another rejection

[julesjones]

I can confirm that zarabee has started sending out rejections for Charm, Beauty, Strangness, because I received mine this morning. That's about the fourth variation I've received on the theme "I like this story, but..."

Naturally, the person who really, really loves the story is my romance editor. She'd take it in a heartbeat, if not for the minor problem that it's a romantic story and not a romance story. No Happy Ever After. Not even a Happy For Now. Bit of a problem there, when the majority of romance readers demand a happy ending. :-)

Back to the submissions guidelines, looking for sf editors who will consider erotic, romantic non-romance...

Comments

[ruthi.livejournal.com]

Romantic as in

Mystery! Gloom! Doom! ?

[julesjones]

It's a love story, but they don't Live Happily Ever After. There are always choices to be made in a relationship between an immortal and a human. It's a question of which price you're willing to pay.

This is one of the series of stories I've been doing which are essentially British myths set in the present day. The next one I wrote was the silkie novel Spindrift, which does have a happy ending. Though I did make the readers wait until the very last page. :-)

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Have you considered joining the Romantic Novelists' Association (http://www.rna-uk.org/)?

[julesjones]

Thanks for the link - I'd been meaning to check them out, but didn't know exactly what they were called or where they were on the net. Having had a look, I suspect that I wouldn't really get much out of it when I'm resident in the US, although if/when I move back to the UK I think it'll be worth considering. I'd also need to check that I wouldn't run into the problems that have ensured that I will not join the RWA (seriously prejudiced against ebooks and erotic romance, especially the two in combination).

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

You can see 'em in action in the final of University Challenge - The Professionals on Monday at 8.30 p.m. That's how I know about them. I don't think they have a problem with sex as such, because they complained that the three most common misconceptions they encounter are (a) that they never write about sex, (b) that they write dozens of books a year, and (c) that they always write under pseudonyms. They didn't mention ebooks. But I thought of it because you mentioned Regency, and the RNA's star player, Stephen Bowden (http://wenlock.blogspot.com/), writes Regency, and has revealed that he will be dressed to match on screen tomorrow night.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Stephen says: "In the context of deciding whether you are a published author, and thus eligible to be a full member rather than a New Writer like me, the RNA doesn't count e-publication. The market for e-books in the UK is tiny, but it is growing, so at some point things may change. The RNA has nothing against e-publication, and quite a few of our members are e-published as well as traditionally published.
Quite a few RNA members write erotica - indeed the RNA's webmistress is a big seller in erotica."

[julesjones]

Ta. Not counting ebooks for pro publication credits for membership isn't in itself a problem -- SFWA spent some time scratching its collective head about how to decide whether an electronic publication counted as a pro market. (Their current standards for a market to qualify as pro are set out at http://sfwa.org/org/qualify.htm#Q7 ). But there was weird stuff going on in the RWA whereby they set a minimum requirement on copies sold etc for an ebook publisher to be considered a pro market, then moved the goalposts when a publisher actually achieved the required standard. It's made me aware of the possibility.

I missed University Challenge. Had set an alarm for it, too. :-(

It's a small world - having just gone to look at Stephen's blog, I think the Saskia who commented there is another Loose Id author...

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I have it on tape at present.

[ex-emilyvei.livejournal.com]

Aw, too bad. I'll start bracing myself now.

[julesjones]

She got a huge number of submissions, so I'm not too disappointed, other than this story being a right pain to find potential markets for. I may end up having to rewrite it - watervole read it yesterday and thinks that I could probably remove the fannish cultural elements that make it difficult to sell to a mundane market, and/or tone down the sexual content, although I'm still not convinced. It would be relatively easy to switch it to het, although that would remove some of the point of the story. Or I could go with the plan of writing more short stories with the modern day mythology theme to put together as a collection of mostly happy endings, although the last one of those got away from me and turned into a novel. :-)