‘Under Your Skin’ submitted!
Dear Editors
I am submitting my novella ‘Under His Skin’ for your consideration. It is a gay paranormal romance, complete at 18,200 words. Since it is divided into two parts and an epilogue I have not been able to provide you with the requested chapters, but I have attached an extract that I feel is the equivilent.
‘Under His Skin’ follows an artist, Barnabas, who rescues a stranger from a storm and nurses him back to health. The stranger is revealed to be a selkie, which Barnabas reacts badly to and refuses to continue their burgeoning reltionship. The selkie eventually proves his love for Barnabas by chosing him over his seal skin.
My previous publication credits include a short story in Diorama Comics Hallowe’en Anthology and several pieces in my university’s creative writing magazine.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Yours,
Natalie Kingston
So, yep, I’ve submitted the selkie story. Went through Redlines and Deadlines advice on cover letters, which didn’t really help me! They posted on reccomendations, and encouraged people to submit potential cover letters, not a single one of which actually conformed with their reccomendations. Most of them had several paragraphs of blurb, and though the editors were suggesting they should be cut, none of them really came back to the original point that it should only be a few sentences.
Anyway, since the selkie story is 18000 words, I figured I might as well go for the short blurb. The rest was fairly easy; it’s much the same as a short story submission. The difficulty on finding cover letter advice for longer pieces is a real pain; searching for query letters works a bit better, but most of that isn’t relevant to somewhere like Ellora’s Cave. I think I’ve muddled out a compromise, and at least it’s not too long!
I was going to post about suspension of disbelief, but I’ve been distracted by the burning need to buy ‘Best Little Whorehouse in Texas’. This weekend introduced me to the fact that I was apparently wrong about Dolly Parton. Honestly, that’s why I submitted the selkie story today; save myself from a thinking post. I just spent three hours writing and rewriting that cover letter instead.
