It’s a strange morning up at The Real Home. Not because of anything particular, but due, in part, to things I’m doing–
I submitted Her Demonic Majesty to a publisher. My nerves are suitably wracked.
I began working on the submission yesterday afternoon, after running around and taking our new teenager to a Japanese restaurant for lunch. I read over the guidelines, and . . .
Let me tell you. The publisher I’d selected, they were very particular about how they wanted everything formatted, laid out, what they wanted from you. And when you read about how, just getting one thing wrong will likely have your submission getting sent to the trash bin–yeah, damn. You get those rattlers in your tummy.
It was almost too much to deal with yesterday afternoon. I got the boiler plate for the submission in place. I added some of the information needed. I formatted the manuscript and renamed it as they wanted.
But that wasn’t the part that bothered me the most. Oh, no:
I had to write the synopsis.
The publisher wanted three things: an author’s bio, a short synopsis, and a long synopsis of the whole novel. The bio and short synopsis–not a problem. We’re talking book blurbs here. But a page or two of the whole novel? Damn, that was some writing. Not that I don’t know the story, but telling it to another person, and doing so in a way that’s going to overwhelm them with detail–that was something I’d never done before.
Needless to say, the nerves were jangling all the while. I wrote, looked over what I wrote, edited, wrote a little more. I wanted to get it as close to perfect as possible, and when you’re wondering if a misplaced word is going to blow your shot at getting a novel accepted, it sort of camps out in the back of your mind and drives you just a little crazy.
In the end, however, I finished everything. I set up the email. I attached the manuscript. I got everything looking nice.
I clicked send and updated my author’s page on Facebook.
Now, I wait. The publisher says I might need to wait 90 days, maybe 120 days. But there will be a wait. I can deal with that.
Gives me time to write.
That’s two novels I have out now, to different publishers. Both are looking at the full manuscript, so there is hope that something could see the light of day. Or both will be bought. Or both could be rejected.
Hey, life, right?
So, with all my editing and query writing and submissions out of the way, there’s nothing else but new stories. There was a little writing Friday night, but nothing yesterday. Not that I didn’t expect that, because when you’re going to dawn to dusk, and beyond, you can’t expect to get a huge amount done.
But that’s not the case today. So . . . more to Part Four. More to Memory’s End. More to another story that, one day, I’ll need to do another query for.
Write, edit, submit. Ray Bradbury would be proud . . .
