The Write Idea

It’s been nearly a year since I’ve posted here and I cringe to think that not much has changed since my last post. Yes, I weathered quite a terrible year, fraught with natural disasters, health issues and life in general, but in retrospect, I’ve finished a second manuscript, started another three and am no worse for wear.

I’m now diligently searching for an agent. Have had no luck with publishers in the past year and it seems as mentioned to me once before by a well-known author, talent is never enough. Just like everything else in this industry, it’s who you know and how you go about approaching them. I’ve done that, pulled every card I had in my pocket and persevered as best I could, to no avail, so I just plug away and hope that something comes of all of it.

I’d hate to take the easy way out and self-publish. To me that seems like cheating. You have no one to say “this isn’t good enough”, then again, who are they to say anything at all? Liking or disliking ones work is subjective and changeable. I’m not a boastful or conceited woman, but I know I have what it takes. I know I have talent. I’ve had diligent readers of my work over the years that push me and ask when they can see my books in bookstores. I just hate telling them there are none, especially after reading some of the dreg I have read, which decorate our bookshelves already. It’s proof enough it’s all in who you know…

With that, I continue to search for acceptance while I continue to fill pages with my thoughts and let my characters run my life as often as I dare let them. Hopefully someone will see what others have and my work will finally get out there and please someone more than myself…

This year has been a whirlwind for me, to be sure, and not a good one at that. As many of you know, I suffered the devastation of the April Nor’easter that pummelled the East coast and basically lost everything I owned. Luckily, the things I hold dear to me (myself, my cats and my work) were quickly moved to a safe place while my apartment sat, four feet underwater, for well over a week.

It has taken me a few months to clean out and rebuild my life from that moment, but as always, I tend to look at it with a positive prospective. I guess I saw this as the gods way of telling me I have too much crap and needed to clean. Now, after cleaning, steaming, shoveling, repainting and rebuying as much as I could, I think I’ve finally finished enough to get on with my life. My office is now a beautiful, soothing place to work and during the time I was stranded I managed to finish my Regency and edit it and now have begun with the submission process. I’m keeping things crossed…

My health has been a deterent as well over the past several months, though I’ve never let that stop me. Anytime I find myself stuck in bed, I just bring the trusted laptop along and I am happy as a clam. Maybe that’s why I was able to finish my Regency so quickly. Who knows, but it’s done and I’m hoping the effort wasn’t for naught. Well, to me it never is. I enjoy ever moment and thought I put into my work. Its like hanging out with a group of friends you don’t get to see very often and I enjoy it immensely.

At any rate, summer is upon us so I hope to get out, go to the beach or just laze by the pool and enjoy life for a change. Its been a long time coming and I certainly do deserve it after the year I’ve had so far.

Wow, it’s been a long time since I posted anything here. Bad writer - no cookie. Can’t even use “no time” as an excuse since I was unemployed for most of the year. Though I will say that I did use that free time wisely and within 7 months I managed to finish my second full-length manuscript. It was initially titled “Curse of the Count”, but after recent discoveries of things that I need to change in the story, I have changed the title to “Earl of my Heart”. I have also restarted my efforts on “Sanctuary Stones” and about a month into it, I realized that I needed to rework the entire plot because certain things were implausible (to say the least) and unlikely to have happened (according to my wise and wonderful friends at the Beau Monde). So once I have reworked “Earl of my Heart”, all of my time will then be devoted to “Sanctuary Stones”.
Of course I still have my contemporary “Sea of No Cares” hovering half way through a tense plot and my avid and hungry test reader, Zarabeth, has been riding me pretty damn hard to finish all three. So, I have to snap to it and get them done and then endure the long, arduous process of submission and all that - Yay me.
So with that, back to work. Oh yes, btw, I AM at work; a paid job, one that I go to every morning now, so my free time is no more. Though I will have to say, my office is a mere 1.33 miles from my door. On a bad day, it takes me all of 4 minutes to get there, and I’m home by 4:45 most days, so I guess you can say I have more free time than most authors, so I can’t complain. Not one bloody bit.