I had a dental checkup today. You know how those are. Sit back in the chair while the hygienist does a variety of uncomfortable things and chatters at you, and you can only reply with things like "mmm" and "ergh."
In a space where I could talk a bit, she asked why I'd quit my computer job, and I said it was because I'd developed tendinitis in my arms. She told me she'd had the same problem with her job--carpal tunnel, in her case--and had gone to "that fancy place in Seattle that worked on Ken Griffey Jr's arm."
"Oh, yeah!" I said. "Seattle Hand Surgery. I was in therapy there for YEARS." Unfortunately, tendinitis is not as treatable as carpal tunnel, so they were never able to do anything for me. Years of therapy, zero results.
She was luckier, though. Carpal tunnel. That can be fixed surgically. But she said she couldn't afford the surgery. "So I found this massage therapist," she said, and she began to explain how'd he'd discovered tight muscles in her neck that, when released, made her carpal tunnel symptoms go away.
I got excited. The way she described him--and particularly the manner in which she described him, like he was brilliant, a visionary--sounded familiar. "Was his name Leroy Cunningham?"
"Yes!" she said. I swear she almost leaped out of her seat. And then we immediately asked each other, "Where the hell is he?" Because Leroy Cunningham has disappeared.
( Read more )
In a space where I could talk a bit, she asked why I'd quit my computer job, and I said it was because I'd developed tendinitis in my arms. She told me she'd had the same problem with her job--carpal tunnel, in her case--and had gone to "that fancy place in Seattle that worked on Ken Griffey Jr's arm."
"Oh, yeah!" I said. "Seattle Hand Surgery. I was in therapy there for YEARS." Unfortunately, tendinitis is not as treatable as carpal tunnel, so they were never able to do anything for me. Years of therapy, zero results.
She was luckier, though. Carpal tunnel. That can be fixed surgically. But she said she couldn't afford the surgery. "So I found this massage therapist," she said, and she began to explain how'd he'd discovered tight muscles in her neck that, when released, made her carpal tunnel symptoms go away.
I got excited. The way she described him--and particularly the manner in which she described him, like he was brilliant, a visionary--sounded familiar. "Was his name Leroy Cunningham?"
"Yes!" she said. I swear she almost leaped out of her seat. And then we immediately asked each other, "Where the hell is he?" Because Leroy Cunningham has disappeared.
( Read more )
Heartsick, by Chelsea Cain (thriller)
Oh, man. This is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. It opens with Archie Sheridan, a detective who's been chasing a serial killer for over ten years, being captured by that serial killer--who turns out to be a woman--and viciously tortured.
Then in the next chapter, we skip ahead two years. Archie has somehow survived his ordeal. But he's addicted to vicodin, and his wife and kids have left him. The serial killer, Gretchen Lowell, has been caught and is serving life in prison. Archie visits her weekly, for reasons we don't learn until later in the book.
The book's present-day storyline is about Archie pursuing another serial killer, but the real compelling question, the one that kept my eyes glued to the page, was WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO ARCHIE?
When I read that his wife had left him, I immediately thought the worst of her. He's been through a terrible ordeal, and assuming he's not violent or dangerous (he's not), how can she abandon him to struggle through his recovery alone? But as I read further and learned more details, I realized she had very good reasons for leaving, and I sympathized. I even thought she'd done the right thing.
As for Archie's relationship with Gretchen, the woman who tortured him almost to death, it's tragic and sad and gut-twistingly disturbing.
The book isn't perfect, because the Archie and Gretchen backstory is so much more compelling than the main storyline about the new serial killer. But that backstory sure kept me reading, as did my desire to see Archie grow and recover from his extreme psychological damage.
The writing is top-notch. Let me give you an example, and the key point here is that this example is nothing special or exceptional within the novel. The whole book is like this. Archie is interviewing the teenage friend Maria of a girl who's been kidnapped by the new serial killer.
"'Have you found her?' [Maria] asked immediately.
