Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Valentine's Day

This year my wife and I decided to do something different for Valentine's Day. And it made it a great day.  Of course we do the usual, cards and candy for the kids. They wake up and see them on the table and get so excited. My wife made pink pancakes and the kids loved those as well.  I was already at work, but there were leftovers and I had some pancakes this morning. They were still fantastic.

The difference this year was that she came up and met me for lunch. We went to GoodWood BBQ and had a fantastic lunch. But afterwards, we drove a block and bought each others gift. They turned out to be the same gift. This year, instead of flowers and too much chocolate, we got each other iphones.

Over the past year, our droids have been outdated and on the blitz. I would miss phone calls, texts, and messages. She was calling friends when her phone was across the room. We've been looking for the last 3 months and finally decided on the iphone.

Last night while she went to a church meeting, I spend almost 3 hours getting to know my iphone and downloading music. Today, I am much happier about our phone situation and valentine's day turned out fantastic for both of us.   Here's to hoping that your day was just as good!

Saturday, February 4, 2012

It's Query Time

Well, I'm back from our vacation in Disneyland. More on that later. Two days prior to leaving, I finished another round of Editing for my WIP - Immaculate Conception. The title is growing on me more and more. I do realize, although hesitantly, that I really probably have no control over the title.

I was aiming at around 80,000 words and my final word count ended up being 87,000. The editing process was tricky, but that always seems to be the case with the editing process. Overall, the entire process has been streamlined from my first few experiences at writing and editing.

My work is now out at some beta readers and its growing close to the time to start querying. I've been researching query letters again.  Agent Query or AQ at the webaddress of http://www.agentquery.com/writer_hq.aspx is a really solid resource. I've also been reviewing Query Shark - another great resource.  http://www.queryshark.blogspot.com/.

Query letters appear to be an art form. Traditional letters are typical and safe, but atypical letters can be abstract, genius, or a complete disaster. I am going to go with Traditional.  I've worked and reworked the last 2-3 weeks on the query letter and I hope that I am getting close.

This is an exciting but nervous time.  I'll let you know more as things get going.