you write in with your resume and cover letter. if we like you, we send you a letter explaining that this internship is unpaid, and we don't help you find a place to live or a part-time job while you're interning, but you do get to hang out at the tor offices and meet lots of super people and take home as many books as you can carry. the letter also explains that you're going to be doing a lot of filing, making a lot of photocopies, and reading a lot of unsolicited unagented manuscripts, but that your main job will be to write reader reports on manuscripts that editors give you. with the letter we'll include a book, and ask you to write a reader report on the book, and we'll give you the specs as to what a reader report should look like and include.

after all that, if you still want to be an intern, we'll take you out to lunch and scare you with stories of drunk editors and crazy authors and general insanity, and if after that you're still excited about interning for us, we plan your schedule.

sounds great, right? i can tell you from firsthand experience that it actually IS a ton of fun and lots of work and very interesting and amazingly educational.

MKK

If Tor had shower facilities, you could almost make it work.

(three words: Tor slumber party)

I have a "real life job," developing various
Web sites for the University of Pittsburgh.
One of the Web sites I maintain is the
Internship site. This is currently my
lead-off internship:

http://www.pitt.edu/~intern

Hmm . . . it's a tough call. Eat and have safe shelter, or live under the bridge and *finally get to be the one who says whether the novels get stuffed back in the SASE, or get read by the editor* (equivalent to powers of a minor ghod).

If I lived within commuting distance (or had a teleport capability), I'd pay for the privilege of seeing what the competition is up to out there. Actually getting to see what "slush" reads like . . . it has its appeal.

But then that's prolly because I've never done it.