Dude, Where's My Muse?
Saturday, December 29, 2007
ACHIEVE YOUR DREAMS VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR
Every step I take brings me closer to the realization of my dreams.So by posting this, I'm supposed to talk about the above. How something I'm doing or have done I guess, is taking me closer to achieving my dreams. Obviously, I'm going to talk about about writing :o) Shocker? lol
I've been writing seriously since June 2002. That was the month I had to put my beloved 4 year old dog to sleep, six weeks before his 5th birthday. He spent so many hours at the top of the stairs, staring down watching me write that my mom told me I should try writing seriously as a tribute to him. I started researching writing online and stumbled onto eharlequin.com and found their writing contest, that year was intrigue and I started writing my first manuscript. By the deadline, I'd passed the word count for the contest, but it was inline with the guidelines for Silhouette Intimate Moments, so I sent in a query that November. In a shocker of shockers, I got a request for the full just after Christmas. They passed on the first ms by June, but I was still writing. From there I rewrote some of the manuscript, re-pitched it to HQN and got another request and another pass. That was when I decided maybe romantic suspense wasn't for me and I went to contemp romance. Wrote 2 contemps, one that was requested in the pitch for Modern Extra and one I didn't send out.
Along the way, I started to take an online workshop or two every so often and bought the RWA workshop CDs the last 2 years, trying to learn and improve my writing as much as possible. (Which it has, I look at some of my old fanfic and almost cringe!)
This year I made the switch from Urban Fantasy to Young Adult. I never EVER thought I'd write YA, but in April I woke up in the middle of the night with a scene and two characters who wouldn't go away. By the end of that week I think I had 10K down.
Between working on the new YA manuscript and taking some really awesome workshops this year, by August I was working on a blurb for the query letter in a workshop with Lori Wilde. With the 2nd draft almost done, I sent out a couple query letters in September based on my new blurb for my YA and within half an hour had a request for a partial which started a nice run of requests -- including a couple for fulls, which honestly, hadn't happened since the first 2 manuscripts and those early requests came from editors, not agents.
So as I'm writing this, I have my first YA out with 3 agents I'm very excited to have looking at my work. I'm on a week (or 2?) vacation and jotting down notes on the next project and realizing that without writing that first rom. suspense manuscript I might never have written that first YA, or that urban fantasy sitting in my desk drawer.
Labels: Blog Tour
posted by Lis at 5:06 p.m.
6 Comments:
Wow, Lis, your partial request list is quite phenomenol, don't you think? Do you know how many authors don't even get that far? Me, included??? Good luck, hon, but something tells me, it's not about luck..it's about perseverance and you've got it in the bag! Thank you so much for your blog post and if anyone else wants a stab on it AND be included in Judi Moreo's Achieve Your Dreams Virtual Book Tour '08, click here!
Good luck with your writing, Lis. And I know how you feel about missing a beloved pet. That's why I have cat's eyes on all my book covers with Resplendence - to pay tribute to the cat I had to put to sleep this past spring.
Catherine Chernow
www.CatherineChernow.com
Hugs, Lis, you know I love your writing and I'm so proud of you. This is going to be your year in 08.
Thanks Dorothy :o) Looking back, its a bit surprising to see the # of requests I've gotten, but starting out I thought maybe they requested a lot of what they were q'd on. I know better now *g*
Thanks Catherine! That's a very nice tribute to your beloved cat. I'm planning on putting H in the dedications on mine.
*hugs* Thanks Nell! I hope so! I can't believe how fast 2007 zoomed by
Thank you so much for taking part in my virtual book tour. I was so excited as I read your story of making your dreams come true. See, we might never have found out all those wonderful things about you if we hadn't asked your help in the tour. You are truly a star!
Yamte!
Judi Moreo
Author, You Are More Than Enough
www.youaremorethanenough.com
Way to go Lis. I had no idea you had so much in the hopper. Best of luck. Please keep me posted.
Cheryl
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