ARCs and the hopeless callowness of some authors
To begin, here’s the skinny* on asking for an ARC of PEGASUS for review. Don’t ask me! Email: sara.zick@us.penguingroup.com
I don’t know how many they’ve printed or how many are already earmarked for specific reviewers and review sites/journals, how many they’re giving away to people who ask, how many they’re shoving in the back seat** to take to conventions***, or what their suitable reviewer criteria are†. I could probably find out . . . but I don’t want to. As it is I’m having an attack of . . . look, I just write stories, okay? Other than that I hurtle hellhounds, ring bells††, struggle with various approaches to music, and wrangle with little green growing things. And read a lot. And keep a few homeopathy clients amused.††† I even do laundry occasionally.‡ I’m not good at the spotlight. I’m not good at cranked up and networking. In fact faint glancing blows with cranked up and networking make me think that careers in supermarket shelf restocking look restful.‡‡ I don’t entirely mind that I have ME and hellhounds keeping me at home when I could be indulging in a glamorous cross-continental book tour‡‡‡ So anyone who writes book reviews and likes my sort of stuff, yes, please, ask Putnams for an ARC, and I hope you looove PEGASUS and write the most scintillating review of your life about it and because of its scintillatingness it’s picked up by Reuters, the Huffington Post and lolpegasi. And I’ll be very pleased and flattered and grateful. I will also be at home among the rosebushes and the bell towers.§
I’m just feeling small and solitary because Hannah’s been gone for two weeks. She went to Bologna because everybody in publishing goes to Bologna§§ and then her entire family went to Norway for ten days. She says that everybody goes to Bologna and then hangs around Europe and who needs to meet the same people at the Vatican you just met over a conference table?§§§ The high point of today was talking to Hannah for a very, very, very long time on the phone.# Very. I could probably have got half a dozen rosebushes planted in the time I spent on the phone.
And now I need to go SING. I have a voice lesson tomorrow and after missing last week due to circumstances of a funny-car-sound nature I want to astonish Blondel with my progress and dedication. Ahem. Or at least sound more like a mezzo soprano in training than a car whose steering rack has a hole in it.
* * *
* Does anyone say ‘here’s the skinny’ any more now that onionskin paper copies exist only in the dark clackety-clackety past of typewriters and Liquid Paper?^
^ My gods. It still exists. http://www.google.co.uk/products?hl=en&q=liquid+paper+correction+fluid&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=-WW6S8jCGsKYOMOPyMkL&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=title&resnum=3&ved=0CB8QrQQwAg
But can you get it in any colour but WHITE? Other elderly people may remember the deep, satisfying fun of trying to match your beige original with the available range of beige correction fluids.+ AAAAAAAUGH. Okay, computers are not all bad.
+ And the yellow that was nothing like the standard yellow of standard yellow second sheets. I’m going to start trembling uncontrollably here in a minute.
** JOKE
*** Someone asked if they would be giving out ARCs at ALA. The marketing plan printed on the back of the object in question says ‘ARC distribution at all national school and library conventions’ so I take it that’s a yes.
† Hi, I have a review blog and my mum and my dog ALWAYS read it, may I have an ARC of PEGASUS please? —Sorry, requirement is at least TWO dogs.
†† And argue with my husband about which nights he’s going to play bridge because there are good and bad nights for bell ringing practise and it’s nice to have dinner together occasionally. Although given my tendency to be anything up to two hours later than planned—and that he goes to bed at 11 and I go to bed at mmmrmph^—even on a night that he is not playing bridge and I am not ringing bells ‘together’ may be relative.
^ Which at the moment is mmmrmph plus one, see ‘failing to adjust to summer time’
††† I didn’t say I’d cure you! I said I’d entertain you!
‡ The indoor living situation right at present is unusually . . . turbid. In the first place I’m spending every quarter-hour I can pretend to spare in some garden or other, mostly madly potting up and potting on—things just hurrah out at this time of year—which means that I’m tracking incredible amounts of garden crud indoors. Never mind that I have not one but two mats by the kitchen door AND I take off my shoes ON the mat. The dirt, compost, gravel, bits of dead things of varying biological origins and realms of unspeakableness and the occasional small surprised worm and/or beetle leap out of the cleats in my shoes, organise themselves into working parties, and start fanning out across the floor. Meanwhile all accessory garden-related items that have to be Dealt With Later get dumped in the sink. Later then includes taking everything out of the sink and putting it . . . somewhere . . . when, for example, I want to peel broccoli or make a cup of tea. . . . ADDITIONALLY at this exact moment I’m washing hellhound bedding. Which, it’s true, I prefer to do in good weather when I’m likely also to want to be gardening . . . but it means that the ambient atmosphere is rather fuller than usual of suspended hellhound hair seeking a purpose in life. The unique substance created when ambient hellhound hair meets heterogeneous garden effluvia has not yet been fully identified by science, but it’s nasty to get off household surfaces. Especially when you’re not doing any housework because you’re in the garden.
‡‡ They pay badly though. And hellhounds, when they’re eating, get through a lot of chicken.
‡‡‡ Hahahahahahahahaha. As anyone who has ever lived through a glamorous cross-continental book tour would tell you. Yes. I have. I don’t need reminding.
§ Although there are going to be some internet interviews and things. Stay tuned.
§§ Bologna Book Fair. http://www.bookfair.bolognafiere.it/ Merrilee has once or twice tried to get me to go. Uh. No. I have hellhound bedding to wash and unspeakable substances to chip off the walls.
§§§ I’ve told you about being recognised at Disneyland, haven’t I? This was a million years ago, when SWORD won a Newbery Honor. ALA was in Los Angeles. A lot of us went to Disneyland after the conference was over. It’s still pretty funny to have someone come up to you at Disneyland and say, You’re Robin McKinley, aren’t you?^
^ Okay, true, it would be funnier if someone came up to you. At least I am Robin McKinley.
# Yes. Norway was great.
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