And I have no good reason but to say, wow, I’ve been busy.  I’m actually whittling away at both my submissions pile and my deadlines. Emphasis on deadlines–including some very nice upcoming books like the Practical Guide to Monsters, the finales for three trilogies in the Dragonlance: The New Adventures series (see sidebar for links to the first books in those trilogies), and a new novel related to the Practical Guide to Dragons. And somewhere in there is Hallowmere—By Venom
‘s Sweet Sting, the sequel to Tiffany Trent’s In the Serpent’s Coils, which is between stages right now, and then there’s all those manuscripts and samples coming in! Patience is a virtue much to be treasured during May and June in the publishing world.

The next big event right now is ALA, which I’m very excited for on many levels. Most importantly, I’ll finally get to meet Tiffany (

). We’ve worked together for two years now, and we haven’t met yet! I’m so jealous that all my coworkers met her a couple weeks ago at BEA before I got to. I take comfort only in knowing that they missed me terribly.

Second most importantly, I’ve never been to Our Nation’s Capital before. Or the Capitol, for that matter. I’m excited to see what little I can squeeze in while the whirlwind of the conference is going on.

Second again most importantly (because it’s just as important if not more so, and I’m just as excited, but for different reasons) is that I’ll get to connect with librarians and teachers and all sorts of people connected with children’s books again. I love going to shows like this. It’s energizing (and exhausting).

So if you’re going to ALA, look for the Mirrorstone/Wizards booth (note from Tiffany’s pictures from BEA that the booth will again be that cool–it’s a great landmark for meeting friends, I hear). Come meet Tiffany and get an ARC of In the Serpent’s Coils. Meet Candice Ransom and investigate history with the Time Spies. Come explore the world of dragons and monsters with our Practical Guide signings–and ARCs of Red Dragon Codex, the cover of which is so beautiful that I must share it, but it’s not completely final yet, so you’ll be the first to get a sneak peek if you’re at ALA! And as always, there will be other free stuff too. 

I’ll post the booth number next week when I know it!

Having been to a number of shows in the last year where I’ve picked up ARCs that I haven’t had a chance to read yet (yes, this includes books I picked up LAST YEAR), the 48 hour reading challenge issued by MotherReader is one that I think I’ll take up after all. (I saw it when she first posted it and thought, “What a great idea! Too bad I don’t have the time,” but as it comes closer I am starting to think the pile of books is starting to teeter and I’d really like to at least read a couple of them. So perhaps I’ll spend the weekend reading. If it’s nice weather, I’ll take the books to the park and read there.)

If your TBR pile is anything like mine, you’re welcome to sign up and join too. I hear there’s going to be prizes.

This post isn’t from any actual questions, but it covers things we’ve seen happen either occasionally or regularly that either annoy us or make the editors’ jobs harder.

Let’s take the last subject first. Let’s say you get a rather impersonal reply in your SASE that says something to the effect of “Thank you for your recent submission. (apologies here for being unable to respond individually) We’re afraid your work isn’t a good fit for our current needs…” etc.

What do you do?

A) Get mad, then get even. Send the rejection letter back to those idiots who couldn’t see the mastery of your work!
B) Get mad, then get back to work on your book.
C) Get mad, then get depressed because no one will ever want you.

If you chose A or C, you’re taking personally something that wasn’t intended personally. I won’t deny that rejection hurts. Whether in love or publishing, the sting is still the same because that’s you they’re rejecting, right?

Actually, no. 

You aren’t what an editor sees. The manuscript is what an editor sees, and like I said in the last post and have said several times over in the past, it’s not personal. It’s a matter of finding the right match, and if the manuscript doesn’t fit what they’re looking for at the time, it’s no reflection on you.

What is a reflection on you is if you decide then to call attention to yourself by sending the rejection letter back to the editor or doing something even more spiteful, like calling the editor names. It shows a lack of professionalism that will be remembered far more than your writing skills.

There really is no need to call attention to oneself as a high-maintenance author, because it will just stick in the editor’s mind and make her not want to work with you personally. That’s a big difference from an editor seeing a manuscript and saying, “I don’t think this works for me,” (therefore rejecting the submission)–that editor could be saying internally “but perhaps their next one will be better.” 

But we can’t write that to every writer–we simply don’t have the time. I think I might start putting yesterday’s reminder as a signature: it’s just not a good fit it’s just not a good fit it’s just not a good fit. 

It’s up to the writer to be able to take that moment of pain–and I fully acknowledge it’s a moment of pain–upon receiving a rejection letter and say, “I can do better.” And perhaps “I can do better” means finding a different publisher at which the fit would be better, but there’s still no reason for rudeness. Editors tend to shift from house to house, and if you’ve made yourself memorable in a bad way, that can linger in their minds.

Just a public service announcement. Kindness and professional courtesy are always the higher road. Tack the rejection letters to the wall, vent to your friends, heck, go to RejectionCollection.com, but don’t do anything to burn a bridge with an editor (though RejectionCollection is pushing it on burning bridges). 
Your career will thank you for it.

