Southern Writing

Tinkering around

I'm playing around with my blog design today. I've already cleaned up some categories and added an "About Me" page.

On the writing front, I've submitted some queries to agents. I'm stressing about my synopsis.

I've put my sequel to the side for now, and I'm writing a novel of a different genre. It's giving me a well needed fantasy break, and if my first novel doesn't sell by the time I finish it, I'll be able to query two markets at the same time. It's a little bit harder to write the new novel, though, because it's based in reality. I don't have as much room to play.

If anyone out there has recommendations for urban fantasy agents (I just read the genre is dying in an industry blog- fun!) let me know. I need all the help I can get.

Revisions and queries and life, oh my!

I find it strange how fast the writing process has gone for this book. Previously, I tried to write a novel during NaNoWriMo and failed. I've been working on the same epic novel for ten years. In school, I was always starting a novel, writing a few pages, then giving up. I've won a couple of awards for short stories and even had one published, but novel writing has always been just out of my grasp.

Now, all of the sudden, I've managed to write an entire 60,000 word novel and rewrite it in a little less than two months. It kind of makes my head spin. I guess that's what the threat of poverty does- it makes you take a chance on your dreams and do the work. While at the time I was writing in just about every spare moment and pushing most other things off to the side, now it seems like a dream.

I'm thinking I'm going to send a query a day to agents; I have four ready to go and one I just sent out tonight. This whole process is fascinating to me. If I have nothing but rejections after 30 or 40, I'll start sending queries off to publishers.

In other news, I'm going to be in Howl O Scream again. At least I can always have scare acting to fall back on if the economy keeps going South. Now that's the kind of marketable skill everyone should have.

Cue fanfare

I finished my novel. Now, I'm working on preparing the manuscript for submission to agents and going through the whole thing to tweak it here and there with suggestions from my beta readers.

This is new to me, so the people who read this blog now have the chance to follow an aspiring author as she goes through the process of finding an agent and publishing a novel. I'm thinking that next week or the week after I'm going to submit the novel to five agents and see what happens. I'm thinking the worst case scenario is no one wants it and eventually I take it to a writing group or workshop for critiques.

I've already started on the second novel in the series, and I'm working on a submission to an anthology. More about that later. Right now, I'm going to celebrate with my coffee.

The New Gay: Tampa is a go!

My newest gig is up and running.

I'm going to be writing events listings and features for The New Gay's Tampa edition. It's a website that offers up cool things to do and a new way of looking at the world; it's based in DC, so for right now I'm the only writer regularly working on the shennanigans going on in Florida.

I'm looking forward to writing to a new audience and building a new readership base.

And, if you want to get in on the ground floor of The New Gay, go ahead and query them. They're looking for a few good writers.

First rejection of the new year

I received my first rejection of the new year yesterday- it was for "Seeing God" from Necrotic Tissue. So, tonight I plan on rewriting it and submitting it somewhere else as soon as possible.

I think what really sets successful writers apart is that they face rejection every day still decide to send out their material over and over again.