Saturday, February 11, 2006

I'm too full to sleep

We went to a dinner party tonight (co-workers of Tony's) and now I'm still too full to sleep. I ate too much dessert. Ugh. Eric makes one heck of an apple pie.

I've also been tossing and turning over my whole agent debacle. After hearing back from the one agent (you know, the "loved it, but there's already a flood of vampire stories out there" -- not that I blame them, there is), I e-mailed Knuckles (I know I should call him Dan...after all, we've only ever "met" in e-mail, but I just love that nickname. Besides, I love his sense of humor and feel like we've been friends (albeit long distance ones that have never met in person) for ages), who liked the bits of my book that he's read, to ask about his agent. So I e-queried his agent and heard back right quick...he wants an exclusive read for 30 days & send the ms out right away. Yippee! Except that I still haven't heard back anything from Rebecca or Nadia.

So I duly e-mailed R and N for a status update. Heard back amazingly quickly (they must have been literally sitting on their laptops). N is going to get back to me by Monday and R said it was up to me, but she hadn't had a chance to look at it yet.

Tony says it's a no-brainer to send it to the fellow that's asked for the whole shebang vs. someone who only has a partial and hadn't even asked for it at that and I have to agree, even though R has been on my top 5 list from the start. So I just now emailed her back with my response after tossing and turning over it for a couple of hours. Way past my bedtime. Edward, Dan's agent, is high up on my list too -- after all, if he "gets" Dan's books, he'll hopefully get mine. Even my upcoming (i.e. unwritten as yet) novels are always going to have a comic edge. That's just me.

You can't be this short (4' 11") and be serious.

Well, unless you're Napoleon. Actually, scratch that. Unless you're a guy. Short guys tend to have complexes. That's why all short women wind up married to tall men. Really. Have you ever met a short woman married to a short man? Other than, like, the little people from the Wizard of Oz? (wow, how un-PC is that?)

Anyway.

I am concerned with the whole market-flooded-with-vampire stories thing. It seems like everyone got the same idea at the same time as me. Not that there aren't always vampire stories, but there are a slew of them coming out right now and in the near future.

Of course, mine is a bit different being that it is told from a prospective vampire's point of view and vampires are something she's used to and not afraid of (her parents being bloodsuckers) and she has to go to vampire lessons and have vampire homework...but it really isn't a vampire novel. It's more about her journey, her crushes, her teen angst about growing up...The only blood is at a blood bar (would you like that straight up or on the rocks?) and there's no gore at all. So I hope someone will be able to look past the fangs and see the bildingsroman elements. Hehe got to use a word from my college days! Look, ma, my English degree wasn't for naught!

2 comments:

Kim / POWER OF RUN said...

What an exciting time! I know someone posted (I'm pretty sure it was Nadia) on her blog a while back about a vampire book she got that she was able to pitch differently so that the focus was on the other aspects of the book and not the "oh, another vampire story."

Is there another way to focus the pitch info?

It sounds like you have some good agents picked out! I hope you get one of your top choices!

liraelwiddershins said...

Thanks! Me too! Ack!