2005 Journal I

Don't miss Laurie's past journal entries. Here are the archives:

2006 Journal
I'll keep you posted here on all my writing adventures...

December 1, 2006: Whoa, I've really been neglecting my website. I'm so sorry! So, for you faithful visitors, I have some gifts to make up for it:

My huge MEGA-book giveaway -- FOUR bestselling books all up on my TBR pile, to be given away on Christmas Eve! Get your entries in!
A new essay, An Angel, I Think..., which is now posted on my Essays page, in time for the holidays.
And how about some beautiful shots of the incredible ice storm which swept through the midwest section of the US last night, giving us an unexpected day off, because both school and work were called off today! YIPPEE!!

In other news, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, and I'm determined to not get too stressed out about all the Christmas preparations and activities. If it gets done, it gets done. If it doesn't, it doesn't. (Remind of that if I start getting crazy.) Hope your holiday was wonderful and everything you hoped it would be.

Meanwhile, I'm realizing it's almost time to review my 2006 Writing Goals and start a new Journal for 2007. Amazing how time flies.

October 20, 2006: I had a disappointing rejection letter from Steeple Hill regarding Preacher Man. Turns out the editor who had read it earlier this year and written me a whole page of revision suggestions, and invited me to re-send it when the revisions were made -- is no longer with the company. And the editor who took her place is a lot less enthused about the manuscript. <<SIGH>>. So I'm pretty much back to square one for Preacher Man. And since the agent who had shown interest in it all summer ultimately declined on representing me, I'm faced with the grim prospect of marketing it to major Christian publishers without an agent. I located 3 or 4 who may consider it, sent some submissions out, and received prompt rejections. I have one publisher left to consider.

Sometimes I honestly wonder why I bother.

I did a really fun presentation at my Blackburn College Homecoming about going from Aspiring to Published. I had a great crowd and we had a lot of laughs. Beautiful fall day, too.

September 30, 2006: A lot has happened in my writing world since my last journal entry, so here goes:

One of the agents that I mentioned in my last post has taken a "pass" on representing Preacher Man. Although she liked it, she thought it still had some elements in it (even after my revisions) that would make it difficult to market to other Christian publishers if Steeple Hill rejected it a second time. (Remember I made revisions this summer at the specific request of editor Diane Dietz at Steeple Hill.) So, although I began querying this agent in January, and we spent several evenings talking on the phone in June, and she told me several times how much she enjoyed the book and my writing, in August it ultimately ended in rejection. Things in this business move at a snail's pace.
So, I sent the manuscript off to Diane Dietz anyway, with what I hope was a killer cover letter, while praying that she likes my revisions and comes back with an offer. Only time will tell.
Meanwhile, my publisher of Legacy of Lies emailed me and said he strongly urged me to enter the book in the EPPIE contest, which is the highest honored contest in the world of electronic publishing. It's like the RITA to romance writing, and the Oscar to movie actors. :) So I entered Legacy of Lies in the Single Title Mainstream category and will keep you posted as to what happens. I do know the EPPIE is very prestigious in the e-pub world, (check out this article about it) and the trophies are really cool:
And most important of all, I've finished Chapter One of my first draft of my new untitled book! It's my second inspirational romance and I'm really enjoying getting to know the main characters and figuring out how they're going to interact with each other. Hope to get some more time tomorrow to begin Chapter Two.

September 5, 2006: Well, my work is now revised, polished, and sent to two prospective agents -- one is reviewing Casey V and the other is reviewing Preacher Man. And the race is on! Ha ha. No, seriously, I'm hopeful that my agent search will end soon in a successful contract signing. Meanwhile, I'm finding my way back to writing. I've fleshed out a new inspirational romance (my second) and I'm chomping at the bit to begin writing it. I believe I'll write the first chapter to get to know the characters better, then I'll worry about plotting it out. I know the story arc, so that's all I need for now.

