Day in the Life of an Idiot

I posted this elsewhere, but I should also let y'all know that I had a conversation with my agent earlier this week and she let me know that Penguin has turned down my proposals for more Ana books (that would be Tate's Vampire Princess of St. Paul books.) So, the final installment will be ALMOST EVERYTHING, which is coming to a store near you in February of 2012.

What is ironic about this, is that I was actually really starting to get into them. In fact, I remember telling Shawn after I finished the proposals, "I sort of want to write these. A lot. That means they won't sell, you know."

I hate being right about things like this. :-)

But, all is not lost. I'm still hard at work on Tate's newest book, which may or may not be the beginning of another series, called PRECINCT 13. It was actually supposed to be turned in by now, but I had a series of unforunate events, not the least of which was the massive computer crash in which I lost everything I'd written on it to-date. I'm on schedule to have the book turned in early October. Fingers crossed.

Every time I think I should feel depressed about things like this, I tend, instead, to consider how amazingly lucky I've been so far. Once again, I have a book under contract when they've said no, so it isn't quite as scary as a "no" hanging there in the empty space between contracts. There continues to be a possiblity that PRECINCT 13 could take off like wildfire and my career at Penguin could continue for several more years.

Though I said something else the other day that unnerves me. I was talking to Eleanor or perhaps naomikritzer and I said, "I'm really getting into this book now... that probably means it's doomed."

I should say this all started because my favorite of the AngeLINK books is MESSIAH NODE, which was the first to be remaindered and the only one of my novels not to get any kind of award nod at ALL (it was the only of the four not to get picked as a "Critic's Choice" for SF by Romantic Times, even.) In other words, my favorite was the least appreciated by critics -- and, given the numbers that caused it to be taken out of print, the public as well. Ever since then I've decided that if I really, really love writing a book or I think of it as some of my best work, it's likely to perform the crappiest.

The other lucky thing about the Ana news is that I had seen the writing on the wall for once. I actually wrote ALMOST EVERYTHING so that it could be a satisfying conculsion to the series, if necessary. Before you think that I probably shot myself in the foot by doing that, I also made it EXTREMELY clear to my editor that my plan was to have a series of triolgies that would wrap up nicely every third book. The next set was going to be "the vampire queen of St. Paul" series, then "Empress" and then... perhaps, "Goddess."

But, alas, I must say goodbye to those plans.

Weirdly, Tate continues to be more successful than I ever was. Tall, Dark & Dead, in particular, seems to be somewhat unstoppable. Not only did it make money for me when we sold German rights, but I actually got a royalty check from the German publisher, which means it earned out its advance there. The book is still on schedule to have a paperback edition come out in April of 2012 here in the US. TD&D actually defies my Bizzaro World axiom. I like that book and remember enjoying writing it, though it's a book I wrote in record time (six months).

Well, I should go off and continue writing about dragon sex.