Me meme

I've been tagged by Jumbled Ramblings and now must follow the rules of the meme because, well, I like her. And it never occurs to me to share weird random facts about myself. I'll try to make it interesting. That could be difficult.

The rules: Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

1. I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas. Sorry, too much Raffi. I guess I can tell you, I go around singing silly songs like, “If you like to talk to tomatoes…” (Veggie Tales) And “Nothing can go wrong-o I am in the Congo.”(Raffi again) But don’t tell anybody, okay?

2. I like to eat cookies for breakfast. Or pie. I try not to though. Don’t want to be a bad influence on the kids, although we did have rhubarb pie for breakfast the other morning. It’s got fruit!

3. I’ve had lots of animals in my life: Rabbits, Dogs, Cats, Rats, Fish, Snakes, Birds of all sorts (Parrots, finches, turkeys, ducks, chickens, etc.), Sheep, a huge herd of Goats, a couple of Draft Horses, um, I think that’s it. Oh, and a Donkey named Peg. Now we’re keeping it simple with two old dogs, a cat, and four annoying pet chickens.

4. I have Tachycardia or SVT or whatever the doctors want to call it, where my heart starts racing really fast. Too fast. I just call it my heart thing. It sucks. I am able to keep instances pretty low if I don’t stress and get enough sleep.

5. I try to pet cows when I drive by them on the road. Yes, they are out in the actual road, and there are a lot of them on my way home, but I still haven’t petted one. They’re quicker than they look.

***WARNING***GNARLY CONTENT***NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH***
6. When I was in second grade we heard the ice cream man coming, so all us kids ran to the garage and got our bikes. Everyone rode them through the house,except me, since the garage door was closed. When I walked out the front door my bike fell on me and I fell onto a box of stained glass. It cut my leg open from my ankle to my knee. It was pretty much to the bone. In my shocked state I actually thought it looked pretty cool, which is weird because I hate that kind of stuff. Anyway, I got sixty-six stitches and wasn’t supposed to be able to run or walk right or something like that. I’m fine though. I can blame that I’ve never been a fast runner on it I suppose, but I doubt that’s the case. I do have this scar that shows how big my leg was from ankle to knee, when I was seven.

7. I stepped over a rattlesnake in my front yard. I didn’t know it was there until I heard the rattling and turned around to see it coiling up. I was carrying my daughter in my arms. Glad I don’t have to add a content warning to that one.

8. I lived in an 8x10 log cabin for two years. It was like a long camping trip.

That's it. I tag Suzy Scribbles because she's the only other person I know with a blog. If I was brave I'd tag some other people whose blogs I read like Editorial Anonymous. She could reveal some interesting facts. I'm too chicken though.

A Contest!

My friend Susan Marlow, a.k.a. Suzy Scribbles is having a contest! Go to her blog and vote for your favorite book cover. You could win a copy of the third book in her Circle C Adventures series, Andrea Carter and the Family Secret and you get to influence her publisher's decision on which cover they choose. How fun!

Erik Brooks

My tiny library was lucky enough to have author/illustrator Erik Brooks come and do a presentation last week. If you haven’t seen his work you can find him here and here.

He’s a really nice guy, even nice enough to let me do a last minute email interview with him so I could get an article in the newspaper announcing his visit. It was my first interview ever, so it was cool that it was with a children's book author/illustrator. And I was glad to do it by email, that way I didn't have to be nervous.

Seeing the way an illustrator goes about getting art ready for publication was interesting. His watercolor and pencil art is absolutely beautiful. Even his sketches were fabulous. I got to see an actual dummy. Yes, I know, it’s just paper with sketches and words on it, but I’m always curious to know what other writers submissions look like, probably because I always wonder if I’m doing things the right way.

It must be so amazingly great to be able to illustrate books. I would love to have such a talent. I'm glad there are people in this world that do.

Me, interesting?