August 5, 2006: I'm back from an exhausting but fun three weeks (the week before Atlanta, I was on a family vacation to Philadelphia and Ocean City, Maryland!). Although the trips themselves were fantastic, the travel was horrendous! I was on 12 (count 'em, TWELVE) flights in the last three weeks and not ONE of them was on time. I had one cancellation, eleven delays, one instance of lost luggage, one rerouted destination, lots of sitting in airports and on runways, running breathlessly through airports to meet connectors, and even had to rent a car unexpectedly to make it to my final destination when the airplanes couldn't get me there. AIR TRAVEL STINKS!!!

Anyway, I've got detailed trip reports of my second (RWA Nationals in Atlanta) and third (NYC to see JK Rowling and Stephen King!) trips, so check them out now!

NOW, I need to get down to business. I am working on revisions to Preacher Man for an agent I've been in contact with who seems interested, as long as she likes the revisions I make! And, an agent I met in Atlanta is interested in seeing my YA, so I'm going to send her Casey V to see what she thinks. I better get busy!!

See ya...

July 25, 2006: Just a quick note to let you know that I'm on my way to two straight weeks of fun and literary fulfillment! :O) First, I'm heading to Atlanta, GA for the national conference of Romance Writers of America. Highlights will include workshops, editor and agent panels, keynote speakers, and networking with writing friends, old and new. I'm especially looking forward to a retreat led by Nora Roberts, a luncheon speech by Meg Cabot and a workshop by Suzanne Brockmann!

Then off to New York City for An Evening With Harry, Carrie and Garp -- my fabulous bookreading event hosted by Stephen King, and guests JK Rowling and John Irving. Can I handle the excitement of it all???

Don't you worry -- I'm not only going to write detailed trip reports, but they'll be illustrated because I now have a great digital camera so it'll be easy to throw photos into the written pages.

More when I return, and have a GREAT two weeks!

June 26, 2006: I visited a library last week and did a really fun appearance where I talked about going from aspiring to published. I talked about how I started writing, how to interpret rejections and reviews, etc., and I read some passages from Momentary Lapse and Legacy of Lies. It was a lot of fun and I want to thank friendly librarian Susan for inviting me and making me feel so welcome! Here are some photos:

In other exciting news, Preacher Man WON the Inspirational division of the Golden Acorn contest!! The final round judge, editor Julie Swarzburg of Multnomah had this to say, "Great characterization! I was immediately engaged. Dialogue -- snappy."

And ... that led to another potentially exciting bit of news, but I can't share anything yet because I don't want to jinx it! I promise as soon as I have anything definite, I'll report it here. But in the meantime, I'll keep you just a little bit in suspense! :)

And incidentally, I'm still waiting on the results of the Stiletto contest -- Casey V and Preacher Man are still hanging out as finalists, waiting for a winner to be announced!!

June 1, 2006: It's always good to look back on this journal and see where I'm at. I notice that on April 22 I was making good progress on my Casey V sequel and I was midway through chapter 4. Today, it's June 1 and I'm still midway through chapter 4. I haven't written a word since April 22, apparently. Well, I've had company. And I'm starting a new job. And my son's baseball schedule is pretty intense. And the end of the school year finally came.

Okay, so I got all that out. And now... it's time to PBIC!!!

Do you know what that means? Okay, keep reading and I'll leave you in suspense and tell you at the end of this entry.

But I do have some super-fantastic news to share, which isn't exactly writing news, but it's definitely of interest to writers and especially readers! On August 2, I will be sitting in the audience at Radio City Music Hall (yes, in New York City, THAT Radio City Music Hall!!) listening to three of the world's best-selling and most talented authors read their work to all their adoring fans: JK Rowling (you KNOW who that is!!), Stephen King (you KNOW who that is!!) and John Irving (he wrote The World According to Garp, in case you don't KNOW who that is!)

They're calling it "An Evening With Harry, Carrie and Garp." I am so ultra-psyched that I can't think straight. I'm going with a girlfriend who is equally as crazy about Harry Potter as I am. We're going to fly out Monday, sightsee Tuesday, see a Broadway show on Tuesday night and Wed matinee, and then go to this event of a lifetime on Wed night!! Then fly home Thursday. Here's a flyer about it. (So you can weep in jealousy that you didn't get a ticket...) Muwahahaha, sometimes I can be so evil....

