This morning a Romance Writers of America board member called me to tell me that Thrown is a finalist in the Single Title Contemporary category of the Golden Heart contest. I yelled in the poor woman’s ear. I hope I didn’t burst her eardrum, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I did. And the dear was too polite to say anything. When I meet her at the RWA national conference in Anaheim in July and her hearing is iffy, I’ll know why.

I’ve been on cloud nine all day! I squee’d all the way to work, and then relentlessly badgered my wonderful boss whenever someone else emailed, tweeted, Facebooked or called to congratulate me. It’s surreal—I’ve entered a handful of contests, and I won one and finaled in another. In a few others, I didn’t do anything. Zip. Bupkis. And then, and THEN, I final in the Golden Hearts, the Oscars, the Tonys, the Rose Bowl, the Pulitzer of “pre-published” romance authors’ manuscripts! This morning was one of the best Mondays of my life, if not THE best.

I’m going to relish this time before the RWA national conference in July, this time when I’m a finalist. I’ve been writing to friends that I’m “over the moon,” and my friend Hilary at the horse barn said that very thing (“You must be over the moon.” Hilary is British and very cool.). I’m going to enjoy filling out all the forms. I’m going to love being a finalist, every single day. And I’m going to buy a bottle of actual, real live Champagne to celebrate.

While I’m at it, congratulations to all my fellow Golden Heart finalists. I know people say this all the time, but I’m truly honored to be in such company. I look forward to getting to know the other six finalists in my category. We are going to rock Anaheim, ladies!

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Writing a novel has changed my day-to-day life in ways I could never have imagined. Yes, there’s the actual writing, which (usually) happens daily. But there are other ways too. Not big ways, but small ways that often take place online.

Take blogs. Before writing, I never used to read blogs regularly. Blogs were for the politically active who needed to keep track of which senator said what to whom and what it all meant. Blogs were for the family and friends of the self-indulgent who needed to record their children’s rashes, their cat’s progress through a feline MENSA program or their attempts to build the perfect bong. Boy was I wrong.

Now, I read Roni Loren’s Fiction Groupie blog as though she’s paying me (she isn’t…yet). I hear about blogs via several email chats, loops, etc. that I subscribe to. I don’t read other blogs as regularly, but I’m going to blame that on the fact that my company blocks blogs on my computer at work because obviously, they are the work of the devil. Or our competitors. (Who are also in cahoots with the devil.)

I also have acquired new vicarious personal publishing holidays, or VPPHs. These are the days that my author friends’ books come out. I am delighted to find that I am genuinely excited for them and very much enjoy downloading their works to my Nook. Every time I do, I imagine the day when I’ll do the same for Thrown.

Besides VPPHs, I have also acquired new friends via the World Wide Web. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, email loops…they have all introduced me to some damn cool and talented people who are out there writing books. Some I have met in person, some I have yet to meet. Either way, it has been rewarding. Plus, on Facebook, I can pretend Susan Elizabeth Phillips is one of my personal Facebook friends because she tells me what she’s doing every day. I’m still waiting for that invitation to go on family vacations with her, but I know it’s coming…any day now…she’s just busy…

Writing has made me more of an observer. I now carry a notebook in my purse and a little voice recorder in the car, just in case I think of a spectacularly brilliant line of dialogue or witness what Pam Houston calls a “glimmer,” or a moment or interaction that could be the kernel of a story or scene (or whole book!). I used to say, “Oh, I’ll remember that!” and I seldom would, so now I whip out the notebook/recorder and free up those brain cells that would have forgotten it anyway.

Writing has also made me a different kind of reader, for better or worse. Now I can’t just enjoy a book—oh no, I have to notice craft. How does the author handle her characters’ points of view? What is the sentence structure like? Ooh, that’s a good phrase, I might have to use that (properly altered). This book is superbly paced—how did the author achieve that? And on it goes. NOT that I don’t like reading—I still love it—but the genie is out of the bottle and I will never be able to just read ever again.

But it’s all good. Sometimes change is difficult. These changes are welcome.

Thank you again for your continued support!

