I have a nice load on my plate right now, wrapping up some edits on UnHero, my first serious novel. (As serious as my novels get anyway.) I look forward to hooking up with J.R later so she can tell me how much it sucks and I can tell her how right she is.

I had initially gotten this last round of edits together with the intention of submitting it to a contest in early February. (This one, to be exact.) While musing over a chapter rewrite I still need to do, I went over some of the fine print and was made nervous by some of the details. The grand prize winner gets a contract with Penguin, which is awesome. Apparently though, that contract is non negotiable and includes a lot more rights then a writer with an agent might normally give up.

At least, that was my suspicion from my stalking reading various and sundry agents who blog. With that suspicion in mind, I wrote to an agent asking him what he thought about the contest.

To my total shock and surprise, this very busy literary agent wrote me back. He shared my concern about the number of rights they wanted, and he was concerned about what the contract itself would look like. He did say the percentages were all industry standard and that the contest was not a scam.

I gave it some thought, and still am, but I think this contest is for a different kind of manuscript than what I’ve written this time around. More importantly, I was surprised and delighted that this agent, who wouldn’t know me from Adam took a minute or two out of his day to answer my question. (Except that I have breasts, and I don’t remember the Bible mentioning that Adam had DDs.) Would that have happened before the internet? I don’t know, but I really don’t think so.

Anyway, thank you again Algore and your precious creation Teh Internets for the precious knowledge I have discovered within your tubes. Thank you also, Agent, for answering my question, though I doubt you’ll read this blog to know.

I guess I’ll just have to sell this damn book the old fashioned way, by dressing it in a mini skirt and heels and sending out to the street corner.

Coming up: Book Reviews. No, really.

Bonus Question: Is it weird that my Creative Writing professor didn’t know what the word ‘ichor’ meant?