The thrills of the writing life

[jhetley]

Just hauled another couple-hundred pounds of paper over to the city recycling center, four years of back-issue magazines.  That still leaves us with two years' stock in the house.  The floor joists thank me, but I fully expect to hear from Wife on the subject at some point in the future.  At which point I will reply, "O love of my life and mother of my sons, I could tell by the dust clouds that neither of us had looked at those in at least two years..."

Along the lines of "writing life", I should mention that I have finally received the first advance checks from France for that mass-market edition of the SUMMER COUNTRY translation and for a trade-paperback translation of  WINTER OAK.  I signed contracts for those back in June 2007.

"Don't give up the day job."

Comments

[otterdance.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's not that long a wait for foreign money. Who's your French publisher?

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Mnemos.

The mass-market is a sub-rights sale by them, half of the proceeds to me. As far as "long" goes, our shared Nice Agent Lady was getting perturbed with them last fall, and said they were behind on all their payments.

But yes, I have heard of much worse. Hence the day-job quote. In this so-called "business", sometimes you are lucky to get paid at all.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

HAH. I still hold the record. I received my first on-signing half of the advance check for my first Spanish edition... over a year after I signed the contract. THe book was OUT by the time I received the on-signing portion of the advance. I wasn't holding my breath for the on-publication half after that, let me tell you...

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Never claimed a record...