Lilith Saintcrow

Five things make a post this Monday.

* I believe I have an essay in an upcoming SmartPop anthology from BenBella Books. It’s titled Ardeur: Unauthorized Essays On Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter. And it’s available for preorder on Amazon now. (Hat tip to Literary Escapism, I almost forgot about this essay.)

* I’ve taken to wearing hoop earrings again. They make me feel quite gypsy. It’s a shame I can’t wear gold.

* It’s getting awful close to the release date for Betrayals, the second Strange Angels book. I’m so damn busy I haven’t had my usual case of release nerves yet. Watch, now that I’ve said that they’ll show up and give me huge jitters.

* I’ve been reading The Luck Factor lately, and doing the exercises. That is, by the way, my problem with most self-help books, or more precisely the way most people tend to use self-help books–no real effort is required of the reader, so one gets an ersatz jolt and things one’s done actual work. But I digress.

Wiseman makes the interesting point that lucky people are persistent because they expect things to turn out well. In particular, he talks about people who win a lot of Internet and mail-in contests. Several of them say “if you don’t enter, you can’t win,” and point out that they spend time doing this and enter a lot of the contests. This is very similar to what I call my shotgun theory of publishing–keep submitting different things to people, and sooner or later someone will like something in your work enough to publish it. However, if you do not submit or you only flog one manuscript, you significantly lower your chances of getting initially or consistently published. It was (I won’t lie) gratifying to find this principle applied in other areas.

* I’m still in the phase of The Book That Will Not Die, in Heaven’s Spite. But we’re coming up on the last third of the book, so I can look forward to a brainbusting gallop to the end if I can just get through this bit. *crosses fingers* If I can just get us to the showdown in time…

Related posts:

1. More Release Madness!
2. Nothing But Red
3. Valentine Slogan Contest Winners!

Tags: Jill Kismet, novel madness, pennyworth advice, Strange Angels

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 11:12 am and is filed under Random!, Real Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.