Saturday, March 21, 2009

Query Shark revisited!

Two months later:

http://queryshark.blogspot.com/2009/01/98.html

I'M SO, SO HAPPY! This is amazingly awesome. I want to dance. I got the "Good Revision Example" tag. This is what comes of querytracker.net - they helped me polish this to a fine shine. At least I know now that if I'm getting rejected, it's because they're genuinely disinterested - not because of a particularly bad query. :)

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

At LAST

Tomorrow, I should wrap up the second draft of The Cherubim - and my lovely wife can finally read it. I'm really excited; she hasn't read any of it yet. I don't think she even knows what it's about.

Thursday, my family is coming into town to spend a couple of days. I'll take off to recharge my brain before starting Book Three.

Sorry for the brain-dead, infrequent posts. I'm spending my off-hours watching youtube videos of Sandra Lee, my new favorite person. Who else can make a $40 cake into a $500 cake by adding store-bought cupcakes, decorated cookies, and sprinkles? "Priceless", quipped a moronic co-host of the show, devastated after he was told his smiley-face cookie was too Wal-Mart to be added to the cake.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Day ???

I'm two-thirds of the way through the second draft of The Cherubim. Still spending 90% of the week in the office revising away; at least it's more readable than the second draft of The Dead Rise. Still going to get back to Critique Circle once the chainsaw's put away and the scalpel comes out (right now, I'm trying to get rid a lot of the mundane stuff - those who've read earlier drafts of my first book know what I'm talking about :-) )

I've started to worry about the joblessness. I know; I planned to stay out of work for four to six months. That's still very do-able. But I'm getting grumpier the more I read the news, and when I look at job websites - NO ONE is hiring, and the few times I've submitted a resume for IT positions, I haven't heard a reply back. Sometimes, I wonder if my email is working properly.

So I applied for a job at a local bookstore that's a quarter mile away. Think I did well on the application, except when it asked for a salary, I listed an hourly fee more in line with an IT position than a bookstore clerk. That was silly of me.

I'm still not sure what to do. I'm nearly done with the second book, but I haven't heard back from any agents in a couple of weeks. I can't decide if I should send out a few more queries, or wait to hear some kind of feedback from the agents I've already queried.