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One Drop at a Time
Jul. 25th, 2008 03:47 pmDid my first Montage piece interview this afternoon, three days ahead of schedule. The file is filling up, which is good, and the guy was very gracious, but it just reminded me how much I hate this whole process; it makes me nervous, sweaty, tired. Meanwhile, in Weird But True Tales of Menstruation…I’ve essentially been having my period since the 19th, so lightly it was freaking me out a bit (my typical period is short but heavy—an intense burst of PMS, pink-tinged mucus, dark blood with cramping, brownish gunk—but it was as though I’d never moved past phase one). Today, however, the floodgates broke; I finally don’t feel bad anymore about making Steve stock up on tampons. And I hurt, too, which isn’t so wonderful. Still, I’m writing—and not just here, either!;)
So…since cristalia has joined the throng of people testifying about their experiences with Prime, here’s my two cents: I found them okay to deal with on the first go ‘round (Kissing Carrion), and really frustrating on the second (The Worm in Every Heart). Continuing issues included total lack of promotion, unreachability and unresponsiveness (at one point, I had to have Steve rewrite my emails to them before hitting "send", because I was so vitriolic), constant sidelong digs about how insular and amateurish the horror side of things was, fights over cover art—simply put, I’ll never forgive them for putting a cover on Worm which was the exact same cover as K.C., except with a far less attractive color-scheme, since the books were never conceived as “this” and “more of the same”. As it is, I think I’m probably the person who’s bought the most of my own stock, over the years, and I blame them directly for the fact that so few people know Worm even exists. Though they've paid me consistently, my last royalty cheque was for $13.12 U.S., or something.
So yeah, when I hear the Prime name attached to something, I tend to avoid it. Which is too bad, I suppose, since it’s now attached to quite a lot…and their product is actually quite beautiful, at its best. But not so much if you insist on identifying yourself as horror, I guess, because they’ve made it very clear to me that they aren’t all that interested in the genre. (Or then again, maybe what they aren’t all that interested in is me.)
I’ll always be grateful to Prime in that they published my books, got them out into the world, made it possible for a wide range of people to access my work (if they went out of their way to hunt it down). But in a lot of ways, I yearn to start over. I think my stuff deserves it.
So…since cristalia has joined the throng of people testifying about their experiences with Prime, here’s my two cents: I found them okay to deal with on the first go ‘round (Kissing Carrion), and really frustrating on the second (The Worm in Every Heart). Continuing issues included total lack of promotion, unreachability and unresponsiveness (at one point, I had to have Steve rewrite my emails to them before hitting "send", because I was so vitriolic), constant sidelong digs about how insular and amateurish the horror side of things was, fights over cover art—simply put, I’ll never forgive them for putting a cover on Worm which was the exact same cover as K.C., except with a far less attractive color-scheme, since the books were never conceived as “this” and “more of the same”. As it is, I think I’m probably the person who’s bought the most of my own stock, over the years, and I blame them directly for the fact that so few people know Worm even exists. Though they've paid me consistently, my last royalty cheque was for $13.12 U.S., or something.
So yeah, when I hear the Prime name attached to something, I tend to avoid it. Which is too bad, I suppose, since it’s now attached to quite a lot…and their product is actually quite beautiful, at its best. But not so much if you insist on identifying yourself as horror, I guess, because they’ve made it very clear to me that they aren’t all that interested in the genre. (Or then again, maybe what they aren’t all that interested in is me.)
I’ll always be grateful to Prime in that they published my books, got them out into the world, made it possible for a wide range of people to access my work (if they went out of their way to hunt it down). But in a lot of ways, I yearn to start over. I think my stuff deserves it.