So, that's about it. OH! Except for the definition of PBIC: what all writers need to do when their excuses and whining are done: Put Butt In Chair!

May 9, 2006: I was supposed to be the speaker at a Reading Council dinner meeting tonight, but I got a call over the weekend from the organizer and she said they were canceling due to lack of interest. She assured me it wasn't ME they weren't interested in, but rather the timeframe of the meeting. The attendees are mostly (if not entirely) teachers, and this time of year is crazy for them, with the end of the school year in sight. Okay -- I won't take it personally. Sure.

Anyway, I did attend the Chicago Spring Fling and had a fantastic time!! Here is my trip report which tells you all about it! I had brought my digital camera so I could include photos in my trip report, but unfortunately the batteries were dead. I found that out when I went to take my first photo.

April 22, 2006: Don't you absolutely HATE email spam? You know what I mean. You pull up your email program and it takes minutes to load all the mail, and then you see it's filled with junk with Subjects like, "How to enlarge your penis," or "How to increase your sperm count." YUCK!! I'm sorry, it's my pet peeve for the day.

In writing news, I have had some developments:

I got my Golden Heart score sheet back on Preacher Man and I was pleased to see one judge gave it a perfect score of 9! Unfortunately, another judge gave it a 4 :( and the others hovered somewhere in the 7.5 neighborhood. I didn't final, but I did make it into the top quarter of entries.
I heard from the Delacorte Press contest that I entered Casey V in that I did not make it into the final round.
I'm making good progress on writing my Casey V sequel. I'm midway through Chapter 4.
I'm judging the Madcap contest for Excellence in Romantic Comedy (a great, fun contest each and every year) and really enjoying those entries.
I'm looking forward to next weekend when I travel to Chicago for the Spring Fling conference, where I anticipate hearing a wonderful keynote by Jennifer Crusie, and I'll have an appointment with an agent who handles Young Adult so I can pitch Casey V. Now that I think about it, I need to prepare my pitch between now and then so I don't come across as a total idiot. :)

I believe that's all the news.

April 9, 2006: Brief update to yesterday's entry: SUCCESS!! I went to Barnes and Noble today and found an empty comfy armchair, sat down, pulled out my little portable word processor, and despite the distractions of people walking by, looking for books and staring curiously at me .... I managed to write for a solid 90 minutes! When I got home I uploaded my work to my Word doc and found out that I'd completed TWELVE MANUSCRIPT PAGES! Yippee!!

I found it appropriate, after my confession yesterday, that when I'd settled in and looked around, the new Deluxe Edition of the Harry Potter Scene-It game was staring over at me from the nearest shelf. :)

April 8, 2006: Happy birthday, hubby!

How writers write. It's a subject I've been thinking a lot about since the highly publicized journal entry (in the UK, anyway) that super-author JK Rowling posted on her website about how she was writing and ran out of paper and had to visit stores for 45 minutes before she could find one nearby that had lined paper. Which tells me a couple things about how JK (Jo) writes: she writes out in public, and she writes long-hand.

Another favorite author of mine, Pat Conroy, has said that he writes longhand on yellow legal paper, and he generally writes about twice as much as he ends up with, and slashes mercilessly once the pile of paper is as big as a shoebox.

A couple of ladies in my critique group meet each other at coffee shops around town and write there, amidst the conversation and hustle/bustle of a public place, and two other ladies in my critique group meet each other once a week at the public library and write together.

Me? I've always needed peace, quiet and solitude. I have a sign hanging on my "office" (okay, guest room) door (but it's where I do all my writing because it's got my computer, files, research books, etc.) that says "SHHHH! Author at Work. Do Not Disturb!"

But now that I'm two chapters into my new Casey V sequel, I'm having a hard time getting back in the swing of things. I find the time -- occasionally -- to devote to writing, I sit down, I pull out my sparse but completed chapter outline (that leaves plenty of room for creativity), I pull up the Word document, I write a couple lines, and then ... I start thinking of something else. I get distracted. I start wondering what my email inbox holds, I start thinking about the variety of website and blogsites that I check regularly on the internet.

