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!!!

I guess everyone knows I've been following the Harry Potter Lexicon debacle.

Well, from the commentary I've been seeing coming down on SVA and RDR's side, all I have to say is that I hope I don't end up making a lot of money with my writing. It seems that most of the people supporting him object to JKR winning because she has a lot of money.

Soooo apparently, by that logic, copyright only matters if you're a starving writer. Never you mind that if you're a starving writer, you probably don't have the following for this kind of wankery scholarship.

Onto another subject: I'm a little ticked at Dreamhost. It ended up taking 20 hours for them to update the password to one of my email addresses. It's working now, but still... It's only supposed to be "a few minutes", in their words, not nearly a whole day.

But on a happier note, I have a pleased orange tomcat in my lap who is giving of much love. He's very warm though, and it's very hot today. He may have to be evicted soon.

We got one load of laundry (Doc) and all the sweeping and mopping (me) done. For tonight/tomorrow, that leaves cleaning the kitchen counter and sanding the door jams where the kitties have relieved their stress.

...and that might be a bad thing, because while Faramir is my favorite character in the entire series (including The Hobbit), the most shit happens to him. But on days when I just feel dumped on, those are the days when I feel like Faramir. I empathize with him, perhaps in much the same way Tolkien did.

So, I mentioned I got a "no" from my first choice. That's fine. I can live with that. I sent off today to another early choice. I'm still waiting to hear from quite a few of my early submissions. That's also quite fine.

I know it's not April yet, much less July, but I've started scribbling on "Arcana" a bit. It's almost definite that it will be e-published, but I'm still sparing no effort on it. Granted, I just started today, so I'm not very far.

But I actually thought, "Hey, why not share a tiny bit?" And it is a tiny bit, but here we go:

"My life is a bad horror movie. No, it's not just bad. It's, like, Z-grade. It's--"

"Designed to piss the rest of us off?" I couldn't quite manage to hold back. "All you've done since you got here has been whine, Stacy."

She pouted, her lower lip trembling just slightly. Oh, tell me she wasn't going to start crying now. That would just cap off a wonderful few days.

Thoughts?

Anyone know where I can pick up a Faramir mood theme or more Faramir icons?

Okay, I've sent 6 queries to agents and 1 query to a publisher for Amaranth, so far.

Why is it that writing the queries is so much harder -- to me -- than writing the actual novel was? Even with the hectic pace of NaNoWriMo, queries are still miles and miles harder.

I wonder why that is.

Also, I got my first rejection letter over the weekend. Bummer.

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!