alchemical fantasy
Neverlands and Otherwheres is out!
A note about my story Second Sight: This is the most autobiographical of all my stories. The Skeleton Man and Kaloo Baba are bogeys from my childhood (my little bro and cousin might recognize the latter!), and I actually lived next door to the Unpainted House. As for the rest, well, read the story and decide for yourself where the line between fantasy and reality is.
(Yes, I’m being purposefully enigmatic.)
First off, I read today that Terry Pratchett (author of the Discworld series) has been knighted. I’ve been following Pratchett ever since I read Reaperman when I was 14 (and yes, that was more than a decade ago!). He never fails to amuse, delight and surprise me. He’s also one of the wittiest and most intelligent writers I’ve ever had the privilege of reading. I’m so pleased for him.
And now, courtesy of D., in a similar vein, here are…. edible dragons.
(And now I have cravings for cake.)
On an unrelated note, I thought I’d mention that my first submission of 2009 happened a couple days ago (see, I’m not slacking!) and I received a proof of Soulsong to look over. Not a bad start to the year.
I know that writing fiction does not generate much income. I know that most novelists do not support themselves on their royalties and advances. Then I read articles like this one and I really know it.
It’s not the lack of money more than it is the lack of readership that bothers me. My husband says that it’s a pride thing instead of an avarice thing for me. Darn right. If I’m spending all this time crafting and polishing my stories, I’d like to have lots of readers, please. Preferably tens of thousands of them.
That said, I got a thousand words on the last story of this month. So, despite my pessimism, I’m still planning on inflicting my work on the unsuspecting populace. Oh, and ALSO, I got my contributor copy of Neverlands and Otherwheres which includes my story Second Sight (written as R. A. Gale). I got a real kick out of watching my husband read my story in its published form. Hee.
Wow, a lot have posts about the state of the publishing industry have been hitting my Google Reader recently.
Agent Jennifer Jackson has a rundown of which houses are announcing layoffs.
Agent Kristin Nelson expresses confusion over HMH’s “acquisition freeze“.
Susan Wise Bauer, co-author of the classical homeschooling bible, The Well-Trained Mind, is on the verge of a nervous breakdown (her diagnosis, not mine!) over how all of this is affecting the latest edition of that book.
On the plus side, Amazon announced their 2009 Breakthrough Novel Award for unpublished novels. Contest opens February 2009.
On a personal level, I came back from Thanksgiving to the good news of a check in the mail from the sale of a short earlier this year. This was especially nice because this month I received two “good, but not quite there, send more” rejections for the one story I’m currently shopping around. Back to Ralan and Duotrope, I guess.