AHHHH, THE INTERNET!! That destroyer of concentration! That consumer of free time! We love it, don't we?

So, I'm trying something new with this book. I'm getting up, away from my office, away from my computer. I have a little portable word processor, and as much as possible, I'm going to write the book there. Whether it be in other rooms of my house, or out in public like Rowling and my critique buddies, I'm going to wrench myself away from the distracting presence of the internet, and I'm going to write this book!! :)

So, you may wonder, what sites around the web are stealing my productive time? I find myself torn between two different types of sites. I enjoy authors' blogs, especially Squawk Radio, which is a hilariously diverse and entertaining site collaborated by a group of NYT bestselling romance writers. I also enjoy my pal Jesse's blog and the blogs of a huge number of authors can be found here in one nice chunk. But, you say, that's not bad. Those blogs are all writing-related, so it's kind of like research, right?

Uh, yeah. That leads me to my biggest internet time-consumer, and it also leads to my confession of my latest, um, hobby. Okay, shall we say ... obsession? Yes, I can admit it: here goes... My name is Laurie and I am a Harry Potter fanatic. Do you know there are hundreds of Harry Potter fan sites out there in cyber space?? I personally have about ten of them bookmarked in my Favorites, and I check them on a near-daily basis! I love keeping up on all the juicy tidbits about the books, the movies, the author, the actors, etc etc etc! It's a very fun and entertaining world! But now that my sabbatical between books is over, I need to get a handle on my obsession and get that time back! :) We HP fans are a devoted lot, but enough is enough.

Okay, I've got to go check Veritaserum. :)

March 19, 2006: It's been a full month since I've journaled. (Is that a word? My SpellChecker doesn't think so. For that matter, it doesn't recognize SpellChecker as a word either....) Sorry about that. I can only say in my own defense that it's been a ghastly month. Not to bore you with details, but my husband has been very ill. In a nutshell, he's missed 6 weeks of work, was hospitalized for a week, culminating in a surgery last Friday. He's now home. I'm optimistic that I can breathe a sigh of relief soon.

I did escape for a previously scheduled trip to the beach for 5 days in the midst of it. Sometimes I think that's the only thing that got me through the whole ordeal, the tiny bit of rejuvenation I got from walking on the sands of the Gulf of Mexico and soaking in the rays of the sun. Here are a few pics.

In writing news, I got a rejection from Steeple Hill on Preacher Man. This is the submission that resulted from my meeting with editor Diane Dietz when I was in Reno for last year's RWA National Conference. The minute I saw the big heavy SASE in the mail I knew Diane was rejecting my manuscript. But I was pleasantly surprised to see a very long and thorough critique letter (proving that she read every page of it) and a few very nice compliments that I'm going to hang my hat on for awhile (ie., "I enjoyed reading Preacher Man..." and "I found your voice very engaging and would like to see more from you.") Would it be odd if I sent her a thank you note for her very informative rejection letter? Ha ha ... only in this business...

I did manage to write a few pages of my new book while I was on vacation but it's been sitting idle since. Once I'm out from under the burden of administering medications, giving sponge baths and cleaning out vomit basins, hopefully my muse will make a reappearance.

February 19, 2006: The big news is, I've started a new book! My new project is a sequel to the Chronicles of Casey V, picking up where the first book left off, and will be my second Young Adult chick lit. My two nieces, Brianna (age 13) and Christina (age 16) were my test readers of the first book. Whenever I finished a chapter I'd send it to them for their feedback, and they were great about making sure the pace was right, everything made sense, and Casey V's voice was consistent with a modern-day 16-year-old girl. Now that it was time to start the sequel, I invited Brianna to a local coffee shop one evening last week so we could brainstorm about things that could happen in Book 2.

