Critter's here!!

We've been feeling pretty down today, because my sister and her family left this morning. Guess the price of family reunions is adjusting to an empty house afterward (sigh). But guess who showed up in the mail to cheer us up? Critter!


Yes folks, Critter has arrived safely at destination number five. Stay tuned to follow his adventures!

Happy New Year 2010

Make a Smilebox greeting

A gift

I was given a very special gift last week. It was from my fellow Onwords & Upwords critique group members, in recognition of my getting agented. I can't tell you how much it meant to me. I've been in the group for at least three years (maybe four ... will have to do some mental math to figure that out.) If anyone knows how hard I worked to get here, they do.

It still feels like a gift to have an agent. The strangest thing is that I have been so busy that I haven't had time for it sink in. My sister Rohini (Ruhi to us) is visiting us from Australia with her family, an eagerly anticipated event for us, and our house is FULL. This is the first time she's ever been to the U.S. and I really want to her to enjoy her time here, as well as spend as much quality time with my nephews (aged 10 and 12) as we can. Can you believe my luck that even though I only started querying October end/beginning of November I signed by November 20th, and had my revision done (this took an entire day in pajamas squinting fiercely at red edits on my ms, but I know that revisions for agents can take a very long time, so again, I feel incredibly lucky) by December 1st?!! Ruhi landed here on December 3rd and I was DONE and free to spend time with her. And that's what I've been doing ... shopping-shopping-shopping with my sister (not usually my thing, but it's her vacation), museums, cooking, laughing, catching up, watching my nephews play in the first falling snow they've ever experienced, getting them acquainted with our menagerie of pets ...

So, my critique group meeting last week was the first time I could focus again on my writing, and on (gasp!) being agented , with people who *get* it. They were more than happy to listen to my blow by blow account of how it unfolded. They hugged me. We celebrated. And it felt awesome! Check out what they wrote on it ... made me tear up.
I have this brief moment to post on the (much neglected) blog only because my sister and co. are currently in Washington DC, and the kids are at school, and the hubby is at work. The house is quiet. Never realized how essential quiet and solitude are for my writing! As they return today, this is probably the last such moment until Jan 3rd, when Ruhi leaves. I know we'll miss them all, but my YA novel will finally be ready for submissions the week of Jan 4th, so I will have something to look forward to. Perfect timing again. And maybe this amazing miracle of being agented will finally start to sink in ... :-)

Until then ... Happy Holidays and Happy New Year 2010!!!

AGENTED!!

NEWSFLASH: I just signed with Steven Chudney of The Chudney Agency. However, I still have to get the kids to the ice cream social in the next 10 minutes, and then clean up for my daughter's 10th birthday party this weekend, so more info will have to wait.

But I couldn't resist posting just the basic news :-)

NaNoWriMo 2009 - Day 13

Bit embarrassed to admit that I'm, ahem, done with my re-write! I really thought it would take me longer, but most of the stuff I had to change was kind of at the start of the story. Once I had the new voice down (moved the mc to middle school instead of elementary), it was just a matter of plugging through the manuscript re-writing dialogue. I'm printing out the whole thing today and editing the hard copy, but I'm pretty much done. YAY!

Time to pick up the house ... OMG what happened here while I was writing???

NaNoWriMo 2009 - Day 1

Not a great start! My daughter woke up with a fever last night. Looks like my uninterrupted weekday morning writing time is in jeopardy, since she'll probably be home from school for a few days. But I plan on starting anyway. Will update word count daily, so watch my widget (on the right)!

NaNoWriMo 2009

I've just signed up for nanowrimo. It's probably cheating to do nano for a rewrite, but who cares? I need the motivation! I have to submit Karmic Cat to my novel critique group for our December critique spot. We do one full ms per month, and my turn's up again. Except, I want to rewrite the whole darn thing from a different (older) POV. So, let the (re)writing begin! Will I be ready for that December critique, or will I have to send them my revision of LEELA'S STAR (of which they are probably thoroughly sick!) again??