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WARNING: This post is not mostly about writing. If you’ve come here expecting a big ol’ post about writing, sorry. I’ve had an adventure further afield.

Yesterday I went on my first audition for a musical in a long time. Why in the world would I do this? Why the sudden urge to put myself through something as nerve-wracking as a singing audition if I didn’t have to? Was someone holding a Nine to my head and counting back from five? No.

One reason is Tom (husband) is now Mr. Theatre (yes, with the pretentious “re” ending), and that was all my fault because I gave him acting lessons for his birthday and the rest is history. He has been making chicken noises around the house to shame me into auditioning for something. So the short answer as to why I auditioned is, I had to shut up the chicken.

But the other answer is, I wanted to. And I’ve finally accumulated enough self-confidence and courage to do it. I was a theater major, but I never auditioned for anything after graduating (and precious little while in college, truth be told) because I was in New York and never thought I was anywhere near good enough. Since I never auditioned, we’ll never know if I was right.

After a certain theater person nudged me to audition for “The Drowsy Chaperone,” which the Vintage Theatre is doing this spring, I started taking voice lessons. Then the audition announcement came out and I took a deep breath, figuratively closed my eyes, and signed up. I was committed. The chicken lost a few decibels.

As the audition date neared, I grasped for analogies, as I am wont to do. Maybe it’s the writer in me, but I can’t help myself. I decided it was like riding in a dressage show. I am a complete newbie to the performance side of the theater scene in general, and the Denver theater scene in particular. I equate this with having a dressage horse who is serviceable, but not what anyone would call spectacular. My lovely mare, Brooke, is a thoroughbred who is built downhill (NOT good for dressage); in dressage shows, we would have to compete against warmbloods who were imported from Europe because that’s where you go if you want a truly spectacular dressage horse. In a dressage show, you have to ride a “test,” or a pattern of movements that you memorize. In a musical audition, you prepare a song. In dressage, you can’t control who rides against you, all you can control is your ride. You practice and practice and prepare and prepare; you bathe your horse and braid her mane; you polish your good boots; you get to the show early and warm up appropriately. You go into the ring on time and ride your test as accurately as you can. That’s the part you can control. You hope that the riders with the European warmbloods will not ride as accurately as you, and then you have a shot at beating them.

Same with singing. In my analogy the European warmbloods are the established Denver theater actors, the cadre of performers who know each other and who the directors know, too. To compete against them, all I could do was practice my song until I knew it backward and forward. I chose a dress to wear that was close to what the character I wanted to play would wear. I got a mani/pedi with deep red polish, again because the character would have done the same. I drank lots of water and warmed up in the car on the way in. I told myself I could do it.

And then I did it. I rode an accurate test. I did everything my voice teacher told me to do, I took my time, I “owned” the stage, and I sang my song. I was on key, I was in character, I was loud, I belted the high note I used to fear. As far as I could tell, I did exactly what I wanted to do. I was nervous, yes, but it was the same kind of nervous I’d get at a horse show—not debilitating, but I shook a little. But I rode through the nerves, as it were. And as Tom pointed out, I wouldn’t have to worry about my voice careening out of control, jumping off the stage and galloping out of the theater, throwing me to the sidewalk in the process.

Now it’s up to the theater gods. This is where it’s helpful that I’m trying to get a book published, because if you’re going through the traditional route to get your book published, the pace is glacial. Grass in winter grows much faster. Children can be conceived and born in less time. You wait MONTHS for someone to read your query/partial/manuscript. It’s the nature of the beast. In this audition process, there’s another audition next week, for dance. Callbacks are two weeks after that. Then, presumably, they announce the cast within the following week. That’s what, four weeks, tops? Four weeks? CHILD’S PLAY! That’s would be a lightning round in publishing. I can do that standing on my head.

So now the audition is in the history books. Almost three months and hundreds of dollars later, my five minutes are over. But I did it. I did it and I’m proud of myself. It was scary and I did it anyway. Sure it took a few years of horse showing to properly prepare me (who knew?), but that’s okay too.

Oh, and the chicken has been silenced.

