Happy Belated Memorial Day!

Memorial Day weekend was a blast, filled with mucho alcoholic beverages. I came into work hung over this morning. Blah. I haven’t posted for a while, but for the record I had a very successful graduation. It came and it went…quickly and I didn’t trip and fall either so kudos to me. Right now I’m preparing for a weeklong trip to Florida. Can you say the Wizarding World of Harry Potter? Yep, that’s right….Universal Studios here I come! I don’t know if I am more excited to see the beach or going to Universal.

Also, Jennifer and I have been delayed a bit on the release for querying….we decided officially to make our novel YA. So, I went back and revamped our first five chapters and this week I will continue on the other two chapters that we edited to get it up to par with the rest of the chapters that I fixed.

And one more thing, this weekend my husband had a dream and with the brainstorming efforts of none other than my identical twin sister and her significant other, I have a title for a new book that I want to write….it will be called…wait for it…..The Circle. Starring none other than my real life family….it’s going to be awesome. Probably one of the best ideas I’ve heard of in a while….but it’s fiction and it will be bad ass.

Now that you have been updated, I’m going to hop off of here so I can regurgitate up my breakfast in hopes that my hangover will recede into nonexistence. Have a great week.

News is better than No News...or maybe Not!

Jennifer and I have been dead set on getting this novel to meet our standards and I would like to say that it is kicking our butts. We are having major debates on seperating some chapters into two chapters and then changing around the first 3-4 chapters to make it more appealing to the reader. Not to mention any further literary agents who will be asking for the manuscript.

Also, today is my last final. Saturday is my graduation and I couldn't be more excited. I want to thank everyone who has helped me in this long and demanding journey. Including my partner in crime, Jennifer, whose unwavering support and confidence in me, has kept me going.

But now that school is almost over, I can focus on new and more important things....In the next few months there are a lot of different authors who are releasing their next books in some of my favorite series, so here is a few of them to look forward to.

Laurell K. Hamilton's
Hit List (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 20)
This title will be released on June 7, 2011.




















Lauren Kate's
Passion (Fallen Series, Book 3)
This title will be released on June 14, 2011.





















Here is one of my favorite TV shows and book series that was written by Charlaine Harris. True Blood: The Complete Third Season (HBO Series)
This title will be released on May 31, 2011.

Reading, writing, and editing...

Since Stacey and I have been revamping AoE and neck deep in the editing process, I’ve found myself more focused on the formats and writing techniques of other writers than I have been in the past. I’m not going to name specific books or authors, but there have been a lot of Ahha! Moments to be had recently. The first thing I’ve noticed is that some of the books written by authors on my favorite list are really, really simple. While the descriptions are present, they’re not over the top, they aren’t embellished with unnecessary words, and they’re really straight forward and to the point with just enough description to give readers just enough information to create their own pictures in their head.

Another observation I made came when I started to read the latest release of one of my favorite authors. Now, I’m not sure if her writing has always been this way or if my view of reading has just changed, but with this particular book I am seriously disappointed in the quality of the writing. It feels like either she didn’t edit it correctly herself or her editor is seriously slacking on the job. The dialogue is choppy, the descriptions are mediocre at best, and I find some of the characters (who I used to adore without question) annoying as hell. I think I’ve been so critical of Stacey’s and my writing lately that it’s started to transfer to my views on the books I read, which can be a good thing in some instances, but kind of a drag when I really just want to be swept away by a story and not distracted by the numerous mistakes between pages.

I know this is a pretty random blog topic, but for some reason it’s been on my mind a lot lately. Strange thing is, I’m really not a big fan of editing, but now that I’ve started I can’t seem to stop. It’s really starting to affect the entertainment value of the books I read. I’m afraid by the end out our current editing on AoE I’m going to need some kind of 12 step program to get some control back lol.

Anyway, I just thought it was an interesting observation. We’ll see how far it goes. In the mean time, we’re almost to the halfway mark on editing AoE and there shall be querying in our future. Good times!

T-Minus Eleven Days

In the back of my mind, I have Europe's, It's the Final Countdown, playing in my mind. Eleven days until graduation and it has been a long and hard journey. The sacrifices I have made to become a college graduate....and I hope that it's well worth it.

Today, I spoke with my aunt and she asked me what I planned on doing with my degree and I said, "Nothing, until I know what my writing career is going to look like." And then I continued the conversation by saying that I have become very ambitious and want a literary agent before September. That might sound aggressive, but I don't think it's aggressive enough. As soon as school is out, we are going to finish perfecting AOE, formatting it into a formal manuscript and then sending out our query letters.

You can say that we are fairly nervous; I hope we get a bite soon, because I think if we don't then it will deflate our spirits, but we do have a list of top twelve agents in our genre that we will send our queries out to first.

Julie Barer
Barer Literary, LLC

Jim McCarthy
Dystel & Goderich Literary Management

Ginger Clark
Curtis Brown, Ltd.

Anne Hawkins
John Hawkins & Associates, Inc.

Barry Goldblatt
Barry Goldblatt Literary Agency, Inc.

Irene Goodman
Irene Goodman Literary Agency

Wendy Schmalz
Wendy Schmalz Agency

Susan Schulman
Susan Schulman Literary Agency

Bill Contardi
Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents, Inc.

Laura Rennert
Andrea Brown Literary Agency

Jodi Reamer
Writers House

Rosemary Stimola
Stimola Literary Studio

Kate McKean
Howard Morhaim Literary Agency

Alan Nevins
Renaissance Literary & Talent

And then after that, we are going to query everyone in that genre.....no particulars until we get either rejections or partial submissions, or even maybe full submissions...I'm hoping for the full requests. And if we are lucky, we will become as famous as Stephanie Meyer or Lauren Kate....either or.

Then we can start living our lives the way we want to. The End.
P.S. Charlaine Harris' new book is coming out today, Dead Reckoning.