You would think…

with all my kids gone, that I’d have tons of time for things like writing in my blog. HA!  Double Ha!

The good news is that I’m about 2/3 done with the huge edit to my story.  I’ve added about 5,000 words.  It’s definitely a stronger story already and I’m really happy with the way the rewrite is going.

I’m planning on working on my synopsis for Keeper today and getting that turned in tonight or tomorrow.  I have a really terrible habit of putting things off until the last day and then forgetting to do them.  I don’t want that to happen this time, because I think I’ve written a really strong story.

I miss my kids.  Tons.  I talked to Ruby yesterday and she was telling me all about her grandparents taking her to the zoo, and how she found a peacock (only she calls it a he-cock) feather and how the snake opened it’s mouth and showed all its teeth and scared her.  And I was fine.  Until she said, “can I come home now?”  Man.  We’re picking everyone up on Sunday morning.  I’ll be more than ready for my break to be over by then.

My dad and one of my brothers are going to be here in a little bit.  They’re stopping on his way to Idaho to visit my sister.  He’ll stop on his way back, too.  Yay

More

I’m sitting here, waiting for my novel to print. Three hundred and fifty five pages, double spaced, Times New Roman 12 point. The stack of already printed pages is staggering already, and there are 144 more to go. I’m going to take it, and my toddler, outside in the hopes that she’ll splash in her wading pool for a few minutes and let me get some work done.

Ruby is going to Las Vegas tomorrow afternoon to spend a week with her grandparents. Adrienne and Nick are already there with their dad. We’ll pick them all up on the sixth of July. So here’s my plan. I’m going to work on this story today and tomorrow. The week that I have no kids at all, I’m going to dedicate to my new novel. Hopefully that will give the ideas for revisions on Devil You Don’t some time to peculate. That seems to be how my brain works.

I’m choosing to focus on this sentence from the not-quite-rejection: “Please know that if we did not see promise in the manuscript we wouldn’t be sending back such detailed information.”

Better Than Rejection

I heard back from Pink Petal Books today. They sent me a revise and resubmit letter. That’s considerably better than a rejection. My brain knows that. My heart is a little heavy. But I’ll live. At least I know what the problems are, and I can fix them. One is a pretty major change to the structure of my story, and in retrospect I think I knew all along that it didn’t quite work. So, I’m going to see what I can do about fixing things up and get it back to them. And try to keep reminding myself that this is a step up from the stack of form rejections I have hidden in a desk drawer.

Patience, patience

Isn’t it nice to come home? I really love the feeling of sleeping in my own bed after a few nights trying to sleep with a wiggly toddler on a narrow mattress. Especially because my husband is a little bit of a clean-o-holic and I know that I’ll come home to clean sheets and a house that smells pine fresh. I am so lucky.

Las Vegas was…Las Vegas. Hot. How did I live there for twenty years? I felt physically ill after just a couple of days. Oh, I know. I never left the house in the summer when I lived there. I even had groceries delivered during July and August. I’m such a wimp.

I really love living in the mountains.

I did get a lot done on my short story. A good hard-copy edit. Yesterday I plugged the edits into my story and ended up adding 1000 words. It’s a good story. I’m proud of it. I had meant for it to be light, chic-lit-y. It didn’t happen. Every edit has made it darker, and now it’s pretty much just on the lighter side of paranormal. That’s okay. It’s my thing. I don’t even read chic-lit, so I’m not sure why I thought I could write it.

I have two stories out there right now. My novel at Pink Petal Books and a short story at Ellora’s Cave. This is not a business for the impatient. I just looked back through my email, and I submitted my story to Ellora’s Cave two months ago. Two months.

That’s it for now. I have to get out to my garden. I just put in one last bed, and I need to get it planted. It’s still June, and the last frost was less than two weeks ago, but there’s still this feeling that I need to rush and get everything in so that it can grow up before the cold comes again in September. Especially the squash. I have pumpkins, butternut, golden nugget, and spaghetti squash seeds to plant! Yum!

Playin’ in the Garden with Ruby

Ruby found a lady bug in the garden today. This was after she sat with me at the table on the patio with a pencil and some scratch paper, working on her ’story’ while I worked on a hard-copy edit of mine. So, here you have it: the aphid-eater and the baby writer.

Rejection

About a week before I submitted Devil You Don’t to Pink Petal Books, I submitted it to Samhain Publishing. Last night I this was in my email:

Dear Shaunta:
Thank you for giving Samhain Publishing the opportunity to review your work, Devil You Don’t, for possible publication. Unfortunately, we won’t be extending an offer of publication for this manuscript.

My apologies for the form rejection letter but, due to the volume of submissions we receive, we’ve had to move to using this format.

We appreciate your submission and wish you good luck in the future.

Best, XXX

I’m pretty happy that the request for the full manuscript came from Pink Petal Books before I was outright rejected by a form letter by Samhain. Let me just tell you that there is nothing, nothing, like a form rejection letter to put an upstart writer in her place.

