I'm alive! I promise!

You all have been so beyond patient with me!

And I want you to know how much that means to me. Honestly. It’s been what seems like forever (and in the book publishing world, might as well be) since CASTE was published. So much has happened since then. A pregnancy, a baby, raising said amazing child, going back to work, weddings and vacations, dance competitions, and just mainly living life. I honestly thought I’d have all the time in the world to write the sequel and get it published, and that I’d be able to do it as quickly as I did CASTE. What a fool I was!

But a happy fool.

So, not only was I busy, but I’m also a procrastinator. Those two together are deadly to a writer. Not writing put me in a funk of not “feeling” like writing and not having my creative juices flowing. Which would make me put it off more. And more. And more. Until (what is it now, 2 years?), have gone by and I still don’t have a sequel for you. To top it all off, I’ve been promising blog posts to answer all of your amazing questions and have let you down. I will try so hard to change these horrible patterns in the near future.

But worry no more! I am working on the book. I’m outlining and editing and writing. And procrastinating. :) I just wanted to let all of you awesome readers know that Book 2 is coming. I am about ¾ of the way done writing it. After that come the edits, but that goes fairly quickly.

I already have the title and the cover. Want to see it? I’m super excited about it. Ready? Here we go!

--Me

Updates on CASTE

My decision to self-publish was the best decision I could have made for my book. It's been a little less than three months and I've sold around 3,200 copies of CASTE.

Wow.

Honestly, I didn't think I'd ever reach that number. I'm so excited that it's getting such a good response out there in the world. To celebrate this awesomeness, I'm going to do a little celebratory promo starting Friday. So check back here to find out what it is.

Now, onto what the majority of you want to know. Where's book two???

Book two is currently in my head and on paper. There's a lot more I want to do with this one. The storyline is a bit more complicated and involved and I want to make sure I get it just right. I sat down the other day and started writing again, and it felt marvelous.

I'm excited because a lot more backstory will be revealed. Not so much for Karis, but for Ethan and Rebeka. And we'll get a peek inside the Corporation's diabolical scheme and what, if anything, is going on in the Further. And we'll find out more about Akin's plans for Karis. Oh, we'll also get a new character to hate. Pearl. I'm excited beyond belief about that one. And, possibly (I'm still playing around with this one), a tug-of-war involving love, but not between who you're thinking.

Okay, quite a bit of a teaser paragraph there. :) I hope you enjoyed it.

Right now, there's not a specific month for a release date, just "2014". As we get closer to the date, I'll let you know. I'll also tell you guys the title and reveal the cover just as soon as I can!

Until then, happy reading, my friends!

--Me

Updates on moi

You may have noticed that I've been absent for a little over a month. In July, Hubby and I had our first baby. A beautiful girl, and while she is truly a blessing, it was a rough road for me when she got here. A warning in advance, this post might be a bit too graphic for some readers. There's a bit of blood involved.

My pregnancy was easy. My labor was easy. My delivery was easy. It was about twenty minutes after our little girl joined our family that things went downhill. Fast.

My doctor had just delivered the placenta and there was, in my opinion, a lot of blood (but what do I know of these things?). The doctor wasn't worried, so neither was I. I was holding my baby, taking in how miraculous birth actually is, when I started to get really light-headed, as if my blood sugar was dropping. No biggy. I'd felt like this before prior to pregnancy. It wasn't anything that a little food couldn't fix. But when I told one of the nurses that I needed food because of my blood sugar, she looked a little surprised and skeptical. After that, my symptoms multiplied rapidly.

I will try and describe what happened the best that I can, but everything happened so fast, and I wasn't really conscious for some of it.

"I can't breathe," I said to the nurse as my airways tightened up. It felt like I needed my inhaler, but I hadn't brought it with me. Then there was the murky darkness that was creeping in at the corners of my vision. Then it all went black. I couldn't see and I couldn't breathe. The nurse was hooking me up to oxygen and I was still bleeding.

