This is the fastest I’ve ever received an acceptance of a submission: 6 days! But it probably has more to do with deadline pressure than my brilliant writing: Dreamspinner wants the anthology to be released in early June.
I’m very excited about it! Not only did Saturn in Retrograde turn out to be something I’m rather proud of, but a release in June keeps me in the public eye. It’s bad to go more than a year between releases, if you’re trying to build up a readership (or at least I’ve read that the “magic number” in the publishing world is a new release in not more than a year and a half, if you don’t want people to forget about you). And although I did have a release in December (The Dogs of Cyberwar), and it garnered some nice reviews, it didn’t sell particularly well. Seiðman will possibly be released this year, but I’m not sure yet. So a new release in June is good.
In the meantime, I’ve been struggling with Shinosuke again, my re-telling of a 17th-century samurai love story. I’ve written about five thousand words in the past two weeks, which is hardly a great pace. It’s been pretty awful, in fact. I was blaming the slow progress in the first week on having my attention focused on getting Saturn in Retrograde out the door, but I don’t have much to blame the slow progress of the past week on. I have a handle on the manners of the period, now. At least, enough so that I don’t have to worry about it constantly. And I like the story. But for some reason, it’s hard to write it.
I guess the only thing is to keep plugging away at it.
In other news, Dreamspinner Press is hosting a workshop for its writers in New York City this week and I’ll be there! I’ll be hopping on board a train with my friend, Claire Curtis (who needs to be there for moral support — travel gives me panic attacks), Thursday, at 9:17am in that wretched time of day some more optimistic people like to call “morning” and returning Sunday night. No doubt, I will achieve some kind of writerly enlightenment somewhere in the middle.
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