On one hand, there's nothing to report -- been roasting chickpeas, thawing and browning chicken sausage, and melting fontina on top of rye Triscuits. Oh, and throwing out most of the contents of the refrigerator after an all-day power outage. Not exactly the gourmet flourish we've been used to around here.
On the other hand: international rights sales! Let's talk about them!
SIMMER has now been sold to publishers in both Italy and Germany.
In a way, this feels even more momentous than the sale to Gallery for world English rights. It's not, but it feels that way. It's hard to explain. I guess because it's always been my dream to see my words on the shelf in a bookstore. I've pictured that, I've imagined it, I've got the context. So that dream come true is awesome and wonderful and exciting. Of course it is! But the international rights are different, because I never got that far in the dream! I never pictured an Italian woman at her local bookstore with the book in hand, or a German woman talking to her book club, discussing SIMMER. (Or whatever title it ends up with in German. Babelfish thinks the German for simmer is Simmer.) And the idea of this future is now even more awesome than I imagined.
From yesterday's Publishers Marketplace listings, under International rights: Fiction:
Italian rights to Jael McHenry's SIMMER, to Corbaccio, in a pre-empt, by Jenny Meyer Literary Agency on behalf of Elisabeth Weed at Weed Literary.
German rights to Jael McHenry's SIMMER, to Heyne, by Jenny Meyer Literary Agency on behalf of Elisabeth Weed at Weed Literary.
Ecco! Achtung! Um... strozzapretti!I never saw it coming. And it feels tremendous.
