You Know You've Made it When...

You get an emailed solicitation for a one of your manuscripts, only to discover the solicitation is not quite as wonderful as it seems.

Last week I received an email from 'new international publishing house JustFiction! Edition' requesting I send in my manuscript for The Great Man.

(A clue to other solicitors, The Great Man is the single most precious thing I've written. Sure, I hate it more often than not. Sure it gives me nightmares and prevents a good night's sleep. Sure, I've cried over more character deaths than I care to admit in public. All the same, it's a precious, precious story. I don't mess around when people ask to see it.)

Thanks to my naturally suspicious nature, my first reaction was, literally, 'Hmm.' So, I typed in the name of the editor and the 'publishing company.' I found this.

Wow. Thanks sfwa.org and Victoria Strauss for saving my manuscript, and thus myself, from certain doom.

Far from being disappointed, I was thrilled. These fools think I am a writer! Mwah hah hah hah hah hah! Honestly, I feel I have now graduated to the middle ranks of aspirants.

Look out publishing world! I'm moving on up!

Bristol Man's Gift

A present of something which the giver pronounces to be of no use or of no value to himself.

- Henry Reddall's Fact, Fancy, and Fable, 1889

Gry, anything of little value, as the pairings of the nails.

- Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755