This Blog post is a Test
This is a test of the Blog to Facebook wall posting system. Lets see how it works shall we?
Read More »Bob and George
This my friends is a totally random post about two members of my household. Ones alive, one my husband just thinks is. This is also a blatant attempt to provoke my husband into commenting on my Blog. Shall we see if it works? So here we go… Bob and George. Per the request of kc Dyer here is a picture of them together. Bob is the snake. George is the Apple device with the unfortunate name that we chose to rename “iGeorgeâ€. (iGeorge was quickly shortened to just George) A few interesting tidbits about each: Bob – Is a royal or ball python who is 4 years old. He has been part of our family for the past two years. George – Has learned to recognize “iGeorge†when you start to type it and auto finishes it. Bob – Is very friendly if a bit shy. George – Is not alive, despite the fact that we have named him, so he is not friendly or unfriendly but he does his jobs quite well. Bob – is a huge hit at my kids school whenever I take him there I am swamped by kids and feel like a minor celebrity. George – is a huge hit when Jason takes him out in public. He is swamped by people and I think he feels like the coolest person around since he is the only person in our group with this new toy....
Read More »Monday Update
Rejection Queen Status: – I have no new rejection to report my status is still 1. – On that front I sent three queries this past week. They were all with my newly polished shorter more cleaned up query letter. So we’ll see what the response is to this newer more precise letter. What am I working on this week: – Last week I wrote a very rough and dirty first draft of a synopsis. This week I hope to clean and refine it and make it pretty and ready to send to the agents who want to see it with my query letter. I have at least 5 or 6 in my binder who ask for a synopsis with the query letter. – I hope to work some more on The Youngest Brother this week, which much to my embarrassment I have not touched in almost a month. - I plan to send at least 4 or 5 more queries this week – hey how can I win that crown if I don’t send out those query letters. 😉 – As always I will continue to research and add agents to my binder. Last week I added three. Personal notes: – I will be celebrating my birthday this week. I was born in the late seventies sometime after 76 and before 78. 😉 – This Friday I get to hang out and have dinner with one of The BookBroads who will be down in Seattle. I am very excited about this and looking forward to it. – My calendar is a bit more open this week than last meaning I should have more writing time this week, The Youngest Brother just might get some of my attention after...
Read More »A sad day
Even writers get to have them right? My grandfather died this morning. I don’t really have much else to say. Words elude me at this point. Maybe soon I will be able to string together thoughts into a coherent whole and give proper tribute, until then… rest in peace Grand Pop.
Read More »Spring
It’s Spring, my second favorite season. I like Fall best, but Spring takes a close second, especially here in the Pacific Northwest. I’m not sure why Spring has never managed to inch out Fall, I mean in the Spring you have the explosion of life and color. Flowers and trees are coming alive and everything seems bright and cheerful. Yeah, it rains…but this is the Pacific Northwest – it ALWAYS rains – and the sun breaks through the clouds in the most amazing ways in the Spring and makes the new leaves look so vividly, amazingly, green, like someone painted them there. I even love the rain. After all that’s what gives us all the amazing green everywhere. Plus I just like it, maybe that’s why I like the Fall, because I enjoy the rain so much. I like feeling snug and warm inside while it is wet and drizzly outside. It makes my house seem cozy all the time. We also get some of the most amazing rainbows in West Seattle that I have ever seen in my life, especially in the spring. Not that I don’t like Summer and Winter – they have their charms and I would never want to live somewhere that was relegated to only one season all year. I think that there is something very soothing in the cycle of the seasons, at least for me. But the truth is I love the Fall and the Spring the best....
Read More »Queries – the missing link to the “crown”
Update in the race for the status of Rejection Queen: No new rejection to report – my number is still at 1. I currently have two outstanding queries. One I’ll admit I don’t think I’m going to hear back from. The other I’m right within the window of reply. So I should hear in the next week or two. This weekend I worked on my query letter. This, of course, is the key to winning the Rejection Queen Crown. You see in order to accumulate rejections one must first send out queries. Without the query there can be no rejection. But, lets be positive here, without the query there can be no acceptance either. 🙂 I spent several hours perusing the web this weekend just reading queries. Yes I’ve done this before but I was looking for something different this time. Something elusive and almost intangible. Hook. I need a hook. That one sentence that makes the agent need to read my book. I knew it wasn’t something I was going to find in someone else’s query but I was hoping that by studying others I could maybe learn what an agent was looking for in the hook. What did I learn? No two query letters look alike. I read the ones agents accepted and posted to their blogs or web sites. Every single one was a bit different. They ranged in tone, style and depth. So, while there are some hard and fast rules (like address the agent by the right name, stick to one page, identify your genre, stick to one page, hook the agent, stick to one page…), I’m thinking that there is a little more flexibility than I want to give myself. The combination for a successful query might be more a cooking recipe, a pinch of this and a dash of that, than a scientific formula, one gram hook, three grams description, two grams personal background. This is one area where I could really use a hard and fast formula that is guaranteed to...
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