Been a While

Been quite a while since the last post, but that is due primarily to the fact that very little has happened regarding my being published. Been on hiatus as bit while Kate Lee reviewed my manuscript. Sadly, just this week, she got back to me with a "no."

I have about fifty agents left on my list. I'm thinking of pressing the pause button, reading my entire manuscript and make minor (or major if need be) changes, prior to trying these next fifty agents. This means however that I won't be able to participate in NaNoWriMo this year.

What with my roommates pregnancy, my decaying employement status, Muzzie's memoir, now this re-edit, I don't know if I can spare the time.

I'll update more later.

Update

So, here is a quick update.

Toe the Line
I'm still sending out requests for representation to agents. I recieved to negatives yesterday. I am working at a pace of one request per week and easily have enough prospects to last the rest of the year.
My roommate read Toe the Line and was quite enthusiastic about it. She had some edits, but she loved the last few lines the most. Almost gushed.
A friend of mine also read the manuscript, she too liked it.
JA Konrath spent nine years sending out requests before finally getting a positive . . . I'm not through with year one yet.

Muzzie's Memoirs
Muzzie is exceedingly frustrated and frustrating. I can't tell how she wants to proceed. We're about 50K words into her manuscript and she is talking about starting over. She says she doesn't find it worth reading or exciting. I bite my tongue when I want to reply with "well, it's your life."
One of her favorite things to write is: "There was much hugging and kissing, and love all around." She never says this, but she writes it alot. Pehaps the title should be "Love all around" or "Love all Around Me."
I completely deleted the paragraph long description and explanation regarding her episiotomy. I'll save the rest of the family that particular horror and bare the burden myself.
Nevertheless, I plan on finished the first draft edit and sending it to her in paper format by the end of the week. Needless to say this has slowed down my editing of Running on the Edge.


Running on the Edge
I wrote this three years ago. It's about an adventure race in Big Bend. I'm rewriting/editing it and boy it's a ton better following the rewrite. Much better characters, new twists, new plots. I plan on being done by August so I can get ready for NaNoWriMo next year.
My hope is that when I run out of agents for Toe the Line, I'll be ready to start again with Running on the Edge.

So that's how things are going.

Desperately Seeking a More Attractive Timbre

This might turn out to be a long, tangential post, but in terms of the writing process it could be interesting. (Talk about an uninspiring first line!)

A few weeks ago my cell phone broke. It crashed on the golf course and I don't really blame it. I was involved in a sales event for work, a tournament that lasted over 6 hours. By the 18^th hole I actually envied my cell phone's death.

It was my intention, prior to its passing, to wait until Verizon started carrying the iPhone before buying a new phone. The demise of "old faithful" forced my hand and I lost the luxury of choosing my own schedule for phone replacement. So, naturally, the iPhone not being an option, I went and bought a new fangled DROID phone. I like it. It's pretty handy to have around, and soon it should double as a Kindle eReader. Presently it lacks that eReading application, but I have made great use of another feature.

Years ago, during my long commutes from Halliburton up by the airport to my house down in Sugar Land (Houstonians will audibly groan when they read about that commute), I played with the idea of using a voice recorder to write my stories orally. It's hard not to think of ways to wisely use commuting time when you have over an hour of it each way. Despite a year of driving that commute to work, I never followed through with any of my voice recording plans.

Then, with my grandmother Muzzie needing help on her memoir, oral story-telling once again raised its head. For months I traipsed over to Muzzie's to record her stories into my computer. At home I would transcribe then edit her words and despite her critique, I think I gave her stories a pretty good home in a pseudo-memoir.

Now, thanks to the voice recording capability on my new DROID phone, I am once again finding the benefits of oral story-telling. My commute time is far less, only about 15 minutes, but that is just enough time for me to speak out a few pages of text. So far I like what I see. I tend to be far more succinct when I talk a story than when I type one. I felt I was bogging down in the details of the race described in "Off the Edge", the novel I'm in the midst of writing. I felt like I was mired in things that didn't matter. Speaking the story off the top of my head into the recorder tends to keep me on track.

Although I've only kept at it for a few days, to this point I'm impressed with the changes I'm seeing. I'm far more pithy and concise when I have to speak the story. If only I could do something about that awkward sounding voice. Perhaps a nose job will provide me with a more attractive timbre.

Just One More Day . . .

This week I've been following the example of Diane Mott Davidson and posting some recipes. I wonder (as I did earlier) that it was inspired by a cooking class I took this past week. 

I've done a bunch of cooking classes over the years. This was probably the most fun. Not the "best" mind you . . . but definitely the most fun. 

The chef was Chef Dee Dee (see the picture above), and she was super fun. The menu was interseting and very easy for anyone who has taken a "bunch" of classes. 

