Overall, great.

I think "Aimee’s only hope for help, she discovers, is the assassin." is an extremely flaccid last sentence.

"Now Aimee has to ally with the same assassin and rival." Still not great but better.

How about just "Aimee's only hope is the assassin."

Shorter and more stark.

I think it's an interesting angle for the pitch, Gud, but the pitch itself is reading a little clunky to me.

I need more caffeine before I'd attempt to tweak it, though.

So ... I totally forgot about that. Do you want me to take a shot at it, Gud?

And Gar, do you have a pub date for your book?

Author people, see my post in Press. And spread the word!

Don't know pub date. My drop dead deadline for having everything in is June 1, though they would rather have it sooner. Isn't publication usually a year to 18 months after that? On the other hand, with a small publisher which does limited publicity (even compared to the little bit that big publishers do) maybe turnaround is faster. Year to 18 months always seem long to me, but the reference books that explained it made convincing cases for why that needed to be

So ... I totally forgot about that. Do you want me to take a shot at it, Gud?

Sure, if you don't mind.

I'll be back with a few, Gud.

Gar, they might not have one set yet if they haven't let you know. Small presses so work a bit differently than a bigger house.

And it really depends -- I sold Cold Kiss in October of 2009, and they said from the get-go it would be fall 2011 before it came out. Children/teen publishing has a pretty long lead time.

But when I was at Kensington, mass market paperbacks could be out in nine months from a finished manuscript, sometimes.

I finished my first chapter of 'Cog'. My new novel is finally getting along.

Yeah I think they set a release date once they approve the final manuscript.