buffysmg, the first and last poems would make great songs, if you're at all inclined that way or know anyone who is. The first one especially sounds like something by, say, a girl singer with a deceptively light voice singing a very simple, almost nursery-rhyme-like tune (maybe a bit like the incredibly eerie "Pretty Fly" sung by little Pearl in The Night of the Hunter).

Ugh, erika, that sucks. But the Kind!Rejection does at least mean that they wouldn't mind hearing from you again. If they put enough effort in to make the rejection not Formal!, they saw something in your writing that's worth that effort. It's still a rejection and it still feels lousy, but they're definitely not slamming the door in your face.

This is true. This editor knows my work and likes it, so it's not as if I don't thank her, but...

I found out something cool, recently. My friend Donna teaches a class called "Perspectives In Disability" and she uses my tattoo article in class.

buffysmg, the first and last poems would make great songs, if you're > at all inclined that way or know anyone who is. The first one > especially sounds like something by, say, a girl singer with a > deceptively light voice singing a very simple, almost nursery-rhyme-like > tune (maybe a bit like the incredibly eerie "Pretty Fly" sung by little > Pearl in The Night of the Hunter).

I actually had been singing the lines in my head as I wrote them, but I am in no way capable of singing them. LOL

This is a bit more basic/mechanical than our usual topics on this thread, but I have a question:

I just replaced the prologue of my alternate history with an obituary--that of the Important Personage whose premature death is where my world's history first departs from that of the one we're all living in. Incidentally, I hated killing that prologue, since it was very prettily written. I came closer to channeling Patrick O'Brian than I'm normally capable of, and I kept re-reading it to gloat over my elegant turns of phrase. However, I realized that it was more than the reader needs to know about events happening 25 years before the main action of the story, featuring a character who never appears again for the very good reason that he's dead.

So I cut the affecting death scene and just wrote a one-sentence obituary (one sentence because in my world the guy dies too young to become that Important of a Personage). And I'm proud of my google-fu in tracking down a newspaper for the town where he died and in figuring out how to word a period-appropriate obituary. But I don't know how to format the darn thing. Should I still have "PROLOGUE" as the section header? Right now it's something like this:

From the PERIODICAL of PLACE, DATE

The obituary itself, which is one longish sentence about the guy, how old he was, where he died, and what of.

Does that sound right for manuscript formatting? I'm sure it'll look different in the actual book if I'm so fortunate as to sell it, but that's not my problem.

::runs in and commences flailing::

So, a Rather Large Publishing House has made an offer on the GCS book proposal.

I'll post more details when everything is signed and whatnot, but zomg! An offer! Eeeeeee!

(x-posted with Beep Me.)

Whohooo! Congratulations, Jilli!

Heh. So....Jilli.....what do you think about blurbing my next book? Now that you're gonna be SO FAMOUS?