This will be a short post. Mostly because I'm really just wasting time while my laptop charges (it's an old laptop and sometimes refuses to charge and since it's willing to charge right now while I'm holding it open, I'm obliged to sit here for a little longer and let it keep charging) but also because it's been probably too long since I last posted.
So, what have you been up to, internet world?
As for me, I've been:
Writing on a new WIP, tentatively titled Rivana of the Twains. It's a fantasy (YA, of course) and right now, I'm madly in love with it. Tough to tell at this juncture whether it will be genuinely unique and marketable, but the important thing is it''s rekindling my passions. I'm stealing moments to write just one more sentence, and jotting down little notes on pasty pads while at work. I'd forgotten how freaking good that feels.
Working at the shop. Still loving it. Still learning. Things are great so far. I have, as of yet, avoided breaking any anvils... but give it time... *crosses fingers that I never *actually* manage to break an anvil*
I still have fulls of Gone Missing Girl out so several agents. So glad that they're 'out there' but I'm not hulking over my inbox. It's enough that they're in the works. I've got work and the new WIP to keep me busy. But it means the world just to have stuff with agents.
Getting feedback from a new critique partner... (THANK YOU CHRISTI!!!) which is a little frightening but mostly made of awesome because it means new eyes on my stuff and a new angle on things. Opens up an entire world of possibilities, one which I'm super excited about.
Also, I've watched the Boston Marathon tragedy unfold. Wept over the dead and injured. Selfishly wept a little more over the knowledge that friends who desperately wanted to run, failed to qualify and subsequently weren't there to be endangered. Watched the capture of the second suspect. Laughed at my niece, code name Walelu, and forgot about being sad. Laughed at Mad Max and forgot about being sad. Wrapped my cousin's fiance in toilet paper during Easter games, then got wrapped myself in a toilet paper wedding gown during a bridal shower for the same cousin. Caught the bouquet of a friend, which I did NOT want to catch, but was forced to in order to avoid getting the bouquet implanted in my front teeth :) Saw War Horse, and was less than impressed. Blech all around. Not to slight anyone who loved it.
So, yeah, been busy. Not been around very much on the internet, but been around in general. All right, off to write, and edit and all of that. See you round internet!
Monday, April 22, 2013
Sunday, April 7, 2013
The Way Things Happen...
It's been a while since I posted. Things are going well, if strangely, some of them more strangely than others. Which brings me to the title of this post.
Sometimes things happen in the very strangest of ways and no matter how you try to steer toward normality, you miss it by a mile but end up in the same place anyway.
Most of this blather was inspired by the epic saga partaken by my mother and I in our hunt for special item X for my father. I'm not going to say exactly what it is because it's still in the works and I don't want any chance of him somehow finding out. And he's one of those people who always finds out somehow, even without trying.
But I digress. Mom and I have been on a hunt for item X. Turns out that item X is very hard to find. Very expensive. And pretty much impossible to get ahold of.
Then we found what we were looking for on eBay. I am not an eBay expert, but I know something about it. We bid. We were outbid. We bid higher. We lost.
Then I got an email from eBay saying I'd received a Second Chance Offer because the original high bidder had failed to pay or the sale had otherwise fallen through. This offer means that your high bid becomes a Buy It Now price, which you can agree to pay, or pass on. So I replied that I was interested, but had several questions which I itemized in the email. I had 3 days in which to respond to this offer. I got no reply from the seller until the end of the 3 day offer period, which was annoying but not insurmountable. At the end of the offer period I received a confirmation email from eBay stating that my offer had been accepted and gave me all the information required to pay by bank transfer. I also got an email from the seller saying my offer was accepted and to let him know when I got the confirmation from eBay. I replied, saying I'd received it, but I was confused because originally there had been several options for payment, and now it was only giving me the option to pay via bank transfer, and I didn't want to. While awaiting his reply (mind you, he hadn't responded to my first two emails) I tweeted about how it seemed weird that he was taking so long. A friend replied to my tweet and during our conversation, she told me it all seemed strange to her, and that I should do what made me comfortable but that she thought it was fishy. So instead of biting back my frustration and rushing to the bank to complete the transfer I didn't want to do in the first place, I felt bolstered by her support and did nothing but wait for the seller's reply. When it came a full 24 hrs later is said simply 'Please pay with bank transfer and I will ship item to * address supplied by me*' He still never acknowledged my questions nor answered them. At this point, I wen to eBay and contacted the seller directly through them, instead of by email. And while I was doing all this, I discovered that eBay has warnings about second chance offers and states that if you received one, you need to check your eBay message center because you will ALWAYS receive a Second Chance Offer there, in addition to you email. Guess who DIDN'T have a message in their Ebay message center? I promptly forwarded the fraudulent emails to eBay's security center and they have since emailed me, confirming the scam and letting me know that they were already attempting to track the emails down.
