Spring Fever

With five teens yesterday - I have substantially less food in the fridge than I started with on Friday. As much as I love the house full of kids, I'm looking forward to Monday and getting a bit of work done on my book.

I always forget home much a 21 year old boy can eat, until he comes home. On the other hand - he's also very good at lifting heavy objects and it adds another driver to the household. All in all, I love having him home.

So my plan for today - write a bit this morning (even a paragraph would be an accomplishment), cook the passover ham, saddle up Jeff, bring K back to school, and then collapse.

Rewrite, rewrite

I am in rewrite mode. The first two chapters have been completely reworked and rewritten. Perhaps 2 sentences survived unscathed in the first 4,000 words of The Board of Dead. As difficult as it is, the book is improving with each pass through.  While I still consider the book "DONE" it is not apparently "FINAL." 

Here are the first few lines of Chapter 1 - 

"If Tallie Whitman had known she’d be asked about everything she saw and heard before Dean Hipley’s body was discovered in a physics classroom, she’d have taken better notes.

Tallie was a reporter, after all, even if she was only a volunteer reporter for the town of Oakwood’s biweekly newspaper. And even though this was only the second Board of Education meeting she had ever gone to, the police officer questioning her wasn’t making allowances for inexperience."

Thoughts? Would you read on?

It's another beautiful day in Connecticut. I'm still very pumped up after yesterday's Unicorn Writers Conference at the spectacular St. Clemens Castle in Portland, CT.  Favorite workshop - Query letters with Irene Goodman.

The agent and editor panel discussions were interesting, but I didn't hear much that I hadn't heard before. The biggest surprise to me? How difficult it is, even after you have an agent and have found an editor that likes your manuscript, to then get a contract from the publishers.

The big houses are terrified of this market and clearly have no idea how to transform themselves in a digital age. One editor said that sales dropped by 30% after Borders closed.

So with a dose of reality mixed into the euphoria of talking to agents about my book, I'm still optimistic.

Welcome!

Hello, Readers! As I put the final words to paper on the book that created this site, I'm eager to connect with potential readers (an agent would be nice too!).  This blog is intended for readers and writers of mystery fiction. It will chronicle the life cycle of my almost completed (four years in the writing) novel, tentatively titled, The Board of Dead.