Writers' Chasm

Hope everyone had an awesome weekend! I know I did. :D You will NEVER guess who I met Saturday. THE Steve Vander Ark. You know, the one that created the Harry Potter Lexicon. *faints* I got my picture taken with him. I’m going to stop fangirling now and try to remember what I was talking about… Other than that, my weekend was pretty blah. Moneigh finished fourth in her maiden, Quality Road finished third in the Travers (losing to Summer Bird who’s definitely taking after his sire in my book), actually I don’t think any of my horses actually won this weekend. Indian Blessing lost…Quality Road lost…Moneigh lost…I think that’s all I was cheering for this weekend. Oh, need to go look up that filly that beat Rachel so I can keep an eye on her. Okay onto things that you actually care about. I really need to try to keep the horse racing to my horse blog. This week we’re going to talk about genres. No, I’m not defining them all. I don’t even know what half of my own books are let alone...

And what a short week it's been! I can't believe Friday is here already. And what a rainy, nasty Friday it is... Probably not going to get much done this weekend. Going to a very big, very expensive college tomorrow with my uncle and the youth group and then going hiking Sunday if it ever stops raining. Finished reading Nation last night, review of that coming up on Thursday. Now I get to turn my attention to Confessions of a Serial Kisses. By going tomorrow, I'm missing out on Moneigh's maiden race and Quality Road's Travers. Of course, I can always watch them on replay when I get home, but I like to watch races live... Not a lot of posts this week, but we do have a must read! Must Read: Rachelle Gardner had a great post uncovering some of the myths and facts of publishing this week. Contest: Rachelle Gardner is hosting her own guest blog challenge to choose guest blogs for every Thursday through the end of the year. Entries close Friday, September 4th. I'm o...

EEK I'm so excited to announce that I was able to get Bethany Griffin here for an interview with us! :D If you don't know Handcuffs or Bethany, you should. They're both made of awesome-ness. Handcuffs by Bethany Griffin Summary: Parker Prescott is an ice princess. Cold, aloof, and a snob. At least, that's what everyone says on Marion Henessy's blog. And everyone reads Marion Henessy's blog. Parker Prescott is a middle child. She's the good one, the dependable one, the one her parents trust. Well...she used to be. Parker Prescott's parents want her to break up with her boyfrined. But she already did, two weeks ago. And then she realized it was a mistake. He came over. He had the handcuffs in his pocket. Everything went downhill from there. Sort of. Parker Prescott's world is changing and she no longer knows who she is. Does anyone? Review: First off, I want to say I love this book! And I'm not just saying that either. The characters were awesome ...

REVISIONS ARE FINISHED! :D Just finished a few minutes ago in fact. Okay, now that I'm done squealing, let's see how things are going... I didn't have a very good morning. I woke up from a somewhat great dream that made me mildly depressed, had a headache most of the morning, and then found out that Mine that Bird has been scratched from Saturday's Travers (where I expect Quality Road will outclass most of the field) and Nicanor is on 60 days turnout rest for an injury. Anyway...it's really hard for me to tell which day was my best and which was my worst because of the revisions. I didn't do a lot of writing this week, even when I did have time. My best day for writing was, of course, last Wednesday when I finished Destiny with a 5,571-word writing spree. My worst days were Friday and Monday with no words both days. My best days in terms of revisions were Friday and Saturday with five chapters each. Last Wednesday was my worst with only three, but I think I shou...

I couldn't think of anything that I wanted to post today, but I have been thinking about my favorite book/series/authors lately, so I figured that it would be fun for us to share what all our favorites are. Plus I have a TWFT post to do today so I really need to be brainstorming for that... Been procrastinating most of the morning. Spent a lot of it talking to friends, watching stakes races, writing a blog post for my horse blog, checking up horse neglect cases (Dang those take a long time), and updating my submitted agents sheet. I received two query rejections so far today and it's only one. The agents are on a role today. Now, for a brief rant over Breaking Dawn and some fangirling over Harry Potter. (Don't worry, there will be no spoilers.) Let's get Breaking Dawn out of the way. With Eclipse's filming underway, they are considering making a movie out of BD. Okay, seriously, you want to make a movie out of that? Just take the beginning of BD, hook it onto the ...

I don't have a lot of links this week. I'm not really sure why...just don't. I've been working on revisions the last three days. They're going well and I hope to have them complete by WW. Then I get to send her off to Query Land and turn my attention to Jump. Hannah's waiting not-so-patiently so I can't wait to go back. No Must Read this week. Not enough links for me to need to feature one. Blood Red Pencil has some tips on blog tours this week. GLA has a 2010 Guide to Literary Agents excerpt: How NOT to get an agent . I so need to get that book... They also have an interview with Jessica Sinsheimer of Sarah Jane Freymann Literary. Pimp My Novel continued their series of taking a look at genre specific sales this week covering literary fiction , historical , women's fiction , and romance . Querytracker has a wonderful post on character vs plot driven novels. Rachelle Gardner has two great posts, one on how to tighten up your manuscript and anothe...