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This post is a violent act of procrastination. Yep, I’m entirely and completely avoiding working on my manuscript because…well, because I have to go on a flight from Nashville to Denver and there are thunderstorms en route and I’m sure it’ll be bumpy and I’ve developed an annoying turbulence phobia. Me. Someone who works in the aviation industry, with pilots, and has had them explain turbulence and how the planes are built to fly through it and pilots do their best to avoid it and of all the zillions of flights every year that experience turbulence there are precious few incidents and…blah blah blah. Doesn’t matter. I’m a turbulence wimp. It’s pathetic.

So what I’m hoping is, I’ll get so involved in revising THROWN during the flight, I won’t be bothered so much. This has happened before, so I have reason to believe it could happen again.

I’ve had a bit of a discouraging email since my last post. An agent I was hoping would like my writing (let’s face it, I hope every agent likes my writing, but I had met this one and thought she was more likely to like my writing than your average bear), alas and alack, did not. I did not float her boat, nor did I knock her socks off. She was not wowed or gobsmacked. She was nonplussed and maybe even bored and/or annoyed.

Oh well. Now I know. And seriously, I’ve hardly been out there in the trenches getting buffeted by dozens and dozens of brutal rejections. I have little right to complain.

It makes me both less and more determined to get published. Right after I read it, I thought, “Yes, I am a terrible writer!” The agent never said anything like that, but that’s how I interpreted it. Then, after telling Tom and his friend Cindy what the agent wrote, and emailing with Joanne Kennedy (who I’ve dubbed my “publishing shrink” and whose latest book, Tall, Dark and Cowboy is my reading material for those times in flight when I can’t use electronic devices), I decided that it’s just one person’s opinion and someone else out there will love it and want to represent me. I just have to work really hard at rewriting it and make it sparkle even more brightly.

I know this all builds character, but really. Do I need THAT much more character? I went to a Catholic girls’ school, for heaven’s sake! Apparently so.

If I let this come full circle, my fear of turbulence may echo my fear of writing. Not a fear of writing exactly, but fear of making revisions that don’t sparkle enough. What if I spend hours and hours and hours rewriting to deepen my characters, and I send THROWN off to that agent who asked me to revise it, and she doesn’t think it’s all that great? What if I get a big “Meh”??!

As I often do with myself when I worry, I go to the next logical step. Okay, what if I DO get a big meh? What if the agent doesn’t like it? I’ll have an arguably better book and I can cross another agent off my list. I’ll send it to other agents until I find someone who loves it. And if I run out of agents, then I’ll figure something else out. Self-publishing, maybe. Or not. But whatever the case, a meh isn’t the end of the world.

Update: On my flight back to Denver, there were a few mild bumps, but nothing that made my stomach drop or made me clutch the armrests in abject terror. That’ll learn me to worry about some stupid low-pressure system! In other words, the turbulence turned out to be a big meh.

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Aspen, Colorado. That’s where I am today, NOT because it’s the setting for Thrown. But curiously, an email I received recently makes it seem like perhaps fate led me here for that very reason.

Before I tell you about the email, as we’ve strolled about town today, have I been driving Tom (long-suffering spouse) mad by saying things like, “Amanda and Grady ate here,” and “I bet Grady tried to buy Amanda those earrings” and making other references to the characters in my book? You betcha. Tom kept telling me Grady and Amanda aren’t real people, but he’s mistaken. Oh and I gave a sweet (no pun intended) woman who owned the Aspen Candy Company (a very fun place, unless you’re a molar) my author business card when she made the mistake of telling me she liked to read.

So about that email. First, for those of you playing along at home, let me give you the box score on my agent/editor activities. Ready?

Publishing professionals who rejected Thrown: 3
Publishing professionals who have the full manuscript: 3
Publishing professionals not yet heard from: 3

This list includes agents and editors. I’m being purposely vague about who’s doing what because I suppose I’m superstitious and don’t want to give too much away at this point. Or maybe I’m chicken. Try not to judge.

Back to that email. It was from a publishing professional who read the full manuscript and wrote an exceedingly nice email saying that Thrown showed promise, and would I be willing to revise it and resubmit?

To which I reply: HELLS YEAH!

