Friday, June 24, 2011

Yay, Friday!

I now have just three more chapters to read, and I'll consider this book done enough to send to my agent. I have all kinds of nagging doubts and I'm not sure the voice and style are what publishers are looking for in this kind of thing, but I think the voice and style fit this story and these characters. It's not as funny as what I'm known for, though there is some humor, but this isn't a comedy and I don't see how I could make this story into a comedy.

I had a very strange nightmare last night in which a real estate agent stuck her sign in my yard and started giving me instructions on what I'd have to do in order to sell my house. I was getting all frantic about it because I didn't really want to sell and I didn't have time to get all that stuff done. I woke up just enough to realize it wasn't real and I didn't have to try to sell my house, but that wasn't enough. To stop the panicky feeling, I had to go back to sleep and go back into the dream, where I called the real estate agent and asked her why she was trying to sell my house. She told me my husband had contacted her. I told her I didn't have a husband, and she realized there was a mix-up and she was dealing with the wrong house. I think, though, that may have been a message from my subconscious that I need to do some work around the house, so once I get the book done, I think I'll spend Saturday doing some serious cleaning and organizing. You know things are bad when you're having nightmares about it.

In other news, I think I'm going to bite the bullet and pull the trigger to actually go to WorldCon in Reno. I've got the membership and hotel reservation, but I'd been wavering about whether or not to go, since I don't have anything upcoming (yet) to promote and don't really have any business I could get done. I may not even be relevant enough to be considered for programming. But networking is never bad, and that networking can pay off in the future. I met some awesome people at the last WorldCon. Plus, I have a room in a nice hotel/resort, and programming seldom starts before 10 in the morning, so I can enjoy some hanging out in the hotel time and treat it almost like a working vacation. This will be the only travel I do this year. I made a plane reservation yesterday and have to buy the tickets today, and I think I'm going to go ahead and go for it. I'm already thinking of fun things I'll get to do. If I don't get on programming, then my schedule will be loose and I can choose what sessions to go to and will be able to learn and absorb all kinds of stuff. I'm friends with the guest of honor, so I may even get to hang out with the cool people. Now I just hope I have enough income the rest of the year to cover it all. I'm hoping for a decent royalty check in August.

On a moneymaking note, I think (though I'll have to check my contracts) the rights to the romantic comedies I wrote for Silhouette should have reverted to me. Would there be any interest in having these available as e-books? They aren't fantasy at all, but I would say that the style and tone might be similar to my fantasy books, only without the magic (though I haven't read them in more than a decade, so who knows?). They're short, only about 50,000 words, so I'd probably make them cheap. I'd just have to deal with the digitizing, formatting and getting new covers. They've been out of print forever, but the rights reversion also takes forever because they tend to keep books in print by doing foreign editions. In fact, formally asking for a rights reversion may trigger a new Czech special release. Anyway, just testing the waters to see if there's enough interest to go through the effort. I wouldn't want to do all this and then sell five copies.

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