I laid back in bed, finally closing my eyes. After all, what was the use if they weren't working when they were open? And I was so tired. So I just laid there. At this point, there were about eight nurses in the room with the doctor and everyone was scrambling around, going in and out of the room, not telling my family (who were all waiting outside in the hall, watching staff enter and exit in an emergency fashion) anything except, "She's bleeding a lot."

GREAT thing to tell the mother of the girl who just had a baby.

Anyway, back in the room, my doctor gave me a few pills. Let me tell you about these pills. They're the pills that they give you when they induce labor. But when you take them then, you only take a quarter of the pill every four hours. It helps get contractions started. I had all of these pills at once, in an attempt to stop my bleeding.

But it just kept coming.

I had three IVs going at once (when all was said and done, I had five bags of fluid pumped through me), a fourth one a male nurse was trying to start, but had no room. He was going to go for my foot, but we ended up not needing his IV. A needle of something was jammed into my thigh. And it hurt like heck.

The nurses kept trying me to do things, to show them I was responsive. They wanted me to talk. To lift my arm. But, come on, people! I'd just given birth and lost a lot of blood. I totally could have done those things, but I simply didn't want to. I was too tired. I remember thinking, "I'm okay, I don't know why they're freaking out. I just don't have the energy to talk or wiggle my finger." According to Hubby, I lost consciousness a few more times before everything was said and done.

Eventually, I was okay. After losing almost two liters of blood in around twenty minutes.

That's a third of a person's blood volume. That's more than what someone loses in surgery. That's how women died during child birth, and still can today. That's some scary crap.

I was lucky I had an amazing doctor present and a great staff. And I thank God everyday that things didn't take a different path.

I had to stay in the hospital a total of three days. I had to have a catheter. I couldn't sit or stand on my own without getting dizzy, out of breath, or passing out. Walking was out of the question for the first couple of days. I couldn't walk more than a few feet without breathing like I had just ran a marathon, and my heart beating like it was trying to get out of my chest. I was pale, my lips were white, and the skin around my eyes was purple.

The first week home, I was on bed rest. And towards the end, I was feeling better. Far from 100%...maybe more like 45%...but I could feel myself getting better. The second week brought me to about 65%.

Then, about 1 a.m., when I was getting up to feed my baby, I passed a large clot. I was warned that I would probably pass some clots, but this was the size of a softball. And not supposed to happen. So, our little girl's first outing was to the ER, where they couldn't find anything really wrong with me, but gave me a blood transfusion. I felt amazing after that, and thought the worst was behind us.

The next weekend, I started bleeding again. Heavily. Now, for all of you out there who haven't gone through pregnancy, every woman bleeds for up to 6 weeks postpartum. It's normal, and fairly light. What I was going through wasn't normal. So, once again, I woke Hubby up in the middle of the night, we bundled baby up in her car seat, and we left for the ER. The entire trip, I was praying, "Lord, don't take me from my husband and my baby." Going through something like that, it's a very rational thought to have.

This time around, they did a couple of ultrasounds, found several blood clots inside my uterus, gave me some medicine to induce cramping to try and flush them out, and made an appointment with my doc for the next day to get a prescription for that same medication.

So I went in, everything looked good. I filled my prescription. I was still bleeding a medium amount, but my doc said that would be "normal" until my body settled itself. I camped out on the couch. Hubby had to go back to work that week and my mom had been with me all week. I passed another large clot, but I tried not to worry about it.

Then I got up from the couch and immediately lost another liter of blood. All over the couch, all over the carpet, all over the bathroom floor, where I managed to make it to. It covered my legs. I was light headed again. My legs were tingling. I was talking and thinking slowly. I was so cold. I could barely stay awake. It looked like a crime scene inside my home.

I had to lay on the bathroom floor, covered in layers of towels to try and get warm. Hubby came home, I called my doctor. The bleeding had stopped and I wasn't feeling worse, so we toughed it out at home. And things turned out okay. But, man, am I glad I had my mom there. I can't even imaging going through that alone, and with a newborn.

So, I'm better now, six weeks later. I'm working on getting my endurance back. My lips are back to pink and I'm not short of breath from walking from the kitchen to the living room.

But I look at my beautiful little girl, and know that I would do it all again. That she was, and is, totally worth it.