First we made a cajun shrimp omelette. The omelette was hardly tough. I make omelettes all the time and have since the fourth grade. BUT . . . even I, a super omelette maker, have things to learn. In this case it was liquid smoke. I've never add liquid smoke to an omelette before this class . . . actually it wasn't that bad. An umami flavor. Unctuous even. I would have preferred a teaspoon rather than a tablespoon of it, but it was new and interesting. 

Next we made crab cakes. Whenever I make crab cakes they are never as good as going out. NO MORE! These crab cakes were AMAZING! And so simple! I can't wait to make them again. 

The next thing we made was shrimp and grits. I'm a grits master, so there wasn't very little I learned from this recipe. But the shrimp sauce was fun to make and although it (like the omelette) could have used a teaspoon of Worcestershire instead of the tablespoon, it was still very good. 

The final recipe was banana's foster. I've made this once before, with my grandmother, Muzzie (see HERE for more on Muzzie). This recipe was a touch better. We got to flambe which is always fun, plus the dinner and dessert at the end of the class was a joy.

All in all the class, like I said was the most fun. I've tried HEB Central Market a couple of times, I've tried classes at Sur La Table, and on an on. Chef Dee Dee is the best.  

Sunset Perfect

Isn't it funny the things we convince ourselves of over time and in life. And how wrong we realize we are when we look back.

I had a girlfriend once and we were sure we were in love with each other. Didn't last. No matter how hard we tried it just couldn't last. In her case it had the most to do with distance and space. Distance does NOT make the heart grow stronger, instead what I've found is that it undermines and degrades love unless one finds other ways to keep it strong.



Another girl, wasn't at love "love", has contacted me in the past bit. I was sure back when I dated her that she was the end all beat all for me. She was a sales girl for Hormel meat products and always drove around with a trunk full of meat to sell. What more could a starving, kid from the Army who never had money want than a girlfriend with ready access to great meat!



Now that she and I talk there is nothing there. It's like the pilot light just went out with her.



What's the point?



Things change. People change. Feelings change.



I think about something that my grandmother, Muzzie, once told me. She said that she thought her son, Richard, loved her, but that he didn't like her. How often has that been the case. I know it has been for me, and has been recently. Where I loved someone but I didn't necessarily like them. It's a tough feeling to have.



What's this have to do with writing?



I have a novel I'm currently working on called Sunset Perfect (great title right?). It's all about this. Loving someone but falling out of like with them. The title too is indicative of this difficulty. On the face of it the title sounds like a description of a perfect sunset, but the novel is about the challenges the two main characters face. That perfection has a sunset clause or an end. Toughest novel I've written, but I'm thinking that that fact, the fact that it's the toughest might make it worthwhile in the long run.

Bad Year Means Good Writing?

I was talking to my mom the other day about this past year and how rotten it has been. I went over some of this in my blog post the other day about my father's death (here). But my father's sudden passing is only one of the many things that 2015 brought and I'm happy to see in the rear view mirror.

Back in May my best friend, Killian died. It went about as well as those things can. I wrote about it (here). It was if not a defining moment, then a moment in my life I'll remember forever. He was a good old dog and a great family friend.

In June I laid off my entire department. My department here at work went from a department of five to a department of one. Over and above the increased work load, it was a tough week to suffer through if only because it was hard to say goodbye to so many people who I had come to depend on and trust. It was purely business, but still, that was a tough week with a lot of tough calls.

In July my grandmother, Muzzie, died. I've mentioned Muzzie several times in this blog, (see here) but I don't know if I ever mentioned that one of the last few times I saw her, in the nursing home, she was sitting up in bed reading my book, Toe the Line (here). She told me that she was loving it. She intonated that it was the first time she had read it when I knew that it was actually the fourth or fifth time. But isn't that what I as an author should want? Shouldn't I want my readers to feel like my writing is new and fresh each time they read it.

In September our foster son Anthony left. It was the second time he had been with our family and it just wasn't working out. So we had to have him leave. Stunningly hard. I'm sure it will come up in my future writing.

Now this with the Pops.

There were more things going on, the detritus of life, the odds and ends of writing and living, some big, some huge, some just the details. But what's the point of all this 2015 reflection? Pity? Hardly! I remember when I first started writing I read that great artists must suffer in life and for their heart. I remember writing about it though I can't find it now. I thought it was silly and for the most part still do. But boy does 2015 show me that a bit of suffer adds a ton to the options of what to write about it.

I wrote it up there about Anthony. "I'm sure it will come in up in my future writing." Muzzie will too. My father's death as well. It is not just subject matter it is also experience and adds depth.

Though as much as I thank 2015 for the help in my writing (hopefully), I'm looking forward to 2016 just cause 2015 sucked so much.