While I'm writing a synopsis, and finding it very difficult, I've revised the teaser or blurb or whatever it "should" be called. It does seem there are so many rules for submitting, and they vary widely from one source to the next. My synopsis should be 1 to 3 pages and include the major characters, the entire story, theme(s), plot, relationships, ( Read more... )

Here we go again. I’ve added to the teaser to include a bit more detail and hopefully make it more enticing to a potential reader (or agent, or publisher, God willin’ and the creeks don’t rise…) Next is the synopsis. Boiling down the entire story, in detail, into a few pages. Every source I read on what’s expected for a submission varies from two ( Read more... )

I’ve been trying all week to meet a goal of writing a synopsis for my novel. I have been looking at AgentQuery.com for motivation, but then work got very busy (a new listing, not a bad thing!) and I let that synopsis scare me off again. Why does it seem so much harder to boil down a 110,000 word novel to a few concise and well-written pages than it ( Read more... )

Be quiet for a moment.

My sister has but a few left

Here, with us.

Listen.

It's the song of her soul

About to fly free.
I went to my garden and
Gathered a small bouquet.
My garden where
We sat and laughed.

Tonight,
When stars light the heavens,

They will be one richer

For our loss,
Their gain.

Such love and light,

All our gathered spirits,

Attend her, hold her,

( Read more... )

Got a new computer (finally) yesterday, and completed a read-through of my novel in hard copy. Anyone who thinks, after all the editing and rewriting on the computer screen, that reading through on paper isn’t valuable is, well, wrong. I let it sit, thinking I was done and the hard copy read would just be for typos, but I was amazed at how many ( Read more... )

Keep trying to you get it right, eh? Another go at the blurb ( Read more... )

Revising that blurb. First sentence was too long. This is just to journal it for me, and for anyone who might be interested in commenting ( Read more... )

Long time since I've posted. Just finished editing the novel I've been working on (for long enough to have written War and Peace). Got through a draft just before the holidays and cut it from almost 178,000 words to 135,000. But a first-time, unpublished novel can't be longer than 130,000, so I got out the scalpel and went to work, again. I've just ( Read more... )

Well, this is Good Friday, but for me, not for the religious significance, but because of the amazing and wonderful responses I've been receiving all week ever since Jenna talked me into posting my two Brokeback stories to a couple fanfic (slash) sites that I'd never visited. I don't think of Brokeback as slash, and have no interests in the other " ( Read more... )

Today marks a year since my last post. It's not that I have much to say. It's just time to start again. The anniversary, the Ides of March and St. Patrick's Day, is and has been a hard one (reference last two posts from a year ago.) Our beautiful girl gave us six weeks during which she was nearly herself, seemed so normal, and then on May 1, after ( Read more... )