Break by Hannah Moskowitz Jonah is on a mission to break every bone in his body. Everyone knows that broken bones grow back stronger than they were before. And Jonah wants to be stronger—needs to be stronger—because everything around him is falling apart. Breaking, and then healing, is Jonah's only way to cope with the stresses of home, girls, and the world on his shoulders. When Jonah's self-destructive spiral accelerates and he hits rock bottom, will he find true strength or surrender to his breaking point? Sounds cool, doesn't it? It's times like these that I wish I could buy books off Amazon. It's already in stock! Hannah has a blog and a website if you want to know more about her and Break. Now I'm off to search for my wallet and hope that it's in the bookstore when we go...

Okay, this news is far too awesome to wait until tomorrow. You're never going to believe it! DESTINY IS DONE! That's right! The rewrite is complete at 78,000 words! Did I have any idea when I wrote my WW post this morning that I was going to be making this announcement? NO! I knew that I wanted to get some work down on Destiny today, but at that point I didn't even know how it was going to end, let alone know that I was going to finish it! Now begins the process of editing and querying. I'm going to celebrate this afternoon and then decide if I'm going to query while I polish or polish and then query. (Normally I would suggest the second option, but I'm afraid I'm going to explode if I don't start querying soon.)

And it's that time of the week again. It's been a pretty good one. I'm about ready to kick the laptop this morning though. It's being very slow and I almost had a panic attack this morning because I thought that I'd lost everything that wasn't backed up, or at least everything I did last night. But thanks to Word's Autorecover I managed to save everything and it's all backed-up now. I had a pretty decent week this week writing wise. My best day was yesterday with 4,108 words and my worst days were Saturday and Sunday (but I have excuses for those days) with 0 words both days. Last night I went on a total writing roll. I remember looking at the clock around ten-thirty and then the next time I glanced down at it it was midnight. Destiny: Status: Progressing slowly Last week: 69,000 words This week: 72,000 words (I decided to knock off the polished part since I'm concentrating on the rewrite and my beta's disappeared again) If you'd asked me a ...

Had a pretty good weekend this weekend and I hope you all did too. :) Saturday I spent most of the day with family members that I only get to see a few times a year, including my now eight month old niece. She's so cute! Both her and her nine month old cousin are cutting teeth though so they were pretty grouchy Saturday. Sunday my mom decided to wake me up and announce that instead of going to the reunion we were going on a day trip hiking. We ended up only going hiking on one trail, instead driving all through a bunch of little towns trying to find the place that we were supposed to hike at. Still, we saw a lot of pretty scenery and I got a lot of reading done. I read Realms of the Gods by Tamora Pierce and I'm happy to report that I like the book as much, if not more, as a writer than I did as a non-writer. I also started Nation by Terry Pratchett, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting into it. The worldbuilding and writing style just aren't my kind of thing. I coul...

We're going to start this weekly post off with some bad news. Yeah, I'm sorry too. Then we'll get to the good stuff and hopefully you'll be all cheered up before it's over. Firebrand is closing! That's right, the agency that we all know and love, that created the Query Holiday earlier this year, is closing. This does, however, explain last week's news that three agents had left Firebrand to create their own agency. In much happier news, MSFV is holding another Secret Agent contest . Genres included this month are romance -- including paranormal and historical, -- urban fantasy, historical fiction, high-concept women's fiction (what is that?), and literary fiction. Must Read: Here's a wonderful post on what keeps writers from writing . I think I've suffered from all of these at least once. A week. And Kristin's very inspirational journey to agented-ness . I'm going to go read it again once I'm done with this post. I need some kind of ...

It's Thursday which means some new releases. I went through B&N and Amazon and found some awesome ones this morning! I actually planned to have something very special to share with you today, but it looks like that might have to wait until Monday. It's a surprise. :) Don't worry, it'll be great. Sent by Margaret Peterson Haddix Not sure on the release date "I think it's probably safe to say, given when you should have landed, that you're...um..." "Tell me!" "I think, right now, you're the king of England." Thirteen-year-olds Jonah and Chip are reeling from the news that they're both missing children from history, kidnapped from their proper time period. Before they can fully absorb this revelation, a time purist named JB zaps Chip and another boy, Alex, back to the fifteenth century, where they supposedly belong. Determined not to lose their friends, Jonah and his sister, Katherine, grab Chip's arms just as he...