And I don’t even say “Hells yeah” in my everyday speech. Like, ever. Which is how you can tell how important this is to me.

As a result, I’m going to stop revising Love in the Time of Colic and go back to my firstborn. I have work to do, to be sure, and it won’t be easy, but I’m rolling up my figurative shirtsleeves (it’s cold here in Aspen, so there will be no literal rolling up of any sleeves) and digging in. I have no doubt I’ll make it better, I just hope I make it better ENOUGH.

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My friend Ashley March’s second novel, ROMANCING THE COUNTESS, hit bookshelves and ebook sales sites on Tuesday. I’m new at having friends who write books, and I have to say, I love it. I was genuinely thrilled for Ashley, who is a lovely person and a terrific writer. I admit that although I am busily reading THE HELP for my book club meeting next week—I read at a pace that can only be described as glacial—I’ve been simultaneously sneaking peeks at Ashley’s book. Such are the perils of reading on a Nook, as I merely have to touch the screen and PRESTO! a different book appears. I have since beaten my wandering eyes into submission and am completely committed to finishing THE HELP before reading any more of Ashley’s book. No really, I am. Honest. No matter how tempting Ashley’s prose… Probably.

Curiously, my car is helping out on this. It started leaking transmission fluid not long ago, so it’s in the shop all weekend long. ALL WEEKEND. I’m too cheap to rent a car, and public transportation in suburban Denver, by and large, sucks, especially on weekends. As a result, by rights I ought to get a ton of reading and writing done this weekend, as I am essentially on house arrest. (My bike’s tires are flat. Which I’ve been meaning to correct all summer. Oops.) Oh and my husband has rehearsals, so he’s no help whatsoever. But thanks to him I now know the harmony to more Sondheim songs from “Assassins,” so that’s a bonus.

Good thing I have all this quality time at home, because I’m struggling with the beginning of my second book, LOVE IN THE TIME OF COLIC. I thought I had it all figured out in the first draft, but then I read it over, and it needs some help. NOT that I didn’t expect to have to revise it, for heaven’s sake. But I’ve been pondering this for some time. My car helped with this last evening when I walked home from the park-n-ride because I had to take the train and the bus home from work. (Side note: I worried about this walk, even though it’s in a friendly suburb bursting with chain restaurants, on a major road with sidewalks as wide as freeways. I am so suburbanized! When I was in New York, I walked everywhere, walked home all the time. It took me an hour last night—the same amount of time it used to take me in Manhattan to walk home! And yet, last night I felt I should have been awarded a medal when I got to my cul-de-sac. What a wuss I have become!) I had that hour to think about my book and the plot and the opening, which helped. Still don’t feel like I’ve nailed it, but now I’m to the point where I just throw those plotorial (NOT a real word) spaghetti noodles at the wall and see which ones stick. Ah, my love/hate relationship with writing. It’s mostly love, but I’m feeling some unwelcome attitude from my story right about now.

And as always, thank you for your support!

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I’m sipping a flute of Prosecco as I write this. Not an unusual event for me, but tonight it’s for a reason. Here’s the deal. Yesterday I got an email from someone I didn’t know with the subject: Query: THROWN. I figured it was my first full-on rejection from an agent.

Happily, I was stupendously wrong.

It was a request for a “full,” or a complete manuscript! I read it over and over to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me (after all, my Lasik has seen better days). When I was sure it was true, I read it several times over just because I was so excited. A FULL! This means the agent read the approximately 55 pages I’d sent last week (just last week—these people were on the ball) and liked it enough to ask for the rest. Mind you, agents typically don’t get paid for reading manuscripts. Their days are filled with taking care of their current clients, so they read submissions from new writers after hours and on weekends. In other words, for an agent to request a full means she thinks enough of your writing to commit to reading it in her free time.

This particular agent doesn’t accept email submissions, so I had to go old school. I printed out the whole thing—all 360-something pages, one sided (sorry, trees!). It’s 1.75″ thick! (Of COURSE I measured.) I went to UPS, plopped my baby in a manuscript box and sent it on its way. I got to write “REQUESTED” on the label in red marker, the magic word that gets your manuscript one of the best tables in the restaurant, as it were.

