Some Thoughts on the Common Cold

Suck it up while you cough it up, blow your nose, sneeze, ache, and feel generally miserable. Tylenol Code Tablets (plug!) help some. Quite a lot actually.
Thisbe, the younger, fatter, more sensitive cat has adopted me, and was supremely solitious during the two days when I was really sick. It's odd how animals know when you are under the weather. Thisbe wouldn't leave my side and slept by the bed or next to the computer screen (as close as she could get). I wasn't too sick to write, and ground out ten pages which are the beginning of the new book, my having written the middle already. I wrote a couple more pages of my short story. Sorted out all the rejections and filed them neatly. Researched agents to send the newer book to.

A number of agents didn't bother to reply to the query. Which means the 37 cent SASE is wasted, and the effort of writing a professional letter vetted by 8 different writers is wasted. What a way to run a business! One starts to feel about as popular as a telemarketer. Of course sometimes when the reply is a card without even a signature, one often thinks that someone's office assistant with the IQ of an eggplant has been told to "get these goddamn queries out of the office. What do people think we're running, a literary agencey?"

Anyhow. The novel in question is with a publisher who will at least (I hope) read it, and maybe even like it, who knows? It's political and historical and quirky and salacious and totally unlike anything I've ever read. That's probably the problem. Dunno. The only really good guy is a North Vietnamese guest worker. The other characters have various degrees of badness from very bad to not quite so bad. I like to write about the sinners, not the saints.

So, this weekend I'll send out maybe 25 queries in hopes that 18 or so will be answered, and maybe someone will even want to look at the book, but I am not counting on that. There will be massive opportunities to suck it up. Hey! I'm pretty good at that.

Achooo!

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