masks off too! cover art. also, i am old.
Feb. 5th, 2013 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
samschoolerSo tomorrow is my 20th birthday. I made a blog post a while back (blog has since been deleted; I'm really quite terrible at keeping blogs, but I'm going to pay money for this one, so it's sticking around) about how a goal of mine was to be published before I was 20, and how, oh well, I wasn't going to make it. I convinced myself that I didn't want it because I thought I wouldn't have it.
Then I sat myself down early in December and wrote a story about a detective and a vampire. The entire story was based off a single gif from the American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- the scene where Salander is sitting on the sink, eating breakfast, with only a shirt on. I paused that scene, looked at it, and said, I want to write that character. It wasn't so much about Salander as it was about that feeling, that image: a character who would sit bare-legged and unselfconscious on a sink in a house that wasn't theirs.
I wanted it, so I did it. I went in at around seven p.m. and when I emerged five hours later, I'd written 5,500 words. And they were words that I liked. I sent them in.
Torquere contacted me a month later.
I guess it's still surreal to me. My editor sent me the cover art today, and I had to look at the W-9 I signed to double-check my SSN for an application to another college (yeah, also a thing that's happening: I'm moving to Ohio University next semester, woosh). It doesn't feel like it's true. The night I received the acceptance email, I taped a note to the back of my door, so when I woke up in the morning I would know that it was still true.
Getting a 5,000-word story published probably doesn't seem like a lot to most people, but it was enough to kick start my career. It was enough to assure me that writing is my career, and that I won't let it go for anything.
So hey, 16-year-old me: you're gonna do it. Congrats. Also, you live to be 20 without spontaneously combusting or getting hit by a Budweiser semi. Good job!
Here's the cover art for MASKS OFF TOO!:
I can't wait to hold a paperback copy of that. hnngh.
Then I sat myself down early in December and wrote a story about a detective and a vampire. The entire story was based off a single gif from the American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- the scene where Salander is sitting on the sink, eating breakfast, with only a shirt on. I paused that scene, looked at it, and said, I want to write that character. It wasn't so much about Salander as it was about that feeling, that image: a character who would sit bare-legged and unselfconscious on a sink in a house that wasn't theirs.
I wanted it, so I did it. I went in at around seven p.m. and when I emerged five hours later, I'd written 5,500 words. And they were words that I liked. I sent them in.
Torquere contacted me a month later.
I guess it's still surreal to me. My editor sent me the cover art today, and I had to look at the W-9 I signed to double-check my SSN for an application to another college (yeah, also a thing that's happening: I'm moving to Ohio University next semester, woosh). It doesn't feel like it's true. The night I received the acceptance email, I taped a note to the back of my door, so when I woke up in the morning I would know that it was still true.
Getting a 5,000-word story published probably doesn't seem like a lot to most people, but it was enough to kick start my career. It was enough to assure me that writing is my career, and that I won't let it go for anything.
So hey, 16-year-old me: you're gonna do it. Congrats. Also, you live to be 20 without spontaneously combusting or getting hit by a Budweiser semi. Good job!
Here's the cover art for MASKS OFF TOO!:
I can't wait to hold a paperback copy of that. hnngh.