"'Not yet,' Archie said kindly. Kids were often overlooked in police investigations. The thinking was that they made bad witnesses, but Archie had found that they noticed things that adults didn't. As long as they were interviewed appropriately, assured that they didn't have to know the answers, so they wouldn't make up what they thought the interviewer wanted to hear, kids as young as six could offer valuable observations. But Maria was fifteen. Teenage girls were unpredictable. Archie had never communicated well with them. He had spent most of his teen years attempting to start conversations with girls and flubbing miserably. He hadn't really gotten much better. 'Can we talk to you some more?' he asked Maria.
"She looked at him and her eyes filled with tears. Well, you've still got the magic touch, thought Archie."
The author is entertaining on every possible level. She's advancing the plot, she's giving me some interesting information about child witnesses, she's developing Archie's character, and she's even thrown in a funny line. These paragraphs are doing four things at once! No wonder I was never tempted to skim this novel.
I recommend this novel highly, but be careful--it's not for the squeamish. I felt dirty after reading this novel, not because of any sexual content (there was hardly any), but because it dealt with such creepy topics as the conflation of violence and intimacy, dependency and attachment, obsession and love. And it never struck a false note; every word of it felt absolutely true. That's what's so damned disturbing about it. I was careful not to read this book within a hour of going to bed; I knew it would give me nightmares.
It's part of a series, and I plan to read on. But I'm going to need a palate cleanser first; too many books like this will put me in a funk. A nice Bujold or Brockmann book should do the trick.
Oh, man. This is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. It opens with Archie Sheridan, a detective who's been chasing a serial killer for over ten years, being captured by that serial killer--who turns out to be a woman--and viciously tortured.
Then in the next chapter, we skip ahead two years. Archie has somehow survived his ordeal. But he's addicted to vicodin, and his wife and kids have left him. The serial killer, Gretchen Lowell, has been caught and is serving life in prison. Archie visits her weekly, for reasons we don't learn until later in the book.
The book's present-day storyline is about Archie pursuing another serial killer, but the real compelling question, the one that kept my eyes glued to the page, was WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO ARCHIE?
When I read that his wife had left him, I immediately thought the worst of her. He's been through a terrible ordeal, and assuming he's not violent or dangerous (he's not), how can she abandon him to struggle through his recovery alone? But as I read further and learned more details, I realized she had very good reasons for leaving, and I sympathized. I even thought she'd done the right thing.
As for Archie's relationship with Gretchen, the woman who tortured him almost to death, it's tragic and sad and gut-twistingly disturbing.
The book isn't perfect, because the Archie and Gretchen backstory is so much more compelling than the main storyline about the new serial killer. But that backstory sure kept me reading, as did my desire to see Archie grow and recover from his extreme psychological damage.
The writing is top-notch. Let me give you an example, and the key point here is that this example is nothing special or exceptional within the novel. The whole book is like this. Archie is interviewing the teenage friend Maria of a girl who's been kidnapped by the new serial killer.
"'Have you found her?' [Maria] asked immediately.
"'Not yet,' Archie said kindly. Kids were often overlooked in police investigations. The thinking was that they made bad witnesses, but Archie had found that they noticed things that adults didn't. As long as they were interviewed appropriately, assured that they didn't have to know the answers, so they wouldn't make up what they thought the interviewer wanted to hear, kids as young as six could offer valuable observations. But Maria was fifteen. Teenage girls were unpredictable. Archie had never communicated well with them. He had spent most of his teen years attempting to start conversations with girls and flubbing miserably. He hadn't really gotten much better. 'Can we talk to you some more?' he asked Maria.
"She looked at him and her eyes filled with tears. Well, you've still got the magic touch, thought Archie."
The author is entertaining on every possible level. She's advancing the plot, she's giving me some interesting information about child witnesses, she's developing Archie's character, and she's even thrown in a funny line. These paragraphs are doing four things at once! No wonder I was never tempted to skim this novel.
I recommend this novel highly, but be careful--it's not for the squeamish. I felt dirty after reading this novel, not because of any sexual content (there was hardly any), but because it dealt with such creepy topics as the conflation of violence and intimacy, dependency and attachment, obsession and love. And it never struck a false note; every word of it felt absolutely true. That's what's so damned disturbing about it. I was careful not to read this book within a hour of going to bed; I knew it would give me nightmares.
