O Frabjous Day! Callooh! Callay!

[dr_pretentious]

It's a good day here in Averyland.

The agent wants to see a longer partial of Spires of Beltresa, and it sounds like she anticipates asking for the full eventually. Quite reasonably, she's not quite ready to commit to reading all 900+ pages until she's seen a little more. Who wouldn't be daunted by the bulk of the Big Book? I certainly would be.

The editor of a magazine I thought I'd never hear back from has asked for a revision to the short story that got me started on Traitor of Imlen, and he wants to see anything else I might have. Well, now I know what I'm bringing to the writing group meeting on Sunday.

Okay, the key's in the ignition, and the engine sounds like it's turning over. Maybe this time I'll get the car to move.

Comments

Re: Pix

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Publishers like to do the matchmaking themselves for illustrations and design. They use a lot of their arbitrary preferences as knowledge tests to separate people they think are ready to work on a professional level from people they think aren't. One of the fastest ways to get dismissed by a publisher is to say, "And my friend did these fabulous illustrations." It seems unfair, really, since the illustrations might well be fabulous, and plenty of the cover art being produced by professionals in the genre is really trashy and will age badly. But what can you do? The gatekeepers make the rules.

Re: Pix

[tracyandrook.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wasn't thinking of making pix to publish, per se. Just, if you want to make a picture, make one, that's all.
But from your description I understand the conspiracy of publishers to make sure illustrators and writers remain separated. The publisher, who supposedly knows what will sell books, doles out the assignments. Little red ostriches on the covers of Tolkien's books (?)I remember.