This will be the last post with a “brrrr” theme. I promise. We’re getting lots of rain these days, but the temperature is rising into the forties. By contrast with a few days ago, it feels positively tropical.
I received a royalty check last night for a short story in a hardcover crime anthology that came out a few years ago. The payment was pretty much in line with the several I’ve received for that story over the past three years: 67¢. The postage stamp on the envelope containing the check and royalty statement was 63¢. My total income for this story is probably less than $10. Part of the problem is that the cover price of the book is nearly $30 and there are no “big names” in it to attract attention. Not available in bookstores, too, so it was a tree falling in the forest—a tree that wasn’t converted to paper to print copies of this book, either. There’s a lesson in there somewhere. Oh, yeah—the same message I wrote about in Six Marketing Myths in On Writing Horror.
I started working on a new short story this morning. It’s not going well—my mind was full of all manner of ideas about the narrator and his situation a couple of days ago, but when it came time to put it down on paper, I felt like I was forcing it. Guess I’m not clear enough on the plot yet, so I’ll have to let it simmer on the back burner a while longer. I can hear the guy’s voice in my head, but he’s not telling me the right stuff at present.
Ghost Inn is now in my agent’s hands. Fingers crossed that he thinks it’s worth pursuing.
We’re off to see Yo Yo Ma tomorrow night. I don’t know anything about his family, but I’ve always wondered if he had a brother named Frisbee or a sister named Slinky.