This was the first time I’d ever printed out my manuscript one-sided. Is it bad that I enjoyed printing it out because I could read snippets as it came out of the printer, and also because it made my work tangible, a thing to give to someone else? This is, by the by, the traditional way to present a manuscript to an agent. As I walked across the parking lot to the UPS store, all I could think of was the last scene in “Wonder Boys” where the wind scatters the book manuscript. Although it was windy, my pages all made it into the box unscathed.

What’s next? I wait. The email said I’d hear back in six to eight weeks, so by Halloween, I should know if it’s thumbs up or down. I am again reminded of the glacial pace of publishing, but who cares? SHE ASKED FOR A FULL!!

P.S. For those of you wondering if Galley’s picture made it into the Nutmeg Portuguese Water Dog calendar…it did! (See previous post for details.)

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What a summer it’s been! I’ve been in Iraq, defusing IEDs.

Um. Okay. Not really.

But I haven’t blogged in so long, I wanted to give an excuse that made it sound like I was doing something extraordinary. The truth is, I was revising THROWN to prepare it for its summer vacation to Agentland. During the better part of July I shunned social engagements (a challenge for me, as I love seeing my friends, especially if it involves dinner and/or wine) as I finished making Joanne Kennedy’s suggested edits and other changes based on what I learned at the Romance Writers of America conference.

As a result, my book is done and ready to go. My yard is a mess—I believe there might be parrots and monkeys living in my flower gardens-cum-rain forests. My dog got shortchanged on his walks. My horse was certain she’d been sold. And my husband…well, it’s good he had scripts to memorize and a heathy love of satellite TV. My thanks to all of them.

I printed out the whole manuscript and sent it to my mother-in-law. Yes she wanted to read it. Yes I told her there was some smut. Yes she still wanted to read it. She is a voracious reader, which apparently trumps any Puritanical tendencies (she is, after all, a native New Englander and a French-Canadian Roman Catholic to boot), since she would never let a little smut get in her way. Plus, I think she likes the thought of her daughter-in-law being an author. (You thought I was going to write “she likes the thought of her daughter-in-law writing smut.” Weren’t you? WEREN’T YOU?)

I have to say, it’s FUN to see the story on paper, actual paper. It feels like it’s SOMETHING. The lady at the UPS store asked how much it was worth, and of course at first I said—sounding like a credit card commercial— “priceless.” But then I told the truth–it’s worth the paper it’s printed on, nothing more, since I have it backed up twenty ways from Tuesday on various devices.

Tomorrow, the ides of August, I will send the beginning of THROWN—along with a query letter and synopsis—to the various agents and publishers I met at the RWA conference who requested it. An exciting and terrifying day! Even Jody, my fantastic hair cutter/stylist/arranger, was nervous for me. I am shoring up my emotions for defeat, for a flurry of polite rejections…but I could, I COULD get published. Only one way to find out.

On another front, back in May I entered THROWN in the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers contest, and the finalists are supposed to hear that they’re finalists in “mid-August.” Seems to me it’s mid-August now. Since I haven’t heard a peep, I’m assuming I didn’t make the cut. So now I’m pinning my hopes on my dog, Galley, whose picture has finaled in a contest to be in a Portuguese Water Dog calendar (and yes, he’s completely naked in the photo).

On still another front, I judged a contest. Well, one entry, since as you know, I was busy writing my own novel. I’ve entered a handful of contests and now know a little about what it’s like to get feedback. As a judge, I had to fill out a score sheet with numerical rankings, 1 – 5, on all kinds of categories. Things like characterization and dialogue. I could also comment on the score sheet or on the manuscript itself. I did both. I tried to be specific and give the writer as much feedback as I could, since I appreciated it when I got lots of feedback from the contests I entered. It was fun, although I felt a pressure to do a good job. It also made me think more about my own writing. Interestingly, I read the synopsis for the entry I was judging first, and I didn’t like it at all. But then I read the entry itself, and although the writer has a much different “voice” than mine, I really liked the writing. I hope she (I assume) finaled.