That's why I've been neglecting my blog. Dealing with all of that, and then just a normal newborn. It's hard to find time to do much other than feed the baby, sleep, and try to keep up the house. I promise to do better, though. She's starting to get on a sleeping schedule, so I should have more time to do the things I want to do. Like work on the sequel to Caste!

I'll put that update in another post for tomorrow! Happy Tuesday, my friends!



--Me

FYI on Caste

Hello! Hope you all had a fantastic weekend. Just wanted to let you (my readers) all know that we appreciate and value all constructive feedback and thoughts we get about Caste.

We heard some rumblings about the editing in the book (a repeated paragraph, small editorial errors, etc). And while that isn't uncommon for a book to have (even for Big 6 books), it is still undesirable.

We have sent it to an additional copy editor and believe we have fixed all the errors. The newest edition is uploaded on Amazon for Kindle and the print copy of the book.

Thank you for everyone reading, reviewing, rating, and spreading the word about Caste! I am still astonished and floored by the response and truly humbled and grateful.

In other news, I have been getting your questions (both on facebook and the blog here) about pronunciations, sequel info, and other things. I wanted to let you know that we're working on an FAQ to put up, so keep your questions coming! Time has just been short with the impending arrival of baby ANY DAY. :)

Until then, keep reading and sharing the love for Caste!

--Me

CASTE is now available!

It's done! CASTE is now available and ready for human consumption!

Currently, the ebook is ready to go on Amazon, and the physical version should be there soon, as well.

B&N is next on the list and should be going up online in the next few days (they're a bit slower than Amazon).

iBooks and Google Books should be in the next week or two at the latest.

Guys, this is SO exciting! Now I hope I am forgiven as to why I've been so absent lately. So, go over and check it out and leave an honest rating/review, if you would be so kind.

Happy reading!!!!



--Me

Deep breaths

EEEK!!!!!

You guys!

The final proof of CASTE just came in. And it looks AMAZING! Looks like we're on schedule for a May 30th release date!

I can hardly believe it! :)

--Me

Updates!

How are all of you doing?

Me? I'm doing fantastic.

Baby is growing and will be here in 10.5 weeks and my book is less than a month away from being shoved out into the world!

I announced a little while ago that I'd decided to self-publish CASTE while still querying for an agent. The main reason for that was two-fold:

1. Why the heck not?
2. I felt like I was just sitting on my hands while querying and waiting for that elusive "yes".

I'd gotten several full requests, but nothing after that. Which is both encouraging and downright depressing. So, I decided to invest time and money into getting it done myself; and I have to say, I'm pretty darned excited. 

I have to wait for the proof to get back to me from the printer, and then do some online marketing/publicity/promo stuff (wish me luck with that), and then get to finishing the second in the series. 

This is kind of my first little, "Hey, guess what's going on?!" push. You are the first. Thanks for that. :)

That's all I have for now (oh, still wearing my heels through 7.5 months of pregnancy. I think that's pretty impressive).

Happy Thursday!

--Me

Exciting news of the non-book-publishing-but-still-pretty-dang-exciting type

It’s that time again…updates. You know I like to give ‘em. SFWC was the middle of February. I always take the month of March off from writing because I’m usually recuperating from the conference and working on any requests or final tweaks and edits for my current WIP.

When April came around, I decided to do something I’ve never done before and that was sign up and participate in the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Let me tell you, that was fun and challenging. I wrote around 14,000 words to a story that was only meant to be a throw-away story. Who knows, maybe one day it will become a trunk novel.

Between the A2Z challenge, reading close to EIGHT books and offering reviews, I didn’t have much down time to write for me. That’s what May’s for. Starting today.

CASTE – I’ve submitted the full ms to three agents, one has already come back with an R&R (which is entirely awesome), two more have it in hand and I’ll probably nudge them sometime this month.

Funny story: One thing you’ll notice when you get into the business of writing books and wanting to get published (especially if you write in a specific genre), is that you end up submitting your different works to the same agents over the years.

One of the agents who has a full sent me an email the other day. I glanced at it on my phone when it came in and it said something to the effect of, “So sorry, but your query got trapped in our junk filter. Please resubmit if you’re still seeking representation.”

