For the Criminally Inane

Pitching in baseball is where the catcher and the pitcher try to outsmart the batter and either make him swing when he's not supposed to or  fake him out so he doesn't swing at a perfectly good pitch. That's not what we are talking about here. But it is similar. I am throwing a potential home run to a potential catcher...wait, I think the metaphor just fell apart. At any rate, I've got something, they might want to catch it. They call it pitching. We're talking about Industry Professionals: Agent and Editor pitches. Face to face. Just the story. Before going to the conference, I researched some pitch strategy because I really didn't know what the heck I was doing. The best one, I thought, said to build a relationship of trust first. We had five minutes to 1) introduce ourselves, 2) talk about our book 3) ask or answer questions 4) exchange information for further contact. There wasn't a lot of room for building trust. But I tried. So after my exper...

The whole story. Ever since I was a little kid I wanted to be a writer. In fourth grade, I wrote mysteries and my friend illustrated them. They made no sense. The clues were contrived and there was always a cute boy. I wrote again in Middle school, in high school, took creative writing classes in college. About eight years ago, I decided to turn my dream into a reality by taking writing seriously and started writing about two thousand words every day. I read books, watched tutorials, and studied my craft. And I wrote. I wrote a lot of crap. But finally I felt like I had something worth sharing. Something I could put out there for the masses. So, back in February Rob bought me a writer's retreat on the beach for Valentine's Day. Four days on the beach, writing, agent critique, yoga and no kids. I know, romantic right? But that's what I wanted so it was. Can we just give it a collective, awwwww? It even came with a box of chocolates. However, in June, a month away from ...

Alton Brown and I are like besties. Sunday morning I saw it come across my Facebook feed that he was coming to town. And I knew I had to go. The kids and I came to know Alton Brown after binge watching FoodNetwork Star on the internet. (No cable here!) We thought him, funny, genuine and, I don’t know, unique. Authentic. So one thing I’ve learned from going to a few of these book signings at our local Indy bookshop (see previous posts) is that the faster you buy the book, the earlier you get in line for the signing, hence out of the bookstore and the less likely I am to find something I want to spend my money on. You see, you get a letter code at the time of purchase. Since it was Sunday and the event was Tuesday, and Alton Brown was popular, I knew we were in trouble. So I had a dilemma. Was buying something on the internet breaking the Sabbath? But if I didn’t buy it on Sunday, Monday would surely put me at an F or a G! I went round and round with my husband and guess wh...

Calling all Writers!  Have you ever wanted to write a novel but never had an excuse to just do it? Now you do! November is novel writing month, that means that October is making Halloween costumes for the cuties as well as plotting my novel as much as possible. What is NaNoWriMo?   It’s where you write a novel or 50,000 words with a beginning middle and an end in one month. For me I write about 2k words a day and that gives me Sundays and Thanksgiving off. If you’ve done your homework, writing two thousand words won’t take you that long. See link to sign up and get more info! Why do it? Because there may be an idea itching around the corners of your brain, wanting to come out. Here’s a time when you can actually do that. Make it happen. I write romances. But I take my NaNo as an opportunity to write in a different genre, to explore a new voice, to try out different skills, to push my boundaries. In the past, I have branched out to write a fantasy and a historical. Th...