Brief Update 7/2011

Hello!

Well, I have emerged from the infant-induced hiatus to another summer when I am not teaching. I am learning the trick of getting both the girls down for a nap at the same time so I can actually work.

The other trick is to put them both in daycare for a couple days a week. Maybe later this summer I'll blog about the guilt associated with paying a babysitter so I can write, but not today.

My brief writing update is as follows: I am finishing a full revision of my fantasy novel, working title Something. I thought that I had made edits/revisions to the whole book last summer before WWC, but I had only done the first half, thinking anyone who would want to see it would only ask for the first fifty pages first.

Here's a tip: DAW wants the entire manuscript right off the bat.

So, before I send the book to them, I needed to finish the edits. Plus, one of my first readers suggested a couple revisions to the characters arcs that made a lot of sense to me.

The good news is that I am totally in love with this book again. It is as much fun to read and work on the second time as it was the first. I really hope someone wants to publish it.

After I finish that book, I'm going to finish writing the alpaca romance novel I started last August. I think I'm about 60K into it. I need to flesh out the "B" plot, and then revise it to go into the mail to publishers.

That's it for now!

m

BIAM Day #2

I am happy to report that so far in my 50K Book in a Month (BIAM) challenge, I am slightly ahead. I wrote about 1700 words yesterday and 1800 today, which puts me ahead of my 1667/day benchmarks. I'm going to gloat a little now, knowing that it will come back to bite me in the ass.

I have managed to sketch out an alpaca-centered idea for this novel. As far as I can tell from my haphazard research on amazon.com, there aren't any alpaca-centered novels out there. Given how often alpacas are referred to in pop culture (thank you Jon Stewart and Stanley Steemer), I think I really need to fill that hole. :)

that's all for now. Keep writing.

m