I picked this really cool place where they serve all the fancy coffee drinks and have the comfy leather chairs, potted plants, etc. The minute we walked in we saw that we wouldn't be able to sit for a quiet, insightful chat because there was a live jazz band playing there. So instead, we had a loud, shouting match above the fantastic sounds of the band, while we sipped our grande Caramel Lattes. :) But we ended up having a great time, and came up with a few great storyline ideas. Yesterday I plotted out the first eight chapters (there will probably be 12 in all) in an outline, and today I started writing. I wrote 3 full pages, which I know isn't a lot, but it's a start. And I'm really excited about getting back into this really fun character again.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting to see how Casey V and Preacher Man did in the final round of the Get Your Stiletto in the Door contest, so as soon as I hear anything, I'll report here!

In other writing news, I judged 7 Golden Heart entries. They were all fantastic, and it made me think about my own GH entry, Preacher Man, that I entered this year in the Inspirational category and wondered how it was faring in the first round.

My sweetie was ill for Valentine's Day but managed to conjure up a beautiful dozen peach roses and a sweet card inscribed with his own heartfelt message. So the Valentine's Day celebration I described in this interview with me actually turned out to be fictional, but hey, sometimes fantasy is just better than reality!

February 4, 2006: I was over at Barnes and Noble this week and as I almost always do when I'm there, I breezed by the L's in the General Fiction section looking for my books. There were none there, where they usually are. Of course, the only one they're carrying these days is Momentary Lapse. Whispers they sold out of long ago, and Legacy of Lies isn't distributed through the channels that B&N recognizes. ANYWAY, I wasn't sure quite what to make of the absence of Momentary Lapse -- either they'd sold out, or they were hiding them in a dusty pile in the store room.

I got a cup of White Chocolate Mocha and sat down to read my latest RWR (Romance Writers Report) when the Public Events Manager, who'd set up September's An Afternoon of Romance, walked by. The first thing she said was, "Have you seen your display at the Information Table?" I hadn't. She said, "We've gotten so many calls after your Pantagraph article that we set up a special display of your books!" Relieved that I wasn't persona non grata with my books sitting in the back room, I told her that I was working hard to get in with the "big guys" -- the publishers who have distribution channels and relationships with all the bookstores so that when I write books, they actually are available to people who want to buy them! :)

And along that line, I accomplished two things this month before I dive headfirst into writing the sequel to Casey V -- I researched and prepared a packet for an agent who I think would be great to represent me on Preacher Man, and I entered Preacher Man in a contest whose finals judge is an inspirational editor at a major publisher. Working towards my 2006 goals (see 1/14 entry...)

January 28, 2006: It's been a fun week! A week ago, a reporter from our local paper, the Daily Pantagraph, called me. When I did the Afternoon of Romance for Barnes and Noble back in September, they'd sent the paper a press release. Although they didn't do a feature about the book event, this particular reporter, Bob Halliday, held on to the press release. He does a little segment called Take Five every Friday, where he asks someone five questions about their career. He thought romance novelist would be a cool career to include in his segment.

So, he called and we chatted for about 20 minutes, and I directed him to this website for further info. He called back a few days later and said the website was "impressive" -- thanks, Bob! The next day, a photographer came over and took a variety of photos. Yes, I actually had a PHOTO SHOOT! :) Yesterday, the article ran!

It was short and sweet, and didn't run any of the photos, but hey, it's gotten me a TON of "saw your article!" "You're famous!" comments at work yesterday, at the kids' basketball games today, etc. So, I put a webpage together with a link to the article, as well as the photos that never saw the light of day. Enjoy.

January 14, 2006: Okay, I'm a little late kicking this journal off, but I have been thinking about my 2006 writing goals, and am ready to officially state them:

1. Pursue and obtain an agent specializing in Young Adult (beginning in January).
2. Write Book 2 of Casey V series. Plot Book 3.
3. Submit Preacher Man to inspirational market (initially, without an agent.)
4. Enter more contests for YA and Inspirational, to get in front of editors/agents.
5. Attend two writers conference this year.

It's going to be a GREAT year! I just know something big is going to happen for me this year. It's MY year. :) Come along for the ride.

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