Blog time! This is what I've been up to lately:
For How to Break an Evil Curse, I started agent hunting in late spring of 2015, and I told myself I'd pursue that until the end of 2015, at which point I'd move on to hunt for a small press or self publish. But--as those of you in the know are already aware--a half year is apparently not nearly enough time when agent hunting. I hadn't expected to get any interest, so I figured committing to six months would be more than enough to make it so that Future Laura wouldn't be sitting around all bitter and cranky, cursing out Now Laura for not trying to get published. I don't want Future Laura to always have to wonder; she's cantankerous, and I wouldn't care to meet her down a dark alley if she gets ahold of a time machine and I haven't followed my dreams. So, yes, I appeased Future Laura.
Future Laura, Now Laura, and Future Husband all reading my published book. Yay time machines! Yay following dreams!
I didn't expect any positive responses from agents, but then--hooray!--I actually started getting requests for full and partial manuscripts! Super cool and super unexpected and super throwing off my 2015 plans. No one has said yes yet, a few have said no, and I am still waiting to hear back from some. One of the agents who requested a full manuscript did so after my self-imposed deadline of the end of 2015. So there went that deadline out the window.
Yes, I should have opened the window before I threw the deadline out of it. Oops. Many thanks to Karl, the window guy.
To sum up, How to Break an Evil Curse is just hanging out, hopefully having a grand old time with all the other stories in Publishing Limbo. Hopefully, when it goes under the bar it doesn't knock it down, or bend too far backward and fall on its back for all the other books to laugh at. Limbo's a tough game. But it's better than the other Limbo. I assume. I've never been.
At least How to Break an Evil Curse has one book friend in Publishing Limbo: The Co-Ed Files, by Jennifer Flath and me! Yup, that's right, we've sent out a few queries, and we have an agent reading the full manuscript! Our goal is to send out more queries for Co-Ed, but we keep getting bogged down by our solo projects. It’ll happen, though. We’ll get those queries out. Just not as quickly as we’d like.
Jennifer and I have so much fun sending out queries!
One bit of solid, actual, fancy news is that I wrote a short story and it's going to be published in the April edition of Farstrider Magazine, a new online short story magazine with a focus on humorous fantasy (think Terry Pratchett and similar). I'm so, so, so super happy about this. I'd do a big smiley emoticon right here, but that feels inappropriate in a non-social-media environ. The story is about a maid in a palace, but that's all I'm going to say. You'll just have to read it when it comes out. Because it will. Because it's gonna get published!!!! Oh what the heck, emoticons: :oD :oD
My entourage and me celebrating my short story's success with cupsa windshield wiper fluid.
In addition to Curse and Co-Ed, I've been doing a new fantasy story. It's darker than Curse, but still funny, since I don't know how to write any other way. When I wrote Curse, I didn't know anything about the publishing world, or what publishers or agents want, and I wasn't even thinking in terms of publishing anyway, so I just wrote whatever I wanted to, however I wanted to. But for this new story, I'm trying to make a conscious effort to actually do stuff that publishers and agents are said to want, while still remaining true to how I want to do stuff. We'll see how that goes. All I know right now is I'm having a ton of fun with it.
Ooh look! It's ALL the agents! Reading my new story! They're enraptured.
And now the agents are fighting over who gets my book! For some reason, they have removed most of their clothing.
OK, so I guess that's what I've been up to. It feels like a lot has been going on with the various books I've written or am writing, but since most of that stuff is very early stages of publishing-related stuff, it may still amount to nothing. Every single agent may say no. Who knows. Time will tell.