Suspense, Day 8? Day 1?

[dr_pretentious]

After a week with no response, I finally decided to make sure the email address the Shiny Young Agent was using when she set out to start her own agency was still current. I'd updated my address book when she left the Venerable Agency where she'd been working when I first met her, but I hadn't updated it since she got the infrastructure in her new office up and running. Lo and behold, a new email address on a new website.

Once I pinged her at her new address, she got back to me with an update within 12 hours. Given the glacial pace of the publishing industry in general, and the kinds of delays that individuals in gatekeeper positions can get away with as a result, a 12-hour response time is downright impressive.

So here's the word: She just got the ms back from two readers, and reading it herself is on her docket for next week.

My wild speculations on the basis of this tiny bit of information: If two readers have read it and told her what they thought of it, and she's still planning on making time in her schedule to read it herself, then the readers can't have thought the ms sucked too badly. After all, why would she have readers, if not to cull the pile and protect her own time? So, two people whose job it was to say no have not said no. Whoever they are, I wish them a spring full of crocuses.

Comments

[peartreealley.livejournal.com]

Sounds exciting!

Best of luck!

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

Well, they would have to be brainless fools not to have loved it. I say this in an entirely non-addicted way, of course.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

They might have loved it and yet concluded that it was still unsalable because of the page length, the politics, the state of the market, etc. So far there have been ::counts on fingers:: four moments when a person could have slammed on the brakes and didn't. There was a reader who looked at the partial back in July and then sent it up the line to the SYA. There was the SYA herself, who then read the partial over the summer and asked for the full. And then there was each of the two readers who looked at the full--I'm sure with a book this long and a market so inhospitable to long books, had either of the two readers come down hard on the ms, I'd have a rejection slip by now.

Now, the SYA has to (A) love the book, AND (B) conclude that its prospects in the market are good enough for her to spend many hours of her life and to wager a tiny part of her reputation on trying to sell it. Love is grand, but it does not necessarily conquer all.

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

your wild speculations are doubtless correct. i can think of other interpretations, but where's the fun in that? :)

[anghara.livejournal.com]

[fingers crossed]

I honestly think that the awfullest part of this game is the WAITING, and unfortunately that's where you're at right now. But I hope this time it WILL be CHristmas morning at the end of the wait. Good luck!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your kind wishes!

The waiting's hard, but it's easier today than yesterday, now that I know there will be an answer and that my ms hasn't just been gathering dust all these months.

It looks like I'll be going to Lunacon. Maybe I'll cross paths with you there.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Cool, see you there!

A.

[tokeiwakamidesu.livejournal.com]

I will send them the crocuses myself.

That's really great, but I can't imagine you're surprised - there's no way to read that manuscript and not like it.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

You say that because you've only seen the polished bits. I assure you, there were ways to read the first draft and not like it.

Also, some Terrible Things happen to beloved characters near the end of Vol 1. The end of the vol kept poor vgnwtch up until 2am, at which point she sent me an email that said "MATHNAL MUST DIE!!!!!!!!" There were several attempts at transliterating wails of horror, too. vgnwtch is thoroughly hooked on the story, but I did give her a rough day there.

That's not too spoilery, is it? I mean, you knew Mathnal was going to do some Terrible Things to people before the curtain fell.

Actually, some of the most useful suggestions I got on that first draft were from someone who wasn't all that sure he liked it.

Oh, and speaking of which, I've been meaning to thank you for your notes on "Atlantis Cranks." I'm letting them simmer in the brain for a bit. If the folks who currently have the ms take a pass on it, I'll give it another round of revision with those things in mind.

How's the convalescence going? Hope you're feeling better.

[calene.livejournal.com]

Well, you got past the gatekeepers and up to the front door...

*squee!* Still crossing fingers, hoping for the best, and all that rot. :D

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Whatever the best thing that can happen is, I'm hoping for that. I'm trying to hope for it without assumptions.

cool

[jaime-sama.livejournal.com]

Great news!

I think your reasoning is reasonable. What are readers for if not to tell you what to reject? They don't seem to have told her to reject it. Yay!!

I never knew that fiction went out to readers, just like scholarly books. Are the readers published novelists in the same genre, I suppose?

Jaime_sama, now with improved anonymity!