June 29 is the day that's circled on my calendar. On that day, it will have been exactly five months since I submitted a query to Ace & Roc Science Fiction & Fantasy, imprints of the Penguin Group. I'll know for sure by then if Penguin is interested in my novel or if they aren't. If the latter is the case—and their continued silence indicates to me that it is—then I have a backup plan.
Baen Books, a renowned sci-fi press, doesn't just accept unsolicited queries: they accept unsolicited manuscripts. I checked their submission guide and it seems they prefer works between 100,000-130,000 words. Mine is 114,000. They prefer a simple style and judge works primarily on plot and characterization, and if it's one thing my work is oozing with, it's plot and characterization. My style is simple, with a few sesquipedalian terms scattered in here and there (crucial to the plot, of course). Baen also offers "competitive" payment rates. Vague wording, yes, but then Ace & Roc didn't breathe a word about payment at all.
The only downside is that the "reporting time" (response time) is 9-12 months. Ouch.
Well, can't win 'em all. As Baen sheepishly admits, they get a lot of manuscripts. So I'd basically have to wait until next April or possibly next July to find out if Baen wants to publish my baby or not. Miss H and I shall be gone from Korea by then, and hopefully installed in a tasteful, spacious two-bedroom apartment in Henderson, Nevada and engaged upon entry-level jobs with wondrous prospects, blabbity blabbity blah.
At least I have a timeline.
No joy yet on the short fiction front. Daily Science Fiction is considering my 1,100-word short story "Boxing Day," which I submitted on May 2. I expect a reply within a fortnight.
In the meantime, to keep myself busy, I've conducted yet another full-blown proofread-and-line-edit of Novel #1. Gawd, this feels like the zillionth one I've done, and it probably is. When I finish I'll do the same thing to Novel #3 (not for the first or the last time) and then following that I'll finish Novel #4. (Novel #2, as you'll recall, is a work of historical fiction unrelated to my humongous sci-fi opus). I really want to get started on Novel #5 before the year's out. That one's going to be fun. I've been taking long walks and brainstorming it for a long while now and I've had some spectacular ideas, wheezes which will keep the fans happy and my fingers busy.
As for nonfiction, well...Korail just instigated another scenic train route. You remember how I told you about the O-Train and V-Train? Well, those were so successful that they started up another sightseer, the S-Train, down in the southern part of the peninsula. There's talk of G- and B-Trains to travel up the east and west coasts of Korea as well. But the big one is the DMZ-Train, which...well, I don't know much more about than you do. But I do know that the end of the line is the infamous Dorasan Station, a fully-equipped and squeaky-clean yet abandoned and ghostly whistle stop. It's the last one before the DMZ, and the railway line stretches on emptily into the distance, a high road to nowhere. It was part of the USO tour that Miss H and I did in 2012. It'd be cool to roll up to it in an actual train, though, and see the countryside in between Seoul and the DMZ. Dorasan Station was built during a rare period of amity between the two Koreas and was intended to serve as a gateway for trade and industry (and perhaps passenger service) between Seoul and Pyongyang, but the creeping enmity between the two nations killed the dream and left the station derelict. I imagine I could write a pretty travel article about a ride on the DMZ-Train and submit it anywhere I liked, using some of the vivid imagery and florid prose for which I am renowned.
Oh, and I imagine the big Z-shaped train trip I'm taking through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore this summer (not to mention the week I'm spending in Hong Kong afterward) would be fine travel-journalism fodder too.
So. That's where I am.
Wish me luck.
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