The lovely agent emailed me back twice this afternoon, apparently the submission never arrived. *sigh* I'll print one out this weekend and mail it. Guess I should have listened to my gut that day and double taped over the address label, I've got a feeling it got wet, smeared and became unreadable. Oh well. Live and learn. I'll have to order some more US stamps soon I guess :o)
So I emailed the agent, just asked if she could tell me whether or not she did receive the query package. If she says no, I'll probably resend. I still do have one agent who I *think* has the first 75 pages she requested. I'm saying think because I didn't track hers either, but I mailed hers the same day I sent out STTA. So have to wait and see. I went back and the agent I emailed, they finally have an agency website. Yay! lol I'm sorry but I kind of prefer agents with a web presence. I like actually being able to see the person I may be dealing with and putting my career in their hands. The site talks a lot about branding which I'd been thinking about for awhile (didn't I post on that before?) anyways, that's the one hitch. My brand could technically at this moment go three ways: Something To Talk About: Sexy, Sassy Contemporary. Her Protector : Romantic Suspense, and then some of my other stuff is angsty...think Danielle Steele but not so heavy on the women's fic feel most of her stuff is now. So that's confuzzling.
Funny moment of the day: going through my draft box in outlook and finding parts of STTA I'd been planning on emailing to my yahoo account as back up. I don't remember writing half of it, and its kinda good! *g*
Well the Summer has officially begun and its turned into rainy, thunderstorm season here. The joys lol Was sitting in the living room last night when this weird spiral lightning hit, it buzzed then the house shook. That was weird. A little afraid it was going to come through the window and get me since I had my writing binder on my lap. But I'm told lightning can't go through windows...*can it?* Seems like summer's also taken over in writerland. Not much news going around lately - besides Nell's sale of course!! :o) - blogs are quiet, agents and editors may be in hibernation mode...and writers are on vacation. Except me, I apparently don't do them lol I tried, and then my hand found a pen and four pages were scribbled out. Even when I'm trying to distract myself with RAW last night, still scribbling down stuff. When Shawn and Cena in the ring TOGETHER can't keep me distracted, I start to worry. Realized yesterday going through my agent grid, I never did hear back from one agent I queried in November (snailmail, with synop and first 3 chapters). Not sure what to do. Do I email and ask if the postal system lost the submission? Or plop down another $6 plus my US stamps and see if she actually replies this time. Any thoughts?? She's supposed to be one of the fastest readers so I'm not sure. I mean it seems plausible it got lost, but what if she requested more and I don't know...too much to think about in this mugginess. *g*
And counting... Today's the 8 week mark on Something To Talk About. I'm not so much nervous but just wondering how far it is in the reader-editor process. Does Richmond even use readers? Burning questions lol Actually had a good writing flow last night, wrote for an hour and did 1600 words on Winning Bid. Had a nice father's day in spite of it being the 19th. Had to exchange the one tool gift I got dad, the case wouldn't close properly so ran out to Canadian Tire to do that, priced some stone for the edging and did some running around. Then mom and I took him out for dinner to our favorite restaurant that just reopened last month. It was our first time there since it burned down about 2 summers ago and they've really made it nice in there. Its not the same setup but the food's still amazing. On a RAW note really quick, OMG what the heck was up with the Matt Hardy music during the Edge/Lita wedding?? I thought maybe he'd show up then I thought nah...maybe Vince is testing the waters? Carlito to RAW, would not have expected that one. So I'm guessing we will see Y2J to smackdown. Booo!!! Though under that hair, Carlito may not be bad looking lol
*glances up* A day late huh? So yesterday was Canada Day and unlike a lot of flag waving Canucks I don't quite celebrate it. I prefer to indulge my 1/8 or 1/16 American side at times lol We got an email from a friend of ours yesterday morning inviting us over so we went over about 9 last night. Was nice, talked for awhile, went outside to watch the fireworks at midnight but didn't see any then headed out to Tim Horton's for a midnight snack. (talk about celebrating in Canuck fashion lol) But since I'm not a big fan of their food, I had a can of coke and an apple fritter.
is one of the hardest days of the year for me. June 19th, 2002 at 12:05 pm I had to put my beautiful angel and muse H.B.K to sleep. He was just six weeks shy of his fifth birthday. He got sick so fast that it was an absolute shock that he was so sick that we'd have to put him down. The first night he ever spent away from home was the night before when the vet kept him overnight on an IV. Anyways, in honor of my loveable furball and best friend, today's blog post is completely his own. August 13th, 1997 - June 19th, 2002
So Alberta and Saskatchewan have spent the last two days in the stronghold of weird weather. And since most of my family *grumblegrumble* is in Southern Saskatchewan, we spent most of yesterday watching the weather channel.