I chuckled to myself, thinking it was no big deal; I’d read the email in detail the next day and resend my ms. When I opened the email and read it closely, I found out that it wasn’t for CASTE. It was for my very first book I queried them about back in 2010!

Holy crap. Thanks for being a rockin’ enough agency to come back and ask me to resubmit. That’s awesome. So, after I type this, I’ll be spending my time at Starbucks spit-polishing those first few chapters and resubmitting them. Who knows, right?

I found out over the weekend that I might have a slight allergy to bees. I know, It's a little late in life to be figuring that out, right? But, believe it or not, this is the first time I've ever been stung by a bee. I got stung on the head (actually, a very funny story, maybe I'll tell you about it sometime), instantly got a migraine for the rest of the day--not to mention the pain was the worst I'd ever felt, not even kidding--and then things started to swell. But not until the next day. Then, a protrusion the circumference of a softball proceeded to make its way from the top of my head and across my forehead before finally settling--yesterday--on the bridge of my noes and both eyes. I looked like a Klingon. No joke. Anyway, it's finally gone this morning.  

So, now on to the BIG news. Some of you may already know that I work at a newspaper crunching numbers. Not exactly my calling with words, but I get by. Plus, I sit close to the news department so it counts for something.

Anywho, we have this cubicle that’s filled with nothing but ARCs. Me and a couple friends (Pam & Janice) often peruse the contents to see if there’s anything that catches our interest. I didn’t realize what a travesty this graveyard of books was until I came across The Hunger Pains. I about cried (a slight exaggeration). What a missed opportunity!

I complained to Janice and Pam that we don’t have a good book review column in our paper for “everyday reads”. NYT AP wire stories don’t count. I mean, local reviews in a casual voice.

“We should offer to review these books!” I said with a fist of injustice in the air.

“Yeah!” Pam chorused.

“You should write a proposal!” Janice said.

So I went back to my desk and did just that. I explained why the paper needed this and why it HAD to be the three of us to do this. And before I could think about it anymore, I emailed the newspaper editor.

She emailed me back and said, “Let’s meet.”

Then, in the meeting, she told us, “I love this idea. Let’s do it. But instead of a column, I want a page for your reviews. And I want you guys to have a blog for the paper, too.”

We were excited into speechlessness. Then we started talking about other ideas. It was crazy, and they loved it all. We were basically given free reign to make this ours and make it the best we could. A community calendar for upcoming reading and writing events. Editorial pieces written by us, FAQs, Twitter, Facebook, email, the whole kit n’ kaboodle. They wanted writing samples and they loved those, too.

It was heaven. I think we’re all still floating on Cloud 9.

Anyway, our first deadline was yesterday for the very first installment of our PAGE. It’s still hard to believe. I’ll probably buy about a thousand copies and frame at least ten, giving them out as gifts.

So that’s my “big news”. I can’t wait. I’m one step closer to getting my book published. Kind of.

Anyway, I’ll be sure to keep you all posted on how that goes and give you the link so you can visit us over at our official home (Book Addicts) when that’s all up and running.

What about you all? Anything new and exciting going on? Little or big.

--Me

Speed Dating

Disclaimer: This is going to be a long post. But I'll try and make it interesting in a way only I can :)

When I registered for SFWC, I paid the extra $50 for Speed Dating. But when I showed up to the conference on Thursday, I wasn't feeling entirely sure of myself. I was seriously considering not even doing Speed Dating. My newest project is a dystopian….but not like the other dystopians out there. I was afraid that when I told the agents the genre, they'd roll their eyes and think, great, another dystopian and I'd be embarrassed. Kind of like if I were pitching a vampire book when the whole Twilight/TVD craze first started. Then I started thinking about all the people who would be asking me about Speed Dating when I got home. Hubby, my mom, Renee, Janice…the list goes on. They'd be frustrated that I didn't take the opportunity, and I'd be disappointed I took the coward's way out and didn't go through with it. So, I bit the bullet (roughly the size of a 9mm) and committed to Speed Dating.

