Yippee!

So what can I say about Michael Bourret? Well, before today I could have said he's a great literary agent, and the first agent I ever queried.

Today, however, I can say that he is not only a great literary agent, but he is also MY agent. I am thrilled to be working with such a terrific guy. And I'm ready to get to work on Janie Hannagan: Dream Catcher, to make it perfect for submission.

Michael Bourret is with Dystel & Goderich Literary Management.

What with all the Memoir hype...

...about folks whose memories have been altered by aliens in such a way that their families are ganging up on them to prove them worthless vile citizens of the literary world, I would like to exploit this situation by writing a new book:

My Terrible Life Down By the Crick: An Exaggerated Memoir

---- In which Lisa McMann finds herself in extreme peril (near death, several times in a variety of provoking ways) while catching crawdads in the crick down by the ol' church parking lot. But when she goes through the tunnel of doom under the road, she comes out the other side a changed woman--with many, many cobwebs in her Dutch-blonde hair, and a new, much more serious problem...she turns 12 and grows boobs, and Timmy VandenBrink has to kiss her in Paulette Toilet's dog pen before Paulette's big brother Fudd will let them out of the cage.

But I'm worried that it won't sell so well without the controversy. Hmmm.

The Quill Awards

Vote here until September 30th.

Inspiration for writing

A few months ago, I took a break from sending queries for my first book, Kinder Farm, to finish a second novel called Sister Andri.

And then, I read The Time-Traveler's Wife...

Wow. Loved that book. Loved that I couldn't figure out what was going on at first. Loved the style in which it was written. And it was just the inspiration I needed to pen a third novel that had been rattling around in the back of my brain for a month or two.

It's funny -- I think I 'm unusual in my obsession with writing. I don't use outlines, but sometimes before I write, I'll write up a 2-paragraph summary of the book, much like a query letter. Usually I'll have the idea for a few weeks or months, and I don't know exactly how it happens but often I'll dream about what happens in the story. Once the idea for a novel grows larger than just a glimmer, I'll write a few notes, and then do a bit (or a LOT -- as was the case for Kinder Farm and Sister Andri) of research. When I finally start writing, I'll write 12-15 hours a day until I get stuck, or until it's done.

So, when I finished writing the rough draft of Janie Hannagan: Dream Catcher in a week, it didn't surprise me. But other people look at me like I'm either lying or the book must be terrible. But 100 hours went into the book that week. Not to mention the dreams at night, working out the plot for me (how nice of my dreams to do that!). After writing the rough, I put it away for a few days, then spent a day editing. And then my toughest critic read it and almost fell over in excitement about it. That's a good sign. :)

So I put it away and wrote a sequel to it over the next ten days. Then went back to the first book about Janie and edited for a week, sent it out to my handful of readers and got it ready for querying.

And then, oh the horrors, I took a whole weekend off from writing.

Today, I'm ready to edit the sequel. And work on a query letter and synopsis of Sister Andri.

And look for another amazing book out there to read.

Books, books

Here in Arizona, we try to escape the heat by visiting Michigan relatives. Just returned from two weeks there of amazingly hot and humid weather. Phoenix is almost more tolerable...

Of course, with a vacation comes summer reading. I struck it rich this year, with the following:

Australian author Markus Zusak's new novel, "The Book Thief," is a fantastic read, and one of the few books I couldn't bear to pass on to my sister-in-law. It's my new favorite book, and I plan to read it again. "Water For Elephants" by Sara Gruen was unique and beautiful, about circus performers during prohibition. I'm not much of a fan of detective stories, but I'm halfway through James Lee Burke's "Crusader's Cross." Love his description. I finally pulled "The Flame Tree" by Richard Lewis from my dusty pile of books and loved that as well, and learned a bit about Indonesia in the process. And Ellen Meister's new "Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA" is up next.

The results are in

The 2006 Bulwer-Lytton best-of-the-worst opening lines fiction contest.

So many good ones to choose from--you'll want to read them all.

'Pomes'

I just got a package in the mail the other day: three copies of a book called Regrets Only. It's a collection of poems.

Why do I have three? I believe that was my payment for the two 'pomes' I have in this anthology. But I forgot all about it. So I checked my submission tracker.

Back in 2003, I sent three poems to Little Pear Press. Around a year later (late 2004 or early 2005), I found out Little Pear Press wanted two of them to put in a book. Since I'm not much of a poet, I didn't shop the poems around to anyone else, and I was happy to have my work accepted.

And here we are, three years after I initially sent in the poems, with a lovely little book to put on my shelf. Thanks, Little Pear Press!

five point five

Five point five.

5.5 words per minute, I mean. As a typing speed, that's not at all impressive. But I'm proud of my five point five wpm. Because if you can type 5.5 quality words per minute, for 5.5 hours a day, and for 5.5 days per week, chances are you'll have a 75,000 word novel in about 5.5 weeks.

It's a good goal. 5.5 words per minute doesn't seem like too much to ask. Take it one minute at a time.