Joanna wrote today to ask us for our birthdays. They need that for the information they submit to the Libary of Congress.
!!!
Okay, okay, I know that in the grand scheme of things it's no big deal. To anyone who's been published before, it's just part of the process. But I hope you'll allow me a moment of first-time-author giddiness. My name in the Library of Congress!!!
The funny part of this story is the reason why we didn't submit our birthdates along with the initial author information. See, we couldn't figure out why they would want to know our birthdays. And somehow we came up with the idea (okay, be honest, I came up with the idea) that they intended to do our astrological charts before offering us a contract.
I know it sounds ridiculous now. But come on, cut me some slack! I had no idea they would have to submit our birthdays to the Library of Congress. I couldn't imagine why they wanted my birthday. And being a new age publisher and all, I thought maybe they used astrological information to help figure out if we were a good match for them.
I confess, I was a little put off by the idea of strangers reading my chart. It seemed like having to turn in a journal along with a job application. (Yes I know I'm writing in a journal that's posted on a web site. This is entirely different.) So we left that line blank on the submission form.
[Later] You know, I felt so silly about this crazy idea that Llewellyn intended to do our astrological charts, that I went to their website and read their submission guidelines again. They don't just ask for the author's birth date. They ask for date, time, and location of birth.
Which makes me feel a little less ridiculous. I think it's natural to assume an astrological purpose when asked for birth date, time and location. Unless you are being asked by the US Census.
In any case, I never did give Llewellyn the time or location of my birth, and the Library of Congress apparently doesn't need to know that, so it's nothing more than a funny story at this point.
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