Failure? I never encountered it. All I ever met were temporary setbacks. -Dottie Walters
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. –Ray Bradbury
After I read a good book, I have a hard time coping with reality. –Andrea Gerber
(c) 2012. All rights reserved.
The finalists for the GUTGAA agent contest won’t officially be announced till Friday, but it’s not looking good for me so far. As of right now, only three people have stopped by to comment on my entry (how many have actually looked at it is anyone’s guess) and none of them were judges. I won’t lie, I’m disappointed. I was really hoping to make it through to round two and possible see a request come my way. But I have been having a lot of fun with the whole blogfest and I’ve made a lot of new friends and I’m really happy for everyone who is moving on. There are a ton of talented writers out there and the ones getting through deserve all their hard-earned success. The small press competition is coming up, but I’m not going to be competing in that. Good luck to those of you who are!
FYI, if you want to enter the small press competition, you need to sign up here.
So back to querying I go. Between GUTGAA and PitMad, I’ve acquired some new people to add to my query list, which is also helpful. The GUTGAA pitch polish helped me fine-tune my query pitch and the comments I received on it in my agent contest entry were favorable. See? Good things, right? Plus, PitMad was good exposure since I was throwing out pitches every half hour or so, right? Visibility is good, right? I’m working on the power of positive thinking here, people.
I think I need to keep working on my positivity skills.
Would you like a peek at what I’ve been working on the last couple of days?
Cast your votes for Vegin Martoka today! He’s been nominated for President of the United States of America and I think he would be a great leader for our country in this difficult time. After all, he led Lokana through one of the most turbulent times in its history, dealing with the devastating droughts and the assassination of his parents, as well as the attempted coup by the Zealots, led by his own brother-in-law, Balil.
Vegin believes all men – and women – were created equal and will make sure that all are treated equally before the law. He despises corruption and has ousted corrupt officials from every level of government. A family man, Vegin strives to lead by example. Honor, decency, and integrity are very important to him. He is a team player, willing to compromise when needed, and believes that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
So vote for Vegin! Click here to cast your vote. He will lead Lokana – erm, America, sorry – back to glory! 😀
(c) 2012. All rights reserved.
Ah, Sundays. Those lazy days before Mondays and work and craziness are days to be treasured. This particular Sunday, you can find me chatting with romance author Tory Richards over at her blog, Romance with an Attitude. We talk about writing and family and some other completely random things. Why not check it out?
Tomorrow the fun will really begin with GUTGAA. Actually, I’ve been having quite a lot of fun with it already, as there are quite a lot of lovely people to chat with on the Twitter hashtag #GUTGAA. I also received some helpful advice during the pitch polish event. Now I’ll get to see how well I implemented it…
And now I think it’s time for a nap. Yep, this is one lazy Sunday. 🙂
(c) 2012. All rights reserved.
Oil Painting Workspace (Photo credit: nimbu)
I know I promised an exciting (Ha! :)) photo essay on repainting Tomcat’s room for today’s Photo Friday post, but the thing is, well…we’re not done. Oh, I’ve got a few before pictures, and we’ve got two coats of primer on the ceiling, plus a coat of paint and three coats of paint on the walls and two coats of paint on the radiator (I won’t be sorry to see that thing go as soon as we can afford to redo our heating and lack of cooling system). But the plastic is still on the bed and the floor, the tape is still on the light fixtures and the woodwork, and every night this week, we’ve looked at that wallpaper border and sighed with exhaustion. Also loathing. Maybe even a few other things.
So with no pretty, pretty after pictures to show off, I’m going to wait on that post-bedroom-remodeling post I had planned. Seymour wants to get the border put up Sunday, so maybe one day next week, I’ll get it done. That sounds like a nice, reasonably distant time.
Meanwhile, today is the day for the entries to fly in the agent pitch contest for GUTGAA (short for Gearing Up To Get An Agent). My entry didn’t make it into the morning pitch session, which literally filled up in seconds. Amazingly, we didn’t break Gmail. 🙂 The afternoon session starts in mere minutes. I had my finger hovering over the send button on my email this morning and my eye on the clock; I hit send as soon the clock hit 11:00 a.m. (well, 10:00 a.m. here), but I was just a bit too slow. Hopefully the afternoon session won’t be quite as crazy as the morning. There are 200 available slots; 100 remain as of this moment.