It's part of a series, and I plan to read on. But I'm going to need a palate cleanser first; too many books like this will put me in a funk. A nice Bujold or Brockmann book should do the trick.
Gacked from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
jl_johnson, here's a Writer's Digest article on writing antiheroes.
I love writing antiheroes. I wrote one in my first novel (Finneas) and he was really fun.
Second, an article on subtext in fiction. This is about engaging the reader on a deeper level, such that he/she perceives things that aren't actually in the text. It's not talked about much, but I suspect subtext is often what makes me love rather than just like a novel. As the article explains, subtext is critical for character-based novels, less so for plot-driven novels.
I am 28,000 words into that Lucien novel, and trucking along at a rate of a thousand words per day. I expect to have the first draft finished by the end of March. I'm still nervous about the ending, but I've got half of it figured out now (the romance half). The action half I'm still struggling with, but that's the easy part now that I have the romance problem solved.
That antihero article made me think about my characters and whether they are heroes or antiheroes. In Finneas Trapp, Dalin was a hero and Finneas was an antihero. In "Soldier, Sage, and Vagabond," Janto and Rhianne were both heroes. There were no antiheroes in that book. Florian comes closest, but since he was acting to thwart to my heroes, he was technically a villain.
In my new book, classification gets tricker. Lucien straddles the line between a hero and an antihero. Vitala (the heroine) is in the middle as well, but probably closer to hero than antihero, because even though she's an assassin and she does things most people would consider evil, her motives are not selfish. She's trying to save her country and is willing to lay her life on the line to achieve that. Lucien's motives are more questionable and complex, but he's nowhere near as self-centered as Finneas. I think hero vs. antihero mostly comes down to motivation. If the character's motivations are unselfish, he's probably a hero. If they're selfish, he's an antihero.
Fun stuff. Fellow writers, what about you? Are your protagonists heroes or antiheroes?
28000 / 100000 words. 28% done!
jl_johnson, here's a Writer's Digest article on writing antiheroes.I love writing antiheroes. I wrote one in my first novel (Finneas) and he was really fun.
Second, an article on subtext in fiction. This is about engaging the reader on a deeper level, such that he/she perceives things that aren't actually in the text. It's not talked about much, but I suspect subtext is often what makes me love rather than just like a novel. As the article explains, subtext is critical for character-based novels, less so for plot-driven novels.
I am 28,000 words into that Lucien novel, and trucking along at a rate of a thousand words per day. I expect to have the first draft finished by the end of March. I'm still nervous about the ending, but I've got half of it figured out now (the romance half). The action half I'm still struggling with, but that's the easy part now that I have the romance problem solved.
That antihero article made me think about my characters and whether they are heroes or antiheroes. In Finneas Trapp, Dalin was a hero and Finneas was an antihero. In "Soldier, Sage, and Vagabond," Janto and Rhianne were both heroes. There were no antiheroes in that book. Florian comes closest, but since he was acting to thwart to my heroes, he was technically a villain.
In my new book, classification gets tricker. Lucien straddles the line between a hero and an antihero. Vitala (the heroine) is in the middle as well, but probably closer to hero than antihero, because even though she's an assassin and she does things most people would consider evil, her motives are not selfish. She's trying to save her country and is willing to lay her life on the line to achieve that. Lucien's motives are more questionable and complex, but he's nowhere near as self-centered as Finneas. I think hero vs. antihero mostly comes down to motivation. If the character's motivations are unselfish, he's probably a hero. If they're selfish, he's an antihero.
Fun stuff. Fellow writers, what about you? Are your protagonists heroes or antiheroes?
In the year 2009 I read 101 books. Except I didn't finish 7 of them (because I found them too boring), so the real total for books I read in their entirety is 94.
7 were re-reads. 87 were books I was reading for the first time.
8 were books I read aloud to Sean. 86 were books I read on my own.
Books read on my own break down as follows:
31 nonfiction
55 fiction
Here's the fiction breakdown by genre:
11 SFF
16 YA (of which 10 could also be classified as SFF)
2 Historical
12 Romance (including paranormals)
6 Crime fiction
8 literary/other
( Complete list behind the cut (not including unfinished books) )
7 were re-reads. 87 were books I was reading for the first time.
