Registration completed!

I have been legitimized!

It's been just under two full months since I sent my story off to the U.S. Copyright Office (I know, it's copyrighted as soon as I create it, but I feel safer and more legit this way) and the wheels of bureaucracy have finally turned far enough to grant me my own Certificate of Registration (the seal for which is on the left side). Not bad timing for the government, really.

I had expected, well, considered that there might be something a bit more officious coming my way — something I might even want to frame, but instead what I ended up getting was a copy of the Short Form TX page I'd filled out back in February, but this time reproduced on nice-stock paper with watermarking on the back and this little Certificate symbol/notification at the top left of the page.

Marybeth Peters has a very nice signature.

So it looks like this (I have munged where munging seemed prudent) at right. I know I shouldn't be so excited to be further etched in the governmental brain, but even if nobody ever reads the story but me, or nobody ever cares to read the story but me, I've got a space in the vast vaults down in Washington, D.C. I guess I do look for authoritarian approval a bit much.

In other surely tedious Agent Search News: The letter went out a few days later than planned, that is to say, Friday. I went back over the details again and realized that The Nearby Agent people didn't want a synopsis of more than 3 pages, so my 5 page Murder in the Grove synopsis had to be hacked down again. During which time I realized I'd dropped a word out of the MITG synopsis, which on top of the already moronic repetition of phrase in sentence noted here means I'll be stunned if they're not using it for toilet paper by now.

It all comes down to wishing I had an editor to blow all of this by before I send it out, but such a person has not stepped up to say howdy, so it's up to me. And when you've read the same synopsis grafs over and over, no wonder some things get missed.

But, the letter and new synopsis are out. When I hit the post office I bought enough postage to send out 10 more just like it — synopsis, SASE, letter. And then I realized rates go up again on May 14. So I have to send out 10 more before then.

I'll be busy.