Yippee-ki-yi-yay and other things you just have to say at times

Well, it took seven hours, but I think I've done what I wanted to do with the Honor manuscript. Now, it's time for more "hurry up and wait" time to be put in.

I think I walked into this with a fairly simplistic idea of how things went. I guess I just assumed that it would be a straight out rejection or acceptance. When getting any feedback on a slushpile manuscript as quickly as I did should have tipped me off to the fact that it wasn't a flat-out rejection. Anyway... I don't think I'm off on my translation now.

I think I definitely need an agent, though, to run translations for me. Hopefully, I'll have more luck this time around. I'm not doing an repeat submissions even though this is a completely different manuscript. I don't know what the protocol is on things like that. Besides, I have a crib sheet on their rejections from last time. I'm a little surprised at how cold some of their form letters are. They weren't all bad. In fact, some of the rejections... even the form letters were nice, so those got high-lighted for possibilities. It was about fifty-fifty as to which ones I felt torched the bridge behind them. Maybe that was their intention, though. I know agents typically have hundreds of queries a week and they probably don't want to deal with the same writers again and again. That was useful to know though, because I could tell which ones I never would have felt comfortable working with.

For those that are curious, the nicest rejection I received was from Laurie McLean at Larsen-Pomada Literary Agents . I'm totally not being sarcastic either. Honest truth. It was the kindest and most motivating rejection I've received. In fact, if I was to re-query anyone... there you go... right there. Nice people.

I've already mentioned the one that bothered me the most, but I won't say who sent that. The body of the rejection was "Pass and God bless." I actually winced when I read that. It was even an email. Please... just send me a form letter instead of something like that. I know we're not supposed to take rejection personally because I doubt they're rejecting our manuscript with any personal feeling attached, but that one.... That one won the "OUCH... cold" award. I had other awards that I attached. There was the "bland award for extreme blandness." I awarded the "vague" award. Oh... and then the "best use of a Lewis Carroll quote in their signature" award. Someone actually used the word "rejection letter" in their rejection letter. They got the award for "boldness." Anyway... now I run across these agents blogs, and I find myself thinking "Weird... I gave you the bland award."

So, I ran into someone at church who was proofreading "Re: Straint" for me. She'd finished the book and tried to hand it back to me, but it was barely in my hand before someone snatched it out. My friend, Danielle, who is currently hoarding the completed Honor series, asked, "Is this another book?" in accusation before shaking her head as if I was trying to pull a fast one on her. Then, she tucked it in her purse. The husband was there for that and found it amusing. My fourteen year old fan was excited to hear that she'd be getting her hands on my latest YA adult book. Her mother refers to her as my first rabid fan. My order should come from Lulu tomorrow along with two books from the Sarah series that need to go through the hard-copy edit process. Lulu was a find. I'm so glad I read somewhere that you should do a small private print run on Lulu to find typos. It's so much easier to find stuff when it's printed out.

Anyway, I was working on Honor Six last night and I should get back at it while I'm in the mode. Between Alex, the fourteen year old, and Danielle, I'm not sure who is more rabid, and I just have to keep throwing books at them.