Good Web Links

The Read...

Still deep in Christine Feehan's Dark Slayer.   Am finding her characterization much deeper than usual.  Guess centuries of suspicion, antagonism, and loneliness can do that.  She also is playing on the sympathy factor of a villain that targets the unborn and young children.

Web and Other Stuff ...

A writer's internal editor can be notoriously inconvenient ... especially when reading something plagued with bad copy editing.  Karen Marie Moning  recently shared her personal rating system for her own manuscripts. --  Is your writing filled with ones or fives?

I'm cleaning, sort of.  [No matter what I do, the piles keep getting deeper.  Yeah, I know the solution.  Less solitaire and more organizing.]  Whatever, made a discovery as I checked through the old emails from before my "vacation" last summer.  Chassily Wakefield at 1st Turning point wrote a pertinent blog on time management.  Promotion and Time  Management for Unpublished Authors -- Finding a Balance.

On the finding an agent front, how about an "old standard"?  Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware has an article on finding a legitimate agent on the Science Fiction and Fantasy writers website.  "The Safest Way to Search for an Agent" .  The article is filled with good advice and lots of useful links.  Well worth bookmarking.  [Was reminded of the article, which I read long ago, by a mention on Facebook.]

Am feeling a little sorry for the people who Google "apocalyptic" and get one of my old blogs.  It's like when Goggle Alerts tells me someone's writing about "taking vengeance" [the title of the novelette WolfSinger Publications is interested in] only they are talking about the wrath of god instead of Mariah [Dark Solstice].

Progress...

Not writing, but still seem to keep busy shuffling papers ... and the empty/full boxes under the library desk.  Who knows?  I may have an empty space to revise/edit the print copy of Voices soon.  In the meantime, a couple new characters are perculating out of my brain, but I may go back to just expand on the Maren story I started at the beginning of the year.  Only I'll keep her in whatever medieval cul-de-saq she vegetating in.

That causes a problem of what I do with Faithful Alice Sweet.  I like the old dame.  Actually, she was only around 50 years old.  Only a YA would think her old.

The other accomplishment:  I did send out queries to several agents for There Be Demons.  Now all I have to do is sit back and wait for the rejections.  No.  I don't think I'm being too pessimistic.  It's just when I read all those agent comments about how they "fall in love with a writer's voice" ... I figure that ain't going to happen to me.  People might enjoy reading my stuff, but they'd never "fall in love" with it if they had a brain in their head.  Why do I say that?  It's my firm belief that falling in love with anything is totally adolescent.  Which brings up the question on whether I'd want an adolescent agent.

That said.  Really appreciated the auto-responder to Chris Richman of Upstart Crow.  Gave answers to most of the questions a writer might have at the beginning.  The website was also helpful.  Is he my "dream" agent?  ?Quien sabe?  He doesn't handle adult stuff ... so he'd be out for the Half-Elven.

Oh, I also sent out Dark Solstice out to a small e-publisher who has good editors according to AW Water Cooler.  [Hope I didn't confuse the publisher notes from the others I rechecked.]

Trivia...

It's nice to have hot water again.  Most of the dishes even ended up getting washed in the dishwasher. Only, the garage door opener went out.  We're back to lifting the door ourselves ... until the repair man can make it.