Category Archives: Writing

What I’ve Read Wednesday

YAY!  I’m finally getting to post a review on Wednesday :).  I’ve been planning to do this for like a month and a half now, but things like Christopher’s ‘let’s play the stop breathing game’ and hospital visit stuff then school got in the way.  I have about fifteen books sitting on the table next to me that need reviewed and returned to the library.  The plan is to do that then they’re all ready to go each Wednesday ;).

So for today’s book… Candace Calvert’s Critical Care!  I just discovered Candace’s books last week thanks to a blog post and then a rabbit trail from that blog to another one, then another, then scrolling through then… Well, it was like a pachinko machine, to be honest and I don’t remember the exact path, but that’s okay =D.

Christopher and I did our early morning school/babysitter thing, grocery shopping, stopped by the school to drop off Emily’s snacks for her Star student snack day [her teacher said she loves being Star student – shocking!  Em loving the center of attention?!  Couldn’t be!  Of course, her shorts are on backwards but that’s because Dad was home this morning ;)], talked to Miss Julie [Abbie and Emily’s preschool teacher who was outside with this year’s preschoolers], stopped at the library [love the drive up window!], the bank then home to put up the groceries, feed the 3yo and watch too much Mickey Mouse Clubhouse [the new Road Race episode in which Mickey’s voice sounds funky – did they get a new voice actor?] and I settled in to start Critical Care.  We got home about 11 am.  I finished before 2pm.  That’s a good thing.

Initial thoughts:
It’s a bit shorter than most of the books I’ve read recently but I’m good with that.  It actually gives me hope because it’s about the same length as Unbreak Her Heart.  Mine is about 72K words and I’d be interested to know what Critical Care came in at.

From the cover:

After her brother dies in a trauma room, nurse Claire Avery can no longer face the ER. She’s determined to make a fresh start–new hospital, new career in nursing education–move forward, no turning back. But her plans fall apart when she’s called to offer stress counseling for medical staff after a heart-breaking day care center explosion. Worse, she’s forced back to the ER, where she clashes with Logan Caldwell, a doctor who believes touchy-feely counseling is a waste of time. He demands his staff be as tough as he is. Yet he finds himself drawn to this nurse educator … who just might teach him the true meaning of healing.

What I Loved:

  • Jeremiah 29:11 – Yep, my favorite verse makes several appearances :).  It’s written on my bathroom mirror right now and displayed prominently in Claire’s home.  Is it God telling me something?  Or random coincidence?  I know what Jan would say… 😉

What I liked:

  • I’ve spent too much time in the last couple of decades [eep!] watching medical dramas of one kind or another.  Reading about one is a bit different!  Critical Care is inspirational ER without the ‘drama’ [in the off-screen sense; ER went on a few seasons too long…]  I could see the emergency room in my mind’s eye both from those shows and from our all too recent visit ourselves [see: Overwhelming Gratitude]
  • I love Claire.  I feel for her after the tragic loss.
  • I love Logan.  I didn’t like his picture on the cover :p.  I kept thinking ‘but he doesn’t have long curly hair in his picture!’  I know – author’s don’t have much choice in that ;).
  • I love the rest of the supporting characters!  They’re so real!  Erin struggling with relationships.  Sarah dealing with her past.  How those things are resolved.  Or at least starting to resolve.
  • Logan finally opening up – not just with Claire but with everyone.  The resolution in his life with so many things in his past.
  • The ending left me with a smile on my face.
  • I’m glad that Disaster Status was on Amazon for like 1.50 or so yesterday – the Kindle edition – so I already have it on the iPhone waiting to read because the library’s two copies aren’t due for at least a week – but I still wish I had an actual hard copy to read :/.

What I Didn’t Like:

  • The ending :p.  Yes, I see what I wrote up there.  But I also know that Disaster Status picks up at another hospital with one of those supporting characters who moves at the end of the book.  Okay, I can deal with that.  But my inner literary voyeur wants more Claire and Logan ;).
  • Um… that’s about it ;).  Except that I wish the one character, minor though he may be, would have gotten his comeupence [how do you spell that?!] because it so annoys me that he didn’t.  But that particular kind of situation is a bit near and dear to my heart.

Overall:

It’s going on my Amazon wish list.  I liked the characters.  I loved the romance.  And I liked the medical aspect of it – maybe it’s too many hours wasted watching ER, House, or true stories on Discovery Health, but I liked it!  I also found an interview on Title Trakk that said that she has other books out for the general market – comic mysteries with a wacky cruise nurse or something to that effect.  Think I’m going to have to try to find those :).

