It's Here!

April is finally here, and along with it, my new book, The House of Secrets! Unfortunately, I was unable to celebrate appropriately, as the stomach flu invaded my house at pretty much the same time. I was mostly spared (so far anyway--fingers crossed), but with three kids in various states of sickness, I mostly spent the past few days heating up chicken soup and doing way too much laundry.

So, I'm now trying to get back into "writer" mode. I'm hoping to get something up here soon about how I started doing this in the first place, since I was always curious about how to get a book published before I did it myself. Here's one (obvious) piece of advice: Be persistent! I was going through my filing cabinet recently, trying to clear up some space, and I can across the manuscripts of TWO complete books that I finished and submitted and were rejected (some more than once). They're probably not very good (I'm afraid to read them again right now), and I know it was crushing at the time to have them turned down.

But now that I can take a longer-term view, I guess those books were practice runs. I never would have gotten my current book published if I hadn't written those first and learned what NOT to do.

That said, when I become a nationally famous author, maybe publishers will be lining up to buy these early manuscripts for a giant advance. I can dream, can't I?

Gearing up for my new book

I guess it's time to start the official countdown...My new book, House of Secrets, comes out in April, which is less than a month away. I just got my first look at the cover, which looks good even though it's very much a standard "modern romance" format. Will I be a complete geek and look for it on the shelves of my local Barnes & Noble? Yes, I will. Will I be an even bigger geek and ask someone to take a picture of me in front of the aforementioned shelf? Very likely.

I'm working on another book proposal, in between juggling other projects. I'm finding the wide variation in deadlines somewhat dizzying. I write pieces for the Web and see them posted a day or two later. I write a magazine story that gets published a few months after I turn it in. But I wrote the proposal for House of Secrets almost two years ago! I've almost forgotten all the twists and turns. (OK--not really. I did so much revising and rewriting that I could have recited certain passage by heart last fall.)

More info to come as we get closer to the pub date.

...And So It Begins

Yes, I've finally gone and done it--started a blog. I'm a little late to the party, since every other writer has long since figured all this out. But my goal was to get this done by the end of the year (2008), so at least I can say I got that accomplished!

My upcoming writing time will be limited, since school's out for the next two weeks and I'll have three children around to entertain (!). But I've got a whole new set of ambitious goals for the upcoming year, so more details on that soon. Hopefully I'll get some of them done before December 2009!