You know its bad when the two meterologists are telling people in the areas in purple to go take cover immediately, don't bother opening windows just go. We knew something was up the day before when the one guy was saying use Friday to prepare and know where everyone is. Kinda scary. My best friend lives in one of the purple zones in Southern Alberta and they showed the streets flooded and baseball sized hail. Haven't talked to her yet but I'm hoping her place didn't get flooded. May not be the time to mention we may be concert goers in September!
Today we got hit with some of it up here not the intense thunderstorms but the rain. Still raining out but tomorrow is supposed to be nice. *fingers crossed*
On the writing side, working a bit more on Winning Bid. Did some of the synopsis (just two paragraphs but still...) and playing with the first big scene between the two. See how it goes.
I'm not too sure what all I feel like blogging about today, its yet another day in the pathetic month of June. If every month was like this, there's just no way to handle it.
Writing is slow going, I'm not sure about Winning Bid at all. It almost feels like I've forgotten how to write. Which is a bit scary, I've spent the last seven years writing whenever I could, starting in fanfic and branching out and I can't even do the fanfic right now. I thought that was my comfort zone, and even there I can't get the ideas down on paper.
Off to watch Smackdown and catch the early Leno before the thunderstorms hit and I miss Backstreet.
Just when I thought things were looking up around here, the proverbial "s" hits the fan. Its not writing related thankfully, though I haven't touched winning bid in 5 days and I'm already getting antsy about it. Though yesterday marked the 7 week mark on Something To Talk About. I'm just wondering if anyone's even glanced at it.
But anyways, there's a situation going on 'back home' with my grandma and two of her kids - my one aunt and one uncle. And its well not good. So its upsetting MY mom which she doesn't need, she's trying to bring down her stress levels (she's been home since January with extreme high blood pressure) and things were slowly getting normal and this blows up...hello, I don't want to have to have to take her to the ER because she's hitting 200 again like we did in January. So since I can't exactly vent around home, or tell Oma to open up her eyes, I can at least vent here.
I'm sorry but to take advantage of an almost 82 year old woman like this, and practically brainwash her is beyond ignorant. I hate to say I had these two pegged years ago, but I did. As my one aunt calls them, the rocket scientists of the family, should have their heads examined. They've talked her into giving up her two bedroom condo and move into a small cramped house with the wacky whiny aunt and her 5 cats and two teenagers oh and stairs that Oma can't use because its like a ladder their so steep. (She sold her house a couple years ago and moved into the condo to get away from stairs) So the other brain surgeon, is going to move into Oma's condo because he can't find a place of his own (the house she's moving in to...is his. He apparently can't live there since his wife died last year...well then sell it). This same uncle, took her couch out of the house without asking at Christmas and drove around with it in his van for over a month...
Its like a bad movie plot and its pathetic to be living it even at this distance. *sigh*
Today's the day I've been waiting well almost 5 years for, the new BSB CD. So today's post is solely dedicated to the Boys and their best CD yet which is officially released today.
To hear clips, go to www.backstreetboys.com I'm madly addicted to Just Want You To Know...
Off to happy land where I can blare Backstreet loud and proud :o)
(Catch the boys appearances this week: CBS Early Show - Wednesday morning/Leno - Thursday/MuchMusic Awards - Sunday/MuchOnDemand - Monday)
Ah yay it posted!! These are the shoes I wanted a couple weeks ago, finally went back today and picked them up, last pair in my size. And found the pic of them online. Aren't they cute? Their so comfy which is good because half my other shoes aren't anymore. :)
Nell tagged me, so here we go, five memories from my childhood:
1) Shopping with my dad at the Sears Bargain Centre in Regina on weekends and spending half the afternoon in the tool department, with the occasional stop in the cafeteria upstairs for jello (cut into cubes with whipped cream on top)
2) Picking my stuffed ALF toy at the toy store after passing grade one and making the saleswoman take down the entire two shelves of ALFs from behind the counter so I could pick. I took the one with the most hair. I still sleep with him on my bed :o)
3) Riding my tricycle around the basement to dad playing country music and ringing the bell on my handlebar to make him stop working and fill my bike up with gas *g*
4) Going to the lake in Regina (I forget the name!) to feed the geese and play on the swings in the playground.