9 of 10 stars

Now to finish those query letters and get my main webpage up and running instead of having the ‘coming soon’ thing on there forever.  It needs a bio and the first chapter posted – though I did post the first page here on the blog :).

Family, Reading, Reviews

What I’ve Read – Special Holiday Weekend Edition, Part 2

Yeah so this is late.  Internet was floofy last night.  I really did enjoy Out of Her Hands though I’m not sure that comes across in the review.  I think I need a new review numbering system… Five stars just doesn’t have enough nuance, I don’t think.  So here’s to 10 stars with definitions probably along the lines of those at Overweight Bookshelf – at least until I come up with something witty of my own.  I’ll go back and change the other two reviews I’ve done.

After we got home from Tulsa Saturday night and got the kids in bed, I opened Out of Her Hands. I finished it on Sunday.  I’m struggling a bit with this because I really did like it and though my nitpicks seem to be more in the forefront than with Searching for Spice, I liked them both enough to put them on my Amazon wish list.  But I still feel like my nitpicks way outweigh my likes which isn’t truly the case – for some reason, I’m having an easier time articulating them though…

I’ve hesitated about posting this because of the old ‘more nice than not’ rule and I don’t feel I’ve truly followed it.  I do hope that it comes across that I did enjoy the book.

Summary:

Life moves on for Linda Revere.  Her kids are growing up.  Before long, she’ll have an empty nest.  Her marriage is good.  But Nick has a secret girlfriend – someone who isn’t Christian.  There are other struggles going on with Emma, Deb and even Carol, the client who befriended Linda in Searching for Spice.

What I liked:

  • Linda!  I still love her!
  • Ross!  And Doris!  I love them!  They can be my grandparents!
  • Bert and Slim!  I love Bert and Slim!  I want Bert and Slim for my other grandparents [and yes, that means that I want Joyce and Harry for parents 😉 – or at least aunt and uncle].
  • The studio seems to have mellowed a bit.  That’s good, but I did enjoy some of the quirkiness there.  Thomas and his gossip are real, if annoying ;).  And where’s Pam?!
  • Carol – I’m glad she’s back.  Part of me wishes that Linda would stand up to her a bit, but I understand why she doesn’t stand up to Carol more than she does.  I do wish Carol would ‘grow up’ or whatever a bit and be a bit less demanding.
  • Deb – I love Deb.  I wish her well in the life changes she’s experiencing.  I kind of hope at least part of it falls through so we see her more in the next book.
  • I see potential in Amber, Nick’s girlfriend.  As a character, she’s probably where she should be at this point in her life.  As a ‘real person’, she would have a ways to go towards becoming who she could be.  I hope we get a chance to see that.
  • I do enjoy the other situations the family gets in – the ones not related to parenting situations at hand.  The painting choices, the Thanksgiving, the tentative steps towards a relationship with Amber [until Amber, in my eyes anyway, does something to ruin it – like the sweater thing], the weddings, etc.

Nitpicks:

  • Even more than in Searching for Spice, Jerry’s perfection grates on me some.  More than some at times.  His solution for Nick is a good one, but he offers it without discussing it with Linda.  I think it was the right choice, and I think Linda would have, too, but to make the decision without discussing it first was the wrong thing.  I would have been okay with that if he’d apologized for it later, but he didn’t and she never called him on it.  While he doesn’t come across as ‘holier than thou’ or anything, that he is always right bugs me.  Nobody is that perfect.  And it seems that Linda is always wrong.  That bugs me too :).
  • I was somewhat critical of Andrea Boeshaar in Always a Bridesmaid for the parental control over a grown child living at home.  There, the character was practically grounded for not calling home.  Here, DiMaria seems to go too far the other way – at least IMO.  Nick was out all night, in the middle of a snowstorm, without calling.  He worried his parents, he was inconsiderate and it seemed glossed over.  Nick does say it won’t happen again, but there seems to be very little contrition on his part at that point but it isn’t addressed.
  • Jerry – though his always rightness bugs me, so does his lack of stepping up at times.  Nick seemed to need a good man-to-man talk at more than one point, particularly after the mall incident between Linda and Amber.  While I understand his ‘no gossiping’ stance, I felt like Linda should have discussed her concerns about Nick and Amber with him at that point and Jerry should have sat him down for a heart-to-heart.
  • Amber…  She’s still growing.  She’s not there yet and so this could very well be a part of future books, but she has a serious chip on her shoulder at times.  She’s cruel to Linda at times – whether intentionally or not [the sweater party?!] – but never apologizes and never really says ‘thank you’ for everything Linda and Jerry do.  At least that was my impression.  She may have said the words, but I didn’t get the attitude of gratitude.
  • Deb still has her head in the sand.  While she’s technically accurate in her description of her relationship, it’s such a slippery slope and I think, in real life anyway, she’s going to wake up to find out that she’s had blinders on.  I think it’s possible that will happen in book 3 [if there is a book 3 :)].
  • Nick.  We never saw him broken over what was going on near the end of the book.  We never saw him grapple with his decisions, with the implications of faith and those decisions.  The whole thing is from Linda’s POV but seeing some of the struggle would have been nice.  He’s changed a fair bit, it seems, since the first book and I wonder about the catalyst for that change – is it Amber or did it start before that?  Will he step up and be the man of God his dad and grandpa are?
  • The last bit seemed…  glossed over.  No, that’s not right.  But more of a ‘in the last six months these things happened’ epilogue type feel to the last couple of chapters.  I think it could have ended fairly happily after the big deal happening in May [which would have made it a bit short, but the whole spring passed in a paragraph or two…] and then a whole other book written about what happened after that – though the rest isn’t maybe quite enough for a full book, maybe half or 2/3 of one and I’m sure other wrenches could be thrown in the works for the last 1/2-1/3 :).  However, I know editors and publishers can have a big part in that kind of thing so I’m choosing to believe that they had much to do with that.

Loose ends:

  • What about Pam from Searching for Spice?
  • What about the history teacher?  What was the fallout from that?
  • What about the fallout with Katrina’s day off?

Overall:

I totally called the family connection ;).  You’ll see what I mean when you read it.  Just remember that I called it!

I give Out of Her Hands 7.5 out of 10 stars.  I sincerely hope for a third book and, hopefully, see some resolution for Nick and Deb, in particular.  And Emma who is moving off to college.  I’ll read it again and I’ll be waiting for the sequel.

Reviews, Writing

The ‘In Crowd’

It’s September.  That means it’s time for me to send out the serious queries to guys like Steve Laube and all of the agents at Books and Such and so on.  Of course, today there’s a post by Michael Hyatt on his blog [Top Ten Posts of August – hits wise] and there’s a link to a post he made with all of the agents he’s worked with who work with Christian authors.  There’s like 40 of them!  While that’s much better than my list of *six*, I wish I’d seen it earlier in the summer when I could have queried the non-first choices earlier.  Ah well.  Back then my query letter wasn’t as good ;).  Just ask Erin.

I’ve been looking around at blogs and Facebook pages and see a number of the authors I’m discovering are ‘friends’ or ‘fans’ of each other.  I long to become a part of that group – even if the relationships are superficial at best.  Just a sign of support for a fellow author with no real relationship [I don’t know that that is the case, of course, and it seems that more than one have genuine relationships but as a ‘worst case’ kind of thing].  I see not just the Deb Raneys or Karen Kingsburys who have dozens of books out but those like Megan DiMaria and Candace Calvert who have two or three and wonder if I really have what it takes.

I know I’m insecure about myself and my abilities.  Mostly.  Every once in a while, I have a shining moment of self-confidence where I know – no, I know that I know – that I can do this.  That I have talent as a writer.  That someone besides me will find humor in what I find humor in [and not just like Melissa who laughed as Mandie loves Andy’s Frozen Custard and St. Louis Cardinals games – like I do! Or Penny when Mandie and Liz’s mom eats dessert for her appetizer – just like her mom does!].  That someone else will cry as I have when writing my characters in difficult situations.  That someone else will be so entranced that they’ll grin from ear to ear like I do when romance finally finds the hero or heroine.  I can do this.

Will the road to author-dom take me to a major publishing house?  Will I find that an agent is a rare commodity indeed and that, even with persistence, I’m just not quite that good?  Will I end up, a few years and several more Nanos from now, self publishing and hoping to sell 25 copies to friends and family while keeping that slim hope that one copy will someday find it’s way into the hands of Chip MacGregor or someone at Alive Communications?

