posted
Yay. Now I can go back to functioning like a semi-normal human being again.
For those who don't know, I sold a story to an anthology called Women of Mystery: An Anthology (presumably to distingish it from earlier anthologies entitled Women of Mystery).
It was cool, both because the idea that someone liked my story enough to pay me a pittance and publish it totally rocks, and because the editor of the anthology, Katherine V. Forrest, wrote a couple of my favorite books.
So that book came out at the end of November, and a bit under a month later, I got an e-mail from a woman who is editing a science fiction anthology for the same publisher, asking if I had anything I'd like to contribute.
The submissions for her anthology started in mid-August and ended at the end of the year, but she told me I could have an extension (and that a bunch of the contributors had already gotten extensions). Apparently, she'd picked up the anthology with my story in it, and liked it enough that she wanted something from me for this new one.
Well, I learned something about my limitations as an author. For one thing, I can't start with a fully fleshed-out plot, or it feels too stale to write. No outlines for me.
And I can't even get started unless I have an idea that's new to me. If an idea is anything like anything I've ever read before, I can't keep the other thing out of my head. I never would have been able to write "The Trouble with Tribbles" like David Gerrold did if I'd read Heinlein's The Rolling Stones, because I would have been thinking, "Flatcats, flatcats, flatcats".
And... well, this part I kind of knew ahead of time, which is why it took me a week and a half to even get started on the story. I get obsessive. It's kind of like reading, in a way. I don't like putting down a book unfinished, because then I'm freaking about what's going to happen. The same thing happens when I'm writing. Since I only have a vague idea of how things are going to turn out, I keep wanting to get back to the computer so that I can find out.
Anyway, even though she solicited the story, there's no guarantee that it's going to wind up being in the anthology. I don't think. I'm sort of bending the limits of what the anthology is supposed to be. It's sort of like outlines. I'm not good with rules and limitations. My Dad still can't figure out how someone with that kind of problem became an Orthodox Jew. <grin>
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Evie3217: Congrats starLisa! What's the story about, if I might ask?
The new one or the old one? The old one... well, the main character gets killed in the first line of the story, and the rest of the story is not a flashback. That's the best I can do without ruining it. I actually have it on my website (unlinked), but I'm not sure if I'll forfeit copyright if I post the URL.
The publisher's site for the book has blurbs for about half the stories in the book. This is what they wrote for mine:
quote:A woman's visit to the hereafter and back again--to stop her own murder!
The new one is kind of a chase. Which is kind of a lame description of any story, but I'm not sure what else to say without ruining it. I guess it's about trusting someone you love, but that's also kind of lame. I dunno.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by starLisa: I actually have it on my website (unlinked), but I'm not sure if I'll forfeit copyright if I post the URL.
You won't forfeit copyright, but your publisher would probably get a bit upset if you made your story available online (read "publish") at the same time they are trying to sell it. You would need to look at your contract for the details, but it probably says something along the lines of them having exclusive publishing rights for X number of days, and after that time the rights revert back to you. If that's the case, then after that time has expired you can publish your story on your website if you wish. And of course, you can always publish any unsold stories on your website, but that would use up first rights, making it harder to sell them in the future.
Make sense?
--Mel
Almost forgot to say congratulations! That's great that you're getting your work out there.
Posts: 1269 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
Thanks, everyone. The book is up on Amazon.com, and I've seen it on the Borders in-store computer, though I doubt most of their stores keep it in stock.
And... am I a terrible person if I say that I wasn't wild about most of the stories in the book? I mean, definitely buy it, if only for my story. <grin> But out of 14 stories, I thought only 3-4 of them were well written. Personal taste, I guess. And it's kind of surprising, because the other 13 authors have all been published previously. I was the only first-timer.
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