What is interesting about me? That's a question I've been forced to ask myself too many times lately. It seems when you sell a book, you have to sell yourself with it. It was something I was not prepared for. So, what do I share? How much? Do I even have anything media worthy?

I wrote two pitch letters last night and I can't help but feel strange about it. It's like I'm saying, "Here are these great things about me. Want me to write you an article all about my wonderful self?"

So, future authors, be prepared. Start a list of interesting facts about your writing self that could be used for an article. Also, keep tabs on how you came up with your story, what your process is, how long it took you to write, and anything at all pertinent to you and your future book. Also, try to get some good candid pictures of yourself at various times so you are not forced to endure failed photo sessions.

And when it comes down to it and we got nothing? We're writers, right? We're sure come up with something.

Option

I’m in a good situation—I think. My publisher has an option on my next book. Here’s the catch: I got excited because I found a publisher that I think might fit well with a manuscript I’ve been holding on to. I was getting ready to send it to them. But wait, I can’t send anything out to anyone (within the definitions of the option) without first giving my publisher a look at it. This particular story is not one I think would fit with my publisher. What to do? Send a manuscript to my publisher, right, but which one? I can’t seem to choose. I want it to be a good one. A story they will like and want. I don’t want to waste my chance at another book. Should I ask my editor what they’re looking for? But, what if I don’t have what they’re looking for? I can’t just sit around in manuscript limbo forever. That would be dumb. And I’m starting to get antsy with nothing sitting in a slush pile somewhere. I just need to choose the one I think fits best I guess, polish it, and cross my fingers. And hey, an actual publisher wants to see my next book. That’s pretty darn cool.

Word!

I finally have Microsoft Word and oh what I’ve been missing. I can read comments! Lines and lines of wonderful comments my fabulous writer friends have so wonderfully shared with me.
I couldn’t help but read through every single crit(and my computer didn’t crash!) as I filed them away and this made me realize a few things:

• I’m a slacker. I have a lot of material I need to revise and get out into the world.
• Wordperfect really does suck. I even found two mistakes (clearly pointed out by Word) in the manuscript I sold. How embarrassing.
• I really miss my critique buds that have drifted away.
• Using colors and strikeouts and bubbles is cool. I’ll have to figure out how to do it.
• I’m not a very good critiquer, but I’m trying.
  
  I’m so happy I finally have Word. Now I can get my manuscripts organized. Right now they’re everywhere—in my email, on disc, on two different computers, then there’s all the ones on pieces of paper in various notebooks and around the house. It’s nice to be able to sit down to write and actually be able to find what you’re looking for. Having finally gotten this computer thing taken care of, I have hope that I can get my manuscripts organized. Just don’t look in my desk!

Dummy

I’ve been working on a picture books manuscript, trying to get it to be a page turner. At the advice of Linda Pratt, an agent with the Sheldon Fogelman Agency, I have made a dummy. Now, my dummies are nothing fancy. I took eight pieces of fluorescent green paper, folded them in half, and wrote my story in pencil–what I think would logically go on each page.

Dummying is a really depressing—I mean helpful, exercise. As I wrote my story down I came to some quick realizations:

Some portions of the story do not have a definite page break.
Some parts are too long.
Some parts don’t have a good feature to illustrate.
Some parts just suck.

So, I’ve cut, added, and restructured. I hope the manuscript is the better for it, but I do miss some of the parts I had to cut. Many of them were my favorite scene set-ups—I’ll have to leave that for the illustrator. And I’ll tuck those lines away. Maybe I’ll find a use for them someday.

I have to admit, I don’t dummy often; only once that I can remember. Sometimes I do a rough numbering of paragraphs to see where I’m at, but after this I’m going to have to dummy every picture book I write. It really gave me a good perspective on what I need to do to make a salable manuscript.

I think I may even experiment with writing in dummy form. I’ll be forced to create a page turn from the start, make scenes more even and uniquely illustratable, and, of course, I’ll try to make things not suck. Who knows? I just might work a little faster and hopefully a little better.