e.g.thompson

Hey ya’ll.

Soooooo, I finally heard back from Tor and it was disappointingly anticlimactic. I knew it was coming. (Well, I knew my manuscript was rejected, I just wasn’t sure if I was ever going to receive a letter saying so!) The letter is known as a “standard rejection”, or SR, and here it is:

Dear Author,

We have given careful consideration to your manuscript and we are sorry to say that we do not feel we can offer to publish it. This is a personal judgement, of course, reflecting our own editorial needs, and the decision of another publisher might be quite different. For this reason, we prefer not to give more specific criticism.

Thank you for the opportunity to consider your manuscript and we wish you the best of luck in placing it elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Submissions Editor
Starscape and Tor Teen

Ho hum. Onward and upward. Roll with the punches. Coat yourself in idioms 🙂 In the meantime, I finished a 2nd edition of The Feast and released it last week. So you can check out the “where to purchase” link for an updated looksie.

Or here 🙂

That’s all for now, folks!

Take care,

Erin

Hello, crew!

It’s been a while. Sorry about that, but I don’t believe in writing updates unless I have something to say. Most of the time, I’m more Ayorthaian than not 🙂  (you get 100 points if you get that reference BTW)

The six month deadline for my Tor submission is closing in, and I haven’t heard anything. The saying “no news is good news” doesn’t apply in this instance, though of course I’m still hopeful due to my cursed optimism. According to Tor’s submission guidelines, I’m supposed to resubmit my story after six months because this means their response was likely lost in the mail. First, I now know it can take 8-9 months for a response from them, but I figure I waited (mostly) patiently for their six month (“do not submit elsewhere”) turnaround, so I’m off the hook as far as I’m concerned.

Second however, it was hard enough waiting the first six months and I don’t have it in me to wait another half a year for a very likely “thank you, but no”, so I do not plan to resubmit despite their advice. Does that sound bitter? I don’t mean it to. Rejections are the norm, for almost all writers. Besides, I had planned to initiate Stage B of my Very Specific Plan if this happened, so I’m going to flesh out my manuscript and polish it before sending it on to another big publisher that accepts unsolicited submissions. Their turnaround time is three months.

In the meantime, I have a short story submission under consideration and a few more pending response. Writing is not for the impatient! I repeat: do not attempt publication if you have little to no patience! A “quick” turnaround is two weeks and three to six months is normal, for all lengths of stories. Before I initiate Stage B, I’ve submitted queries to to agencies who have a 4-6 week turnaround, just in case. In theory, it’s a lot easier to go through the whole publishing deal if you have an agent. So, I figure I should give that a try. Pro tip: make sure you learn all your email’s shortcuts. TIL that some combination involving the spacebar sent one of my queries prematurely. As in, my letter wasn’t complete #queryletterfail Oh well.

Good night!

Erin

Greetings!

As an early birthday present to myself, I activated the Very Specific Plan I mentioned last log post. This involved mailing (yes, mailing–people still do that!) a cover letter, synopsis, first three chapters, and a self-addressed stamped envelope directly to the young adult acquisitions editor for Tor, one of my favorite publishers of fantasy. Now I wait for six months to hear back. “Why?” you may ask. I really don’t know. This is what I felt compelled to do with this particular project, so I listened to my instincts. I firmly expect a rejection from Tor (after all, they receive thousands of manuscripts every year in the mail), but for now I’m content to wait and get back to work on The Salt Pine Prince. Finally!

One of my New Year’s Resolution was to drastically cut back on Facebook time, and so far it’s been a success. I don’t log in very often and when I do it’s just for a few minutes. And I’m really much happier for it! Surprisingly, I don’t miss it, though I do miss feeling more connected to family and friends. This actually leads into my next resolution, which is to get/stay more in contact with family and friends in other ways. Like mailing letters, calling, and making more of an effort to visit. As an introvert, the struggle to maintain relationships is real, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try!

Anyway, back to Delaterra I go!

Greetings and Happy Holidays!

Time to update! My fifth book will come out tomorrow (under my pseudonym), and I’m polishing up a sixth that I have a very specific plan for (it was a surprise idea that popped up during NaNoWriMo, which I will tell you all about in about six months when I see how it goes). Once book #6 is out of my hands (hopefully in January), I’m going to finish what will end up being my 7th book, The Salt Pine Prince. I know I’ve said that a few times, and who knows if I’ll actually follow through this time, but there it is. It’s always been in the back of my mind, where I’ve been working out the kinks.

Also of note, I got a new job! It’s been a journey the past eight months being a “stay at home mom”. It always felt like there was no time to write, but somehow I self-published three books in that time, and got a lot of work done on #6. But I’m ready to get back to work.

Finally, I’m still writing short stories and have been working with an anthology called “Clash of the Titles”, where the editor created the titles and the writers wrote stories to match. My story is called “A Quality of Pain” (it’s fairly dark) and right now I’m not sure if it will appear in the main anthology or be released in a spin-off magazine. There’s a Kickstarter planned so depending on where my story will appear I may update on that at a later date.

Well, that’s all for now! I’ve been flirting with the idea of quitting social media because I honestly don’t care for it, and never have. It’s just another thing to update. I convince myself that I’ll be able to manage it (I even created a Hootsuite account) and I do for a few weeks, then I go months without tweeting or updating Facebook. So, we’ll see.

Happy Holidays and New Year!