I did actually fall…

I did actually fall asleep, or at least into a light doze, for a few hours yesterday morning in front of the tv. So I made it through the day, in a bit of a daze. A little mopey this morning because my scale claims that I haven't lost any weight this last week, though I've lost a bit of body fat. And that 136 a week or two ago was definitely a blip; although I occasionally dip down to 136.something, most of the past two weeks have been pretty solidly 137ish. Which is okay, but not where I'd hoped to be by now. If I can make it to 135 by the end of June, that'll be halfway to my goal in half a year. That should be do-able, but not if I stop losing weight! We'll see how well I survive WisCon -- five days of travel eating is always tricky. I should stop at the grocery store today and pick up some low-calories snack bars to munch at the dealer's table, so I don't just end up eating other tables' chocolate instead.

I don't know that I've mentioned that I've been really happy this past week -- it's the weather. Cool and misty most of the time, with pounding thunderstorms most nights and fabulous lightning shows. It's mostly the rain I like, though. I love the way the air feels. It makes me want to just walk and walk -- and in fact, I've done a fair bit of walking around the city doing errands the last few days. Nice.

Oh, regarding that threesome novel proposal -- well, I put it together, as best I could, and got it to Bob, who presumably got it to nice editor lady yesterday. I'm guessing she'll take a few days to read it and then make her decision. I'm trying to just assume all of these early people will be saying 'no', just to keep from getting my hopes up. But it's hard to avoid having visions of two-book-deals floating through my head now.

Y'know, I have no idea what kind of advance they'd pay me, even if this went through. A couple thousand a book? More? Enough to pay off some of my leftover credit card debt at any rate, which would be nice. And I think if I actually manage to sell this book and get more than $2K for it, I'm going to spend a thousand or so on a research trip to Sri Lanka. (And if I get much more, I'm going to buy a better camera to use on that trip.) I don't actually know that much of my threesome novel will draw on Sri Lanka, but that doesn't matter -- the YA does to some extent, and in any case, if I take lots of photos and lots of notes, that will undoubtedly be useful at some point on some book.

I'm doing a lot of travelling in the next few months -- two months in California, another hop up to the Oregon coast, conventions in Philly and Boston and D.C. But I'm craving a trip out of the country -- and much as I enjoyed Zurich and England last summer, they were a little too European to really satisfying my craving for the strange, the different. I want to go wander around villages in Sri Lanka, dangit. Even if that does mean putting up with outdoor toilets. :-)

2 thoughts on “I did actually fall…”

  1. Admittedly it’s not a very big sample, Mary Anne, but the last two people I know of who got novel advances for first novels were about $40K and about $70K, respectively.

  2. Heh. According to what I remember from Clarion (where Nicola Griffith showed us TOR financial profit/loss statements), a typical first novel advance in genre is around $5K. My understanding is that it’s similar in mainstream.

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