Biting off More than I can Chew?

Last September and October I read through my first draft of MURDERING THE DEAD, the ancient Egyptian novel about the murder of King Tut for the first time. I'd written it 18 months earlier and it sat metaphorically twiddling it's thumbs while I revised two of the books that sold to Scholastic, came up with ideas for the third which sold on a synopsis, and also revised a contemporary romance set in Paris which is still waiting for submission.

After the first round of clean-up I sent “Egypt” to two crit friends and one of them gave me a TON of ideas for adding more suspense and action and plot twists and using my secondary characters more deeply. Needless to say I was OVERWHELMED, but I knew the ideas would make a more exciting and dramatic book so I started to work on it again in January thinking I could be finished sometime in February. Yeah, right.

Well - here I am on March 12 - and I barely hit the HALFWAY MARK today! It's going so slowly and I'm rewriting and adding new scenes and cutting so much that I've been lucky to revise 5 pages a day.

Then last week I got my editorial letter for The Healing Spell and I'm leaving on a research trip to Louisiana in two weeks.

I sat down last night and figured out all the projects and travel that are coming up this year and sort of did a general map of my year. YIKES! It's going to be a hum-dinger of a year work-wise.

MARCH - JULY 2009

1. Do the editorial revisions of The Healing Spell

2. Finish the major revision of Murdering the Dead and get final readers for comment/critique

3. Write the first draft of The Traiteur's Daughter - the book sold on synopsis

4. Final polish of The Healing Spell and off to copyeditor

5. Final tweaks/revisions of Murdering the Dead after critique comments and send to agent for review

6. Two-Week Research Trip to Louisiana

7. Summer Family Trip to the Midwest

8. Plan and go on trip to Bulgaria and Italy with son Jared (we've been putting this off for two years and 2010 will be more difficult with two books coming out).

Out of the next 4.5 months I will be gone 6 weeks. Not including the planning/packing and all that extra stuff that goes with traveling. I'm going to revise three different books - and write a new one??? I think I'm officially crazy.

AUGUST - DECEMBER 2009

1. We'll have a new baby in the house along with the almost one-year old currently living here that I babysit several hours a day. :-D

2. First Revisions with my editor for Secret Rites of the Goddess

3. Copy edits of The Healing Spell

4. Copy edits of Secret Rites of the Goddess

5. Proofread galleys of The Healing Spell

6. Revisions of The Traiteur's Daughter with crit group to get it ready to send to agent/editor.

Come December I'm going to have to be put out to pasture.

Teaser Tuesday

So my mailbag is HUGE, absolutely BURSTING at the seams with people asking me what my three books are about that just sold to Scholastic Press. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but I get to because I'm still bruised from all the pinching, K?)

VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION : No, the three books are not a trilogy, they are all stand-alone novels, although the two Middle-Grade novels take place in the same setting and one of the characters is the same . . . the mysterious swamp traiteur. But I still have to WRITE that book, oh my! To have a book sold merely on the basis of a synopsis is still REALLY WILD to me.

I thought I would feel more pressure over this fact, but I'm just really excited because I love the idea and I think it's going to be a fun book to write. AND I just got the idea in September and whipped up a synopsis in a couple of brainstorming and writing sessions. I think all that synopsis writing and rewriting I did for my queries gave me an edge. See, nothing goes to waste, even if the learning curve is extremely painful. So keep writing those query synopses. One day you'll be glad you did!

The novel actually opens with a Recipe for a Healing Spell, but I'll save that for the published book - or maybe later . . . can't decide. Aren't I so mean?

Brief Synopsis of THE HEALING SPELL:
Deep in the Louisiana bayou country, Livie Moulaison’s mother arrives home from the hospital in a coma. Daddy is determined she will only get better surrounded by the people who love her best, but Livie is terrified of her mother’s lifeless condition and wracked by a guilty secret.
The household is turned upside down when Aunt Colleen comes to nurse Mamma, but Livie and her younger cousin Thibodeaux clash from the get-go. It drives her crazy how this annoying kid seems to know what her worst fears are - and plays on those fears to torment her.
Mostly, Livie is afraid she and her mother will never be able to heal their hurtful past if Mamma never wakes up again. Summoning her courage, Livie travels into the forbidden recesses of the swamp to seek out the mysterious traiteur, hoping that if she buys a healing spell, she can bring her mother back to life.

Ta Da! Here is the First Page:

"What in the world is J.B. thinking bringing Rosemary home from the hospital? What a foolish old coot!” Mrs. Guidry talked in one of those loud whispers, like someone who pretends they don’t want anyone to hear, but it carries across the room anyway. “If you ask me, there ain’t no way a man with a sixth grade education can care for someone with a coma.”

There was that word again. I plugged my ears wishing Mrs. Guidry would stop saying it. Mamma looked like she was dead, but she wasn’t really dead. More like stuck somewhere between life and death. As if her body didn’t know which direction in the road to choose.

“Just old, traditional Cajun, Charlotte,” Mrs. Martin answered, a pink flush creeping up her neck when she saw me listening. “It drove J.B. crazy having to leave the hospital when it was time for his shift at the oilrigs.”

Headlights swung into the gravel driveway and Daddy tooted the horn of his Chevy. The dark blue truck looked like a bruise in the dusk. Finally he was home. And this time he was bringing Mamma with him.

My chest got so tight felt like a gator squeezing my heart between his jaws. Drooling to eat my innards up and then spit me onto the muddy bayou banks, leaving my brand new Montgomery Wards red sneakers floating in the hyacinth. That happened to a little boy down the Bayou Teche last year. He was only three years old, and his mama cried her eyes out for more than a week straight.

My hands are shaking!

I'M THROWING A BLOCK (BLOG) PARTY!!!

I'm thrilled, stunned, crying, laughing and pinching myself purple.

I just sold a THREE-BOOK DEAL TO SCHOLASTIC PRESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Actually, my AMAZING agent did. But I sweated over them!!! Over the last 6-7 years that is.

I've had so many rejections It would take me an hour to count and list.

So I'm not.

I kept failing. But I kept failing BETTER. Rewriting so many times I can't even tell ya that either.

Please celebrate with me!

There's tons of food, drinks galore, a whole table loaded with every kind of dessert you can think of! Please eat - it's all non-caloric - throw balloons at each other, high-five with me. Toss confetti, dance, wiggle your hips, cry, weep, laugh. OH YEAH, BABY!!!!

I am blessed to know you all and to have gained so much wisdom, advice and much-needed doses of perseverance over the past couple of years when I was seriously ready to give up.