I don’t know.  But I know I’m going down this road.  This is something I’ve longed for on one level or another since Jr. High or earlier [and I have the /shudder/ stories Chrissy and I wrote to prove it!].  I’m going to pursue it.  If Unbreak Her Heart doesn’t end up being my big break, that’s okay.  I’ve got at least two plotlines I could work on for Nano this year and then query next year.  I’ve grown and learned this year.  I’ve handled my three rejections [and a number of other no responses] well.  The ones that will come this fall may be a bit harder to deal with, but I can.  I’ve been clinging to the verse

For I know the plans I have for you, saith the LORD.  Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.  Plans for hope and a future.
Jeremiah 29:11

I looked up Jeremiah 29:12 tonight because there is no period at the end of verse 11.

Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.
Jeremiah 29:12

He will listen.  Verse 12 is on my bathroom mirror.  I’m claiming it.  But verse 13… “I will listen to you“.  The Lord of all creation will listen to me!  ME!  How cool is that?  He knows the desires of my heart.  He hears me when I pray, when I ask for His will but knowing that I hope His will and my desires are lining up.  Isn’t that the best ‘in crowd’ to be in?!

He knows I’ve never truly been a part of any ‘in crowd’ – not as far as I was concerned anyway and it’s likely that even if I were to sell millions of books I would never feel like I’d ‘arrived’, but it’s nice to dream.  And all the ladies I’ve had contact of any kind with have been nothing but gracious.  I hope that, someday, if there’s some other hopeful author out there who contacts me, I can be just as kind.

Wouldn’t that just be cool?  To be seen as part of the ‘in crowd’?  Ah… a girl can dream!

Agents, Writing

God’s Sense of Humor? Or Timing?

I’ve been working on queries again this week.  EEK!  I sent out one email one last night.  I fully expect it to be a rejection but at least it didn’t bounce like it did when I sent it a couple months ago – you know, before I made a bunch of edits to the book itself.

This morning I was working on my query for Steve Laube – my top choice for an agent at this point.  Why?  Because he’s well respected in the industry.  He works with some great authors.

And he lives in Phoenix.

Where I grew up.  And where, if he’s my agent, I may have to visit sometime.  You know.  For business ;).  Yeah.  That’s it =D.

Seriously, though, he’s a top choice for many other reasons, but gets a + for location.

Anyway, I was going through the submission requirements and one of the things his office wants is: If this is a Christian novel and you had to choose a scriptural foundation for the book what verse would you use?

I was talking to Jan, my ‘mom’, and was feeling a bit down.  How do I really know this is what God wants me to be doing?  What makes me think that I will get an agent and contracts and everything else?  Me out of everybody in the whole wide world who’s written a book?  I hadn’t really though too much about the scriptural foundations.  Nate and Mandie are Christians.  They go to church.  They believe God has a plan even if they can’t see it.  They read their Bibles and pray, but it’s more of an overt overtone than a quoting scripture verse every other page type thing, so this was something I was prepared to agonize over.

Then it hit me.

Jeremiah 29:11

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

I pasted it to Jan in the chat window.  Even as I thought it, I knew that it wasn’t just meant for Nate and Mandie, but for me, too.  I may not know what the plans are, but I know the Lord has them for me.  Plans to prosper [whether economically or otherwise] and not harm me.

So, I have a verse for Mandie and Nate.  I have a verse for me.  So the sense of humor?  Or timing maybe is a better way to put it.

Jeremiah 29:11 is one of the memory verses from my Bible study group this summer.  And probably the only one I actually remember at the moment ;).

And on the ‘prosperous’ note – today, I’m writing that check to pay off that student loan!

Edit: My pastor’s wife posted the same verse to her daughter on Facebook today!  Think God’s telling me [and Rebekah?] something? 🙂

Agents, Writing

More Reading and Writing

I’ve done a lot of reading in the last couple of weeks.  I’ve read another Deb Raney book that I’ll review later.  I read all of the Cheney Duvall, MD/Cheney and Shiloh: The Inheritance books [9 all together].  I’d hope that there would be another several books, but since it’s been 5  years since the last one came out, I don’t think it’d be worth my time :(.

Last night I read Erynn Mangum’s Miss Match that was very good.  I’ll be reviewing it later as well [though I think I’d like to wait until I’ve read all three and book 2 is currently checked out with another hold on it before mine /cry/].  Congratulations go to Ms. Mangum and her husband on the birth of their new son!

This afternoon is going to be spent getting ready for tonight’s Bible study and then getting queries ready.  Jan, my ‘other mom’, started something yesterday from a writing prompt but then promptly [haha!] got stuck a page or so later.  I am contemplating stealing it ;).  How does Married by Monday sound for a title?  I’ve got some ideas floating around my head and possibly even how to combine it with another story I’ve got half plotted out to make both of them work better.  Hmmm… I think I like that idea.  I even have a thought on how to turn it into a seven book series [one for each day of the week].