Okay, I just hit send. Let the waiting begin.
THIS JUST IN: I MADE THE CUT!!!
(c) 2012. All rights reserved.
If you follow me on Twitter, then chances are you’ll have seen me tweeting like mad today about Vegin, Anná, and the goings-on in Lokana. If you follow me here, then chances are you know that brevity is not my strong suit, which means that a pitch session on Twitter is guaranteed to make my brain explode. I have two reasonably decent short pitches that fit within Twitter limits and still leave room for hashtags. Coming up with others, though, has given me one heck of a headache.
Agents a-plenty lurked about the hashtag #PitMad today, scoping out all the pitches you could handle. Tweets were flying fast and furious and without TweetDeck, I’m afraid I’d have been lost. Heck, even with it, I was afraid I’d be lost! TweetDeck’s lovely columns feature kept me scrolling along in real time, so there was slightly less confusion. I’ll take any reduction in confusion I can get these days. Anyway, so with agents lurking, authors were pitching their books in 140 characters or less and boy, was it crazy! Here are some of the different ways I came up with to pitch The Lokana Chronicles:
Artsy types have the attention span of a fruit bat on crack – we love chasing shiny objects. Don’t believe me? Just turn on a pen light and dance it across a wall at a Starbucks. Guarantee you will lure at least two writers and a musician. –Kristen Lamb
(c) 2012. All rights reserved.
Night after night he sat there, hunched over his desk with a paperback in hand. He angled his desk lamp over the page so that the incandescent bulb glowed mere inches away from his head. I can’t count the number of hours I saw him sit like that, devouring page after chapter after book. He read all kinds of books: westerns and poetry and biographies and anything else he could get his hands on.
But Louis L’Amour was his favorite. If he didn’t read every book that man wrote, he sure came close. He would read the books and when he was done, round them up and donate them to the library. Other times, depending on the author, he would give them to me. Our home was always stuffed to the gills with books and I am proud to say that such is still the case – I have far more books than places to put them (which only means that I need more shelf space).
Daddy instilled in me a love of books that I hope to instill in my own children, that I am trying to instill in my own children. I love to see Cricket’s face light up when he sees a new book; I love to discuss the Goosebumps series with Tomcat and tell him which ones I enjoyed when I was younger and hear which ones he likes. I love watching Seymour install beautiful custom bookshelves in every nook and cranny our old house has to offer and believe me, there are plenty.
But of the many wonderful memories related to books that spill forth from my childhood, the one that will stick with me the longest is the one of my father in his squeaky desk chair, his jacket sleeves shoved up his forearms and his hair mussed up because he hadn’t combed it yet that day, hunched over his desk devouring another book with a beer and a cigarette nearby.
(c) 2012. All rights reserved.
A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day. —Emily Dickinson
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. —Maya Angelou
A day without sunshine is like, you know, night. —Steve Martin
A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. –Richard Bach
A room without books is like a body without a soul. –Marcus Tullius Cicero
(c) 2012. All rights reserved.
So! I’ve been a bit absent (as well as a bit absent-minded) lately, but here’s hoping that September will be an all-around better month, both for my blogging habits and my sanity. My stress levels have dropped considerably since getting my revised version of The Lokana Chronicles sent off to its requester, and I’ve even had some time to read a few books. Talk about relaxing! It was really nice to read books not intended for children ages 5 and under for a change, though I must admit that the ending to one of them is still pestering me. If it continues to do so, I may have to write up a separate post. I may do so regardless. 😉
Anyway, you may or may not have noticed the Gearing Up to Get an Agent Blogfest button that appeared in my sidebar a few days ago. Someone on Facebook was kind enough to point me in the direction of Ms. Deana Barnhart’s lovely blog and this blogfest in particular and once I’d had a look to see what it was all about, how could I say no? Even if it’s a longshot at getting an agent, I’m sure to meet lots of lovely new people and have some fun doing so.
So! The rules! Of course, all good things must come with rules. (Wow, can you tell the books I’ve been reading were set in the nineteenth century or what?) The rules are simple. Answer the following questions, include a brief bio, visit other blogs over the course of the week. Simple enough, right? Right. And now, the questions… behind the cut!
Suddenly they all died. The end. 