5) Walking down the aisle in the Rememberance Day parade in kindergarten with the wreath from the kindergartners.
And there we go! :o) I started to post yesterday but thunderstorms kept me offline.
Well since I did my WWE rant below, I figured I should probably do another post on something more than three of my good buddies would want to read :o)
Bloghopping the last couple weeks showed some of the writers talking about their processes and its even one of the topics of choice on one of the q&a lists I'm on right now. So I'll do a bit of a blog moment on mine.
I'm not sure I have the same process I used to. I used to be able to dive headfirst into the story, vague ideas of what needed to happen, the overall jist of the story I guess. I knew my opening, the ending and a couple scenes in between. They'd come to me at all times of the day or night (still do. its why i sleep with a binder by the bed - note to self, buy more looseleaf paper) and they usually came fast and furious. The first draft of one of my manuscripts I wrote in six weeks. And its well over 100K. (and needs to be revised/rewritten to match to my current voice) Ah the joys.
Or maybe I'm just overthinking it too much. Rereading the paragraph above, I realized I had maybe a rough synopsis in my head all the time, I just didn't know it, I let it be there unconsciously guiding me along. Hmmmm....weird. Maybe its the fact that I know so much about writing now that I can't shake it out and just let myself write. Wow. Small epiphany there lol
I read the *spoiler* for Smackdown on Thursday night because fingers crossed it wasn't Shawn, Randy or y2J going over.
Well it wasn't.
It was the Rabid Wolverine, Chris Benoit.
Not sure I like this...is RAW going to become all brawlers? (Let's look at this: Kane - brawler, Tyson - brawler; SNITSKY - brawler; Masters - someone who needs to have his rear handed to him...) I mean okay maybe the move will benefit Benoit and he'll go beyond mid-carder, and him against Eddie, sure. But I can't believe they couldn't find anything to do with him on RAW anymore and bumped him over. And reading the blurb on the WWE website about how no one's safe, including the announcers...oh please tell me we aren't going to have to suffer with Michael Cole on RAW. Because I love Good Ol' JR and Jerry, and if we lose one of them, I'm gonna be forced to watch it on mute, which frankly is gonna suck. How much are they going to mess with a good thing? I don't see changing up the Divas doing a heck of a lot (though losing Christy isn't going to hurt anything in my book)...
Went out and did some errands today, the good part of dad being on holidays. They're not stuck solely on the weekends. Though if we had gone tomorrow, I probably would have picked up the new Wrestlemania XXI DVD instead of losing my $20 after dinner.
Good points: picked up five new books. Yup, that's probably the most books I've bought at once in years (since my Danielle Steele/Jackie Collins' buying binges). Got three of the last Temptations: Never Say Never; Good Night Gracie; & Her Last Temptation. Plus a Bombshell from last month: The Amazon Strain and Joanne Rock's new historical. Couldn't find Gena's new book at Zellers or Wal-Mart so will have to keep an eye out on the weekend for it.
After helping one of my best buds with her query letter last night and showing her the blurb for the DT prequel, she said it sounded good and asked about it so I ended up writing half a synopsis off the top of my head. Not bad, but I've only worked off synop's twice before, and the results were iffy. Hope I didn't jinx it. But did manage a few pages before falling into bed around three.
Other than that, missed the first twenty minutes of RAW because we went out for dinner and the darn timer didn't go on for the tape. Grrr. But at least TSN here repeats it again at ten. Okay I gotta say, WHOA Cena on RAW. Loving it loving it loving it!!!! And his rap to Christian was a top ten moment of the year award. Just hope this doesn't mean we're losing Shawn/Randy/y2J to Smackdown to compensate. I do think they could pull a champ switch and take Batista though, since 'no one's safe' if that's the case, take Coach but that's not likely. Do think they rushed the ECW angle though, it needed more build up than they gave it...
