My First Novel Rejection!

To convince people I really mean it when I say I'm happy to get rejections, I've included this picture. I am actually really psyched. I've been rejected by a few magazines before but never by a real live agent for a completed novel. This is awesome! I'm feel like I'm playing in the big leagues now even if I'm indefinitely on the bench. Did it sting a little to get a rejection less than 11 hours after sending the query? Sure. Am I going to let that stop me? Absolutely not! At this point I can't even stop because I already sent out a total of six queries. That was one, but there are still five pending and I still intend to send out many more to come. Yay for forward momentum! The rejection was even pretty upbeat for a form letter.

Horatio

I don't draw very much anymore, so it's worth noting when I do even if not everyone will get the reference. Any one of the beta-readers who've read far enough in my novel knows my character Horatio. He was devilishly tricky to draw and, as per usual, he's not exactly how I see him in my head. But there's definitely a Horatio-ish essence to his face and I wasn't satisfied until I at least got the expression right, which was one of the hardest things. I based it off the below picture of Hugh Dancy which, except for the curly hair, looks almost exactly like the Horatio I see in my head. Despite the fact that I actually envisioned Horatio as unconventionally attractive whereas Hugh most defintely fits many conventions of attractiveness. In a dreamcast film of my novel, Hugh Dancy would play Horatio and Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films) would play the Prince, whose picture I put up yesterday. The only trouble is the disparity in their ages because they're supposed to be around the same age in my book. Not like I'm ever likely to have to worry about a film adaptation, and I'm quite lucky if I do.

Character Portrait

I saw some lizards today. I frustrated my little brothers because I'm incapable of waking before noon. But I didn't do anything that I think would make a good blog post. So here's a portrait I sketched back in high school of one of my novel's characters. He's younger in this picture than I currently imagine him, but that may have something to do with me having been younger at the time. He looks about the age in this picture that I probably was when I drew him (I'm guessing about 16). Now I see him as being around 21. Otherwise the expression of his face is very accurate to what I imagine if not all the features (his lips are a bit fuller than I see them in my head and a few other lines on his face don't quite match up). There's also definitely some artistic flaws that bug me in this picture, but I won't go into them because I've always been of the philosophy that pointing out a flaw in your own work to someone either forces them to comment on something they already saw or (far worse) brings something they didn't see to their attention. This way it only bugs me.

I already emailed this to some of the people reading my novel, but I messed up on the email with the picture attached, so after some deliberation, decided these are friends who loved me enough to read my novel and therefore probably wouldn't bite me if I sent them a follow-up email with the correct subject. The trouble was I forgot to attach the picture to the second email but it IS attached to the FIRST email with the WRONG subject. I decided NOT to send a third email. And now it's pictured above for people who don't like confusing emails.

Just so everyone understands the full scope of my incompetence.

September Words

In September I wrote 6383 words. Not as lame as some other school months but certainly a disappointment in comparison to the summer.

Extra Cherie points if you find where else I put up a picture of this tree.

And Tim sent me this great comic from: http://xkcd.com/