Rewrites and the Emergency Room

Yesterday my little one got a fever that wouldn't go away. Tylenol knocked it down a degree or two for the first twelve hours. But after that it quit working. Could be because he vomited everything up right after I stuck it in his mouth. When he started whimpering and getting lethargic, I dropped my oldest off at a neighbor's house and headed for the ER.

Four hours later, I left with an unhappy, feverless one-year-old. His fever had been high enough that they ran a bunch of tests to rule out anything serious. Blood tests, throat and nose tests. Nothing. They gave him something for the fever and sent us home.

Four hours with not even a book to read. I had a lot of thinking time. After being certain that my baby was okay, I could relax and--well, not enjoy the time in ER, but at least make good use of it. And, I'm excited.

I don't think I'm allowed to talk about the plot of my book in detail. Just peripherals. The romance that originally began and ended in this book no longer ends. In fact, it barely begins. This gives me a whole sequel to give life to the romance. I see this as being a two-book series. But I'm seeing another two-book series somewhere down the road, with the same characters, several years later. This could go on forever. The hard part will be making each novel fit the same 'thriller' genre that we're doing for this one. I don't know how many exciting adventures I can think up.

And I'm tired. Trying so hard to stay awake and work on rewrites. But I think I might sleep...

I'm getting published!!

So it's official! Yesterday I got an email from WiDo Publishing Company offering me a publishing contract. I quickly thought about it and sent an email back accepting!

Granted, they haven't emailed me the contract yet, I haven't read it, and haven't signed it. The next step is, they will mail me two copies of the contract. I sign it and send it back. I'm very anxious to see what my terms and conditions will be!

I'm so excited! This is fantastic for me. I always wanted to be published. I don't know if I could've broken into the market with a bigger company. WiDo is growing and needs writers, which fits perfectly with my needs to find a publisher.

There were some conditions already, though. They want me to change the demographics of my book. Here are some things from the email.

We are very impressed with your submission, "Walk Beside Me." Several editors have reviewed it and all had a positive response. Our major concern with it is that the demographic it's apparently written for-- LDS adolescent and teen girls.

One editor's suggestion was to bring in the opening cop characters more, to intertwine their investigation into the story, and thus make it more of an adult adventure/thriller, in order to broaden the demographic. The four girls would still be the main characters and focus, but a team of investigators as introduced in your prologue would also be developed and followed in the background. Is this something you could consider doing?

Overall, your story is incredible, fast-paced and a really, really good read. Your plot development is excellent, and the characters are also well-developed and likeable, except for the villains, who are incredibly frightening. Again, this would make a highly marketable book as long as it could be broadened to an adult demographic. There still might be plenty of teenagers who would read it and enjoy it, but limiting its appeal to simply the Mormon teen girl might be a very dangerous road to go, marketing wise, for above-stated reasons.

In conclusion, WiDo would like to offer you a contract and work with you on the editing, as long as you are willing to revise "Walk Beside Me" so that it could be marketed to a broader demographic.

If you are agreeable to this offer, please respond by return email and a contract will be on its way. Once we receive two copies of the signed contract, an editor will be assigned to you, to work closely with you throughout the long, often rigorous editing process.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Wow! Can you believe it? I've been trying to get this book published for years!!

Okay, so right now, here's my game plan: I've got to finish Branca. I'll work on that one until the end of next week. In the meantime, I'm going to make an outline of where to make Walk Beside Me have more 'adult elements.' This is going to be fun! Hopefully by then I'll be assigned to me editor, and we can start rewriting. And then I think I need to start working on the sequel!

Avoiding Cliches

Right now I'm working on my second novel, Branca. This novel made it to the semi-finals in the ABNA (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award) contest of 2008. It used to be my better novel. But after the changes I made to Walk Beside Me, I kind of cringe when I look back over Branca.

I love rewriting, though. I love watching something mediocre (or :::gulp::: bad) become better. And Emerin, my friend from writing.com, said something several months ago about the ending being kind of cliche. Well, how do you fix the ending? I've got it now. The idea came to me yesterday. And I am *so excited* to start working on it.

Thanks, Em!

Currently I'm on chapter 7, though. Changing the time frame and giving Cirus' coronation more urgency. Before I think it was kind of like, "Why are we rushing his coronation? What's the hurry?" Well, I'm still working on the reason, but I think it's more clear now. And instead of having this novel take place over the course of about a year, we're cutting it back to six months. Might even cut it back more...but six months isn't very long for our protagonist to meet Prince Charming (or Dejan, as it would be), court him, and marry him. Though I suppose in fairy tale time, it's plenty long enough.

Bom dia!

Yawn. What a perfect Saturday morning. I'm sitting in my bed. My 3-year-old is at my feet, watching "Little Einsteins." My 1-year-old is on the floor playing with his firetruck. It's so nice to be with them. Such wonderful, sweet little people.

We were up late last night. Our extremely patriotic neighbors launched firecrackers until after midnight. Is that even legal??? I let Jacen sleep with me. He was scared. Except he doesn't really sleep. He just kind of...tosses.

So Mark is in the Army and I canceled our dental insurance last month. I checked our bank account yesterday--something I hate doing, b/c I always expect us to be overdrawn!--and they charged us our premium! Well, I about had a tizzy. And it was Friday night and there's nothing I can do about it! I hate that. I'm one of those people who has to take care of it RIGHT NOW, make that phone call and get it resolved RIGHT NOW. Now I have to wait until Monday! Grrr.

I think I'm supposed to make a post in my writer's blog. something intellectual about writing. I spent most of last night rewriting chapter 5 of Branca, my fantasy novel. Turns out Claude's point of view wasn't working for me. Or Evan's. Or Maitle's. Okay, so I had about 50 points of view in this novel. Yikes! I'm learning. I'm a better writer than I was. So I'm cutting it down to four points of view. Maybe five, but probably just four. That's some major rewriting!

Oh, and thanks to Vicky, I joined Twitter. I'm waiting for my fans to flock to me by the dozens now.

If you have a chance, check out my other blog. I share it w/ several other writers, and we are full of good advice for your writing process. http://smblooding.blogspot.com/