8 were books I read aloud to Sean. 86 were books I read on my own.
Books read on my own break down as follows:
31 nonfiction
55 fiction
Here's the fiction breakdown by genre:
11 SFF
16 YA (of which 10 could also be classified as SFF)
2 Historical
12 Romance (including paranormals)
6 Crime fiction
8 literary/other
( Complete list behind the cut (not including unfinished books) )
A week with no internet, no computer games, no writing, and very few responsibilities meant I got a ton of reading done. I brought 6 books with me to Texas, but within a few days I'd exhausted most of the stack, and went to a bookstore to buy 4 more. By the time I returned to Seattle, I'd read 9 of them and was halfway through the 10th. Here are capsule reviews of the 9:
Books that were totally awesome:
How to Ditch Your Fairy, by Justine Larbalestier. YA urban fantasy. This was a great book with very elaborate worldbuilding, including its own unique slang. It's about a girl named Charlie who doesn't like her personal fairy, a parking fairy which helps her always find the perfect parking spot. (She doesn't drive.) Meanwhile, she envies her best friend's clothes-shopping fairy and a classmate's all-boys-like-you fairy. She wants to ditch her fairy and get a new one. I saw a few things coming in this book. I figured the character Fiorenze was probably misunderstood, and that the all-boys-like-you fairy would have a serious downside, but that didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book at all; instead I felt vindicated when I turned out to be right. Previously, I read another book by this author--Liar--and didn't like it because I felt the resolution was incomplete and unsatisfying. This book shows evidence of that problem as well. There were a few important questions I felt the author failed to answer (for example, whatever happened with Danders Anders?). But the main storyline was resolved, so I enjoyed this book. A lot.
The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. Nonfiction. Wow. This is a book about word-of-mouth successes and how they happen. It's useful reading for writers, because word-of-mouth is how books become bestsellers, so it's good to understand how that works. But mostly this is one of those books that explains to you something about how the world works that you never quite understood before. Fascinating stuff.
The Dead and the Gone, by Susan Beth Pfeffer. YA science fiction. This is a post-apocalyptic novel, the sequel to Life As We Knew It (which I also read and enjoyed). Usually I hate post-apocalyptic novels because they're all about society breaking down and people shooting each other and stealing from each other and in some cases eating each other. I don't want to read about that! But this book doesn't go there. We're aware of criminal activity, and the characters have some close brushes with it, but this series is not about that. It's about people banding together and trying to survive in a frightening, changing world. This book will have you stocking up on canned goods. (Seriously. I really did stock up after reading the first book.)
Books that were okay but not as good as I'd hoped they would be:
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebond. Literary? General fiction? I never know how to classify these. This book was beautifully written, but it wasn't what I expected. I'd seen the movie trailer and it looked like a mystery-slash-creepy-ghost-story where a girl is murdered by a serial killer and, as a ghost, helps track down her killer. But it's really not that at all. It's a quieter book that's less about bringing the killer to justice than it is about grief and letting go and moving on. I spent the whole book wondering when we were going to get to the good bits, where they catch the killer, and I was disappointed when those good bits never arrived.
The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein. Literary or general fiction (not sure). I adored the first half of this book, but as we moved into the second half I felt like the author was piling misfortunes onto his protagonist to an extent that was unfair and not very believable. Three really horrible things happen to the protagonist, all of them largely unrelated and pretty much the result of bad luck, and after a while I stopped being able to suspend disbelief. I also wanted more followthrough on the "racing in the rain" concept. It was such a great setup, and I didn't feel it was delivered on. Telling the story through the eyes of the family dog was marvelous, though. I loved that.
Blood and Chocolate, by Annette Curtis Klause. Werewolf paranormal. This is one of several werewolf paranormals I've been reading to get a feel for the genre. And it appears this genre is not for me. A young female werewolf falls in love with a human boy, but ultimately comes to realize she needs to stick with her own kind. I liked the protagonist, and I thought the author did a great job of putting me in the head of a werewolf--in this book, the species are different, and they do think differently from humans. I liked that. But I didn't like the resolution, where the protagonist ended up with a werewolf guy we know almost nothing about, and she was kind of forced into the relationship. Was that a happy ending?
