I got another request to do a novel exchange, this time with an actually published author. Granted he's from Spain, and English isn't his first language (or second), but I'm quite happy that, if my wife ever finishes her Kathy Reichs' books, I'll have four pairs of eyes looking at it. This is good, because it means people are interested in reading it. And if people are interested, maybe publishers will see that too. Hopefully, I get thoughtful reviews and critiques. It's not easy slogging through 140,000 words.
Vampire Family Story was submitted to Hungur Magazine - an anthology of vampire stories. It's 2,000 words over the submission limit, so I'm wondering if I'll be cancelled out just for that. 4,000 is not a very long short story. But rules are rules. It's disappointing, because its the only all-vampire magazine that I know of. Besides a vampire chronicle, I don't know where to send it. Is it horror? Dark fantasy? Regular fantasy? A children's story? It widens and narrows my options at the same time. I could just throw stuff at the window until it sticks, but that lengthens the submission process, as I'm just taking shots in the dark. Such is the life of an amateur.
I made a GoodReads profile, after John Scalzi said something about his. It's just something fun to do in-between compile times, and, unlike LibraryThing, there's no 200 book limit. However, I don't like that it makes you pick editions instead of book covers, which may not have the right cover (or a cover I like). So I'm not ready to switch my right-rail widget just yet, but I think I will someday.
In happier news, I got a bunch of new books. The bookstore never has what I want, but I found John Scalzi's The Last Colony and Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. I've already read Little Brother, but I think that book is so important that I wanted a copy for my kids (although, now that I think about it, all the tech that makes the book so special will probably be outdated by then, but hopefully the principles will still be the same). But none of these make good research for my next novel. Fortunately, the library had one book I was looking for (Blue World by Jack Vance). And another (The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard) I ordered from Amazon (along with Jim C. Hines's The Stepsister Scheme, which I'm much looking forward to). There's one more left that I think I should get, but the library says its on order. So I'll wait until I've exhausted these before I buy it.Labels: Black Hole Son, books, GoodReads, John Scalzi, LibraryThing, submissions, Vampire Family Story