Oh Frabjous Day

So you remember that query contest hosted by Jamie Ayres I mentioned Wednesday? It's over already, due to the speedelicious stylings of the agent judge, Nicole Resciniti.

Late January 18, she announced two winners, who received full requests. One of them is my dear friend, Donna Weaver! I'm so excited for Donna! She and her book totally deserve it. Congratulations, Donna!

The rest of us "non-winners" get to send the first 3-chapters and a synopsis to Nicole. Sort of makes me feel like a winner, too. :)

The most exciting part was that Nicole went around and commented on everyone's query. You can go here to see my whole query for DUSTED, but my bio-paragraph (which you'll need to read to understand her comment) is:

I’m a third-generation theatre geek with seven years of experience as a criminal defense lawyer, where I’ve learned about the drug trade directly from traffickers and addicts. I’ve published a paper on the juvenile death penalty, but this is my first novel. The death penalty paper was easier.

This is what she said:

The death penalty paper was easier—haa! Lmao. The title rocks and I’m always a fan of the fish-out-of-water tales. I think this sounds like fun. I’m really looking forward to reading about your pixies.

So. Awesome. Right? This is where I thank Aprilynne Pike for adding that very line and Donea Weaver (no relation to Donna Weaver, mentioned above) for suggesting the title. I, of course, maintain full credit for realizing the brilliance of both and keeping their contributions. :D

I'm going to be polishing my synopsis over the next few days (I just finished re-polishing the first three chapters a few days ago) and crossing my fingers as I dive back into the query pool. Wish me luck! :)

Another Blogfest: With a Contest!

Brenda Drake has such cool contests. This time, it's this one:

Anyone can play and you can still enter: you post your first 250 words on your blog and general crits as well as guesses as to what the character's age is. Then you polish them up and email them to Brenda before 11:59 PM on October *ahem* December 10 (thanks, Shelly). She'll winnow them out and post them on her blog, where they'll be judged by Gabriela Lessa. Prizes will be awarded. For full details, go here.

If you've been following my blog for a while, you've seen this a lot. It's mildly different, and I'm very open to further changes. There aren't any references to her age, so I didn't have to black anything out.

Brina knew better than to go out in public looking less than her questionable best. But she was late, it was rush hour, and home was thirty minutes away by car… but only ten by air. So she dumped her school bag, gym bag, and purse in her best friend Moira’s closet, threw open the window, and sat on the sill.

She closed her eyes, and, concentrating on the gland behind her heart, started pushing Black pixie dust through her body. When her fingertips started to tingle, she thought small and opened her eyes to see the window frame rising large around her as she shrank down, down, until she was the size of a small mouse, buffeted by the warm fall breeze.

Moira lifted a hand, already headed for her shower. “See you tomorrow,” she said.

Brina grinned, waved, and launched herself into the sweltering air of San Antonio, gliding above the manicured gardens that stretched out under Moira’s window.

The first flash came from her left and, like an idiot, she twisted toward it. Which is how the photographer’s zoom lens caught her: eyes opened wide, long braid slicked back from her face with her own sweat, and limbs sticking out at startled angles from her workout tank and short-shorts. All of it glowing softly brown in the dusk.

As a special bonus, the magazine’s cover photo captured the moment her four bright white wings froze in shock, sending her plummeting a few feet downward. 

So what do you think? How old does Brina seem? Any tips to help me convey her age better?

Note: if you're looking for the winner of NIGHTINGALE, I'll have that up tonight... I hope.

Squee! An actual TEEN likes my pitch!

I'm crushing on Drama Girl right now. Not that I've met her, or even know her real name, but I gotta say: having a real-live teenager read 11 YA pitches and first pages and pick MINE to "buy" is a thrill. A THRILL!  Especially since I'm poised on the brink of the scary query plunge.

As soon as I knew there was a Drama Girl, I hoped she'd pick mine--my book has a play in it! Thank you Drama Girl! You give me hope!

If you're writing YA--even if you didn't enter the "teen judges" contest-- you're gonna want to head over to Brenda Drake's blog and read the finals posts. (Drama Girl was the second finalists post. Choir Girl was the first. We're still waiting for Book Girl and Sports Girl tonight or tomorrow. UPDATE: Book Girl's post is now up! UPDATE2: And so is Sports Girl's post!) Brenda has been running a super-cool teen book club for a while now and got the four teens to agree to judge a pitch-and-first-page contest. After the entries were in, the girls read the pitches and divvied them up by who liked which pitch best. Then they read the first pages of the pitches they chose and commented on each one, picking only two to "buy." Their comments are a priceless insight into our target audience.

And, obviously, Drama Girl has very, very good taste. :)

Now, if everyone will just send happy thoughts my way for the announcement of the overall winners tomorrow night, that'd be great. :)

UPDATE: I didn't win, but I still loved reading all the comments. Such a fun contest. Thanks Brenda!

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.