Part the second: SASEs and email.

This is a subject our assistant editor asked me to cover, because she sees a lot of this coming through the submissions we get nowadays. If you’ve been reading this LJ long, you’ll know that we don’t take email queries or submissions at Mirrorstone. The reason for
that has been explained elsewhere, so I won’t get into it here. (It isn’t that we’re luddites.)

So, since we don’t take email queries, a natural consequence of that is that we don’t really want to give email responses, either. Occasionally I’ll email a positive response if I’m really excited about something because it saves time, but you’ll notice that I don’t put my work email on my profile here on LJ–that’s a dummy address I’ve set up so that my work email doesn’t get spammed. I don’t mind getting submission questions here that I can turn around and answer in a general way because it can benefit a number of people, but sometimes you give an inch, etc. It’s best to let my work email be a closely guarded secret.

On the last post, our anonymous questioner pointed out that they noted on their submission that “an email response would suffice.” But it doesn’t for us, and that’s why we request the SASE in a submission. Generally the SASE does the work it’s supposed to do, and unless we’re really excited about your work, you may not even receive a response if we don’t get a SASE.

There are other reasons for the SASE–sometimes the writer will have mistyped their email address or forgotten to put it on their cover letter. That happened to one person recently from whom I requested a manuscript. What would have happened had she not i
ncluded a SASE? I might have tried calling, but I might not have been excited enough to do much more detective work than that. Postage is getting expensive. Sometimes we’ll use our own postage to return work or to send a request for more, but that’s not our responsibility, and we might just as easily, on a busier day, recycle the submission and shrug because none of the person’s contact info was viable.

So, the lesson here? Always include a SASE. Always. With correct postage.

A recent email asks a question that has come up several times in the past: 

I sent you two manuscripts/books, one to consider as a sample for work-for-hire possibilities, and one to consider as an original work. I got one rejection letter. Was it for one, the other, or both?

Often these questions come because someone has sent a multi-purpose package, wherein they’ve got a full manuscript (not the first three chapters of a manuscript as outlined in our submission guidelines) plus several other items for consideration, then say “please consider this for both work-for-hire and as an original.” Then they include one SASE for the whole huge package (if they include an SASE at all, which is another subject that our associate editor has asked me to cover and which I’ll do in a separate post).

The confusion of “which was it??” then arises because you get one rejection letter, saying nothing about which was rejected. 

The simplest way around this confusion is that if you’re going to send several items, be sure to send them in separate packages with a separate SASE, noting on the envelope which project the envelope was related to. That way there won’t be any question about whether one part was passed on to another editor while the other part was rejected. That’s good advice even if you only send one project to each publisher at a time. 

However, still make sure that the submission follows the submission guidelines. If a writer sends a whole huge package including a full manuscript, it indicates at least on the surface that they probably haven’t read our submission guidelines (or they think they don’t have to follow the rules), and it’s much more likely that if one part is rejected, the package as a whole is rejected. 

Really, the editor reading submissions doesn’t have time to parse out huge packages. She’s screening for potential at that point, which is why we specifically ask that writers only submit the first three chapters and a synopsis. It’s an avalanche of paper to get unsolicit
ed submissions at any time, but when writers send one or several full unsolicited manuscripts at once, that gets overwhelming. We’ll ask for more if we want to read more.

The next simplest solution is to be sure to only send one project at a time. It will really reduce both your headache and ours. If we like your work, you can mention, “hey, I’ve got this other project too. Would you be interested in seeing it?” and then we can decide at that time. If we reject it, you’ll be ready with a newly polished next project that might work out better.

Now, if you’ve followed all those directions and have just noted on your cover letter that you’d like your original sample to also be considered for our shared-world series, great! You’re doing well. But you’ll still only get one rejection letter if we don’t feel like your work is a good fit for us at the time.

Here’s how it works if we think someone fits an existing shared-world series: If we decide from your sample that your writing style works for a particular series, and the timing is right and we’re looking for authors at that time, then an editor will note in the letter that while the sample isn’t something we’d be interested in acquiring, we like your style enough that we’ll keep your sample on file for shared-world possibilities. I’ll announce right now, though, that our soon-to-be-updated submissions guidelines state that we are not currently looking widely for new shared-world authors at this time, and I’m not keeping too many submissions like that on file right now.

Otherwise, I’m afraid that a no is a no. If you don’t hear anything besides no, keep writing, keep improving, and keep looking for other venues to place that work.

___________________________________________

And just to reiterate:

Due to the number of submissions we receive, there’s simply no way to give personal feedback on every submission as to reasons we might not be interested . It could be any number of things, but what it boils down to is that it wasn’t the right fit for us at this time (see my 8-post series starting with this one about the relationship between an author and editor for more on that subject).

That’s right, my new keyboard! The guys at work got the DHL driver to look again through his route and they found it! And it appears to be working. It was a relatively painless operation, too–the directions were clear and I went in from the front, so I didn’t have to open up the back like I thought I would. No BIOS beeping upon startup either. Whoo-hoo!