Well I'm obviously not the most creative at titles. Eh... I do better with story titles than anything so forgive the lameness in the titles of blog posts of late :o)
What else is new, hmmm, I broke down Winning Bid. The version that's making me go: huh plot, what plot? is now at 7000 words even. The version I found from 2003 with only two pages to it (minus the truth or dare opening since I used that idea already with STTA) is now at 3000 words. Yup. I'm basically writing the story twice. And there's some issue with the h's ex Charlie who seems to be popping up and causing me trouble in both versions. I'd really like to make him go away because he's messing me up right now :o)
Looked at my Bombshell wanna-be Double Take last night. I know the opening but then I looked at my binder and I've got the idea for the prequel in there. Does this happen to anyone else? You get the idea sketched out then bam! Here's the prequel. And it would work better as the prequel to DT because of things I can't say without giving my story away lol. I don't know. I've got about 30,000ish words I think (estimating) on DT, and now I need to go play with the untitled prequel. Which is going to need lots of research on things and European cities. Including Stockholm I think and Milan for sure. Be a nice change of pace research wise that's for sure!
Well now that I've got that Elton John song in my head *g* Sorry for the whiny posts of the week, but it seemed like everything just sorta hit at once. If it had been spaced out a bit I could have dealt with it better, but it didn't and the week was stressful enough with dude being on holidays and the other stuff. One big giant week of argh and I still can't make sense of some of it.
So, realizing my Temptation wanna-be that I'm almost 7K words into has no plot sucks. I can't figure out where it was going. I know what she does but what does he do? I know what he looks like, what he sounds like (ah, love basing my characters off him) but just what does this incarnation do... I was thinking wealthy playboy but eh... I just don't know. Its like I took two of my old story ideas and merged them into one and ended up in disaster zone. Maybe I should separate them and see what happens. Great, more work :o)
I think I've learned too much about writing lol I'm questioning conflicts and motivations. Personally I prefer just writing and seeing where it gets me. Plotting makes me feel like I've already written the book so why write it again? I know what happened, what she said, what he did and where they broke up...been there, done that, and both h/H are wearing the t-shirts.
What else to babble about. Finished one of the books I won a few weeks ago. Trish Wylie's HER REAL LIFE HERO. Absolutely great book!! First of hers I've read but I'm going to try and track a couple more of down.
Alright, nuff from me. Its overcast and cool out so I can't seed my last pot but I'll try and attempt some writing on my Bombshell wannabe.
Following the emotional rollercoaster of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday why should I have ever expected Friday to be any different?
My favorite group's contest results came up today and though I was a finalist and had to sign the release form and scan my drivers liscense and send it all in in pdf format, I'm not one of the winners *sigh* Got halfway excited scrolling the lists of winners and seeing Lisa...not me about three or four times. Considering how *lovely* the week has been, can't wait for the weekend. What bad news follows next I wonder?
I should have known June's are never good. Three years ago this June I had to put my beautiful 4 year old dog down and they sucked before then anyways. Can I just wake up, and let it be July? (though with concert tickets, since if the Boys do hit here I am going, with or without a certain best friend)
Off to question the power of positive thinking YET again. (since it never works for me)
PS: Excuse the whininess of this post, but there's only so much crap a person can take. I now fully understand Tugger's pain of the last 2 years, 4 months...
Woke up to a wonderful package of books I'd won over at cataromance in the hot seat thread in the mailbox. So I have eleven great books to tackle. Which is great because I just cleaned out my tbr pile on the weekend, though I do need to reorganize my bookshelf because I think the middle one could collapse any day now. :o) Scary thought.
News on the missing wip front, its still not on the hard drive, I may have to try Suzanne's method of naming (thanks for the tip btw!) but I found some of it upstairs in one of the binders by the bed. So all is not lost. But the good opening with the Cary Grant mention is nowhere to be found. Have to see if I put it in another folder or something.
What else, I'm in a bit of a better mood. Took last night off about six and went upstairs to watch Canadian Idol. Oh there's some horrible people auditioning this year (what was up with the cheerleader and her homemade song about Canadian Idol?) But Ben's comments just make me laugh! (For those who aren't in the know, I think he'd be the equivalent to your Ryan Seacrest but I think much better looking and funnier) Loved the part where the guy was singing like from the 40s and Ben goes "I don't think he's from here, let alone this time" lol There's some good singers this year, lot more females though I think (or am I just not seeing as many guys?) Tonight I think wraps up the 10 city tour so should be interesting. Next week begins the elimination. I still remember Kalan forgetting his lines last year and sticking around to win it all :o)
