Big news in the past day or so. I got my first two rejection letters. One, from an agent (four months after I sent a terrible writing sample upon invitation) and the other from Pyr. The former was for Angel Odyssey and the latter was Smooth Running.
Honestly, I'm impressed by how fast Pyr got back to me. It's been almost a year since I sent Smooth Running off to Baen and I still haven't gotten my rejection letter. So, thanks to Rene Sears at Pyr for her time and promptness. I'll have more for you to read soon enough.
In honor of that rejection letter (email) I went down to Barnes and Noble. Not to buy a book, sadly, but to research other publishers. And you know what, it's mostly fantasy on the shelves nowadays. Or urban romance/fantasy whatever. I saw exactly one publishing house that was enthusiastically embracing the guys with guns genre and that was Warhammer's Black Library. On the other hand, one of my favorite sci-fi authors, William C. Dietz still had books on the shelf. It looks like Ace is still around. So I wrote what is likely to be a very amateurish query letter and sent the first ten pages of Smooth Running off to Ace.
So, yea. You get rejected, you send the bloody thing back out. Heck, I may do another line edit of Smooth Running this month. Its been long enough since I looked at it.
I started Aristotle's Poetics for Screenwriters by Michael Tierno. Oy. Not so good. Honestly, I suggest buying an annotated version of the Poetics instead of suffering through this book. It is filled with jargon and the discussions of Aristotle's words are brief at best. It's short but feel longer, like reading a text book, if you know what I mean. Not recommended but I do suggest the Poetics themselves. There is wisdom there about character, plot, structure and theme I just don't like the Tierno filter.
Finally, I wrote 2500 words of Prologue yesterday and I'm pretty happy with it. I'll finish it up today and maybe see if my critique group likes it. Who knows, it may work as a short story. Hah. "Short". Well, we'll see if I can keep it under 5k words. Wish me luck there.
Honestly, I'm impressed by how fast Pyr got back to me. It's been almost a year since I sent Smooth Running off to Baen and I still haven't gotten my rejection letter. So, thanks to Rene Sears at Pyr for her time and promptness. I'll have more for you to read soon enough.
In honor of that rejection letter (email) I went down to Barnes and Noble. Not to buy a book, sadly, but to research other publishers. And you know what, it's mostly fantasy on the shelves nowadays. Or urban romance/fantasy whatever. I saw exactly one publishing house that was enthusiastically embracing the guys with guns genre and that was Warhammer's Black Library. On the other hand, one of my favorite sci-fi authors, William C. Dietz still had books on the shelf. It looks like Ace is still around. So I wrote what is likely to be a very amateurish query letter and sent the first ten pages of Smooth Running off to Ace.
So, yea. You get rejected, you send the bloody thing back out. Heck, I may do another line edit of Smooth Running this month. Its been long enough since I looked at it.
I started Aristotle's Poetics for Screenwriters by Michael Tierno. Oy. Not so good. Honestly, I suggest buying an annotated version of the Poetics instead of suffering through this book. It is filled with jargon and the discussions of Aristotle's words are brief at best. It's short but feel longer, like reading a text book, if you know what I mean. Not recommended but I do suggest the Poetics themselves. There is wisdom there about character, plot, structure and theme I just don't like the Tierno filter.
Finally, I wrote 2500 words of Prologue yesterday and I'm pretty happy with it. I'll finish it up today and maybe see if my critique group likes it. Who knows, it may work as a short story. Hah. "Short". Well, we'll see if I can keep it under 5k words. Wish me luck there.
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