Ahhh WW. Until yesterday I was sure that I was going to have very disappointing progress to report and then it just sort of took off. Hoping the same thing happens today. I don't have anything random to say, other than the fact that whenever I start working I usually get distracted by my masochistic desire to look at horse classifieds. I found out that my favorite horse sold, but came across a very beautiful gray Irish Draught mare. She wouldn't fit my mom's bill, but she'd be perfect for me.... Anyway... I've had a strange itch to work on Shipwrecked and her sequel lately. I'm not allowed to until I at least finish Destiny's rewrite, but Maria's starting to get bored. As much as I want to tell her and Dylan's story, I have to put it on the sidelines for now. I've had a very lackluster writing week. I went from the writers' block of last week, to a busy weekend, to a rather severe writing depression. My best day was yesterday with 1837 words...

Well my day started off rather horrible and then turned to a pretty dang good day. Good: I got an email from my sister-in-law. She got things covered at work and so she and my baby neice are coming up this weekend! :D I only get to see them a few times a year, so I'm very excited. I caught up on the weekend stakes races. Added Flashing, Gio Ponti , and Zensational to my watch list. Zenyatta went 12 for 12 with her thrilling win in the Clement Hirsch. Sad to hear that one of my favorite geldings, Commentator, is retiring now after his third in the Whitney. He was a great horse and will be missed. I just hope that he has the quiet retirement that every racehorse deserves. I finally got it arranged so that I can use text to speech with Word 2007. So when I stop sulking, I'm going to listen to it read my chapters and do some editing. Bad: Writing is not going very well. I'm in a writing depression over Destiny and her query. More on that Wednesday of course. Reading 1984. D...

You never really know how many blogs you're following until you miss three days and spend about three hours catching up. So guess what came yesterday? HANDCUFFS! They put it in the mailbox so I've probably had it for like the last two days and didn't know. Except I'm not allowed to read it until 1984's done and that book has an annoying tendency to make me start yawning and not be able to stop. It's literally put me to sleep on a couple occasions. Not sure why, it just does. So review of Handcuffs will be coming up sometime next week. I was hoping to finish 1984 today and then read Handcuffs over the weekend, but that probably isn't going to happen because I'm spending this weekend with my sister and niece (the one that's older than me, not the little girl. Crazy, I know). Anyway... We had some exciting news down at TWFT this week. Kody was FINALLY able to announce who's publishing her book! Here's her official announcement ! EEK CONGRATS KOD...

My new release list is running dry. I'm probably going to have to go on amazon or B&N and see if I can find some more. Had a rather depressing night last night. Gangbuster finished fourth in the Cougar II and then I spent about three hours working on my query which is rather depressing in itself. Planning on working on it some more today. If anyone has some awesome query vibes that they don't need, I could use them. I also discovered that the 2010 Guide to Literary Agents is now available. Now I just need to dig up about $14 and a ride to the bookstore to buy it... This first one was a nice surprise. I vaguely remember reading one of the Landover books are a few years ago. I need to see if I can find them so I can reread it. A Princess of Landover by Terry Brooks Release Date: August 18th Ben Holiday, Chicago lawyer and mere mortal turned monarch of enchanted Landover, has grappled with scheming barons, fire-breathing beasts, diabolical conjurers, and extremely wicked witc...

This is going to be a short post since I haven't actually done much writing in the last week. So let's allow me to have a quick fangirl moment over horse racing. EEK I saw Rachel Alexandra's Haskell victory last night! AMAZING! And I can't believe Mine That Bird lost the West Virginia Derby. I didn't want him to go the same way as Giacomo, but it looks like he might be headed in that direction. Gosh I hope the match between Rachel and Zenyatta happens. Who's bright idea was it to hold the Breeders' Cup on a synthetic track two years in a row anyway? Everyone root for Gangbuster in tonight's Cougar II Handicap! If he wins, I'll be on cloud nine for a year. Sorry about that. If you didn't understand any of that, then you don't know horse racing like I do. Which very few people I know actually do... Anyway (yes I might need to start a blog for my horse racing fangirling) let's get back to what today is actually about. Now that it's Augus...

OMG guys! Spent the weekend with my cousins and ended up staying an extra day than originally planned. I just now remembered (five minutes before midnight, probably not going to make it) that I haven't done my Monday blog post yet. My time clock is way off; I keep thinking it's still Sunday. Probably not going to be a Teaser Tuesday this week. :( I can't figure out anything that I can post. Okay if I think of something cool, maybe I'll post it. Discoveries of the weekend: Three days with cousins = three days with no writing Coffee is good McDonald's coffee is not I'm pretty good at the guitar in Rock Band My mom can be irritating Knowing is a good movie, but very...strange. Just mentioning the ending makes my mom give me a long lecture. 50 First Dates is the cutest movie I've ever seen. Disadvantage of ordering books from the bookstore = it takes them forever to get here. (Handcuffs still hasn't come. You'll know when it has.) 1 pm is now my new rec...