I would love to try my hand at Chick Lit [like Erynn Mangum].  Think I could do well at it if I had the right idea, but all of the ideas I’ve come up with so far involve coffee – something I am singularly ignorant about.

And now… /big dramatic pause/  I’m off to make lunch.

Reading, Writing

A Teaser…

Since God, in His infinite wisdom, has seen fit to a. give me a bout of mild insomnia/restless leg tonight and b. give me a bit of encouragement via email, I have decided to bestow upon you, my faithful readers – yes, all 4 of you! – a bit of a teaser for Unbreak Her Heart.  Especially for those of you who have read earlier versions, but not this one.  Yes, Angela and Penny, I’m looking at you :).

Without further ado, the first page of the recently written new first chapter.

~Chapter 1~

~Mandie~

~July 2005~

“No, I’m not going.”

“Please,” Liz pleaded with me.  “It’s twenty minutes.  That’s it. Twenty minutes.  It’s not like you’ll hit traffic coming home from the airport that time of day.”

I glared at my twin sister.  “Total time will be more like an hour from the time I leave the house, drive to the airport, pick him up and then it’s twenty minutes with the one person I never want to see again as long as I live.”

“You see Joe all the time,” she pointed out.  “It’s practically the same thing.”

“It’s not the same, and you know it, even if they are identical twins.”  I knew I should have just dropped her off after our trip to the gym but no, I had to come inside and hang out for a while.  It would have been one thing if I still shared her apartment, but I didn’t.  I’d moved back home a few weeks earlier in an effort to save some money.  But Liz had lured me in, even waiting until we had dinner in the oven before broaching the subject.

“Please, Mandie?”  Her pleading blue eyes locked on mine.  “Can’t you just do this for me?”

“You want me to go to the airport and pick up your boyfriend’s brother, even though you know I despise him?”  I sat back on the couch, arms crossed in front of me.  “You want me to take time out of my day, drive all the way to the airport, wait for him, drive him all the way back to Republic – spending at least twenty minutes alone with him,” I repeated, “all because you’re getting a pedicure?”

There it is :).  Hope you like it.  Hope there’s no glaring errors I’m missing at 2:30 in the morning.  And here’s hoping I can now go to sleep.

Later today… the first in a series of posts about my son.  Because even though his birthday isn’t for another 11 days, the saga sort of began three years ago today…

Sneek Peak

What I’ve Read…

I’ve read three books this weekend :).  It’s been a LONG time since I’ve done that!

Saturday, my sis and I took all three girls to get library books.  I picked up three.  Here are the reviews:

Amazon Book CoverSaturday night, I read Always a Bridesmaid by Andrea Boeshaar.  It was… okay.  Spoilers coming.  It’s the only book I’ve read by this author so I don’t know if it’s the author or this particular book or what, but parts of it seemed contrived and forced a bit, even skimmed over.  We didn’t get to see the big confrontation at the end [and I understand why – neither the male nor female romantic leads were there and the book was written strictly from their POVs – point of views – but I still feel a bit cheated].  I’m sure some of it was the type of book – it’s a Heartsong Presents book which has, as I understand it, strict [shorter than most] word counts and ‘rules’ so that may have played a role in it.  I think if it was about 1.5xs as long, more in depth on some things, etc. it would have been much better.  But that’s just my opinion of course :).

Melody in her early/mid-20s and moved home after her boyfriend, Scott, disappeared.  She then discovered that he’d had several other girlfriends, including one who eventually had an abortion.  She dropped out of college but has been slowly getting her degree.  Her little sister, Bonnie, comes home one day, announces she’s engaged then introduces the whole family to Scott.  Scott denies there was ever a relationship with Melody.  She tells her family about it, but because she hadn’t told them about it when it happened (she’d never mentioned Scott at all) and because she’d crossed certain physical boundaries (they never had sex and I’m not quite sure how far they ended up going), her parents, particularly her mother, choose to believe Scott’s version of events over Melody’s.

That annoyed me to no end as did how her parents, particularly her father, treated her at times.  Yes, she was living with them and needed to follow their rules, but when she left to go drive around one night and didn’t return, it was like she was a sixteen year old with a brand new license.  There were a couple of other things like that that annoyed me as well.  I get the ‘you’re living in our house, our rules are you let us know if you won’t be home after x time and if not doing it becomes a habit, we’re going to have to rethink this arrangement’ but this was more of a ‘if it happens again, you’re grounded, young lady!’ type of thing.

