In the words of George Michael Bluth,   I've been sitting on this news for a week, hoping that it would sink in (spoiler: it hasn't), but wanted to go ahead and write an entry while my thoughts and emotions were still fresh. An awesome publisher made an offer to publish one of my books! … Continue reading It’s happening →

My short horror story "Groundskeeper" was just accepted by The Ginger Collect literary magazine for their seventh issue. It comes out 9/22/18. I'm glad it found a home with them. They value the uncanny, the strange stuff. I've been writing for about four years now, primarily on any one of five novels I'm toiling away … Continue reading First Acceptance! →

It took me ten months to produce the rough draft of my first novel. That was a scorching pace for me since I hadn't ever written anything and had to do things like ask google where the comma goes before and/or after a dialogue tag. Also I asked google things like: "What is a dialogue … Continue reading The 73 Day Novel →

Completed/polished novels: 1 Queried novels: 1 Rejections so far: 25 In progress novels: 3 -[Sequel to novel being queried] - fully outlined, some written. Just waiting to see where Book I goes. -A Priori (working title) is about 110 pages in. I very much love this project and I will finish it, but it is … Continue reading What am I working on? How’s it going? →

That is all. I've got the one book out on queries and I've started two others. Three books. I took a class on Sunday and the instructor showed us one of his first query letters. I was crushed. It was better than anything I have ever written. 🙂

Look, If I'd known I was going to realize the necessity of an important revision to my novel six months after I'd begun querying, I would have waited to query. My story was 2.5 years old, ten months to write and the rest for editing and revision. That's a lot of work put into polishing … Continue reading Major Revision with Queries Out →

When do you actually become a writer? Is it when you feel comfortable saying "I'm a writer" when people ask what you do? Is it when you publish your first book? I'll probably never get to the point that I'm comfortable enough to call myself a writer absent publishing that first book. Who knows when … Continue reading Metamorphosis →

If you ever wanted empirical proof that money can't buy happiness, spend a little time in first class. One leg should be sufficient--no need to burden yourself with the experience more than that.  There are exceptions to every generalization, of course, but I hardly expect there is a more concentrated collection of wealthy and comfortable, … Continue reading First Class →

And that number after "Agents" is certain to climb! I'm solidly in the game now, having received my first three rejections. One was a nicely written and carefully worded form rejection and the other two were more substantive. One of those was particularly thoughtful and detailed, having come after she'd read the first 50 pages. … Continue reading Agents 3, Chris 0 →