dr_pretentious | Rugosa Coven's Debut, Forthcoming, 2008!

I've done the impossible. And now that the ink is dry on the contract, I can finally brag about it in public.

I've sold a 38,000 word novella. It may not be as daring or dangerous an accomplishment as, say, bungee jumping over Victoria Falls, but the odds of success were much longer. No magazine wants to give over that many of its pages to any one story, and it's too short to hit a book publisher's 80,000-120,000 word sweet spot for printing and binding. I'd begun to think the Rugosa Coven stories were doomed to be trunk manuscripts.

Enter a quirky new small press that specializes in mythic fiction and embraces the current wave of changes in the publishing industry. Oh, and that has seen some of its books reviewed in Publishers Weekly.

"Closing Arguments"--which a few of you read under its (alas, misleading) rough-draft title, "Bob and the Black Head of Atho"--will be available from Drollerie Press as an e-book at some point in the first quarter of 2008, and in a print anthology at some subsequent point to be announced. When I have more details, I'll be right here jumping up and down and waving banners. Official announcements will also be appearing on the press's lj,

drollerie.

Last New Year's Eve, my father asked me what my goals were for 2007. There were only two that really mattered to me: sell a book, have a child. It's a fine feeling to be two for two, with a couple of weeks left in the year.