Saturday, December 26, 2009

I am currently chilling out in post holiday stupor at my parents having endured a couple of days with iffy electricity, so I figured I'd better take advantage of the internets while I can. Besides going it pioneer style on occasion, the holiday was good. Lots of family, presents, and food, and there's still another gathering this evening. I wound up a little mini-fridge for beverages in studio, a mortar & pestle for grinding herbs for soapmaking, some new towels, some luscious lotions, and a wealth of bookstore and Starbucks gift cards that will probably be used up in a week.The weather has been awful, an ice storm on Wednesday that made getting out of the city a nightmare and glassed over the trees until they split. Today, a white blanket over everything and giant, thick snowflakes. I've had my fill of winter and the direct flights to Myrtle Beach for the Rockford Airport seem ridiculously tempting, though I fear if I went, I might not come back.

I also had some unfortunate news from Ghost Road that they are, for all intensive purposes, putting on hold new publications due to a combination of factors (health problems of the editor and the economy), and will thus be canceling my contract and won't be releasing girl show after all this year, which gives me a couple of choices. I can either resubmit it elsewhere (though I'd really like to focus on submitting the new book this year) or just bring the thing out as a dancing girl title later this year. The latter is especially tempting since I would have full say over layout and design, which makes my inner control freak very happy. On the other hand, even though I thankfully have gotten past that self-publication self-doubt and definitely believe this mss is ready to be released, I'm not sure, since I am definitely a newbie at the full-length book business, how much I can get the book successfully out there enough in the way that Ghost Road and Dusie have done such a good job with the previous books. In February dgp will be releasing Robyn Art's photog/poetry collab, and I was hoping to solicit a couple more mss I have my eye on for the coming year, but it's all very much in it's infancy. Of course, perhaps the best thing is trial by fire and just to go with it.

2 comments:

Jeannine said...

Sorry to hear about Ghost Road, sweetie. Merry post-Christmas - I hope you have some nice light and heat!

Carol Guess said...

So sorry to hear about the Ghost Road title. I know that feeling really well; it's happened to me with several manuscripts. My vote: do it up as a Dancing Girl Press full-length text. At any rate, I look forward to reading it when it's published!