Life changes, sometimes quickly

I haven’t forsaken my blog, I swear it. I just got very sick and then very busy. During those sick weeks, my life sort of got rearranged…for the better, but it’s just not the same thing it was before RT.

Part of the change was because I agreed to do something rather odd… I agreed to dance the Cancan while costumed as Leeloo from the Fifth Element. Come to WorldCon and catch the costume Masquerade. The show I’m dancing in is the half-time show.

Yeah. Not only am I soooooo not a dancer, I also had to build my costume. Believe me, cancan dresses are quite involved. I’m about half way through construction and while I love it, good grief, what a lot of work!

But the one thing I can say for certain is that I’m learning a lot. A helluva lot.

Also, in the life changing department, Jason and I plus a couple friends have started up a wine review site featuring video podcasts. We’re trying to break the barrier between wine snobs and the general public. We don’t want to use colorful language (ie. our reviewer would never describe the ‘nose’ of a wine, he’d say, “smells like…”) and we want to be accessible to everyone, not just people with boatloads of money.

See for yourself at wineass.com.

I’ve learned so much just in these last couple months, it’s incredible. I have learned how to edit video and sew a mean pair of bloomers.

But, I tell ya, I can’t wait until September…or at least until after WorldCon so that my life can chill out and get back to…uh…well…”normal”.

Sometimes a girl’s gotta vent

I’ll try not to let this be too much of a rant, but darn it all I think I’m justified. (Give me a minute or two, that feeling might pass.)

Anyhow, I’m already published as part of a team, but I also want to write some novels on my own. Okay, no biggie, right? Well, the oddities and antics have seriously begun now that I’m receiving lots of rejection letters.

Not that I’m bent over all the rejections. They don’t surprise me at all. I’ve been exposed to the actor’s life where the rejections are even higher and more scathing. I’ve also been privy to some of Jason’s letters and his trials and tribulations, too. So, getting rejection letters is not a big deal to me.

It’s their content or lack thereof, their politeness or lack thereof, etc. that’s causing this little rant.

I’ve gotten quite a range in different styles from different agents–some of which I won’t submit anything else to because I really did screw up in thinking my work might fit what they represent, others were just plain rude and even if I wrote what they represent, I wouldn’t want someone so rude representing my work.

But without naming names, etc. I need to get one particular irritation out in the open…

It’s mainly about the form letter, but a special breed of form letter–the partial page.

Okay, I send in a full page query and get back a half page form. That’s fine.

I send a full page and get back a third page form. That’s fine.

I send a full page and get back a quarter page form. Even that’s fine, too.

But when the agent’s listing requires the query to include a synopsis and first three chapters, how the hell is it okay to reply with a form rejection that is only about a twelfth of a page. Yes, a twelfth. It’s only slightly larger than my business card!

What’s worse is that I’ve received full page rejections with less written on them, but for some reason that was okay. The fact that I got the full page–without more than a “no, thanks”–honestly didn’t bother me. But if I send out about 40 pages and get a twelfth of a page back, why on earth would I want that person representing me?

I do find it bizarre that in a few instances all I sent was a query and I’ve received rejections with more than one paragraph on them–more than simply, “We’re not interested.”–and those made my day. Those are people whom I’d want representing me whether they’d sent a form letter or a personal response.

Even a form letter says a lot about an agent just by the way it was written. I don’t care that I was sent a form letter–if I didn’t write a unique piece of work in their eyes, why should they send me a unique reply–I care what the content is. I’ve always thought that being nice is good business practice. Being polite is even better.

Really, I’m the one who bled on the pages and dangled them out there like naughty laundry on a front yard clothes line. I should be prepared to suffer the consequences. But if a neighbor had come by, pulled down all the clothes, tossed them in the trash and left a note that simply read, “What were you thinking? Are you really that stupid?” isn’t that a bit harsh? Personally, if my neighbor were to be displaying the naughty wares, I’d knock up and say, “You might wanna put those in the backyard where you and your husband can enjoy them more.”

But hey, that’s me.

And I feel much better now!

I wish I knew when the mailman actually arrives because I can’t wait to see what rejections (or hopefully requests for partials) I’ve gotten today!