At Marcon I did a koffeklatch, (or whatever they are called) with Steve Staffel, from Del Rey. It was very, very fun getting to see an editor enthuse over all his current projects and go on about how good his writers were, and how excited he was about this book, and how excited he was about that other book and so forth.
I want one of those on my side.
Although, it probably won't Steve Staffel, I don't think my writing and his tastes would mesh that closely. But there must be one who likes the sort of stuff I write out there *somewhere*. I just have to find them.
And then as soon as I get home from Marcon I see a notice about Xerox doing a contest as a promotional thing. It's to promote their self-publishing/publish on demand, technology. I'm not really interested in self publishing, I don't think. But it didn't cost anything to enter except the time it took to “publish” my book, and for that, I get a free perfect bound (soft cover) copy of the book. I entered Harp & Gyre. I didn't dare take as much time as I wanted on the cover picture, because it looked like they were only accepting the first thousand books, and I didn't know how far along they were. But I did have the files available from the smaller picture I made for my webpage, so I think the finished cover looks pretty darned good for a rush job.