I was reading an agent’s blog recently and she was talking about how there are three ways to get attention in this very tight business. Be introduced, meet someone at a conference, and as a distant third, cold query.

With that in mind, I have a plan. I’m going to join Romance Writers of America. And I’m going to try to get myself to a conference in the next year. I’m going to enter myself in as many contests as I can get my fingers on. I’m going to do what doesn’t come particularly naturally to me: network. Anyone have an agent they want to introduce me to? LMAO

In other news, I finished Keeper. It’s just right at 15000 words by the skin of its teeth. I’m going to print it and take it to Las Vegas with me for a read over. I’d still love a couple of beta readers if anyone is interested.

Beta Readers

I am about two minutes from finishing the short story I’ve been working on. I would actually be done, but it’s only 12000 words and the minimum for the anthology I hope to get into is 15000.

I read somewhere recently that Mary Higgins Clark credits being a journalist with helping her be a really good fiction writer. Because she wrote for radio and had no choice but to write very, very tight. I’m a former journalist, too. I spent a couple of years as a newspaper reporter, and many more writing freelance magazine articles. I get what she’s saying. I almost never use superfluous words. My instinct is to tell the story in as few words as possible. Which is fantastic, and necessary for a newspaper reporter, but not quite as much for a novelist. As a result, I have sort of an odd way of writing. I write the story from beginning to end. And then I write it again, adding more detail and more scenes if necessary. And then again. And sometimes again. So my stories are sort of layered together. I have no idea if that’s good or bad, but it just is.

As an example. This story started out being about 5000 words. I went through and added more and it was like 8500. I’m just finishing up the third go around and it’s 12000. One more time and I should have it right.

One thing I have to guard against is not stopping until I’ve fleshed the whole story out, or it comes across as too–flat? I’m not sure if that’s the word. Not juicy enough.

Another good thing that came from from being a journalist is that I don’t believe I’ve ever had writer’s block. Ever. Spending several years under a constant tight deadline sort of killed the myth of writer’s block for me. I don’t worry about writing perfectly, since I know ahead of time that I’m going to do two or four or ten rewrites anyway. I just start typing. It all works out in the end.

Okay–all that said, on to the reason for this post. I would love to have a couple of beta readers for my short story. Three or four would be great. You don’t have to do any major editing (unless your into self-torture), I’m just looking for general feedback. If you’re a writer, that’s even better. Just leave me a comment or email me at shauntagrimes@gmail.com. I’m happy to return the favor if you have something you’d like me to read. Thanks!

This and that and Indie, too

I posted the prologue to Devil You Don’t, the story that is being considered by a publisher right now. I’d love to know what you think.

I’m 11,000 words into my short story for the Pink Petal anthology. I was struggling with it, but finally came up with a solution to my problem that I’m really happy with. For some reason, working in my garden always gets my creative juices flowing. Today I built a raised bed for a Three Sisters garden (corn, beans, squash.)

I should have the first draft (I’m tentatively calling the story ‘Keeper’) done today. I want to get some more done on Gaia’s Redemption before we leave out of town on Thursday morning.

I went last night with Kevin and Nick to see the new Indiana Jones movie. It was really hard to enjoy it, because there was a gaggle (for real–at least 30) middle- and high-school kids sitting right behind me. They were so freaking loud. Normally, I go with the flow. I’m way laid back. For some reason this really pissed me off, so I couldn’t relax and get lost in the movie. It wasn’t nearly as good as the first three anyway. I did like the kid who played his son (I don’t know how to spell the guy’s name, so I’m not going to try. It’s the kid from Holes.) I’d like to see a sequel series based on him.

I think what I need is a break. My kids are all going to be in Las Vegas for the next week (the big kids for two weeks) and as much as I miss them when they’re gone, I really think I need a minute without them.

Waiting Game

I just finished reading my entire manuscript for my first novel, Devil You Don’t, in preparation for sending it to Pink Petal Books. It’s sent.

It’s been a good 18 months since I finished my last edit on it. I was really pleased with it when I re-read it last night and today. It’s a good, strong story. Even if it isn’t picked up, I’m proud of it. I found a few little things to clean up, but nothing major. I was a little afraid that giving myself that much space from it would have me cringing when I read it again. You know what I mean? But I didn’t. I even felt tension during the tense parts, and excited during the exciting parts. It works.

Now I get to wait to hear back from the publisher. And get back to work on my other projects.

Today, life is good.

Umm…Holy Crap

This was in my email today:

Dear Ms. Alburger

Thank you so much for submitting DEVIL YOU DON’T. Both I, and another editor, have read it, and we would love to read the full manuscript. Please send it by email at your earliest convenience.

Thank you for thinking of Pink Petal Books!

XXX

Can you hear me squeeing? Can you?