Not Dead Yet?

From Kristen Nelson's blog:

Not that it’s any big surprise but historicals are hot and editors are actively looking for original voices—both for big women’s fiction historicals but also for what I call “straight” historicals (especially if they have some sort of intrigue or mystery bent).

Think a more commercial Umberto Eco.

Pitter patter, my heart accelerates...

I don't have a "mystery bent" in either of my works but historical is what I write, popular or not. It's just what I write. Of course, historicals are dead. Except when they're not.

Medievals are dead too. Except that I met Margaret Moore recently and she's been writing Harlequin Historicals - many of them medievals - for fifteen years. She has a medieval out in August, as a matter of fact. Her secret? Medievals sell well almost everywhere except North America. Europeans love 'em. The Japanese, she says, really "get" medievals - whereas Americans just say, "Code of honor? He gave his word and he'd rather die than go back on it? Why doesn't he just break his word and move on? What a stupid plot."

So, when you're submitting your work, you just never know what the person reading it has in mind. It's possible they could be thinking, "this will sell like hotcakes in Japan." Or, "Peru just loves this stuff right now." Or, like Agent Kristin, "I just talked to an editor yesterday who was looking for this." It's all a crapshoot.

I have five queries out right now, two of them for over a month. I won't see anything back until well over RWA is over. But the hope keeps going. In the meantime, I keep my head down and write.