My First Reviews

Status: It's chick flick month at my favorite movie theater/pub, Chunky's. And though I was unable to get my husband to go to any of the other movies they were showing, he was willing to go to Pretty Woman. Which is pretty much my favorite chick flick ever. It was awesome to see it on the big screen for the first time. My nachos were pretty awesome, too.

Number of agents queried: still 13
Number of form rejections: still 4
Number of requests for additional materials: alas, still 0

So remember that beta reader who loved version 18 of my query enough to demand I send her the book? Well, I did send it to her once it was finished/edited to what I believe to be perfection. And while I guess text messages aren't really reviews, I did get some of the most fantabulous texts I've ever gotten.

The first was received on a Saturday at 1:10 am: "Ur book kept me up wayyyyyyyyyy too long." Seems she had to get up early the next morning. I'm not going to pretend I feel bad, though, since that's kind of what I was going for. My favorite books are the ones that are so wonderful that I can't stop reading, so I love that I was able to have that effect on someone else.

The second text was received a few days later at 1:18 am: "Just finished the book and all I can say is I NEED more!!!!!!!!!!" Now that's what I'm talkin' about! That's exactly the reaction I want out of readers when they finish!

But, unfortunately for her, I don't write sequels anymore. Not until I have a book deal and am being paid to do so. I talked about lessons learned from book #3 here, so now I'll talk about lessons learned from books #1 and #2. They were the first two parts of a trilogy. I spent seven years (yes, that was years) of my life working on them. And as I mentioned in my very first blog post, I'll have to completely rewrite the books to make them any good. Especially the first book. I've already rewritten it once, and it's still a mess. So the two and a half years I spent on the second book in that trilogy? Kind of useless.

I mean, if you really think about it, no writing is really useless. If nothing else, the whole process gave me a good idea of how not to write novels. Because I barely planned anything out ahead of time, and basically just wrote whatever came into my head when I sat down at the keyboard. Which, as I'm sure you can imagine, made for a rambling jumble of crazy. So for books #3 and #4, I learned from my mistake, and plotted out the whole thing ahead of time. I don't mean to say that I make a strict chapter outline or anything. I want to leave room to be able to change my mind if I think of something better along the way. But I spend hours upon hours upon hours plotting out my book, developing my characters, and really immersing myself in whatever story I'm creating before I ever start writing chapters. And my books are so much better for it.

So yay for my first (sort of) reviews! It's nice to have a fan. ;)