Friday Five: Going Again

1. December is such a hectic time for everyone. For some crazy reason we had all three of our kids within five weeks of each other, and put Christmas in the middle of it. So that means planning three parties, squeezing Christmas in the middle and juggling all of the other great Christmas type activities as well. I love the season, but stopped doing Christmas cards several years ago. Maybe I'll start doing a spring letter or something later. It's just too much right now.

2. Writing is something I love. It's how I personally identify myself and I've started telling new acquaintances that I write. Not only am I working on my novel(s), but I also supplement my husband's income by writing at home for online sites. It's nice to finally own up to the fact that I'm a writer. I always get embarrassed when people tell me they found something I wrote online. I'm not ashamed of it, I guess I'm just a private person. I don't know.

3. Querying is happening. That is all I'm going to say. I'm not going to share stats or anything. I think it's too personal. When I get my agent I'll share, and if I retire this project (and I don't want to and that's months and hundreds of agents away) then I'll announce that. But I'm officially in query mode. And basically I feel like it is time to just get on with it. I'm planning on starting with groups of five agents at a time to see if I need to tweak my query anymore.

4. Titles. I really hate titles--well at least coming up with decent ones. I'm just no good at it. There are people who are so gifted at titles. I really like Ally Carter's titles for example, but I'm not one of those people. I'm just not. So I'm trying different title in my query letters, well not really. I sent out one title, and then sent out a different one. We'll see if it makes a difference.
And I need a title for my dystopian.

5. I've often wondered at how people come up with book ideas and marveled at the people who have a lot of ideas lined up in a neat little row. I've usually got one or two vague ideas floating around in the back of my head. Currently I have my dystopian novel, and a novel I've had the outline for for over five years (sad I know), but then in October I got the funnest cute idea for a total fluff romance novel (still young adult) and then I've been piecing together this novel about zombies based on this dream I've had three times (I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something). And then in the last week I've had two dreams that were the best novel ideas ever! Really I'm super excited. One is with werewolves/shapeshifters, but it is totally awesome, beyond awesome actually. I've had a thing for werwolves for awhile. And another kind of regency/paranormal idea. And the outlines are both down for them. Wow! I need to get busy because really the characters in these stories are super strong.


Happy Writing!