You just never know. Thankfully no vital information had been passed to the scammers.
BUT while I was on eBay dealing with all of this, I found ANOTHER item X even better than the one I'd lost which had spawned the spam (it should be noted that the original seller is innocent and on the up and up. He was getting scammed the same as me, as his name was being used in the commission of a crime. Thankfully neither one of us has suffered irreparable damage) and I was able to Buy It Now, and have already received proper invoices etc.
So, something crazy bad awful ALMOST happened, but didn't and as a result, I found the one thing my Mom and I wanted most. And God willing and the creek don't rise, this will work out perfectly.
It's sort of the same with querying. Not that agents try to scam you (well, not any REAL agent) But just that sometimes you think you're headed in just the right direction but then something happens and it's all a mess and you're on the verge of flinging yourself off a cliff and suddenly you end up precisely where you wanted/needed to be.
During all of this item X drama, I opened my inbox to find, utterly unexpectedly, an email from an agent I'd last had contact with in about November of 2012! She wasn't someone I'd queried, but someone I'd gotten involved with via a blog contest. But I love this agent! She is someone I've secretly pined for. I admire her, and I'd love to have the opportunity to work with her. Not because she's an agent and I'm a writer who wants an agent, but because she's who she is. And guess what? She was asking me if I was still seeking representation and if so, would I send her the full because she was intrigued!
Now, since I sent her my first fifty pages, my ms has been through a huge edit, mostly because of feedback from an editor at a publishing house. It was good feedback, and since requests for my ms had trickled to a virtual halt, I'd decided to look hard at the ms and revise. So I had. But now an agent wanted to see it. So I sent her the full, and explained everything. The first fifty she'd seen and my current fifty aren't gargantuanly different. It's the rest of the ms that's changed. I explained that to her as well.
Maybe having the ms change will bother her. Maybe she'll think I did the right thing. Maybe something awesome will come of this. Maybe it won't. But you just never know.
The way things happen... well, they can be amazing and unexpected and wild. And sometimes you end up right where you need to be, despite everything you went through on the way there.
Sometimes things happen in the very strangest of ways and no matter how you try to steer toward normality, you miss it by a mile but end up in the same place anyway.
Most of this blather was inspired by the epic saga partaken by my mother and I in our hunt for special item X for my father. I'm not going to say exactly what it is because it's still in the works and I don't want any chance of him somehow finding out. And he's one of those people who always finds out somehow, even without trying.
But I digress. Mom and I have been on a hunt for item X. Turns out that item X is very hard to find. Very expensive. And pretty much impossible to get ahold of.
Then we found what we were looking for on eBay. I am not an eBay expert, but I know something about it. We bid. We were outbid. We bid higher. We lost.
Then I got an email from eBay saying I'd received a Second Chance Offer because the original high bidder had failed to pay or the sale had otherwise fallen through. This offer means that your high bid becomes a Buy It Now price, which you can agree to pay, or pass on. So I replied that I was interested, but had several questions which I itemized in the email. I had 3 days in which to respond to this offer. I got no reply from the seller until the end of the 3 day offer period, which was annoying but not insurmountable. At the end of the offer period I received a confirmation email from eBay stating that my offer had been accepted and gave me all the information required to pay by bank transfer. I also got an email from the seller saying my offer was accepted and to let him know when I got the confirmation from eBay. I replied, saying I'd received it, but I was confused because originally there had been several options for payment, and now it was only giving me the option to pay via bank transfer, and I didn't want to. While awaiting his reply (mind you, he hadn't responded to my first two emails) I tweeted about how it seemed weird that he was taking so long. A friend replied to my tweet and during our conversation, she told me it all seemed strange to her, and that I should do what made me comfortable but that she thought it was fishy. So instead of biting back my frustration and rushing to the bank to complete the transfer I didn't want to do in the first place, I felt bolstered by her support and did nothing but wait for the seller's reply. When it came a full 24 hrs later is said simply 'Please pay with bank transfer and I will ship item to * address supplied by me*' He still never acknowledged my questions nor answered them. At this point, I wen to eBay and contacted the seller directly through them, instead of by email. And while I was doing all this, I discovered that eBay has warnings about second chance offers and states that if you received one, you need to check your eBay message center because you will ALWAYS receive a Second Chance Offer there, in addition to you email. Guess who DIDN'T have a message in their Ebay message center? I promptly forwarded the fraudulent emails to eBay's security center and they have since emailed me, confirming the scam and letting me know that they were already attempting to track the emails down.
