Sunday, April 24, 2011

My Running Mother's Day list (for Jim & Kendall)

  1. Chunky Bracelets
  2. Black capri pants with pockets
  3. Hot and cool glue guns
  4. House slippers
  5. Tulips
  6. Rolling Pin
  7. 8" and 6" baking pans (round)

Monday, April 18, 2011

Life Update

  • Chris is saying 3-word sentences! Hooray! He knows more words than I can keep up with
  • I'm paying for my first parenting magazine subscription. My grandmother had given me one for Christmas a few years ago and suddenly two others started showing up. One, Parents, is expiring and I think it's worth the $7.99 for a 2-year subscription. $7.99?!?! Really!?
  • Thinking of the price of magazines - full color printing on every page periodicals where i get 200 pages X 12 issues X 2 years for $7.99- and wrapping paper where you can get 25 YARDS of four color printing for $.99 at the dollar store... Why the heck does Kinko's charge $.14/page for color copies?!
  • Nicole is going to be a flower girl in Jenna and Greg's wedding. She's SUPER excited!
  • We got 4th place in our bowling tournament
  • I have come up with LOTS of ideas for mother's day this year. I mention them to jim all the time. I don't know if he's paying attention though or if I'll end up with some random gift. Perhaps I should post them here for his future reference? ; )

Sunday, April 03, 2011

novel progress

So, today, while the kids are sleeping, i worked on my novel. I have 16/17 chapters edited (third round) and just that first, annoyingly bad chapter to deal with. UGH. Not sure where to go with it. I did ask four people to be the "fine tooth comb" on the book (2 new readers and two who helped with round 2 editing). I'm aiming to make April a dual-function month- finish round 4 edits and write the query letter.

For those of you not familiar with this, a query letter is what you send to literary agents. the goal is that they read your amazingly well-written letter, are smitten with your style and plot, and then they request to read your manuscript. ultimately it is this agent that will represent me to the big publishing companies - they'll get the book sold, negotiate the $, etc.

In order to prepare for writing the query letter, i had to research the official dictionary of genre types and have determined my book is not a romance or a chick lit (as i orginally thought) but would be considered "women's fiction". Fortunately i have a large audience of potential agents who represent this genre. *wiping brow - whew!*

in the real world, i've learned, authors send these letters out to 100-800 agents in an effort to hook one that wants to represent them. The agent blogs I've read describe their intake of unique query letters to be in the dozens per day- so glad that there's no competition for their attention. :P

All advice-giving articles say that a strong query letter is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing i'll write, in many cases more important than the book itself. If the query letter is terrible than no one will even get to the point of seeing my book.

At least I have a plan B - self publishing.

Feeling some pressure.....

Jamie made a comment to me at the end of one of her editing emails - something about a second book with Megan as the protagonist (she's a side character in this novel) being worth considering. DARN YOU, JAMIE. Now I've got that whole stinkin' plot rolling around in my head.....