This month, I have two unrelated special opportunities to submit a complete manuscript to a publisher. I just mailed Rabbit and Cougar to Karen Lotz of Candlewich Press (who generously offered to read the manuscripts of all the people whose pitches she missed at the James River Writers conference due to her being sick), and I will send Dragons Over London to a contest by Random House as soon as I’ve finished editing the last few chapters. This is especially exciting because because Dragons Over London, which I love but have hesitated to submit places because of its novella-category length, is just the right length to fit the requirements.
Both “submitting directly to publisher” and the “submitting full manuscript” are unusual to me. I’ve done each of them before in various situations, but most of my submissions are queries, sometimes with synopses and/or sample chapters, and most go to agents.
So that’s what I’m up to right now. I’ve also been doing some worldbuilding research, reading books about the Renaissance and the Elizabethan era. The more I read about that time, the more I realize that the average person’s life was quite similar to the life s/he might have led during the Middle Ages. Perhaps this is not *Jedi hands* the historical period of basis I was looking for.
Still, while you’re here, Interesting Renaissance Fact: in 1500, each of the three most populous cities in Europe had about 150,000 people. London, the largest city in England, had only 50,000.
October 21, 2009 at 12:49 am
One of my intro English professors (the infamous Professor Savage, who would give us impossible quizzes and make a 70 an A to compensate) was very adamant that the Renaissance was just an extension of the Middle Ages. Shakespeare is fun to read from this perspective – the viewers of Hamlet mostly believed in ghosts, for instance, and took Hamlet Sr’s ghost *very* seriously.
Really the late Georgian / Regency period might be a good period for you to emulate – back before everyone got really up-tight and Victorian, and before the Industrial Revolution, but at least a small middle class existed and the Enlightenment had revolutionized people’s thinking quite a bit. Plus the fashion spanning that period is awesome, everything from frilly cravats to frock coats….
October 21, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Don’t leave us hanging! What were the three most populous cites of Europe in 1500? I’m guessing Rome, Paris, and Istanbul.
October 21, 2009 at 6:57 pm
You got Paris right – France was, at fifteen million people, the most populous country – but the other two were Venice and Naples.