You just never know. Thankfully no vital information had been passed to the scammers.
BUT while I was on eBay dealing with all of this, I found ANOTHER item X even better than the one I'd lost which had spawned the spam (it should be noted that the original seller is innocent and on the up and up. He was getting scammed the same as me, as his name was being used in the commission of a crime. Thankfully neither one of us has suffered irreparable damage) and I was able to Buy It Now, and have already received proper invoices etc.
So, something crazy bad awful ALMOST happened, but didn't and as a result, I found the one thing my Mom and I wanted most. And God willing and the creek don't rise, this will work out perfectly.
It's sort of the same with querying. Not that agents try to scam you (well, not any REAL agent) But just that sometimes you think you're headed in just the right direction but then something happens and it's all a mess and you're on the verge of flinging yourself off a cliff and suddenly you end up precisely where you wanted/needed to be.
During all of this item X drama, I opened my inbox to find, utterly unexpectedly, an email from an agent I'd last had contact with in about November of 2012! She wasn't someone I'd queried, but someone I'd gotten involved with via a blog contest. But I love this agent! She is someone I've secretly pined for. I admire her, and I'd love to have the opportunity to work with her. Not because she's an agent and I'm a writer who wants an agent, but because she's who she is. And guess what? She was asking me if I was still seeking representation and if so, would I send her the full because she was intrigued!
Now, since I sent her my first fifty pages, my ms has been through a huge edit, mostly because of feedback from an editor at a publishing house. It was good feedback, and since requests for my ms had trickled to a virtual halt, I'd decided to look hard at the ms and revise. So I had. But now an agent wanted to see it. So I sent her the full, and explained everything. The first fifty she'd seen and my current fifty aren't gargantuanly different. It's the rest of the ms that's changed. I explained that to her as well.
Maybe having the ms change will bother her. Maybe she'll think I did the right thing. Maybe something awesome will come of this. Maybe it won't. But you just never know.
The way things happen... well, they can be amazing and unexpected and wild. And sometimes you end up right where you need to be, despite everything you went through on the way there.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Muddling Along...
Well, so much for 'I'll be posting this week since I won't be at work'... funny how that's turned out. I will get this one sad scrawny little dribble out, though. Even if it doesn't account for much.
Ah, this week. This first strange 'I no longer work where I ALWAYS worked week'.
Let's recap:
Monday, the power went out because (hold your breath!) it snowed a whopping 4 inches... this, after the last storm took out every tree in the tri-state area. But at least it was only off for a matter of hours, cutting out at around 9am and coming back around 4. But I was still a grumpy mess for the day.
Tuesday, I spent recovering from Monday. This involved having the plug of the electric fireplace explode and melt creating a physical mess, and psychological nightmare for me (if you know me, you'll know I'm terrified of fire) and that had to be addressed and the fireplace replaced which I managed with the help of my sister. Then in late afternoon, I realized Saida (big old bony thoroughbred mare) was acting colicky. You might remember that at the first of the month, I lost my beloved Di to torsion colic. Needless to say, I verged on meltdown, seeing Saida displaying similar symptoms. I'm STILL twitchy. However, once dosed with banamine and xylaxine, Saida reacted the way you WANT them too, settling down and then going back to her usual self as the drugs wore off. Run of the mill tummy ache. Still, it was a rough night for me, waiting for something horrible to suddenly happen.
Wednesday was spent staring anxiously out into the field at two horses and a donkey who were acting completely normally. I did manage to go out to breakfast with my Dad and write some, but fretted on and off over the blissfully oblivious Saida. It's SO HARD not to be pensive this close on the heels of losing Di.
Today, I wrote some more on my new WIP, Shed The Wind, which doesn't quite know if it wants to be contemp, or magical realism... and wistfully peeked in over at the big PitchMadness hoopla going on, wishing someone was requesting something from me. I'm SO HAPPY for all of those who are competing!!! May they ALL get requests! I was going to try and get into the PitMad event, but that might be sidetracked because my phone has suddenly decided that its foray into first the lake and then the (clean) toilet last week has, in fact, had some sort of affect on it. So unless there's a miracle, I'll be talking with AT&T tomorrow, and possibly sending the phone off to be salvaged or replaced. I have insurance on it, but I'm sure I'm going to lose money.
Oh well. Things could be worse. I can't say that I haven't been occupied this week! And I've gotten some writing done, which makes me very happy.
