SEVEN! It's not scary, I promise.

My little boy is seven today!!! Awww. Not only is he just the sweetest and most perfect child on the whole planet, but seven is a prime and odd number. ;)

So, I need to clean, vacuum, and steam-clean my floors. I also need to go clean up the therapy room and put up T's birthday swing.

Man... I'm so tired.

I just submitted my pitch to the Knight Agency. Thanks to everyone who helped out with that.

I'm just exhausted today due to asthma issues, so I'm hoping this caffeine kicks that in the head. Asthma sucks when you have things to accomplish.

Okay... off to try to accomplish.

Oh, Catherine.... you are so wonderful. I just want to say that having you email me yesterday when I was trying to pull out of my slump... it just meant so much. It made my whole day so much better. I'm really grateful to have "met" so many wonderful people through this blog and twitter. You guys are so awesome.

Pitch... it's the new naughty word

Above is the cover I used for my hardcopy beta readers before I changed the name a little.

Okay, so I need to work on my pitch for Re:Straint today. I'm wondering if I should focus on Scorched and Re:Straint as far as querying and so on goes. Honor kicks tail, don't get me wrong, but it might be difficult to convey how Honor isn't your typical vampire book and is genuinely funny.

Oh... I should post a link to that Submissions Festival I keep bringing up:

http://nephele.livejournal.com/117703.html

So, I need to write that pitch for Re:Straint. I still have my full on Scorched in with CJLA. I have a couple Honor queries out, but I'm sure I'll get my rejections of those on either Valentine's Day or President's Day... or both. ;) If I do... it's seriously okay. Honor is really hard to query because of the over-saturation of vamp Lit. out there. Rejections on Honor have been much easier to take because I just know you can't get across Honor's voice in a small excerpt and a query letter. I've barely touched queries on these other two because I've been distracted with writing actually. So, I think Re:Straint has been queried once which went right to partial... and Scorched... maybe two or three times. Maybe. So, this will be new and fun to query on Re: Straint.

On the pitch, I'm going to use a tighter cut of the blurb below, but it needs to be one paragraph. So, that might be interesting. I've also had a really nice slushpile reader offer to critique my query on Re: Straint, so I'll work on getting that to her today.

I guess that's it. Hmm. I'm going to go visit blogs this morning and try to be a good blog friend instead of the twitterhead I've been lately.

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Test Subjects Needed -Must be Willing to Handle Infectious Materials

Okay, so there is another "pitchfest" this week. This time with one of the agents from the Knight Agency. Unlike the previous one, she'll be accepting submissions all week and it will be private.

So, I'm doing a second run through on Re: Straint, but then I'll need some betas to read. I'm planning on submitting to this pitchfest, but it'll just be a short submission. I have a bit to get the full ready. Normally, I'd love to reciprocate on Beta-ing, but I really struggle NOT to do line-by-line, and these next two weeks are going to be freakishly busy for me, so it wouldn't be an immediate reciprocation.

Before anyone volunteers, let me tell you what I need and about this one: I converted the entire manuscript to first person from third person as well as adding in epistolatory sections in between each chapter. So, I need third person typos found and those sections typo-checked. (That's as deep of a line-by-line as I'm looking for. Glaring typos.) Also, in the conversion between third and first--there are going to be some "kinks" especially with exposition. (I.e. Lucas shouldn't spend paragraphs talking to himself about things to do with the Strain for no reason... it would be odd.) I've been working on that last night and this morning. That will create possibly new problems, though, in that I might cut enough exposition that it'll be confusing. So, I need continuity, clarity, and flow watched.

Let me give you a summary of this before you get nuts too:

The skeletons hiding in Lucas's closet are microscopic, but deadly. He's never had a normal life. Genetics have predetermined what he eats for breakfast and who he can be around. Nothing about his existence is healthy including his reaction to Hallie. He's been stalking her as his desire to be around her has proven to be irresistible. Like an infection, she's in his blood, but he desperately wants to keep his germs... and family to himself. There are those among the Strain who'd kill to keep them apart.

The feeling of hollowness and waiting has finally lifted in Hallie's life, but the mystery surrounding Lucas just seems to grow exponentially. She keeps trying to convince him she needs him in her life completely and forever, but he's convinced he'll prove fatal to her. His mother is rather terrifying, but how bad can she really be? What is the Strain and why do its members hide in dark and quiet corners?

Not everything is visible to the naked eye in this story of infectious love.

Re: Straint is an Urban Science-fiction YA 89,000 words, with mild profanity (PG-13 rating for violence and so on) It does mention cannibalism in an off-hand, glib way--so if that bothers you... this isn't the book to read. It's first person with three POVs.

Anyway, my email address is wendy at sparrow dot us I think two or three betas would be perfect on a stick.

Okay, I'm going back to revising. Have a good Monday everyone. Hugs.

Oh and, in the end, I decided not to do ABNA even though that's what originally spurred-on this rewrite. Best of luck to those that entered.

Terror in Real Time

So, yesterday, I accomplished very little... as the Husband can attest to. (But, wisely, should not.) I did get a lot of sleep, but I think a lot of that was because my stomach was empty. I also managed to submit a pitch for Scorched in a pitch fest. They're going through the pitches today and commenting as they go.

I pitched to Caren and I'm on page seven. I've been following Elana on Twitter, though. Anyway, I've learned a lot just from reading their thoughts on the pitches they've already sifted through. I'm trying not to get my hopes up. I can just totally see a "It's been done" in my future. So, that'll be my day. A lot of "refresh... waiting... waiting... refresh...."

Oh... and T is home. He was complaining of a stomachache. I'm still dizzy enough that the idea of going to pick him up from school sounded miserable... not to mention I didn't want him hurling at school. He's been antsy and hyper, though, so I suspect he's fine.