Now the decision was, which book to pitch? WHITE CITY or my new project? Only one agent was in attendance this year who I pitched WHITE CITY to last year, so I could just pitch my new project on her. After all, I was still having my doubts about my new project, even though I loved it. And, I reasoned, I already had an agent ask for a full on WHITE CITY with an R & R, so it has to be good, right? Plus, I really love Lexi and Seth, and that story is so unique. Why not? But then doubt on that started to creep in. Is WHITE CITY strong enough to have agents ask to see more this time around? Maybe…Mabye? Maybe. Grrr! I was so frustrated.

Then I remembered I wrote my new project in 30 days. I busted my butt to have it edited and polished in 3.5 months so it would be ready to go with me to San Francisco. Why would I want to have all that effort wasted for nothing? And besides, this was its first trip into the real world, what better place to get feedback before I really start to query for it, than here? It'll be like a test market, I told myself. So, I bit the bullet again (this time a 30-06). And so, the decision was made. But a pitch had yet to be written.

For those of you who know me, you know I'm not a pushy person. I tend to be laid back and take action when necessary, but don't want to make people feel uncomfortable or be the one to inconvenience others. Sometimes this personality trait I have a bad thing and good opportunities pass me by; this last weekend, though, at the SFWC, it was to my advantage, and my carefully calculated plan of attack proved sucessful.

There were seven YA agents at the conference (names withheld to protect the innocent). I feel sorry, somewhat, for agents at conferences. Even though they know what the environment holds, something about seeing them always looking over their shoulders, preparing themselves for the pouncing of 500+ budding agents tugs on my heart strings. This is why I don't pitch to them around the hotel unless they specifically break the ice. I figure they probably appreciate one author who's not trying to sell them their book (some of you might disagree with me, and that's fine, but this is my way of doing things).

My plan of attack was this: Small talk that had nothing to do with my book.

The execution of my plan looked like this: It was Friday night, the first full day of the conference. Classes were over. My head was killing me with a nasty migraine. It was about 5 o'clock and I was waiting at the elevators to go up to my room and rest and work on the dreaded pitch (sidebar: the elevators at the Mark Hopkins suck. No two bones about it. They're slow. Down on the lower level where the gym and business centers are, I've waited up to 15 minutes with no elevator, and then end up having to take the stairs to the lobby and catch the elevator there. You'd think that for $300 a night, they'd have some faster elevators. *Whew* that was a long sidebar. Continuing…). I was waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Then, two of the seven agents I wanted to pitch came up behind me, chatting quietly (a man and a woman). We stood there, waiting. I figured this was my chance to break the ice.

Me: So, is your day over yet?

Man/Woman: Smiling Yeah.

Woman: Oh, wait, we have a dinner.

Man: We have a dinner? Nobody told me about a dinner.

Woman: Yeah, it's for the presenters and agents, or something like that. Maybe it's just drinks up at the Top of the Mark.

Man: Huh, no one said anything about a dinner.

Woman: Highly amused now. So yeah, we're done for the day except for dinner.

Me: Food doesn't count as working, though. Neither do drinks. (or something slightly more witty than that, I can't remember)

Man/Woman:
laughing. You're right, it doesn't.

At this point, I see my friend at another elevator, say goodbye to the agents and leave.

This was a good interaction. They may have been on their guard (or not) when I first turned around, but when they realized I wasn't going to pitch to them, they relaxed. A Lot. Interaction number two went like this:

Group of authors and Man agent from prior elevator interaction are waiting in the lobby for an elevator. It's been pretty close to eternity since I pressed the button. Finally, the elevator comes and we all get inside. Five-ish in all. Now, I know from an earlier experience that this agent is staying of floor 3, so I don't have much time to make small talk and be memorable.

Man: This elevator takes forever. You'd think they'd be a little faster.

Me: Tell me about it. I went running this morning and waited at the California level for about fifteen minutes and no elevator came. I finally had to go up to the lobby and catch it there. It's ridiculous.

Man: Yeah, I know. Every time I try to catch one, it always takes forever.

Me: I think it'd be faster to take the stairs, but they hide those pretty well from us.

Man: laughs.

