doesn't count for anything at all.

Typing that scene from Revolutions

Y'know, if I want to be taken seriously as a writer and, more important, if I want to succeed and get the novels published, then I need to do much better than that. I need to be writing or revising some piece of fiction every night, as I was doing before I got sidetracked by school in 2002. I need to get over the fear of rejection, and send out lots of queries: send them, and then do my best to forget them. In short, I need to behave like a professional writer, even though I know I'm unlikely ever to make a living at it.

So I will. I can't point to much progress tonight, but I did type about 600 words of that Jor and Fayubi scene, and consider my options about how it ends. Friday night I typed up the previous bit of the same scene, and posted it on the fiction blog. I just forgot to mention it here. It's not much, but it's a step in the right direction.

Someone give me a shove, will you?

Karen

The Second Year Begins

Adapted from tonight's posting on my LiveJournal: Today was the one year anniversary of my three chapters, synopsis and cover letter for Heirs of Mâvarin arriving on the slush pile at Tor Books in New York. I was reminded of this fact in a dream this morning, in which Patrick Nielsen Hayden got annoyed with me for temporarily storing ham and cheese in a Tor mailbox, and announced he would have nothing more to do with me. For months I've been fantasizing that I could mark this occasion with an anniversary card, something like the graphic on this entry. Actually sending such a thing would be unprofessional, though, so I'll post it online and leave it at that. I'm not really upset at the long wait; I once sold a logic problem to Dell two years after I submitted it. Having spent a few decades turning my derivative high school efforts into a rather decent first novel (she said modestly), I don't really mind waiting to get it published. On the other hand if this long wait ends in a form rejection slip, the depression that follows is likely to make this past week look like a Jolly Holiday by comparison. If that happens (and I kind of don't think it will at this point), I'll probably cry for days...and then send the manuscript to another publisher.

Karen