Queer Teen Press's boilerplate is better than any big publisher's contract I've ever signed in a couple of respects. Every contract should have an "if publisher goes belly-up, rights revert to authors automatically" clause! It's never happened to me, but oh, the horror stories I've heard! No advance, but the royalty rate is generous, so we'll see how it goes. As I said earlier this week, I wrote this in the mid-90s and have never been able to shift it, so that makes it a good book to launch upon the dubious seas of the virtual book market.
Sullivan, That Summer made me write it out of the depths of my crush on Dana Scully on The X-Files (I would like to emphasize that the crush was on Scully, the character, not on Gillian Anderson; though I will happily watch anything GA is in.) It's about meeting your idols, mostly, and the fact that this happens in the context of a lesbian coming-out story is, not exactly incidental, but not the most important thing about it. But it's not edgy, which mitigated against it when I first wrote it, and it's essential to the story structure that an adult protagonist remembering the main action of the teen years intrudes occasionally, which mitigates against it these days, even though the difference between teen Cherry and adult Cherry is not profound. This, for example, is Adult Cherry:
When I get home, I stagger through the claustrophobic entryway to the living area. "I'm dead," I announce. "All is lost. Order my plot."
Chris, dressed for the office, but barefoot, continues tossing salad. "What's killing you this time?"
Obviously, she pulls this teeny drama queen stuff all the time. Mostly as a joke. Mostly.
I wish we had progressed to the point where this book could wind up in a place where a general audience, not just an LBGT one, was likely to find it, but after all we're in the age of the niche market, and after an eight-year gap in the career, I'm not going to quibble about where I make a sale, just so I make one!
I just hope there really will be some money in it.
P.S. Early voting this week! Have you gone out to save democracy yet? Better get on it.
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