Tin House????
Before anyone gets excited, I didn't get accepted outright. But I made the waitlist!!!!
The message is so apologetic, but I was over the moon. I started the application a day and a half before the deadline! After the deadline, actually. They gave me an (unasked for) extension because I opened the application, saw the submission fee of 25 dollars, and immediately closed the application. But the system registered this as me starting the app, so Tin House gave me two extra days to finish it. I chose to see it as a sign. And it was.
A 4000 word writing sample I wrote in six hours. An artist statement, bio, and synopsis I wrote in two hours. That got me to the waitlist at Tin House. And it's funny, I was really mad at myself for not saving my submission materials in a separate doc for future grants and residency apps, but when I went to message Tin House back to tell them I do want to stay waitlisted, I realized Submittable saves all of the submissions! So my materials are right there! And I'm going to copy-paste my artist statement because it's absolute fire.
As a writer, I'm deeply motivated by queer motifs, interesting women, and Jewish themes. My current work-in-progress is powerfully inspired by all three. Hand Magic is the standalone first book in a potential YA trilogy about three teenage girls subjected to mandatory conscription into the British military because they are Endowed, able to use magic. As fascism rises in continental Europe with Jews the intended target, the trio must fight a faceless enemy wielding eugenic weapons and bastardized magic, facing backstabbing from their superiors, political maneuvering by shadowy figures high in the British government, and a small, yet vicious force of deserters from the Endowed army. In the world of the novel, the Holocaust never happened and Israel never created, meaning Europe is filled with thriving, yet marginalized Jewish communities. The trilogy speculates how a "holocaust" might look if magic users were hunted alongside Jews, and how, in another world, the Shoah might have been averted before the Final Solution began.
The Hand Magic trilogy engages meaningfully with themes of prejudice and othering, as well as the multitudinous nature of identity. Each book in the trilogy is built on the bedrock of a classic story from the Torah. The magical system is based around Jewish cultural touchstones such as the hamsa, the Evil Eye, and the Breath of Life, and the Jewish origin of witches is not only acknowledged, but accepted by the magic users of this world. I see my work in conversation with classic YA romantasy such as Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone trilogy, as well as her upcoming novel The Familiar, forecasted to be about a Jewish witch in hiding in Inquisition-era Spain.
In the interest of completing the trilogy efficiently and without wasting time and words, I drafted each book and outlined every chapter before writing anything. I know exactly what happens in each book and have a plan for the series as a whole. I am currently writing the first book and hope to finished by June 2024. I would spend the Tinhouse Summer Residency editing and working on books two and three.
Lmao, “hope to be finished by June 2024.” I shouldn’t have underestimated myself. I knew it wouldn’t take that long. I do see some flaws now that it's two months later. This app wasn't for a summer residency, it's for their summer workshops. Silly mistake. Tin House is two words, not one. Shadow and Bone is romantic fantasy, not romantasy. Yes, they are different things. Ah well. I submitted it at 12:01 am from my hotel room in Brooklyn after three hours of nonstop, feverish work. It was never going to be perfect. But it's damn good.
In other news, I'm ramping up for Muse&Marketplace, and also just being back in the publishing world in general. I applied to RevPit! Another last minute effort that had me writing a query letter and synopsis in three days to make the deadline. If I win (?) or get to the last round, or something of that nature, I'll get a free developmental edit of my manuscript by a professional editor, which is dope. And if I don't get anywhere with RevPit, it will have forced me to write the query letter and synopsis I'll need for Manuscript Mart, so it's a win-win, really.
I've commissioned a simple fanart of Kate Morrigan, the main character of Hand Magic. I can't wait for it to be finished so I can show literally everyone. I'm also going to make some moodboards for Twitter engagement. Pitlight is coming up in early April! That's a pitch event on Twitter where you do a one sentence pitch of your novel, add images (maybe, I'm actually not sure what the rules are for this one), and tag it #pitlight. This one is just for the community, but a lot of pitch events have agents and editors searching the tag and read all the pitches. If they like your post, it means they want to see your materials. I did it unsuccessfully with Heart of the South, and hilariously, sort of successfully with Magicians of the Book, even though I didn't tag my post #pitlight because I hadn't finished writing the novel. Still got two agent likes, which was very exciting.
If you’ve read up to this point in the blog, know that the preceding entries are copied over from my old Patreon, which I figured could be author website training wheels while I was getting slammed by a sixteen-credit hour grad school semester and not in fine enough form to make my own site. Thankfully, that semester is over and I’ve dropped down to part-time status. I’m now possessed of the energy and motivation to make an actual landing pad on the internet! And alas, it is expensive. But as N.K. Jemisin once said, “You have to invest in your work.” That’s what I’m doing. Thanks for reading, everyone!
xx Claire
