it's only a short story" plus "e-publishing, right, it's not like a book display in Barnes & Noble"

Hush you. We all know you can write. This is AWESOME.

Hmm, let's see. With the backing of my agent, The Sergeant's Lady made the rounds of romance editors and got a slew of "this is well-written and richly detailed, and I love the heroine, but I'm not sure how to market it" rejections. Once I even made it as far as an editorial meeting before getting rejected, and believe you me that was a crusher. I took an online class called "Surviving Almost There" that was all about figuring out how to get past whatever barriers are preventing your first sale if you're in a position like mine with near-miss rejections, contest wins, etc. One thing that struck me was that sometimes you're writing the wrong subgenre or genre, and you either have to change your writing to match the market you're targeting or find a new market.

That struck home for me because one of my rejections read something like, "This falls into the cracks between historical romance and historical fiction but doesn't fit into either." Reading that, I'd grumbled, "That's not a crack, that's a NICHE," but taking the class I realized that I was caught between genres, and that if I continued to write the kind of romance I'm writing, I'd likely just continue slamming my head into a brick wall.

So. I talked it over with my CPs and my agent, and we all agreed I'd be better off outside romance, not least because I had several readers all tell me that where my writing really shone in TSL was in the battle and adventure sequences. My response to that was, and still is, "Are y'all crazy? Have you read any Bernard Cornwell? My battle scenes so suck compared to his." But, the thing is, those battle and adventure scenes were all kinds of fun to write, enough to make me want to push myself to make myself the best damn historical adventure writer around.

Anyway, my first idea was to recycle my TSL protagonists, but put them in a mystery-adventure series. Sort of, "He's a clever sergeant, she's a widowed aristocrat. They fight crime. And the Frogs."

I still might try that, eventually, but one day last fall a CP was grumbling about a writer's conference with one of those American Idol-type panels where editors and agents comment on attendees' opening pages. A friend of my CPs had her manuscript gonged with, "This is interesting, but we can't sell X. Could you change that part to Y?" The problem being that Y is something that never happened historically. "Change the course of HISTORY, why don't you?" my CP grumbled. I grumbled in chorus, then thought, "Wait a minute! I'm a writer. I can do anything I want. Including change the course of history." (Lest anyone think I'm plagiarizing my CP's friend's idea, I'm not--my story is nothing like hers. It just gave me the idea of figuring out what would've had to go differently to make Y happen instead of X.)

So. I'm working on an alternate history, or maybe the correct term is counterfactual history, since it doesn't have the fantastical elements of something like Naomi Novik's books or Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series. I just found a place where an event easily could've gone the other way, and I'm exploring the possible consequences if it had done so. So it's historical military adventure with some recognizable historical characters, set in a world that never quite was. And it's giving me fits, because it's by far the hardest thing I've ever tried to write, but I feel like if I can just do the idea justice, it could be something special.

That sounds really interesting. (But I thought that you're original story did too -- so what do I know?)

You're a pro.

Now, where's my "engrave in bronze" kit . . .

That sounds really cool, Susan! And hard get right, yes, but definitely something I would be interested in reading when you do.

I'm working on an alternate history

Alt-history is big currently, I hear. And the Great What If is fantastic fun.

Alt-history is very big right now. I think close to 50% of what I'm reading right now falls into that category. Good luck, Susan!

Never mind. I looked it up: drabble.

Alt-history is very big right now.

I just hope it doesn't peak too soon! I can only write so fast, what with the full-time job and the kid, and I'd hate to finish this thing only to hear, "Well, a year ago we would've bought it, but no one wants these anymore."

It's been building over many years, Harry Turtledove's been writing alt-history for at least 10 years. I think it's got a long way to go before it's played out. Probably more die down than play out. You'll get it in there!