I found a little bit about it online: [link]

So far I've only been able to find submissions guidelines, not a list of what they've published recently. Anyway, I'm waiting to hear back from the conference coordinator about whether this is someone who asked to meet me based on my contest entry. If so, I'm going to learn as much as I can about what he acquires and go to the appointment, since it seems stupid not to meet someone who's already interested in me. If nothing else, it's a connection. But if they just assigned me the appointment based on the genre of my book, I think I'll cancel, simply because I'd rather not make a big push to market it until I've at least finished the first draft.

I'm feeling a bit better about life this morning. I mean, if there can be multiple romance series about school friends with corny nicknames who fight Napoleon together, or friends with even cornier nicknames in a spy brotherhood, or large families with cornily memorable names, there's room for two series where Arthur Wellesley fights Napoleon in England, right? And if I sell this book, it's unlikely to come out before 2010 at the earliest, so by then the similarities to this one particular Temeraire book won't seem quite so stark. I hope. Maybe. I haven't completely recovered my optimism yet, and I have a little over a week left to buck up, because even if I'm not pitching to an editor at the conference, I need to be prepared to talk about my work with confidence and not apologize for it.

Turns out the conference organizers just scheduled the appointments for me because I'd left them blank.

Oh well. So much for that ego boost!

coughdrabblescough

Ooh, yeah, drabbles! I was thinking how disconnected I feel when I've got limited online time, but how I surely had enough time to do some drabbles. But then I forgot. So thanks for the prompt!

It's still "by the book," right?

I love my Doctor Who to bits and I'm afraid it had its way with me when I tried to write a drabble. So, full warning, spoilers for DW 4.13 in this one. I'll spoiler font for those who aren't up to speed with it. It probably won't make sense to those who don't watch Who, but the prompt just played into the series so well, I couldn't resist.

The Darkness

He said the memories would kill her.

Kill what made her special, spacial, space-time relative distance, diversion, divorce, divorced. No, she’d never been divorced. Never been married, married, married to Lee.

He said she couldn’t keep them.

Why did she have to give them up? They were hers, her children. That’s what made her special. They, they, he was special, spacial, space-time relative distance, distaff. No, he had no staff for all he was a doctor.

He made the rules.

She never followed them. Even in the library, she hadn’t done anything by the book, book, look him up.

YAY Sail!

Fantastic!

Hell, I had to give it the old college try. Just because I don't have long, tedious meetings to get my drabble on during them anymore, doesn't mean I can't write one, anyway.

I had a bit of an accidental epiphany today that made me feel much better about my mind and Naomi Novik's apparently having found parallel tracks.

I was reading the reader Q&A on Bernard Cornwell's website, which he updates so frequently it functions like a blog. A reader asked him what he thought of Iain Gale ripping off his Sharpe series, and his response was that Gale is a fine author, and that *both* of them were ripping off Horatio Hornblower.

Before I even thought of any parallels to my current situation, I was already at Amazon.com searching for Iain Gale and deciding I absolutely HAD to have this book (which is not the one where the rip-off accusation comes from--Gale has just started a series set about 100 years earlier with a hero named Jack Steel, which does rather evoke Sharpe in the name alone):

[link]

Note the cover blurb by...you guessed it, Bernard Cornwell!

Anyway, as I was drooling over the cover image, it finally hit me. If this series does sell, I'll probably be accused of ripping off Temeraire AND Sharpe, and maybe even Aubrey/Maturin for good measure. And I'll hate that, even as I acknowledge the similarities are there. But, for every person who goes online and says, "Susan Wilbanks is a hack who copied Novik/Cornwell/O'Brian," there's going to be at least one reader who says, "OMG! A new author doing the Napoleonic era! Happy! Joy! To the Amazon-mobile, away!" And, you know, if I'm a good enough writer, my own unique spin will shine through, and instead of being a rip-off artist I'll get to be part of the pantheon. At least, that's my goal.

Jesus, I wrote real life schmoop.

"By the book"

It’s his favorite game, snuggled deep into the couch before bed, pajamas twisted on recklessly with his own chubby hands.

He points. “Nana!”

I nod, skim one finger down the glossy plastic page. “How about this?”

He rolls his eyes; that’s too easy. “Jakey.”

“Yup.” I wink at him, kiss the top of his head. “You’re a smart guy. How about this one?”

“Me! And Mommy.” He stares at the picture, studying his own face, turned up to me in the photo, the curls we trimmed away yesterday damp on the back of his neck.

I like this game, too.