You Like Me? You Really Like Me!? I Like You Too!

This last month -- July, has been busy. I'm participating in ROW80 --cool brain child of equally cool  Kait Nolen

And I was a part of Deana Barnhart month long -- Gearing Up to Get an Agent month. If we could bottle her (Deana's) energy, I can only imagine what we could accomplish!

Two favorite new friends from from GUTGA gave me with this awesome award.

Angie Cothran She and her critique partners have a cool blog on books and writing. Loved her first 200 words of her YA novel. She's got that deep POV That I can only dream of.

K.V. Briar I'm loving the fact that she's got more frying pans in the fire than the short-order cook at Mickey's Diner. My kind of girl. Once again, a great YA writer

Seriously, you can tell just looking at these two, that you would want them as your friends.

The Liebster Award (meaning friend in German) is meant to connect us even more and spotlight new bloggers who have less than 200 followers—but hopefully not for long. The rules of the award are:

1.         Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.

2.        Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

3.        Post the award on your blog.

4.        Bask in the love from the most supportive people on the internet—other writers.

5.        And best of all – have fun and spread the karma.

My picks, which were hard to narrow down, are:

An Alleged Author funny funny funny.

Amber Plante smart, honest, funny. Great writing tips too!

Marie Andrews cool steampunk.

Ru she makes me laugh!

Lora Rivera just so cool. And her writing is dreamy.

I could have added so many more to this list...

What's so Bad About Being Skipper?

Like lots of young girls in the 60s, I adored Barbie. Her hair, her eyelashes, her eyeliner, her clothes, her high-heeled bare feet. Her ridiculous body ( even at 7 I knew real women couldn't possibly have a shape like Barbie, unless you were Sophia Loren or Barbarella) but, boy did she look good in those schmancy clothes.

Then Barbie got a little sister, Skipper. Skipper was not a knock-out. She was cute, and friendly (I could tell by her non-mean-girl expression) but not a show-stopper. She was the girl next door.

No one was threatened by Skipper. She wore capris -- a lot -- and sneakers, her bare feet were flat, not molded to high heels. She was sporty. And definately not sexy.

A few years ago an aquaintance said to me, "You remind me of my Skipper doll I used to own."

Huh?

"Your nose and face, and bangs!"

But Skipper's...Skipper not Barbie.

Now, I'm no dummy, well, not this time. I laughed and thanked her, because she was complimenting me, no matter how I felt about it.

I saw this person again on Tuesday. I had just had my hair trimmed and she said, "We should call you Skipper." And then she told her 3 year old niece about Skipper and how I looked like her.

This time I loved it. This time, I really was no dummy. Because I am a 52 year old woman and have finally accepted the Skipper in me.

I've figured out that I like being Skipper. She's not high-maintenance, she loves to laugh, she loves going to sporting events, she likes animals and small children.

Besides, those high-heels really hurt my flat feet.

Anything you've accepted about yourself? Tell us. Please. 

ROW80 Check In. Where am I?

ROW80 check-in. Star Date, July 27th, 2011.

We find ourself in a strange, non-writing place. The inhabitants are friendly and the climate temperate. Which only leads to our own inability to put words on paper...how much longer can we go on?

This strange place's name? Staycation.

All silliness aside, I had great plans for this staycation 2 weeks of no work and lots of writing time. Yeah, not so much so. As you can see Sunday, when I should have been writing a ROW80 check-in, I was at a Twins game with our youngest. Monday and Tuesday a bit of writing got done, mainly for a contest. Plus, another baseball game, little league semi-finals. They lost :( after rallying back from a 5 run deficit, they were ahead by 1...other team had last ups and they pulled it off.

Plus, I don't know what I was thinking: no work. Ha! No work, except for laundry and vacuuming and dusting and organising and cooking. Not to mention all the stuff that needs to be done, but not enough time like, re-paint porch and basement. Crap.

Enough with the whining.

Even more than new words on the page, I need to nail the outline for my YA steampunk/fantasy.

NEW PLAN

Brainstorm and notecard outline

Re-write query 

Post on Blog 2x a week not counting ROW80 check-ins

I'm not posting a goal for wordcount this go around. We'll see how I feel on Sunday.

How's everyone else doing?

GEARING UP TO GET AN AGENT WEEK 4 FIRST 200 WORDS!

For week 4 of Gearing up to Get an Agent we're posting the first 200 words of our manuscript...I have started this in so many places, I no longer know what makes sense. Here's the first 200 words of my YA steampunk romance:

I was alone in the attic bedroom. That wasn't entirely true, I had the skitterings of Aurora in the eaves to keep me company. My foster sisters were performing in the production tonight so they would not be along to for another few hours. I hadn't felt well earlier and was excused from my duties as second stage-hand. I didn't act or sing, my foster parents said acting was not my cup of tea -- what they meant was, I had no talent for it. It's not the life for you, they'd say.

It's alright, I didn't care for the theatre, I only cared for the corner of the Mississippi I could see with my distance goggles through my bedroom window. Every moment That could be spared I me eyes were on that bend. One day soon, I would see the AirPirate ship that carried the Captain who was responsible for my parents' death.

If only I knew what I would do after I spied the ship. It's not as if I could call him out for a duel. I might be able to tinker a bomb...but, that was no good, I only wanted vengeance on the Captain not the whole crew.

ROW80 CHECK-IN SERIOUSLY.

Okay, okayokayokay. A funny thing happened on my way to Sunday's check-in.

I got a rejection from an editor who had requested my first three chapters from a pitch on twitter-- and it was the second most exciting thing that had happened to me in the world of writing (the first being, the original request that came from the twitter pitch).

A rejection exciting? Yes. It was a long rejection letter telling me, not one, but two people reviewed it. They told me what they liked and why it didn't work for them...yet. They told me what I could do to make it better, and then they told me that although it wasn't right for them now, it didn't mean it never would be.

So, yay!

On to the check-in: feel as if I've been running in place, lots of writing, just not on anything I had planned out. Wrote a horrible query, got lots of lovely feedback from folks here:

Deana Barnhardt's blog -- Gearing up to Get an Agent

Such good advice.

So, I guess I'll have to wait until Sunday to see how I succeeded this week.

Good Luck everyone.

GEARING UP TO GET AN AGENT WEEK 3 QUERY LETTER

Okay, here it is...I know it needs work -- lots o' work -- just wanted to get it up. Yikes!

Dear Dream Agent's Name,

In a time of gaslit streets how can a young woman hope to avenge her parents' death?

Finding out you're the descendant of Thor is a good start. Having the power to seek out the AirPirate responsible for their deaths is brilliant. Retrieving the legendary hammer from a Mad Genius might be daunting. And learning your almost boyfriend was instrumental in your parents' death might very well be debilitating.

Tess O'Dell has a wonderful opportunity to attend Miss Carmila's School for Exceptional Young People. At the school she copes with discovering her true identity, a best friend and a strong attraction to a mysterious boy; Sebastian St. Camael.

Sebastian has his own problems. Raised by pirates, yet born a true Angel he and his adoptive father are used in a cruel plot causing the deaths of Tess's parents. Unknown to each other by their twisted relationship, Tess and Sebastian meet at school.

Betwixt is a Young Adult Steampunk Romance, set in St. Paul, Minnesota on the Mississippi in 1869. This is my first Young Adult novel.

Thank you for time, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,
Amy Kennedy

THINKING THURSDAY HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO BRAIN MALFUNCTION

Hope this works. Love these guys. If language offends, it was unintended.
Mumford & Sons. Little Lion Man


http://youtu.be/lLJf9qJHR3E