What’s Up Wednesday
Hello! It’s Wednesday, so time for a quick weekly check-in. This blog meme was started by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk to help writer blog friends keep up with one another, and to give us all something to blog about at least once a week! If you want to join in, or visit other participating blogs, visit either Jaime or Erin.
What I’m Reading
I finished Gary Corby’s excellent fourth installment of his Athenian Mysteries, THE MARATHON CONSPIRACY (I posted a review here yesterday). I’m now getting into Susan Dennard’s SOMETHING STRANGE AND DEADLY. This is my first zombie novel, and I’m liking it so far. I’ll get back to WAR AND PEACE eventually.
What I’m Writing
Queries! I need to restrain myself, however. I’ve written a bunch of queries, but I should stop and wait for responses before I query more, just in case I need to tweak the query or the novel. I’m also brainstorming my next project. By that, I mean I’m running through the potential projects in my head and seeing which seems to be taking shape quickest. I have plenty of ideas, but most of them are simply “what-if” concepts. Before I start writing, I need to have a general sense of where the story’s going. I don’t need a lot of detail, just a starting point (which I have for most of them), a crisis, and an idea of where it’ll end up. The one that I’m chewing most on at the moment is an adult thriller. But we’ll see if that what I end up writing. I have some YA ideas that might work, too.
What Inspires Me Right Now
Ideas jotted in a notebook. Not fully developed plots, but ideas. All of them have potential, and it’s inspiring to know I have plenty to go on for a while.
What Else I’ve Been Up To
We’ve been dealing with that 24-hour stomach bug this past week. FourthBorn came down with it first, then wifey, just as she was leaving for the weekend. SecondBorn and FirstBorn were the next to be laid low, and finally ThirdBorn. He did me the honor of throwing up all over himself (and his bed) at 2:30 in the morning. What can I say? He’s our only son out of six kids, so he has to make his mark. Thankfully, that was the worst of it for him. He slept most of the following day and was fine by evening. The up-side of this whole experience was it helped keep me from checking my inbox every five minutes for query responses.
How’s your week been?
Your poor family! Stomach bugs are the absolute worst. Hope they’re all on the mend.
It’s so hard to hold off querying when you just want to send it to all off at once. You’re right to hold some back though. A few tweaks will probably be necessary. Hope you get some good news soon though 😀
Bummer about the stomach bug. So sorry to hear. Hope everyone is on their way to being better. Good luck querying, too, Colin. It’s hard when you want to send them all at once — I DEFINITELY know that feeling 🙂 but I know you’ll hear news soon and then you’ll know whether to send more or take a step back. Please let us know how SOMETHING STRANGE & DEADLY is…I have always been curious!
Boo to being sick! Hope your family is feeling better.
I’ve already taken a step back from querying because I’ve gotten some helpful feedback from agents, and I’m making a few structuring changes before I carry on. It’s nothing major, just shuffling a few scenes and cutting a very minor plotline, but it feels right to make the changes so I’m taking that as a good sign 🙂
I hope your querying is going well. When you posted your query letter on your blog awhile back, I immediately thought, “I want to read this book!” And it didn’t disappoint 🙂 Agents are going to love Pearl and her charming self as much as I did, I know it!
Ugh… Stomach bugs are pretty much the worst. Hope yours clears out and stays away! Best of luck with those queries, Colin. I’m sending you all kinds of positive book vibes. Have fun brainstorming. Potential is the best!
I’ve wanted to read SOMETHING STRANGE AND DEADLY for ages! I’m looking forward to reading it when my copy arrives from Amazon.
Best of luck with querying, and I hope everyone feels better soon!
So, did you manage to dodge the 24-hour bug? Hope so! I suppose that does make a good (wrong choice of word?) distraction from stressing over querying. I hope that’s all going well for you. It’s definitely a good idea to send queries out in smallish batches like you’re doing. I think it’s great that you’ve got a bunch of potential story ideas floating around in your head. At least you have no shortage, right? And it gives you something else to keep you busy while you’re querying. (Not that you aren’t busy already.)
I need to reread SOMETHING STRANGE AND DEADLY and then move on to the next book in the series. It’s been too long since I read the first one, so I need a refresher. I’m sure it’s a nice break from W&P, hey? My W&P break needs to end lol. Hope you’re having a wonderful week, Colin!
Sounds like that bug has wore out its welcome very fast. Hope everyone is on the mend now.
Querying is the worst. I hate being in limbo. I hope you hear back from agents soon. Thanks for sharing!
That certainly is a distraction. I don’t look forward to the time when I start querying, I’ve heard terrible things about it. Good luck with your queries!
Oh stomach bug. I’ve been lucky these past few years that it hasn’t hit us too bad, but I still remember one of the worst nights of my life when my oldest was throwing up every ten minutes for the entire night. *shudders*
Good luck with queries!
Ugh. So sorry to hear your family has been sick with the flu. It’s been a while since I’ve been on middle of the night barf duty, so I’m pretty thankful. My son has had a nasty cold this week, but I’ll take that over stomach flu any day! Hope everyone is feeling better soon! Good luck with those queries and choosing your next WIP idea!
Eek, hope your family’s all better from the bug, Colin 🙁 Think of it all as story fodder, that’s usually how I get through sickness, haha.
It’s been a long time since I queryed, but I remember the hatred of staring at my inbox so intensely I thought my eyes would pop out, waiting for that ‘ding!’. Fingers crossed you get many, many ‘ding!’s by this time next week, all of them good!
Hope that journal continues to get filled, let us know how it’s all going!!
Oh, so sorry to hear about the stomach bug!! Yuck! The silver lining (in addition to keeping you away from your inbox) is that it’s only a 24 hour thing. By next week, you can pretend it was all just a bad dream! Yay for shiny new ideas! I hope one floats to the top for you and you can take off running with it. 🙂 Have a great week, Colin!
Hi, Colin!!! *waves* It’s been ages since I stopped by your blog – sorry about that! I’ve been in the Spring Writing Bootcamp trenches …
And you’re QUERYING!!! Ahhh! Very exciting! Good luck!!
I love that you’re in the new story ideas stage. That’s one of my favorite parts of the writing process – just asking those ‘what if?’ questions and following them down the rabbit hole … Anyhow! I hope you have fun, and that it leads to good things. 🙂
Vomit and queries and zombies – oh my! (Sorry. I had to.) 😉 The stomach bug certainly did a number on your family! I hope you are all getting healthy again as I type – sending healing thoughts your way!
So sorry Colin about the stomach bug. It must be awful having it run through one after another, as it often does with families. Thanks for the tip on the meme. Maria from http://delightdirectedliving.blogspot.com/