“Keep your eye on that one. Anticipate.”
The ICC begins tomorrow and runs through Sunday. According to WW’s gracious and patient marketing director, Kelley Barnes-Herrmann, the winning* novel will be announced during the con.

It is a strange sensation knowing that a life's ambition might be fulfilled within 24 hours. I can still remember the closing night of every Ren Faire I’ve worked, and the bitter sweet recognition that I had just finished an important benchmark in Harley's life. (That bitterness was always offset by a shower and 15 year-old Harley’s anticipation/dread of the closing night party. I’ve really led a blessed life.)

But of novels and announcements.

What this means for me personally is that I’ll be on nails and needles through the end of the weekend. An announcement at the Con doesn’t mean that they’ll let the rest of us know right away, so we might be waiting until Monday or Tuesday of next week.

I wish I could say that I was a better person, and living up to the standards set by EC, with "fire and forget submissions." The reasoning goes that if I can’t do anything to influence the decisions made by Stewart Wieck and his people, so what’s the point of mooning over it? Sadly, if you know anything about me then you know that I’m far from evolved. Perhaps devolved even, the lizard brain driving me on with the single-minded obsession that can only be attributed to the feeding habits of reptiles and lower mammals.

So where does that leave us? In some ways, it’d be easier to not post until I have an answer. Certainly that would be more professional. But it other ways to do so would be concealing the gaping holes in Harley’s psyche. For me, for this forum, it’s important to acknowledge my “weaknesses” as an author. Maybe weaknesses isn’t the right word. Perhaps it is simply giving recognition to the entire author, and not simply reveling in the triumphant portions. So here goes.

-I want the novel. Badly.

-I’ll be heartbroken if it is rejected. It’s a good book. Not brilliant, but good, and with a solid rewrite I’d be proud to hand it over to a publisher.

-I wrote it in 4 months and spare weeks, while working a fulltime job with overtime, with the mere semblance an outline. Two 90k+ projects stacked atop one another meant bad news. Never again.

-I did get paid $1,100.00 for this little number, which is a lot more than my last novel. Or the one before that.

-Yea or nay, I’ll still be writing.

When the dust settles, if Harley’s novel is standing triumphant atop the slush pile, it will be because of the points listed above. And if Harley’s novel ends up one of the corpses, it will also be due to the points listed above.

24 hours. I’ll be in agony until we know, folks.

Thanks for reading.

//H


*That phrase grinds at me. “Winning novel.” A novel doesn’t do anything. It’s written and then – sometimes – read. Still, it is a contest and my 90k words are being weighed against similar collections of words stacked in slightly different orders. Anyhow.