Random House replied and the letter has been "translated" by Jeremiah Tolbert: [link]

"We hired some­one from the record indus­try, and we were aston­ished to learn that you could fuck over writ­ers in ways we never even imag­ined. So we imme­di­ately set about set­ting up an imprint where we could dick over writ­ers like record com­pa­nies have been screw­ing over musi­cans for years."

Heh. Not that it's funny.

Random House Hydra, Alibi, and Flirt contract update: [link]

Have now read two of the recmmended books. Watt's 90 day novel and Second Sight by Cheryl Klein are still on order.

Of the two I've read: So far, Nancy Kress seems to be directly addressing my particular writing flaws. Different people have different problems Nancy Kress's "Beginning Middles and Ends " really helped me.

Maas's "Breakout Novel" annoys me by spending a lot of time trying to sell you on his techniques. Yeah I know I need to improve or I would not be reading your book, Skip the sales pitch and get to the advice already. Also he tells me a lot less that I did not already know than Kress does.

Again personal reactions. Someone else with different writing flaws might find Maas very helpful and Kress less so.

Now that I know some of what I need to do, time to find out if I can actually do it

Querying. Sucks. I have fulls and partials out. It. still. Sucks.

Having fulls out is good news! But, yeah, querying still sucks.

Many many vibes for the fulls and partials, and that the results of the sucky querying not suck.

Next couple of installments have been posted on LJ; at 14,000 words so far I guess it's not exactly a drabble anymore. Any comments are welcome - I definitely had to push myself past a self-sabotaging bout of you didn't write for two days, which proves you fail and will always fail so why not just stop? and still feel very doubtful. But whether it's any good or not, at least it's going forward.

JZ, check your profile addy, please ma'am.

Fingers crossed on all the subs.

Marked to read when I get home, JZ

I want to thank people again for the writing book recs. I will add that I found looking at multiple books really worthwhile. Even though the Kress book helped me the most, because I think it fits my writing personality, there was not a book that did not contribute at least one thing. For example Watt's 90 day Novel which is polar opposite of Kress. It concentrates on getting in touch with your muse, with letting your sub-conscious do its part. And I don't think I could ever go with his whole program, take that improvisational an approach. But some of his suggestions are still invaluable to me. For example, he suggests getting your characters in trouble without worrying about how they get out. And you will find a way to get them out. And I tried it, got my characters in a situation that seemed hopeless. And what do you know, not only was there a way out, the way out was implicit in some of the premises fundamental to the story.

I suspect this principle will work for anyone. If you need writing books, get a number of books on writing that take different approaches. One of them will probably fit your writing personality better than the others. But the rest will still have one or too suggestions you find useful.