This is a very weird day for book stuff.

1. Jonathan Karp passed on the Kinkaids. BAD.

2. The editor of the Seal anthology of women writers writing about illness, age, and how their bodies' frailties affect their work cut about a third of the writers from the list. The editor was apparently "fierce" that "I want Grabien's essay in here". GOOD.

3. My editor SMP - well. Check it out for yourselves. Murder at the Flatiron is written by Ruth Cavin, the imprints EIC and my personal editor for Haunted Ballads. Good, I think?

Can you pitch the Kinkaids elsewhere? I loved the ending of one you did.

Gar, trust me, the agents are on it. He's only one of a few people looking at it, and considering the upheaval at Warner (they were bought by Hachette and told they had to leave the Warners building; when Marlene was there in April, they had no idea where they were going and the mood was, well, grim), this may be for the best.

But it still stings. Bugger.

Every time I come to this thread there is more to make me cry. Y'all are amazing.

Sorry for the sting, deb. I hope it is not too long before the Kinkaid Chronicles find a home - I am so looking forward to reading them all!

That's gorgeous, Dana.

A note about drabble anthology stuff.

Having just had an (otherwise) depressing as fuck (we just lost a personal old friend and an icon and he was my age) conversation with my agent, I have the following:

I am to write a proposal - a page only will do it, so no problem there - for Glenn Yeffeth, EiC at BenBella, proposing a (probably) trade paperback 275 or so page anthology. My own mental interim working title: Drabble: All the Worlds in One Hundred Words.

Since Glenn is apparently not buying fiction right now, drabbles actually fall right under what he's looking at: vignettes, scenes, memories, interpretations. One thing every anthology proposal does need is what they call a four-legged anchor, four reasonably well-known names as the "anchor" - without that, they mostly toss the proposals. Since as far as I know, only Amy and I fit that req, I would have to poke a few writer buddies and see if they want to play. Everything else, assuming the proposal flew, would be from this community.

Do you want me to go ahead and do that? I especially want Teppy's viewpoint, since the weekly drabble is her baby and I won't make one move without it being okay with her.

I think it's an outstanding idea, Deb. (The anthology in general, as well as asking a few other writer buddies if they want to play.)

We all know about permission statements/releases being needed for anything that gets published, so no one will have their work appear without their prior knowledge and approval.

I'm assuming it's opt-in on a per-drabble basis, meaning, if there's a drabble someone would rather not submit, but they DO want to submit the rest of their drabbles, that's possible.

I especially want Teppy's viewpoint, since the weekly drabble is her baby and I won't make one move without it being okay with her.

Well, it's a collaborative effort, in my mind; I could offer up all the drabble ideas in the world, but if no one wanted to write them, it would be a pretty boring community. Yeah, the original idea came from me (not the concepts of drabbles in general; just the idea that we do this non-fanfic drabble community), and yeah, I come up with the topics each week, but I still feel like we all -- anyone and everyone who's written even 1 drabble -- have co-created this.

But, in simple terms, and for what it's worth, I say go for it!

Tep, yep, opt-in. My thnking is, by topic challenge- and those were entirely yours. So you got first refusal on the idea.

So the way it is works is we pick out particular ones we want to you to consider? (Obviously limiting ourselfs to ones that fit the 100 words or under word limit.) That would make more sense and less work for you than you scrolling through the thread looking for stuff. Is that what you mean by "opt in"?

I have been drabble-absent for months. I miss it. I'd love to take part in the anthology, though--I'm really proud of some of my older drabbles.

Side note--Tep, do you have a complete list of topics, by chance? I've been thinking about starting to fill in the ones I've missed.