I’m very very happy. Now I can actually do normal things again, like balance my checkbook. (Heaven forbid I’ve done anything to ruin my balance in the time I didn’t know how much money I had!)

Still having technical difficulties. Did I mention it was only a keyboard problem (we think)? Yeah, so the keyboard was sent, and it arrived and someone signed for it. Only problem is, the person who signed for it doesn’t actually work at this company (I had it sent to my work address because no one is home during the day). Which means that someone out there has a laptop keyboard, which is completely useless to them without the laptop, and which isn’t even worth all that much, and that I am without a keyboard. Dell is sending a replacement, but it could take a couple weeks just to find another one. ARRRGH.

(Which reminds me, I’m going to watch Pirates of the Carribbean with my roommates tonight. There’s something to be said for talking like a pirate sometimes.)

So, because I don’t have the time to do a real editor-y post on my own computer of an evening, you get to see what I did this weekend.

I took some really great shots at Folk Life this weekend, a street fair here in Seattle. I love folk music, so I’m sure it comes as no surprise that this is pr
obably my most favorite street fair, with performers on every corner from all sorts of cultures. Little groups of people getting together playing guitars and various instruments from all over the world, attracting people of all sorts (from your average shorts/jeans/t-shirts to elaborate body art, multicolored hair and dreds). (Also a large proportion of tie-dyed clothing, whatever meaning that may have.) It was a great atmosphere and a lot of great music. I’m just wondering where all these people are the rest of the year between Folk Life at Memorial Day and Bumbershoot at Labor Day. Perhaps my world is just really small. (Though I do work with my share of people of varying shades of hair. I’ve even been tempted to dye my own hair blue or pink from time to time, but the worry is always how long it would take to grow out again.)

A South American group–I didn’t catch the band name or what country specifically; could even be Central American music. Wherever they’re from, it was great music and they had a great rapport. There were at least 10 of them. More pictures and bigger ones in my gallery when I get my own computer working again.

A couple teens playing guitar. Here I am trying out my “carry the camera casually and snap pictures without looking” technique, closely related to the regular “shoot from the hip” technique but a little more targeted. Being out in a loud fair, no one hears the shutter, and I got some great shots! Some more surprising than others, such as the one below–meant to get the whole guy’s costume, not just his knee, but it’s still an interesting shot, I think!

And there’s a big fountain for dashing in and out of. I didn’t dash, but the weather did oblige those who did.

Okay, this is turning into a long post. So I’ll tell you about the Russian dolls…

…and the roasted sweet corn I had…

…and the various musicians I saw…

 
 

…and the guy who did a “real life video game.” He gave people a controller, they paid him money, and he acted out the game.

Note his characters are different heads on stuffed animal bodies. Kind of creepy, though also funny.

Thus endeth the report of Folk Life. Good times had by all–which means me and my roommate. Oh, and my treasure from the day, a little Guatemalan bag to use on my bike rides to carry the little things (up till now, all I had was regular purses and backpacks, all too big or cumbersome).

And just for good measure, a few other shots.

That last one is my cats, looking out from their screen-bound prison, wishing they had opposable thumbs.

Regular programming to resume soon, I hope. I just found out that it’s my keyboard. New keyboard (very cheap fix! yay!) will hopefully arrive today. Meanwhile, enjoy more regency mixes care of YouTube.

With thanks to ErinAnnie for the link.

With thanks to Chris and my roommate (I think–the second one was given to me long ago by someone). I can’t find the source of these pictures, so if anyone knows, please let me know and I’ll link.

The very nice guy in our IT dept is looking at my laptop, and now that he’s finally seen the problem (it liked him so much it worked for him till I came down and it broke again), so far there are two things it could be (subject to change): the keyboard (under $100 repair) or the processor (um, probably want to replace the whole computer).
Argh.
Over the course of the last week of this happening I’ve kind of gotten used to the idea of maybe getting a new computer, so I’ve been pricing them and it really might be fun to get a new computer–though I’d have to automatically go with Vista and of course there’s the little matter of paying for the new computer.
Sigh.
But it’s a possibility, and I need a computer–both for working from home and remotely while I travel, and for personal stuff like managing my money and my writing and my family history and pictures and all of that. So I’ll do what I must. 
But I also like the computer I already have, and don’t really want to get a new one. So I’m rooting for the keyboard being the p
roblem. 
If I do need a new computer, I’ve considered getting a MacBook, since they’ve started equalling PCs in price. Still something I’m considering, though, because it would mean getting new programs, which would add to my costs. Macs can run Windows now, but I’d have to buy it–unless… would my old WindowsXP discs work to install Windows on a Mac? Something to think about!
Also: since my friend is doing all this because he’s just nice, I need to do something nice for him. I’ll bake him cookies, that’s a given. What else can you do/give a coworker for just doing something nice? Product points? Gift certificate?