Elevator dings, agent gets off floor. Engagement two rating: successful.

Sunday morning. We eat a plated breakfast. The agents sit on stage and tell us what they're looking for. Man says to just bring him your pitch and the first five pages. He'll read it and tell you right away if it's for him or not. Woman says same thing, query and first ten pages. How easy is that, right? I head to the business center, print out two queries, Dear Man and Dear Woman. I then print out the first 10 pages of my novel (PS – that cost me about $35, partly because the Mark is ridiculously expensive and charges you $11 just to log on to their computer and $1.64 per b & w page you print. That and the fact that Mac's are retarded, but that's an entirely different blog post).

Now, follow along, the next part may be confusing for some folks:

When I first wrote CASTE (the book I pitched this year), I started it with a scene of Karis in her house making a fire. I read it to Hubby and a few other friends and they said I needed to start it with some action. So, I did. I wrote a new opening that was roughly five pages about a memory Karis has of her neighbors being shot. Then it blended into my old opening, So, the first five pages of my ten pages I printed were comprised of the memory, the second five was the old beginning. (That came out a lot clearer just now than when I told Hubby about it last night, just so you know). I planned to pitch to Man first, so I put his query together with the first five pages. I planned on pitching to Woman second, so I put her query with the second five pages, because when I was done with Man, I'd put the his first five pages with the Woman's second five pages and we'd be good to go. Clear as mud.

Enter speed dating. I was part of the last group to go in for speed dating. Here's the con for that time slot: all the agents are tired and worn out and ready to go home. They've been there for four days, sitting for four hours, listening to countless pitches—not to mention the times they've been approached/accosted by authors outside the sessions. The pro: It's their last session. We're going to be the group that sticks in their heads the best.

You wait in line an hour or so before your appointed slot (even though the volunteers specifically tell you not to), you make friends, you get pumped, you practice your speech, you start to feel confident. Attendees that have already been through the gauntlet of Speed Dating walk by the line scattering words of wisdom. "They're really nice", "So-and-so's line is really long/short", etc. One attendee had an especially good piece of advice. "Man's (agent from earlier) line gets filled up pretty fast, go to him first if you can. Even if he doesn't like your work, he offers you advice on your query or first five pages so you can improve on it for the next agent." This, I thought, was golden. Even if Man says no, I'll still get valuable advice. Score. I planned to elbow everyone in my way so I could get to his line first.

I ended up being second in line. I heard him tell the guy in front of me, "This is good, but it's not for me. Let me suggest this…." They went over their 3 minute limit, but I wasn't worried.

Me: Hi! Hold out hand to shake.

Man: It's good to see you again (Score. Plan of Attack was 100% successful. He remembered me from two days earlier).

Me:
smiles bigger. Hands over query and first finve pages. Here you are.

Man: Reading query.

Me: I notice I accidently gave him the one that says Dear Woman but I'm not too worried because they say the same thing. Then he goes to the five pages. Crap! He's reading the last five of the first ten, not the first five! I snatch them back from him and quickly replace them with the correct five.
Wait! Those are the wrong ones.

Man: Doesn't say anything, just kind of looks weird, then starts reading the first five. Why'd you do that? The other ones were better.

Me: Really? Quickly handing back previous pages. That was my original starting and I changed it to add more action.

Man:
Reading rapidly. Flying through the pages. Yeah, these are better. Oh yeah, much better. Yeah, this is good.

Me:
Grinning like an idiot. Good to know. I'll toss the other beginning.

Man: Yeah, this is good. You know, I rep YA, all kinds; but I don't normally do dystopian, but this has a very fresh twist on it. I want to see it. Email me the full, and make sure you put in the email that you're the girl from the elevator. (Score number two, I'm elated)

Me: And with the blue hair.

Man: smiles. That's right. I didn't notice it as much today because it's up. It was down the other day.

Me: Thanks, Man. It was nice to meet you. Shakes hand. I'll email you the full.

