{"id":1284,"date":"2014-03-06T12:43:31","date_gmt":"2014-03-06T17:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/?p=1284"},"modified":"2014-03-06T12:43:31","modified_gmt":"2014-03-06T17:43:31","slug":"my-first-novel-sale-one-month-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/?p=1284","title":{"rendered":"My First Novel Sale: One Month In"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>80&#8217;s hackers, punk mages, &amp;fey magic. Coder\/wizard fights to get her bro back, finds dangerous secret.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/search.twitter.com\/search?q=%23PitMad\">#PitMad<\/a>\u00a0<a title=\"http:\/\/goo.gl\/U4u4vK\" href=\"http:\/\/goo.gl\/U4u4vK\"><br \/>\n<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In September, I posted <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/galaxyalex\/status\/378165025619197952\">this tweet<\/a>\u00a0without much expectation that anyone would take interest. But I had been diligently knocking my head against the querying process for six months by this point, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brenda-drake.com\/pitmad\/\">Pitch Madness<\/a> twitter event seemed like it would be worth a shot.<\/p>\n<p>I received a manuscript request from, of all places, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.harlequin.com\/\">Harlequin<\/a>. Turned out they had just started up a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/pw\/by-topic\/industry-news\/publisher-news\/article\/58709-harlequin-expands-digital-first-efforts.html\">new digital program<\/a>. and were in the market for some sci-fi and fantasy. And not just SFF romance, either. Regular old SFF.<\/p>\n<p><em>Huh.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Five months later I received a call from the editor. She dug it. She wanted to send me a contract.<\/p>\n<p><em>Huh!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And thus began the process. We&#8217;re through the first round of edits now, and there are a few items I want to remember, which I shall now list:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Working in a professional capacity with someone who both a) believes in the concept and b) has solid ideas on how to make this baby purr is magnificent.<\/li>\n<li>I remembered maybe one in five words from that initial phone call.<\/li>\n<li>All that cool stuff you came up with as you were writing the thing? Make sure it&#8217;s all in the first part of the book.<\/li>\n<li>I really can&#8217;t believe I sent out a manuscript with that many &#8220;said&#8221;s in it.<\/li>\n<li>Wendig is right: Track Changes is, indeed, <a href=\"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2013\/01\/08\/how-chuck-wendig-edits-a-novel\/\">your best friend<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Holding <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/events\/621949651210137\/\">a launch party on Facebook<\/a> is now a thing.<\/li>\n<li>Finding a &#8220;Hold my Orange Crush, but don&#8217;t drink it&#8221; commercial online is a challenge.<\/li>\n<li>I wrote the entire book without saying what the main character&#8217;s hair color is.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So far, it&#8217;s fun and terrifying and challenging. If you need me, I&#8217;ll be staring into space and scrawling notes on any scraps of paper nearby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>80&#8217;s hackers, punk mages, &amp;fey magic. Coder\/wizard fights to get her bro back, finds dangerous secret.\u00a0#PitMad\u00a0 In September, I posted this tweet\u00a0without much expectation that anyone would take interest. But I had been diligently knocking my head against the querying process for six months by this point, and the Pitch Madness twitter event seemed like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,77],"tags":[83,84],"class_list":["post-1284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bits","category-publishing","tag-feycoder","tag-forgotten-sodas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1285,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284\/revisions\/1285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}