Rapturous Raptureless

See? Lawyers can be raptured, too.

I've been having tons of fun this weekend following the rapture countdown online. So much fun that I planned a great post for Saturday, where I'd announce that, since I'd finally finished my second edit, I was now ready for the rapture, should it have to happen. I worked diligently all week on my edit, frantically scanning my writer's group's crits, fixing poorly worded sentences, showing where I had originally told, and adding far too many words to the book as a whole.

On Saturday, I delayed posting, planning to finish right up, and write the blog post right at rapture time. Or soon thereafter. Or sometime.

Around midnight, [no one I knew had disappeared and] I realized that I needed to rewrite a huge swath of my ending (again). Remember my post about anticlimax? Yeah, well, suffice to say the bad guys at the end of my book gave up and went away. Had to fix that. Took some time.

Anyway, after working feverishly all day today (it's not "work" if it's fun and I'm not getting paid, so I can do it on Sunday) I can now finally announce that I'M FINISHED!!

Not, like FINISHED, finished, but finished with this edit. The blasted thing is ready for my beta readers.

After I read over my new ending tomorrow to make sure it makes sense, that is.

If all goes well, and the betas like it, I hope to be querying in a couple of months. That could change. Has before.

Still, I'm going to take credit for postponing doomsday. There was NO WAY anyone was going anywhere before I finished this edit!


It's also good that I postponed this (ahem) post because I get to include an announcement of my very first writing contest honorable mention! Yay! It was a pitch-and-first-250 contest judged by Gina Panettieri (follow her here), President of Talcott Notch Literary Service. Out of approximately 88 entries, there were 4 winners and 4 honorable mentions. You can read my submission here. If you want to, that is.

Also honorably mentioned is my friend Chersti Nieveen. (The fact that her name is listed before mine on the Honorable Mention list means absolutely nothing.) Her submission is part of the story she brought to LDStorymakers 2010. As was mine--we worked on them together at our boot camp table with the awesome Aprilynne Pike. I love what a small world we have here.

We both win a $5 B&N certificate, which is SO COOL! Congrats, Chersi!


A Reminder:
Elana Johnson is willing to help us with our query letters on an Authors' Advisory call. Using fer-reals query letters supplied by fer-reals people. People like YOU! So far I've only received 11, which is rather astonishing to me. Who doesn't want their query letter fixed by a master like Elana?

At least I'll be able to slip my own into the pile without feeling guilty.

If you want yours included, see here for full details.