Apollymi ::||:: Dark Passion Play

I can finally say it with authority: I have a publishing contract!

It's with Cacöethes Publishing for Amaranth: The Preterhumans Book 1. I simply don't have enough words to say how excited I am.

Thank you to everyone who stood by me and supported me in this rather scary endeavor. Many very, very huge thanks to katsuko, for helping me with the late nights and the (even more terrifying) summary, and daimeryan_rei, for the continuous support, love, cuddles, occasional competition, and ♥. Really, I couldn't have made it without the ♥ -- and both of you. Additional thanks also need to go to desolate03 for the support.

Amaranth should be out by December this year or January 2009. Pretty damned impressive, if I must say so myself. It will be available as a print book and an e-book, with the latter coming out first. There will be some editing that needs to be done, but yeah...

Hooray!!!

After some really major soul searching and a good deal of help from some friends, I finally got Amaranth sent off for the first time last night. It's like letting a child go to school for the first time by themselves. I've been working on this baby since 1 November 2007; she's the product of a lot of my time, hard work, and headaches.

I'm not holding my breath on getting an immediate turn around or anything, but given how quickly Paula (Guran, editor of Juno Books) responded to my request for additional information, there is some hope for a reply in less than 2 months. The sample I sent her was 41 pages, so not exactly the longest thing on the planet.

And till that time is up, I'll try not to hold my breath. If I get a negative from this place, I'll go with looking for a literary agent next.

See? For once, I have a plan!

And after my completely random post yesterday, now it's almost time for me to start sending around my 2nd draft.

Samhain Publishing doesn't want it till it's nitpicked within an inch of its life. Juno and Cacoethes only wants the first three chapters.

I need to have it ready, hopefully by the end of the week.

Wish me luck, and...

Happy Mardi Gras!!

It took me a bit, but I do finally have a writing icon for The Preterhuman Series.

Behold!

(Stock image by stock.xchng's Wazari, used with much love but no permission)

This has been a very lazy weekend. I... didn't do a lot.

I think I wrote 100 words on Verdant, when I should have been aiming for 2800+ a day. (3000 would have been better!)

So instead of writing, I ended up marathoning about 9 episodes of NCIS, followed by 1 episode of The Adventures of Sinbad and half an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yes, half an episode. The Buffy versus Dracula one. I'm on a Rudolf Martin kick. I had to quit watching it to come to work.

After work today, at least 2 laps of the Tallahassee Mall (making 2 miles per lap) and strength training. I'm getting really good at those sissy push-ups. I can do my 12 reps in under a minute now, and I'm only getting faster. The exercises of Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday are 2 sets of 12 reps of: crunches with twists, reverse crunches, modified push-ups, forward lunges with dumbbells, alternating dumbbell bicep curls, wall push-ups, dumbbell wrist curls, and step-ups. I'm adding wide leg squats with a dumbbell to that, and I'm also aiming for 3 minutes of continuous sit-ups. It takes me about 20 minutes to do the strength training, while we tend to bust out about a mile in fifteen minutes while doing the Mall.

I still need to do a new default icon for this journal, but... not right now. Right now I need to bust out at least 3000 words on Verdant before the end of the day. More than that would be even better. I'm never going to come close to Sherrilyn Kenyon's record (12 pages in an hour and 91 pages in a day), but I'm going to give it my all. Do my best. Go for the gold. And all those other cheesy sayings that make me want to hit someone over the head with a cast iron frying pan.

And now to work.

Okay, after a lot of debate, I've decided to upgrade my account here from free to Permanent before they take the option away in March.

I'm still digging my new layout, even if it's all green. Actually two of my three journals are green right now: my Tin Man layout on Live Journal and this one. Journal Fen is still blue, for a while, till I find a layout in green that I like.

And I don't even like green!

Lots to do today: go by the GMC dealership and pick up my touch-up pens for my car; go by Sam's Club and get some of our groceries and a new box of my contacts; go by the Parkway Wal-Mart or the Thomasville Road Wal-Mart and get groceries; maybe go by Books-A-Million or Borders and see if either of them have the Sandra Hill books I'm missing, as well as a copy of the 2008 Writer's Market book for less than the cost of my (eventually slightly possible) firstborn child; and WRITE.

I did pretty well last night and got about 1800 words written after I got home, plus the 1000 I did whilst I was still at Grandmother's, for a total of a little over 2800 words. I need to do another day like that, preferably without the staying up till nearly 1 a.m., but I already know I can do that if needs be. I'm running so far behind that it isn't even funny. If I keep writing over 2200 words a day, I might be caught by the end of the week, but the more I write per day over that, the closer I'll be to caught up and the sooner.

So, errands then writing. Game plan.