Week in Short

And it's a beautifully sunny day here! It was 64 when I woke up this morning with a high of 80. Ahh Michigan. Gotta love it. The bad news is, it's supposed to rain in Louisville tomorrow. Now this wouldn't matter, except the Derby takes place in Louisville, Kentucky. And rain + Derby = not good.

Lots of awesome links this week, so let's get started!

Must Read:
Conference etiquette from Querytracker

Contests:
Steph Su's Big Spring Giveaway has some VERY awesome prizes! The contest ends May 7th so hurry over there!

BookEnds:
The internet and your career
Query tally
The why of query rejections

Got YA:
Querying blunders

Kathleen Ortiz:
Query tally [Seems to be a popular thing this week...]

Literary Rambles:
Agent spotlight: Natalie Fischer

Pimp My Novel:
Right of first refusal

Rachelle Gardner:
Why publishers don't do market research

Steph Su Reads:
What's missing in YA contemporary

Story Flip:
Onomatopoeia
Seven deadly sins of a first chapter

Writer Unboxed:
Pitch advice
Building character depth
Book covers

***
This wasn't a fun week for me, so writing kind of fell to the wayside. Plus I have old projects that keep popping up in my head asking if I'm coming back to them soon (Destiny and Assassin's Wife, mostly).

Double-Crossed: Hit 3k last night. I wanted to work on it some more, but Raye's one of the most stubborn characters I've ever tried to write and she's not making it easy for me to get her and Brian's story down.

Guardian: 1.2k. I worked on this one a little bit this week.

Three Days: Almost 11k. I'm at a loss with this one. It's the only story I've ever tried to write that I have to fit into a set time-frame. So far it's progressing a little too fast, so I'm trying to figure out how to slow down without putting in filler and losing the tension.

Hope everyone has an awesome (Derby) weekend and I'll see you on Monday!!

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