Monday, January 26, 2009

The creek keeps on running by...

It's been a busy month, actually, what with Christmas, and moving Brett to Corvalis, that sort of thing. At least one exciting thing has happened, though. I have a shot at having my first novel, Complications, which was printed by AuthorHouse in 2006, placed with a tradtional-type publisher! It all started back in December (I may have written some of the before; if I have, please bear with me). Early in 2008, I place Complications with an agency that claims that they will push POD books (print-on-demand, like mine) to traditional publishers, the kind who will pay the author to print the book, instead of the other way around...

So anyway, I got an e-mail in early December from the agent who was handling my book, telling me that a new publisher had contacted them, looking for authors, but the publisher wanted the author to fill out a questionnaire about him- or herself, and the book in question. So I went to the publisher's website and filled out the form, which had spaces for title, author, a synopsis, etc. The page said that I would be contacted in a week or ten days...

Imagine my surprise when, three days later, I got an e-mail requesting the whole manuscript! I nearly fell out of my chair! This e-mail stated that I would be contacted in a week or ten days, as the review process took that long...

Once again, imagine my surprise when I got another e-mail, again only three days later, saying that they like the manuscript, but it needed some work. Having read back through some of it while waiting for them to contact me, I had to agree. It was kind of on the crude side, stylistically. So I contacted the lady who helped me work on Book 2, and she was more than happy to help me out; I printed out the manuscript and took it to her...

January 10, 2009, dawned cold, and if I recall correctly, snowy. That was the day I started rewriting, based on her copyedit. I took Monday the 12th off from work, figuring, no prob, have the rewrite done by then. Yeah, right! The manuscript really needed work...

I worked on it all day Saturday, spending roughly eight hours in front of my computer. On Sunday, I figured on getting in a whole bunch of hours, but it was not to be. About 9 AM, my lovely wife called to tell me that she'd had an accident, and needed to go to the emergency room. X-rays revealed a broken ankle...

Long story short, I ended up taking the rest of the week off, hoping to have the manuscript done by the self-imposed deadline of January 15th, and I almost made it: I got it e-mailed off late in the day on January 16th, immediately after a celebratory drink of some pretty Kentucky bourbon. So now we wait. It's supposed to take about three to four weeks for the reviewer to decide whether or not my manuscript is up to "contemporary professional standards", to quote Harry Chapin in his song, "Mister Tanner"...





We did run away from home the weekend before this last one for a couple of days. We spent Friday night at Wildhorse Casino in Pendleton, and managed to come out a few bucks ahead playing penny slots. From there we went up to the Tri-Cities, and spent money and Saturday night there. Dinner at Red Lobster was great; I had something called "Island Citrus-Rum Shrimp and Scallops". It's part of their new Fire-Grilled Menu, and all I can say is, WOW! Then Sunday I spent several hours and probably too much money in Barnes & Noble, which is one of my favorite stores on the planet, before we headed for home...

On the way home, the closer we got to Pendleton, the nastier the weather got. It was snowing hard and the freeway was slick coming up the hill out of the town, and the Toyota 4-Runner in front of Jennifer and its U-Haul trailer did a three-sixty in the middle of a bridge and came to a stop jackknifed in the right lane. After those of us who were following him the closest got by, he straightened it out and sat there for who knows how long. Probably had to clean out his pants once he got his blood pressure back down...