Now, a question: I have a number of queries out, but the 10th or so of April will mark the one month time frame for the most recent of the queries. As of right now, I've heard nothing from anyone, so I'm assuming they're rejections. Presuming that I hear nothing by the 10th (one of the agent replies to all, but almost always within a month, so if I don't hear from him, I'll figure he's super busy, and I've been set aside to be rejected later, which is okay) I was considering resubmitting to Entangled Publishing. This is GONE MISSING GIRL, my contemp YA, and it was already requested, then rejected with feedback from Entangled. It wasn't a revise and resub, but they said that if I addressed their issues, they'd be happy to see it again.
Subbing directly to publishers is not what I ever thought I'd do. I worry about my ability to agent myself, and manage myself. But I'm at a point where the dystopian, despite it's numerous requests had fallen into the 'we're over it' category, and the contemp which has gotten so much attention from pitches and garnered interest via queries has never gotten much interest beyond that. My Beauty and the Beast retelling isn't nearly as 'out there' different as something like Cinder, or Scarlett (EPIC LOVE FOR THEM) and thusly seems to have a slim chance of becoming some dramatic breakout agent-snagger.
So should I go out on this strangely shape and unfamiliar limb of subbing to publishing houses? Well, to Entangled, specifically. I'm not ready to sub widely to houses yet. But what say you? Opinions?
Ah, this week. This first strange 'I no longer work where I ALWAYS worked week'.
Let's recap:
Monday, the power went out because (hold your breath!) it snowed a whopping 4 inches... this, after the last storm took out every tree in the tri-state area. But at least it was only off for a matter of hours, cutting out at around 9am and coming back around 4. But I was still a grumpy mess for the day.
Tuesday, I spent recovering from Monday. This involved having the plug of the electric fireplace explode and melt creating a physical mess, and psychological nightmare for me (if you know me, you'll know I'm terrified of fire) and that had to be addressed and the fireplace replaced which I managed with the help of my sister. Then in late afternoon, I realized Saida (big old bony thoroughbred mare) was acting colicky. You might remember that at the first of the month, I lost my beloved Di to torsion colic. Needless to say, I verged on meltdown, seeing Saida displaying similar symptoms. I'm STILL twitchy. However, once dosed with banamine and xylaxine, Saida reacted the way you WANT them too, settling down and then going back to her usual self as the drugs wore off. Run of the mill tummy ache. Still, it was a rough night for me, waiting for something horrible to suddenly happen.
Wednesday was spent staring anxiously out into the field at two horses and a donkey who were acting completely normally. I did manage to go out to breakfast with my Dad and write some, but fretted on and off over the blissfully oblivious Saida. It's SO HARD not to be pensive this close on the heels of losing Di.
Today, I wrote some more on my new WIP, Shed The Wind, which doesn't quite know if it wants to be contemp, or magical realism... and wistfully peeked in over at the big PitchMadness hoopla going on, wishing someone was requesting something from me. I'm SO HAPPY for all of those who are competing!!! May they ALL get requests! I was going to try and get into the PitMad event, but that might be sidetracked because my phone has suddenly decided that its foray into first the lake and then the (clean) toilet last week has, in fact, had some sort of affect on it. So unless there's a miracle, I'll be talking with AT&T tomorrow, and possibly sending the phone off to be salvaged or replaced. I have insurance on it, but I'm sure I'm going to lose money.
Oh well. Things could be worse. I can't say that I haven't been occupied this week! And I've gotten some writing done, which makes me very happy.
Now, a question: I have a number of queries out, but the 10th or so of April will mark the one month time frame for the most recent of the queries. As of right now, I've heard nothing from anyone, so I'm assuming they're rejections. Presuming that I hear nothing by the 10th (one of the agent replies to all, but almost always within a month, so if I don't hear from him, I'll figure he's super busy, and I've been set aside to be rejected later, which is okay) I was considering resubmitting to Entangled Publishing. This is GONE MISSING GIRL, my contemp YA, and it was already requested, then rejected with feedback from Entangled. It wasn't a revise and resub, but they said that if I addressed their issues, they'd be happy to see it again.
Subbing directly to publishers is not what I ever thought I'd do. I worry about my ability to agent myself, and manage myself. But I'm at a point where the dystopian, despite it's numerous requests had fallen into the 'we're over it' category, and the contemp which has gotten so much attention from pitches and garnered interest via queries has never gotten much interest beyond that. My Beauty and the Beast retelling isn't nearly as 'out there' different as something like Cinder, or Scarlett (EPIC LOVE FOR THEM) and thusly seems to have a slim chance of becoming some dramatic breakout agent-snagger.
So should I go out on this strangely shape and unfamiliar limb of subbing to publishing houses? Well, to Entangled, specifically. I'm not ready to sub widely to houses yet. But what say you? Opinions?
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