A Good Year

Now, as 2008 ends, it’s time to reflect on the past year.

Looking back:

I entered four RWA contests. I neither won nor finaled. Mainly because my heroine doesn't appear in the first twenty pages. Maybe this book won't sell as it stands, but I'll have to see what an editor or agent says.

The Wild Rose Press gave me my first contract for my novella, Lady of the Stars. Lady started life as an entry in TWRP's Through the Garden Gate time travel contest. I lost. But they saw enough to ask me to resubmit, and I resubmitted twice before they accepted the story. For all the gory details, see my blog post And How Did You Become An Author?

Before and after submitting, I learned a lot from the Wild Rose Press. Their suggestions made my story better and helped me with my next submission. Thank you, Wild Rose Press, for giving me a chance.

I started promotion. Oh, my. Talk about culture shock. I had no idea what promotion involved. Writing is very hard work, but promotion is even harder, maybe because I'm not the outgoing type. Luckily for me, with online promotion, I can still hide to some extent. I now have a blog, a website, accounts on myspace, facebook, goodreads, and I will start a twitter account. And I belong to forty-five yahoo loops.

In between all that time-consuming promotion, I finished NaNoWriMo (52,084 words) and I wrote my second novella, Pumpkinnapper. TWRP gave me a contract for Pumpkinnapper without asking for a resubmission.

Looking forward:

2009 starts with the release of Lady of the Stars on January 7. I hope it fares well.

Happy New Year.

Thank you all,

Linda

Pumpkinnapper Edits Done

Actually, I finished the edits on December 7. I hadn’t looked at the story for over a month, and it’s amazing the number of things you see after you’ve left it for a while.

The editor didn’t make very many changes, although she did find two problems I fixed. While the story already was fairly clean, now I could see I use some words too often. Too many only’s, breath’s, turn’s, return’s, took’s, gave’s, put’s. I found a handy-dandy thesaurus at the freedictionary.com and replaced and rewrote. But the story is only about 100 words longer.

Then I copied all the changes into a fresh copy of the file, spell-checked once more, and sent it off to the editor. She sent me mail back saying she wanted to get it done before the Wild Rose PRess Christmas shutdown. And I thought I could concentrate on promotion for a while. Silly me.

She returned the ms. only three days later, asking me to check cadence and grammar. Reading the story aloud will help the cadence. I thought the grammar was all right, but I will check again. Maybe I missed some dangling participles. And I’m sure I will see more places where I can replace ordinary words with better ones.

The best part is, she doesn’t expect it back until the end of January, so I can take a breather.

Merry Christmas to all.

I now have three solid weeks off for the first time in my working life, thanks to plant shutdown and vacation I have to take. I intend to put a dent in my TBR pile.

And as the days count down, it’s only two and a half weeks to Lady of the Stars release on January 7 at The Wild Rose Press.

Thank you all,

Linda

Shameless Promotion. Again??!!!

Yes, here we go with more Shameless Promotion. Lady of the Stars’s release date looms closer and closer. I didn’t realize just how close until I looked at the calendar on the Wild Rose Press yahoo loop.

Here I am on January 7, 2009, my release day, scheduled from 9 to 10 AM EST to talk about my book. If you click on my entry in the calendar, you get my blurb.

I realize there are a few typos and I have no idea how they got there. I’ve also changed the blurb since I first sent it in. Yes, we TWRP authors write our own blurbs.

I’d be very happy if a few people would show up. At the lower left of my entry there is a link to “Add the Group Event to my Calendar”. Please do.

That same day, January 7, I also have an all-day Author Day at Brenda Williamson’s Romance Party yahoo group. If you can show up at Brenda’s for a few minutes, too, I would appreciate it. I hope I’m not there all by myself.

And I just signed up at facebook. If you’re on facebook, please send me a friend request. Here's my profile. Or you can find me by searching on Linda Banche.

Thank you all,

Linda

Snow

Now for something a little different.

Today we had the first snow. Not that we received much. The snow is sticking only to the grass and it's melting on the roads. Later in the week we have a forecast for rain.

I like snow, especially when I don't have to drive in it. My best type of snowstorm is one that starts late at night after everyone is home. The next morning, the snow is so deep we can't go to work. I prefer shoveling snow to going to work any day. And if I can't have a day off, I prefer selective snowing. The snow falls only on the grass and the woods and not on the roads. But I haven't yet been able to convince the snow to fall that way.

Now for the shameless promotion. Pumpkinnapper edits continuing apace. I turn them in this week, then I'll spend the next month promoting Lady of the Stars. Lady's release date is January 7, only a month away now.

Thank you all,
Linda