OHMYGOSHICAN'TBELIEVEITANDITHINKI'VEFORGOTTENTOBREATHEANDISMYHEARTSTILLBEATING?ITHINKSO,YEAH,THEREITIS,IT'SSTILLBEATINGANDHEASKEDMEFORAFULLANDTHISISTHEFIRSTTIMEI'VESENTTHISNOVELOUTINTOTHEWORLDANDTHENUMBERONEAGENTTHATIWANTFROMANAMAZINGLITERARYAGENCYJUSTASKEDMEFORAFREAKINGFULL!!!!!! Then I took a breath. :) (for those of you that don't want to try and figure out what I was saying, here it is with spaces: Oh my gosh I can't believe it and I think I've forgotten to breathe and is my heart still beating? I think so, yeah, there it is, it's still beating and he asked me for a full and this is the first time I've sent this novel out into the world and the number one agent I want from an amazing literary agency JUST ASKED ME FOR A FREAKING FULL!!!!!!)

Then I went to the next agent I wanted. She was at a table with three other agents from that agency. AND THEY LOVED IT! I gave them my pitch and the two girls on the end looked at each other.

Girl 1 to Girl 2: Do you like it?

Girl 2: I really like it. You?

Girl 1: Yeah, I really like it. I want it.

Girl 2: I want it too.

Girl 3: Uh-oh, they're going to fight over it. Laughs.

Me: It'd take a Twix bar to win me over. Everyone laughs.

Girl 2: You can have it, Girl 1.

Girl 1: Great. I'd like to see more.

Me: How much more should I send you?

Girl 1: Send me the full.

Me: Great, I can do that. Then we spend the rest of the 3 minutes just chatting, which was awesome. BTW, this is the agency that Beth is signed with, so that'd be pretty cool.

Then I go to the table right next to these three ladies to pitch to Woman (from elevator with Man at very beginning of conference). I sit down and Girl 1 from table next door elbows Woman and says, "This is a really good one." (Wow, this Speed Dating is turning out to be such a good experience for me, I'm so glad I pushed myself to do it). So, I gave my pitch, and Woman loved it. She said, though, that whenever she's at conferences, she never asks for fulls, she always asks for partials to make sure she likes the writing and voice. But she did tell me that she didn't have a dystopian on her list…yet.

I went to two other agents who really liked it and asked for partials. Then I went to the last top agent on my list. She was eating a cupcake. These poor agents, they don't get to pee or eat. Their left to resort to scavenging and scarfing between rounds. I sit down, and told her to keep eating, that I wouldn't consider it rude. I gave her my pitch and she said, "That's really good. I really like that. You made me stop eating my cupcake." Then she asked me for a full.

LIFE IS GOOD, PEOPLE!

Who's to say anything will come from any of these, (who's to say that nothing will?) but man, it still feels good. My novel is well received and is grabbing some interest. This is a great start! (I'm grinning from ear to ear right now, still on cloud nine). I hope that something happens. So, let's summarize:

Two agents: Partial requested.

One agent: Wanted full, but always asks for partials at conferences.

Three agents: Wanted fulls. I made one stop eating her cupcake, made two agents fight over it, and made one--who doesn't normally rep this genre--like it so much, he asked for it anyway.

Again, life is good my friends, life is good.

Happy Tuesday!

PS – I noticed there were times when I changed from past to present tense. Sorry. I'm not going to go back through this insanely long post and correct it. :) I blame this error on the fact that my current book is written in first person.


 

Game Face

I'm sitting here, eating an epic breakfast of coffee and cold pizza, watching a pretty exciting rugby match, thinking about how my mom finally moves back into town tomorrow and another thought hits me.

I have a week and a half until SFWC.

Crapola. I still have to finish my final edits and do a last read run-through. Oh, then there's the pitch I have to work on and the nerves I need to find to give it. I kept telling myself, "I have plenty of time!" Well, that time has officially run out. I'm at the point where a game face is required; and I know just the one.

I'm bustin' out the rest of my edits this weekend and will get them from paper to my electronic copy. I will have my final read-through done by next weekend and I will have my pitch finished by the time my butt hits that B3 airplane seat. That's my plan and I will come out on top! After all, I work best under pressure and sort of have this thing for procrastination. :)

Have a great weekend and enjoy the Superbowl!

--Me