Bitten, by Kelly Armstrong. Werewolf paranormal. I liked the female (werewolf) protagonist, who's tough and cagey, but the worldbuilding didn't make much sense to me (no female werewolves, except for the protagonist? WHY?), and I didn't like the guy she ended up with, who was immature, selfish, and sometimes violent. He felt more like an overgrown teenager than a man (or werewolf), and I couldn't muster any attraction for him.
I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You, by Ally Carter. YA about a spy school for girls. This turned out to be not my thing. Too silly, not enough depth. Might work for a younger audience.
The Sharing Knife, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Fantasy with romance elements. Bujold is a goddess, but this isn't her best work. The worldbuilding's good, and I enjoyed the first half of the novel quite a bit, but then all the cool stuff got dropped for a while and we went into a straight romance plot without much conflict or tension. All romances are wish-fulfillment, but this story is a particular brand of wish-fulfillment I don't like, in which a rather nondescript heroine with problems acquires (generally through dumb luck) the Perfect Boyfriend, who then solves all her problems for her. I like to see heroines solve their problems themselves. It's okay with me if the Perfect Boyfriend helps her solve them (especially if she also helps him solve his), and it's okay if his arrival is the catalyst for her turning her life around, but I still like to see the heroine doing the work to fix her own life, not waiting for Prince Charming to come along and do it for her. Even though this one was a little disappointing, I'm still reading the next book in the series. It's Bujold after all, and she can be slow in her setups. There might be better stuff on the way, and I suspect she's got the heroine on a growth trajectory.
Books that were totally awesome:
How to Ditch Your Fairy, by Justine Larbalestier. YA urban fantasy. This was a great book with very elaborate worldbuilding, including its own unique slang. It's about a girl named Charlie who doesn't like her personal fairy, a parking fairy which helps her always find the perfect parking spot. (She doesn't drive.) Meanwhile, she envies her best friend's clothes-shopping fairy and a classmate's all-boys-like-you fairy. She wants to ditch her fairy and get a new one. I saw a few things coming in this book. I figured the character Fiorenze was probably misunderstood, and that the all-boys-like-you fairy would have a serious downside, but that didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book at all; instead I felt vindicated when I turned out to be right. Previously, I read another book by this author--Liar--and didn't like it because I felt the resolution was incomplete and unsatisfying. This book shows evidence of that problem as well. There were a few important questions I felt the author failed to answer (for example, whatever happened with Danders Anders?). But the main storyline was resolved, so I enjoyed this book. A lot.
The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. Nonfiction. Wow. This is a book about word-of-mouth successes and how they happen. It's useful reading for writers, because word-of-mouth is how books become bestsellers, so it's good to understand how that works. But mostly this is one of those books that explains to you something about how the world works that you never quite understood before. Fascinating stuff.
The Dead and the Gone, by Susan Beth Pfeffer. YA science fiction. This is a post-apocalyptic novel, the sequel to Life As We Knew It (which I also read and enjoyed). Usually I hate post-apocalyptic novels because they're all about society breaking down and people shooting each other and stealing from each other and in some cases eating each other. I don't want to read about that! But this book doesn't go there. We're aware of criminal activity, and the characters have some close brushes with it, but this series is not about that. It's about people banding together and trying to survive in a frightening, changing world. This book will have you stocking up on canned goods. (Seriously. I really did stock up after reading the first book.)
Books that were okay but not as good as I'd hoped they would be:
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebond. Literary? General fiction? I never know how to classify these. This book was beautifully written, but it wasn't what I expected. I'd seen the movie trailer and it looked like a mystery-slash-creepy-ghost-story where a girl is murdered by a serial killer and, as a ghost, helps track down her killer. But it's really not that at all. It's a quieter book that's less about bringing the killer to justice than it is about grief and letting go and moving on. I spent the whole book wondering when we were going to get to the good bits, where they catch the killer, and I was disappointed when those good bits never arrived.
