Almost a year to the day that I sent off the first three chapters and synopsis for Rosemary and Time, Groundwood Books got back to me. Their answer: no.
Actually, what they said was that they thought the book was well-written and original, but ultimately it wasn’t right for them. Erin and her publicist friend from Wolsak and Wynn decoded the letter and told me encouraging things; that Groundwood actually liked the story, but ultimately decided that they couldn’t market it because… you guessed it: the story straddled two genres. (Maggie DeVries of Orca Books was the first to say this)
It’s clear now that if I hope to give Rosemary and Time, a fighting chance at publication, I’ll have to get off the fence and decide whether or not the book is a middle-grade novel or a teen novel, and indications point to this being a middle-grade novel. The story already has the episodic nature of other middle-grade books, and it won’t be too hard to change the love-interest between Peter and Rosemary into a first-real-friendship interest. Actually, this change makes Fathom Five stand out more, since it makes this book all about Peter and Rosemary treading the scary new ground of falling in love, rather than retracing some of that ground from Rosemary and Time.
It’s disappointing, but it’s the reality. Much as I like Rosemary and Time as it now stands, I’m too close to my creation to objectively say whether or not it will work or not as a published novel. That’s what editors are for, and if three separate editors tell me that this aspect of my novel is a problem, there’s something to that criticism. Besides, I’ve already identified some of these problems as flaws myself, and have begun work correcting them.
Rosemary and Time is still in play with Raincoast Books, but we’ll still see what happens after I revisit the novel and finally choose the genre.
In other news, I signed up for Google AdSense. This intriguing advertising program offers up unintrusive text-based ads that should be very familiar to those who have surfed Blogspot blogs. It was easy to join up, easy to upload the code, and some of the ads even have content relevant to my site. It’s fascinating to see how they respond to my keywords, post by post.
Revenue from Google AdSense will help pay for my webhosting costs. I get paid by the click. So, if you see a link that is of interest to you, please don’t hesitate to click away.
Finally, :Angel: was fun to watch and interesting. I think it was primarily the director and the cast that held it together, however. Everything was going well until the Hulk jumped out of the shadows wearing a disco suit. Well, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds, but it was a bit of a comedown from an episode that was full of weird and funny moments. The Halloween party at Wolfram and Hart has to be seen to be believed.
Lorne’s story was compelling, but I question its placement. It’s still early in Angel’s takeover of the Los Angeles branch office, and very little indication was given as to why Lorne should crumble so quickly, or be pressured to take such drastic measures so early. It was fun, but I hope that the writers are back on their game in the next episode.
Oh, and Spike was a fifth wheel again, even though he did get some good lines.