Bringing You Up to Speed

Clearly, I have not gotten better about blogging. Ah,well. I blame it on life--my mom life, work life, wife life, writing life, and the fact that I was a teen/young adult more in the Breakfast Club/Friends/Melrose Place era rather than the whole Blog/Twitter/text era. But I'm learning. Acutally, I have discovered the joys of texting and am quite fascinated with Twitter. But I digress! Remember when I said I wrote another book? So anyway, I started querying in October November (admittedly, very, very half-heartedly--hardly got more than a dozen out for a while.) Then my writing partner finished her project and began querying right around January first--which motivated me all over again. My goal: get up to fifty queries out there and hit 50 rejections, whichever came first. I got rejected, of course. But after the first ten, it was cool--I told myself that this was the process and then I started on a new MS that I was really excited about. And then...one day...I got a request for a partial. And another. And another. Suddenly everything became very real and publishing my book started becoming more like a real possibility. My critique group, the fabulous Mondays, were awesome. So supportive, so encouraging. Of course you'll get published, they said. Love those people. And then it happened. Three requests for fulls, and by the end of the week, a couple offers. Wow. Blown away, I was. And actually, I still am. Every morning I wake up and pinch myself. It's real. In the end, I signed with the very lovely and eloquent Lora Rivera of the CG Literary Agency. She, from the very beginning, seemed to really get my book, love it for what it was, warts and all. (And it does have some warts--we're working on that.) So now, I have an agent, and am working on revisions. Oh, and the book, you ask? It's called FINDING PONY, about Jesse Sampson, a fiercly loyal fifteen-year-old boy, who, after a sickening experience in foster care, sets out to find his kid sister lost in the system, braving gangs, drug dealer, cops, and social workers. I'll talk more about it later, in upcoming posts. In the meantime, look out for my website, which I'm in the process of developing, and newer posts. I'd love to hear from you.