Paperwork in a paperless society

Contracts, contracts and more contracts. I'm sick of paperwork.

In addition to the paperwork that accompanies all the stuff I'm selling on eBay, I have finally settled on a publishing company for one of my novels. I'm sending the contracts out today and have already emailed copies to their office. I don't know why they need hard copies, too, except for the signatures. So why not send them either by snail mail or email but not both? Oh, well, just one more thing about publishing to learn and handle.

Last evening I received an email from Colleen Sell of Cup of Comfort books. She bought one of my stories for Cup of Comfort for Single Moms. That book will be out April 2008. Now that I'm finally in that means advance notice of upcoming titles and a better chance of being published by them again. That brings my list of published anthologies to seven, two of which will be out the end of this year or beginning of next year. I haven't been told the final publishing date.

And then there's my first published novel with no one else's name on it but mine. I can live with that. The publisher also asked if I'd be willing to edit some of their books -- working around my schedule of course. He had lots of nice things to say about me and what he knows of my work, which gives me a warm, tingly feeling. All the hard work is finally paying off--in dollars and cents for a change. The offer is a good one and I may just take it if I can find a few spare hours lying around somewhere.

I'm finishing work on two other novels and I already have publishers interested in them. I'm finding out that the trick to getting past the guardians of the holy gates of publishing is to have at least one published book under your belt.

Tor contacted me again about writing a book about Andre Norton, but I don't know where I'll find the time. I sent them an outline and a couple of chapters I roughed out and explained my currently very full schedule. Tor said they'd wait for me and slot me in whenever I was ready. They had more papers for me to sign, but just knowing they're interested makes it work the effort to sign and initial all those papers.

Well, back to the paperwork so I can take them to the post office and send them on their way. Hopefully, I won't have to fill out, sign and mail any more contracts until tomorrow. I'm not used to writing longhand any more.

That is all. Disperse.