The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein. Literary or general fiction (not sure). I adored the first half of this book, but as we moved into the second half I felt like the author was piling misfortunes onto his protagonist to an extent that was unfair and not very believable. Three really horrible things happen to the protagonist, all of them largely unrelated and pretty much the result of bad luck, and after a while I stopped being able to suspend disbelief. I also wanted more followthrough on the "racing in the rain" concept. It was such a great setup, and I didn't feel it was delivered on. Telling the story through the eyes of the family dog was marvelous, though. I loved that.
Blood and Chocolate, by Annette Curtis Klause. Werewolf paranormal. This is one of several werewolf paranormals I've been reading to get a feel for the genre. And it appears this genre is not for me. A young female werewolf falls in love with a human boy, but ultimately comes to realize she needs to stick with her own kind. I liked the protagonist, and I thought the author did a great job of putting me in the head of a werewolf--in this book, the species are different, and they do think differently from humans. I liked that. But I didn't like the resolution, where the protagonist ended up with a werewolf guy we know almost nothing about, and she was kind of forced into the relationship. Was that a happy ending?
Bitten, by Kelly Armstrong. Werewolf paranormal. I liked the female (werewolf) protagonist, who's tough and cagey, but the worldbuilding didn't make much sense to me (no female werewolves, except for the protagonist? WHY?), and I didn't like the guy she ended up with, who was immature, selfish, and sometimes violent. He felt more like an overgrown teenager than a man (or werewolf), and I couldn't muster any attraction for him.
I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You, by Ally Carter. YA about a spy school for girls. This turned out to be not my thing. Too silly, not enough depth. Might work for a younger audience.
The Sharing Knife, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Fantasy with romance elements. Bujold is a goddess, but this isn't her best work. The worldbuilding's good, and I enjoyed the first half of the novel quite a bit, but then all the cool stuff got dropped for a while and we went into a straight romance plot without much conflict or tension. All romances are wish-fulfillment, but this story is a particular brand of wish-fulfillment I don't like, in which a rather nondescript heroine with problems acquires (generally through dumb luck) the Perfect Boyfriend, who then solves all her problems for her. I like to see heroines solve their problems themselves. It's okay with me if the Perfect Boyfriend helps her solve them (especially if she also helps him solve his), and it's okay if his arrival is the catalyst for her turning her life around, but I still like to see the heroine doing the work to fix her own life, not waiting for Prince Charming to come along and do it for her. Even though this one was a little disappointing, I'm still reading the next book in the series. It's Bujold after all, and she can be slow in her setups. There might be better stuff on the way, and I suspect she's got the heroine on a growth trajectory.
Here were my resolutions from 2009:
1. Finish querying "In the Company of Finneas Trapp." (Either sign with someone, or exhaust the list of agents I'm willing to sign with.)
Partial credit. I queried 19 agents, and the personal feedback I received from 2 of them on the full manuscript convinced me that while the novel might be saleable, it had some flaws I couldn't fix without rewriting it. Since I was already writing another novel--one that didn't have those flaws--I decided my time would be better spent finishing the new novel than rewriting the first. So I stopped querying Finneas. I've set it aside for now, but I haven't given up on it. I still hope to sell it someday, after I fix its problems.
2. Finish "Soldier, Sage, and Vagabond" revisions and begin sending out queries.
Again, partial credit. I completed revisions (including query letter and synopsis) but delayed sending them out because they were finished in the middle of the holiday season, a bad time to query. I will query in mid-January.
3. Write the first draft of the new novel, working title "Sea-mage."
Partial credit! I'm 27k words into the first draft of the new novel, but not finished. And it's not titled "Sea-mage" anymore (not even tentatively). It has no title. I call it "that Lucien novel."
4. When Ethan enters kindergarten (sooner, if it works out), start once-a-week Jazzercise or Yoga.
Partial credit again! I started a weekly yoga class, but I had to replace it with a more urgent need, twice-weekly strength-training sessions in the gym to strengthen my injured hip. Once I reach my target, I plan to replace one of the weekly gym visits with yoga.
