ONE!

First rejection! I told myself I'd send out five more query letters when I got my first rejection email. So I'll do that after work today. Weirdly: this does not concern me as much as I'd expected.

:-/

I just sent out the first five queries for The Cherubim. Feeling pretty ill. I've worked so hard on this, and I know that the way things go, there will be a bunch of rejections coming in soon. Still, without query letters, nothing would get published, right?

Description of my favorite hats

Things are getting exciting again.

Last weekend, Rebecca and I started reviewing The Cherubim - giving it that one last layer of polish before I begin querying again. It's good. It isn't The Best, but it's the first thing I've written where, on rereading it a couple of months later, I feel pretty good about it.

That's not true. I used to write short stories, and I *still* think they're funny ten years later. They're my sad little orphans; I feel pretty sorry for them, but they're kind of cute in their rag-tag dirty clothes and funny hats. But this is different - when I finished The Dead Rise, I was kind of embarrassed to show it to anyone. Whenever I sent it to anyone, I'd have this disclaimer of "This is the first thing I've written, I'm still working on polishing it up..."

So maybe this might go somewhere. Maybe not. Who knows! At the very least, I'm finally getting to the point where I'm wrapping it up. I started writing it in December of last year, and when I go back and reread the notes and the original, first draft, I can't believe how much it's changed.

I'll finish it up and start querying next weekend. And then I can move on to the second draft of Mrs. Shadow. And then Rebecca will have another book to read!