Melody falls in love with boy-next-door Luke who has been pining for her since childhood.  He believed her from the beginning.  Bonnie finds out about Scott when Scott tries to convince Melody to break up with Bonnie for him.  He’s leaving for medical school and doesn’t want to be entangled while there.  That’s a lie, of course, and when Bonnie and Dad confront him, he’s living with another pregnant fiance he plans on leaving behind as well.   That’s the confrontation I felt cheated out of.  The family ends up taking the pregnant girl under their wing and the book ends with Melody and Luke’s wedding.

It wasn’t a BAD read, but not a GREAT one either.  I’d give it 2.5 of 5 stars.

The other two books I borrowed were by Deboray Raney.  I started one Sunday night and read about ten chapters.  I finished that one then started and finished the next on Monday.

EDIT: I took out the next two reviews and will post them later – changing the format to one per post =D.

One of the other books I read, Yesterday’s Embers, may have also broken a logjam for me in my second novel, currently underway, and the sequel to my first.  The title of the first book is currently Unbreak Her Heart by the way.  I don’t think I’ve actually mentioned that…  Anyway, Yesterday’s Embers may have been a bit of an answer to prayer in that way – but time will tell :).

Hope everyone has had a fabulous holiday weekend.  Tomorrow… potty-training the two-year-old…

Reviews

I Think I’m in Love

I think I may be falling in love, sight unseen, with Liquid Story Binder.  It can, like, make timelines!  Do you know how COOL that is?!  I have an Excel table in a Word doc that I have literally torn hair out over trying to make the timelines work.  To see if I had it right.

And it has a character generator.  And you can write individual chapter files [my preferred way of writing most of the time] and it will make them into one nicely formatted file.  And character dossiers.  Not just cheat sheets.  Dossiers.  Images.  Mind maps.  Outline trees.  Project goals.  Color schemes.  Backups.  Statistics.  All sorts of cool stuff!

It has a free thirty day trial [usage days not calendar days].  I’d love to try it out but it’ll be September [probably] before I can scrounge together 45.95 for it [though that includes all updates.  Ever.] unless it’s on sale [a Google search for ‘coupon codes’ brought up several sales – including one that seems to happen around Nanowrimo].

So I’ll dream for now, because I’d go through the 30 days in, well, 30 days [maybe 32 or 33] and then I’d have to do without for a while…  Unless it goes on sale between now and then.  Then I’d probably buy it.

Anyone else have any experience with it?  Is it as good as it’s cracked up to be?  I just started trying to use OneNote to make character sheets and I’m just not getting it…

Writing

Crisis of Confidence

It doesn’t take much to give me a crisis of confidence.  It never has.  They come more seldom and are over more quickly than they used to be, but they still occur way too frequently for my taste.

I’m doing better than I was a couple hours ago.  Becki helped me formulate a plan.  It’s this:

Continue to improve query letter and manuscript
Send out a few more queries
Talk [again] to a friend who has a book coming out in December and went to the same conference I’m planning on attending
Talk to a friend who’s getting a book published and ask her for advice [will be late July before this can happen]
Query a couple of ‘first choices’ in August/September
Register for Heart of America Christian Writers Network Conference in Nov
Schedule one or more critiques/first pages with agents I’m strongly interested in for the conference

Having a plan is helping.  There’s still dues to be paid.  There will be more crises of confidence.  The query letter has been tweaked and improved.

Maybe it’s a good thing that one of the equeries I sent out earlier this week bounced.  It was an agency that is fairly high up on my list.  Now I can submit a better query letter :).  Maybe God had a hand in it all!

Writing

Rites of Passage

Today is the day I (sort of) became an official author.

I got my first rejection!

Yesterday, sent my very first query ever to agent extraordinaire Nathan Bransford and, as expected, he rejected me today.  He doesn’t rep my genre, but he has a fun blog and says that he loves query letters.  One post is even labeled, ‘When in doubt, query me’ – so I did.  He sent a nice, polite form rejection.

So today, I sent out 3 more email queries and am readying my first snail mail query – it will hopefully go out by the end of the week.

I also got my own blog.  For reals.  My fabulous friend, Ang, is working on my website sometime soon because that’s what she does and she rocks.

So today I feel like a real author.  Because today I got rejected.  And that’s okay :).  There’s more to come, but hopefully, there will also be a few requests for partials, some for full manuscripts and, eventually, a contract!  I can’t wait.

Agents, Rejections, Writing
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