Copy Cat

Kelly McCullough posts pictures of his cats every Friday over at Wyrdsmiths, and, I feel like being a copy cat today. Here's my Ms. Piggy enjoying the radiators of fall.

What is Midlist?

The ever thoughtful Jim C. Hines has another excellent post over on his livejournal. Today, he's wondering what does it mean to be mid-list?

I think most of us think of ourselves as mid-list, even though it's a term that's very nebulous and has never been defined for me by any professional, like my editor. We writers tend to talk to ourselves about such things, and make a lot of educated guesses. I think as long as I'm not, as Jim echoes, not J.K. Rowling, Stephen King or other obvious multi-millionaire type writers, I'll probably think of myself as mid-list, right or wrong.

Goodbye?

It's time for me to leave the coffee shop and go home. I have a synopsis for the third book in the vampire princess of St. Paul to finish writing.

I've been struggling writing this synopsis for several months now. I finally realized that one of the reasons may be because I've become very once-bitten-twice-shy about the last book on a contract. When I sold ALMOST TO DIE for, the publisher bought three books. Now that I'm sitting down to plan out the third, I find myself wondering: should I prepare for "goodbye"?

I was very casual about Garnet, and that ended up leaving me in the lurch... with a lot of unfinished business for her character. So I'm thinking that for this last contracted book, maybe I should assume the worst and tie up loose ends JUST IN CASE.

That makes it slightly more difficult to plan, however. Because I don't want to imply to the editor that I'm done and that they should feel free to terminate this series, you know? So, I need to tread carefully. Wrap stuff up, but also leave a new storyline open so if they think I've been selling well enough, they can go for another book or two.

Sigh.

Wish me luck!

Green Man Review

Green Man Review has an AWESOME review of Almost to Die For here, which includes a very funny (and, believe it or not, favorable) line about gouging one's eyes out with a dull spoon.