I no longer change my blog template with my whims like I did in the early days but I did feel a need for a change in the header photo.  While the roses were lovely, I thought the San Antonio flamingos would be a nice change.

Besides tweaking my blog, I’ve been beta reading, dabbling (a little too much) with my fourth novel and entering contests, lots and lots of contests…anything to avoid editing my second novel so I can start submitting it to agents.  I think I am afraid of going through the cycle of rejections.  I trunked the first one after four query rejections, a partial rejection (a rejection that happened a bit further along in the process) and an “emperor’s new clothes” beta read.  I don’t know if I have yet done a good enough job “selling” Gayle.  I believe that given a chance, Gayle from the PURE tells a good story and her wry outlook on events make you root for her.  But I fear that nobody is going to give her a chance based on the 100 MPH flybys that the industry runs on.  She’s the underdog in her story and mine.  But I’ve entered her in the Daphne du Maurier mystery/suspense contest that a sub-chapter of the RWA is sponsoring.  I’m a shiny new member of the Romance Writers of America as of Wednesday of last week.  The beauty of the contest, assuming I make the 100 entries max cut, is that I get feedback on the synopsis (now shaved down to a mere 675 words) and the first 5000 words of the story from four judges.  Feedback is worth its weight in gold or at least the entry fee that I paid.  We’ll see.  Cross your fingers for me on that.

Another contest I’ll be entering today, is a 500 word erotica flash fiction contest utilizing the word “coffee”.  Yes, coffee.  I won’t be posting it here because this is a PG-13 blog and I don’t know if my efforts in that genre are laughable or worthy.  (But if they’re worthy, I’ve already got a new pen name chosen.)  I spent most of this weekend with the sages at AW trying to get a viable piece though I didn’t make it easy on myself going for second person, present tense, which is a very weird way to write fiction.  Needless to say, I will NEVER write a novel in second / present…ever!

Erma Bombeck gave me the thumbs down though I had no illusions of a win because my entry, though funny, wasn’t quite Erma-like.  I won’t be getting results on the NPR three minute fiction contest until May.  But they are posting worthy efforts each week until then.  I’d be ecstatic to make that cut.

Then there’s Amanda Plavich’s first 250 words of your WIP contest for which I entered my vampire novel’s beginning.  It’s so first drafty I’ve no illusions of much happening with that contest, especially after reading most of the other entries.  Whew!  Good stuff.  Go check it out. (UPDATE:  I won!  Go here to read the short story from which my entry was lifted.  I’m about 10k words into it as a full length novel.)

Sunday night flash fiction in two hours and I feel ready to write something fresh, fresh, fresh.

Two weeks until my first fiction short will be published.  I’ll post a linky at that time.  I can’t wait but waiting is the name of the game in publishing so I’m exercising my “wait” muscles.  Can you get DOMS* from that?

*delayed onset muscle soreness