Here are my resolutions for 2010:
1. Query at least 50 agents with "Soldier, Sage, and Vagabond."
2. Finish first draft of that Lucien novel.
3. Complete 2nd and 3rd drafts of the first 60k words of that Lucien novel.
4. Reach 130 lbs on hip abductor machine (currently at 110 lbs).
5. Resume weekly yoga class.
1. Finish querying "In the Company of Finneas Trapp." (Either sign with someone, or exhaust the list of agents I'm willing to sign with.)
Partial credit. I queried 19 agents, and the personal feedback I received from 2 of them on the full manuscript convinced me that while the novel might be saleable, it had some flaws I couldn't fix without rewriting it. Since I was already writing another novel--one that didn't have those flaws--I decided my time would be better spent finishing the new novel than rewriting the first. So I stopped querying Finneas. I've set it aside for now, but I haven't given up on it. I still hope to sell it someday, after I fix its problems.
2. Finish "Soldier, Sage, and Vagabond" revisions and begin sending out queries.
Again, partial credit. I completed revisions (including query letter and synopsis) but delayed sending them out because they were finished in the middle of the holiday season, a bad time to query. I will query in mid-January.
3. Write the first draft of the new novel, working title "Sea-mage."
Partial credit! I'm 27k words into the first draft of the new novel, but not finished. And it's not titled "Sea-mage" anymore (not even tentatively). It has no title. I call it "that Lucien novel."
4. When Ethan enters kindergarten (sooner, if it works out), start once-a-week Jazzercise or Yoga.
Partial credit again! I started a weekly yoga class, but I had to replace it with a more urgent need, twice-weekly strength-training sessions in the gym to strengthen my injured hip. Once I reach my target, I plan to replace one of the weekly gym visits with yoga.
Here are my resolutions for 2010:
1. Query at least 50 agents with "Soldier, Sage, and Vagabond."
2. Finish first draft of that Lucien novel.
3. Complete 2nd and 3rd drafts of the first 60k words of that Lucien novel.
4. Reach 130 lbs on hip abductor machine (currently at 110 lbs).
5. Resume weekly yoga class.
I just got back from an 8-day trip to Texas! During which time I mostly didn't have internet access, because I was staying at my dad's house and his computer was broken, and there was no wi-fi. I managed to check my email a couple times at friends' houses, and to post briefly on New Year's Eve, but that was it.
We visited family, and my friends Liz and Rod and Jennifer, and the kids played outside and replenished their vitamin D stores with some much-needed sunshine. Ethan has been asking me to buy him some bricks so he can build a house. I have not been wild about this idea, because he knows nothing about mortar and just plans to stack them like blocks, and they are heavy and potentially dangerous if stacked high. So I've been dodging those requests. Then he started badgering my dad (his grandfather) about it, and we talked it over and decided it would be reasonably safe if my dad bought him some, but not enough to build really high.
So my dad drove to Home Despot. They didn't have bricks, but they directed us to a brick yard (via the yellow pages). We went there, and Ethan got his bricks:
( Read more and see photos: bricks, candy cane tree, football party, the cows, and an Evil Goose )
We visited family, and my friends Liz and Rod and Jennifer, and the kids played outside and replenished their vitamin D stores with some much-needed sunshine. Ethan has been asking me to buy him some bricks so he can build a house. I have not been wild about this idea, because he knows nothing about mortar and just plans to stack them like blocks, and they are heavy and potentially dangerous if stacked high. So I've been dodging those requests. Then he started badgering my dad (his grandfather) about it, and we talked it over and decided it would be reasonably safe if my dad bought him some, but not enough to build really high.
So my dad drove to Home Despot. They didn't have bricks, but they directed us to a brick yard (via the yellow pages). We went there, and Ethan got his bricks:
( Read more and see photos: bricks, candy cane tree, football party, the cows, and an Evil Goose )
Profile
- sharpblade8
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Page Summary
- amy34 : Small world, and what the hell happened to Leroy? [+2]
- amy34 : Book review: Heartsick [+7]
- amy34 : Writing progress, and two good articles [+6]
- amy34 : The year in books! [+4]
- amy34 : Nine capsule book reviews [+5]
- amy34 : New Year's resolutions [+2]
- amy34 : Photos from Texas trip [+6]
- amy34 : Happy New Year's Eve! [+4]