S'up Saturday

First off, thank for you those of you who've expressed interest in being an influencer for Bright & Cavanaugh's, Storm.

Publicist Jessica Dotta will be posting on that later in the day and she has exciting news!

Next week we have another very special interview this time with National Book Award winner, Walter Wangerin Jr.! We also have an interview with author Sally Jon.

On the home front, I've been fielding questions about progress on my own novel journey.

I've already shared that I have a new agent. I'm still waiting on all the proposals and full MS requested by editors at the ACFW conference on both novel 1 and novel 2. I did receive one 'no' but with an invitation from the publisher himself to send him my next idea.

Well, if you must get rejected, that's the way to do it, I suppose.

I'm finished Demon Chaser (my second novel), and am basically continuing to polish at this point.

It seems I'm in a growth spurt of learning and picking up some tricks to jazz up what I've got and it's amazing to me how an added line here or there can really make a story pop.

That's what I'm working on now, making my ms, which I think is pretty good as is, even better.

I'm so pleased with this novel. In the next week or so, I'll read through it on my computer, checking for last minute changes I need to make, then print it out and read it from start to finish again, trying my best to pretend I don't know the story.

Make a few more changes.

I'll then print out two copies and give them to my readers. Wait for their feedback, make the changes, print out two more copies and give them to two different readers.

Hopefully, while all this is going on, my agent will start getting together proposals to send out to other pub houses.

There is one house my MS is sitting with right now, that I'm particularly hopeful about.

I like this house, I like this editor, but it's out of my hands and that's okay.

Meanwhile, my third novel is beginning to write itself, like a child who can't wait for the first day of camp, it's awake and getting dressed even though I keep begging it to go back to sleep, it's not time yet.

I have the inciting incident, which is always how my stories begin. A horrible event, of course. I also know a bit about some of the characters and a little about the plot.

I am ITCHING to begin it, but Demon Chaser is a loved child and she needs me to straighten her bows, fluff her dress and pinch her cheeks for color. She's almost there and I want her to be noticed among a ball filled with lots of attractive girls, er, manuscripts.

It's my duty as her creator to not push her out before she's as ready for the world as I can make her.

Yes, I realize I'm beginning to sound a bit eccentric.