Are you enjoying the new design on the new WordPress blog/website? I hope so! As the McDonald’s people say, I’m loving it.
I was a bad blogger for a bit as I waited for my new design to go up, and a few things have happened since we last met. For one thing, I finaled in another contest (I first finaled in the Cleveland Rocks Romance Contest), the Winter Rose Romance Contest. I also entered more contests because I have Contest Fever, apparently. I entered a contest sponsored by the Alaska Romance Writers called the Break-Up Contest. You send in your best break-up scene–how fun is that? How could I possibly resist? I rewrote the big break-up in THROWN and liked it even better, so I might use the contest entry as the real thing. I find out about this one in early July.
I also entered the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers contest, another contest where you send in the first 25-30 pages of your manuscript. And finally, I plan to enter a similar contest sponsored by another local Romance Writers of America chapter, the Denver Romance Writers. That deadline’s in mid-May.
But that’s IT, I swear. No more contests for a while. Honest. No really. I mean it.
Besides the contests, guess what else is going on? I’m now an RWA PRO! PRO status means you’ve gotten to the point where you’re ready to send your story out to agents. I sent my query letter to an RWA-approved agent, sent in the application to the RWA (along with my manuscript), and voila! Now I get to sign up for pitch sessions at the RWA conference in Manhattan in June a week earlier than non-PRO members, and I can attend a PRO workshop at the conference where they will doubtless teach me the secret handshake.
And finally, Joanne Kennedy, RITA Award nominee and all-around fabulous author, has finished reading THROWN! We are going to meet for lunch in Fort Collins (halfway between Cheyenne–where Joanne lives–and Denver), and I’m going to pay for a lavish lunch and Joanne is going to share her vast wisdom with me. I will then revise my manuscript if I agree with her suggestions, which I’m guessing I undoubtedly will, as we share sensibilities. And then I will be ready to submit to agents and editors, and pitch to those agents and editors at the RWA conference.
All this also means I haven’t been writing all that much. I’ve been revising LOVE IN THE TIME OF COLIC some, but my real focus is on THROWN and making a serious push to get it published.
Oh, and today I met a little girl at the barn where Brooke lives who looks exactly like Wave, the 8-year-old in THROWN! How weird is that?
Hope you enjoyed reading this update, and thanks for your support, as always.
Would that be the adorable Fiona/
The very one, Susan.