A couple of days ago, I announced that
Urban Tapestry has been invited to Balticon as Musical Guests of Honor next year. I've since discovered that
Connie Willis will be the Author Guest of Honor at the convention, yay! Winner of nine Hugo Awards and six Nebula Awards, her works include
Doomsday Book and
To Say Nothing Of The Dog.
I've met Connie before; when the members of
Urban Tapestry were guests at Ad Astra back in 2001, where she was also one of the official guests. You
can read about our concert and meeting Connie Willis here. Wonderful lady, and I look forward to seeing her again.
Also, some more info about
Balticon and Baltimore: Approx. 2000-3000 people attend the convention. Past Author Guests of Honor have included Neil Gaiman, Steven Barnes, Robert Sawyer, Phil Foglio, Robert Jordan, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Philip Jose Farmer. The more I research this convention, the more excited I get. Tons of writing-related programming, too!
Baltimore Trivia (sort of)
In prep for visiting Baltimore for the first time, I've started researching the city. Of course I had to start with FOOD-RELATED facts. Here's my Baltimore trivia of the day: Lady Baltimore Cake was a cake created by a fictional character in Lady Baltimore (1906) by Owen Wister, who apparently
liked a cake given to him by a young woman so much that he decided to put it in his novel.
Another story says that cake originated in a tea room in Charleston (not Baltimore). According to
Foodreference.com, Lady Baltimore Cake is a moist three-layer white cake made with egg whites, filled with dried fruits and nuts, and covered with a fluffy white frosting. The Lord Baltimore Cake is similar, but uses only the egg yolks. There are other variations
at the bottom of this page from 'Who Cooked That Up?'And that's probably WAY more info than you ever wanted to know about Lady Baltimore Cake. :-)
Writers and Rejection
Thanks to those who posted or sent me private e-mails re: my recent book rejection, and those who posted anecdotes about famous writers who got rejected. I've
expanded my Writers and Rejection page as well as adding cartoons. Here are just a few of my new listings:
Shannon Hale's
The Goose Girl (one of my favourite books ever) was rejected many times and she revised it dozens of times (cutting 200+ pages in all) before it finally got published by Bloomsbury. A woman in my critique group shared a writers' conference anecdote where Hale was a presenter at a conference session. Apparently she walked into the session with a laminated roll under one arm, then unfurled a roll of rejection letters that went out of the room and into the hallway.
Jasper Fforde received 76 rejection letters from publishers before his first novel,
The Eyre Affair, was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2001.
(Thanks to Shane McEwan) Note from Debbie: Dear lord. As much as I admire Fforde's determination, I really REALLY hope my book isn't rejected 76 times before it's accepted...
Madeleine L'Engle's
A Wrinkle In Time (another all-time favourite) was rejected by 26 publishers before being accepted by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. It ended up winning the John Newbery Medal as the best children's book of 1963 and is now in its 69th printing.
(Thanks to Mark Bernstein)Ray Bradbury has had about a thousand rejections over his 30 year career according to a B&N interview, and says he is still getting rejected.
Excerpt from a rejection letter to
Ursula K. Le Guin: "The book is so endlessly complicated by details of reference and information, the interim legends become so much of a nuisance despite their relevance, that the very action of the story seems to be to become hopelessly bogged down and the book, eventually, unreadable. The whole is so dry and airless, so lacking in pace, that whatever drama and excitement the novel might have had is entirely dissipated by what does seem, a great deal of the time, to be extraneous material. My thanks nonetheless for having thought of us. The manuscript of
The Left Hand of Darkness is returned herewith."
(Thanks to Susanna, who points out that the novel won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award.)Some of my favourite rejection quotes:
Jane Yolen: "A writer never gets used to rejections. But if enough manuscripts are out there, each small rejection is less important. Less important? Well, each one hurts less."
Kate Braverman: "Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big. The entire process is beyond intoxicating."
Isaac Asimov re: rejection: "I personally kick and scream, and there's no reason you shouldn't if it makes you feel better. However, once you're quite done with the kicking and screaming [segue into practical advice on revising, resubmitting, etc]..."
(Thanks to Steve Brinich)
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Friday, October 12, 2007 at 3:37PM 
