I just emailed my manuscript to my editor this morning! Whew, what a load off my mind…for the time being anyway. I know it’ll be bounced back for copy edits later, but for now, I have a brief reprieve while I focus on another novel. Bittersweet Memories is due August 1, 2008. I’ll need to start focusing on that next!
Still hard at work revising my manuscript for my May 19th deadline…
My blog entries may be somewhat infrequent over the next week. I have a deadline of May 19th looming on the horizon.
I’m very tired as I sit here typing this blog entry, sipping my coffee at 5:30 AM. I’m trying to get some writing done before my family awakens. I usually sleep a bit later on Saturdays, but I had to get up this morning because of the imposing deadline!
Also, I’m going on a field trip to a small family dairy farm that’s located near my parents’ house (about one and a half hours away from where I live). It’s a research trip for the book I’m working on. I should have done this awhile ago, but I was struggling to make deadline number one, so now I’ll need to make the trip before deadline number two…
I was watching something interesting last night on 20/20. It was a story about a woman who forgets NOTHING! Her mind is like a video camera and she remembers practically every day of her life since she was about 11? Amazing! I’ve always been told I had a great memory (although my mind has faltered somewhat since I had a child). But my mind isn’t nearly as massive as this woman’s as far as memories go!
Jeez!
I received the first half of my advance for Bittersweet Memories yesterday! This will be the third book in the Barbour’s Maryland Wedding anthology!
I received the edits needed from the content reviewer yesterday for my novel, Milk Money, so I have another deadline looming on the horizon: May 19, 2008.
Here is the tentative back cover copy for the novel. The tentative release date is January 2009…
BACK COVER COPY:
Running a dairy farm is a big job, but doing it alone is almost impossible.
When her dad dies, Emily must work hard to save the family farm, but she manages. Until the day the CPA pulls in her drive and announces he’s there to do an audit on the place.
Franklin Reese is appalled at the lack of interest the Cooper women have in the financial end of their livelihood, but he dives in, determined to help them learn. The further he looks into Mr. Cooper’s dealings, however, the more uncomfortable he becomes.
Can he uncover the truth of the situation and still earn the love of the amazing Emily Cooper? Will issues in Franklin’s own life keep them apart, even after the farm is taken care of? Only God can heal hurting hearts and repair broken lives. Will these two let Him in?
Currently, I’m in the Windy City (Chicago)! Later, I’m gonna blog about a great place that serves AWESOME caramel popcorn here. I also have three novels that I finished recently and I’ll review the following titles within the next week or so:
Better Than Gold by Laurie Alice Eakes (A recent Heartsong Presents title)
Treasures of the North (Yukon Quest #1) by Tracie Peterson
What’s Cooking by Gail Sattler (An old Heartsong Presents title)
I also need to post the rest of the winners of my shopping blog book giveaway! I’d meant to choose winners for my novel, John’s Quest, yesterday, but I was too busy spending time with old friends and family members. I will be choosing the five winners for that soon. We’re preparing for my younger sister’s nuptials which take place today! I’m sure it will be a beautiful, joyous occasion!
I signed two copies of my contract, and I’m placing those in the mail tomorrow.
I also forgot to mention that I read a very thought-provoking book last weekend. It’s a little bit different than what I usually read. It’s called Zora And Nicky and it’s about an inter-racial couple and the problems that they face. The author is Claudia Mair Burney. I plan on blogging about this novel soon, as soon as I can gather my scrambled thoughts!
I’m filling out the Cover Art Sheet for my novel entitled Milk Money. The tentative release date is January 2009. I’m letting my publisher know that I imagine my cover looking like this:
An attractive African American man in a business suit holding a briefcase. He’s standing beside an attractive African American woman. The African American woman is wearing farmer’s clothing (like overalls). There’s a red barn, cows, silos, and maybe a cornfield in the background.
I’m just using my imagination here, trying to help the art department to come up with an appropriate cover!
We’ll see what happens! It’ll be months before I’ll receive my cover for this book, but I’ll be sure to post once I get it!
I received the contract for my next Heartsong Presents novel yesterday. I plan on reading it through and sending it out by Monday. The title is Bittersweet Memories. More details will follow in the coming months!
I hope everybody had a nice Easter holiday! I’m ecstatic because I’m off from my day job this entire week, and I’ll be at home, working on a manuscript to submit to an agent. This manuscript is a women’s fiction project with strong romantic elements.
I’m also a judge in ACFW’s (American Christian Fiction Writers) Genesis contest for unpublished writers. As I read through the submissions, I notice the authors are making the same mistakes in each entry, so I thought I’d discuss some things that new writers need to be aware of when submitting to the romance genre.
One of the issues I had with the submissions was that I’m reading the first few chapters of the manuscript, and the hero and heroine have not yet met. In a romance, you’ll need to have the man and woman to meet within the first few PAGES of the manuscript, if you don’t, it’s not a romance. I realize there are books out there advertised as romance where this does NOT happen, however, those are the exceptions to this rule.
Another issue I see is, which is related to the first issue, is that the author will spend the first few chapters focusing on internal thoughts or backstory for the main characters. Usually, the reader is not interested in seeing backstory or internal thoughts for the first twenty pages of a book! They want to see something to happen between the hero and heroine (if it’s a romance). Have them to meet in an exciting way, or in a major conflicting way! Does he appear at her office, trying to steal her job, her major sense of security! You need make something exciting to happen within that first page, that’ll hook the reader as well as the editor!
If your manuscript is not a romance, you don’t have to have the love interests to meet early in the story, but you still need to make those initial scenes exciting, and not bogged down with backstory and internal thoughts. You’ll need to make something exciting to happen that will capture your reader’s interest and hold it throughout the manuscript! All backstory is not bad, though. You’ll want the reader to know some things about your character’s background, however, this knowledge should be sprinkled throughout the manuscript in bits and pieces, not a huge informational dump at the beginning of the book! Believe me, with few exceptions, such dumps prove to be boring, making your reader want to fall asleep or put your book down.
If there is a major event that happens in the past that the reader needs to be aware of, then use a prologue, just be sure the prologue isn’t very long. The same rules apply to the prologue: make it exciting!
I emailed my manuscript off to my editor yesterday! Now I’ll just have to wait and see what happens! I don’t know what kind of changes I’m gonna have to make, but I should find out within a month or so. I’m just glad it’s off my plate for the time being and I’m glad I made my deadline!