Well, there you have it. The update. Now I continue to play with the second draft of LOVE IN THE TIME OF COLIC, novel #2. It never ends, this writing business, and thank God for that! (And thank YOU for reading.)

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The “opening” night of the Romance Writers of America national conference is the “Readers for Life” Literacy Autographing, where hundreds of authors sign their books for you, and all the proceeds from book sales go to programs that promote literacy. This year it was Tuesday, June 28 and the event raised something like $50,000. It’s held in a big ballroom, jammed to the rafters with authors, conference attendees and romance novel fans.

Diana Gabaldon was my first victim. She was near the door, and I’ve read three of her “Outlander” series books, so I pounced.

I try to have something to say to these authors besides, “I like your books.” In this case I really did, because I had been to the Alexander McQueen (late fashion designer) exhibit at the Met earlier in the day, and two of his lines involved Scotland. Ms. Gabaldon’s books are about a couple in 18th-century Scotland, so I thought she’d be interested. She at least pretended that she was, but who knows? She was on a panel the following day at the kick-off session and proved to be quite witty and not a little bit bawdy. It was fantastic.

These autograph sessions are crazy, like what I imagine the opening of a Walmart in a Southern town is like. Thousands of rabid women waiting behind a barrier for the doors to open, then WHOOSH! in they go. This time the conference was in New York though, where even the employees of the Marriott Marquis are trained in crowd control, probably by SWAT teams. In other words, nobody got trampled. Which was nice.

I also went to see Jayne Ann Krentz. I became a fan of hers during last year’s conference, where she was a keynote speaker and I also went to two of her workshops (one given in tandem with Susan Elizabeth Phillips). I had heard of her even before I started reading romance novels, and last summer listened to several of her older books on tape since I knew she’d be at the conference. I was pleasantly surprised and have branched out to reading her historical novels which she writes as Amanda Quick. She’s not only a top-notch writer, she’s a compelling speaker and funny workshop-giver as well.

I also got to see friends at the signing, which made me feel more like part of the author community. I fantasized about sitting at one of those cramped little tables myself, a pile of my books off to the side, signing, signing, signing. Joanne Kennedy was there, along with Allie Pleiter (aka Alyse Pleiter), who is a sorority sister of mine. Couldn’t find Ashley March because they put her out of alphabetical order, which was a nasty and mean trick.

Last but hardly least, my patron saint, Susan Elizabeth Phillips. I think I only gushed a little, but I DID gush, believe you me. But get this—she REMEMBERED ME. From last year. Oh sure, I’ve posted on her Facebook page here and there, and I sent her one or two emails (seriously, just one or two—I am NOT a stalker. No really, I’m not), but I was severely flattered when I walked up to her table and she immediately asked how the writing was going. I gave her a tiny, adorable box from Teuscher with two champagne truffles inside, which she seemed to appreciate, saying it was better than getting a big box of chocolates because then you had to share. And she graciously posed for a picture and signed a hardcover of her latest novel, CALL ME IRRESISTIBLE. (“To Colette— All the best with your career.”) Love her. LOVE HER.

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You didn’t miss Day 1 or Day 2–there was no blog for those because a certain blogger who shall remain nameless was having far too much fun at the Romance Writers of America national convention in New York City. You see, this certain blogger’s new and newer romance-writing friends enjoy libations and conversation, so, well, you get the picture.

Here are the high points.

I met romance legend and very bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz, who is quite the lovely and funny woman. This was at the autographing for literacy event on Tuesday night.

I’ll include more deets later, but I’ve made a new friend who I had formerly only met on Twitter, took 1.5 of Susan Elizabeth Phillips‘ workshops (who is still hilarious and a joy, if you are keeping score at home), and another of my favorites, Lisa Kleypas, HUGGED me. She, too, is lovely. Oh, and I casually chatted with legend Stella Cameron about her papillons.

The biggest news so far is I pitched to agent Scott Eagan this morning and he asked for my first three chapters and a synopsis (!!!!). That was cool.

More to come. Apologies for this short post, but I wanted to tell you SOMETHING.

Thanks for reading!

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