NaNoWriMo Is Coming!

Yes folks, it’s just about that time again: November IS National Novel Writing Month! For those of you unacquainted with this unique adventure, it is a great way to finally start that novel you always swore you wanted to write.

Back in 1999, a San Francisco writer by the name of Chris Baty and several of his cohorts decided to challenge themselves to each write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days.  It seemed like a crazy idea at the time. Novels took years to write, didn’t they? Anything worthwhile couldn’t possibly be written in a mere thirty days, right? But, conventional wisdom didn’t stop them and they forged ahead. Twenty one of them started the challenge and six of them completed it. The next year, they changed from July to November as the designated writing month (to take advantage of the less desirable weather) and 140 people signed on to take the challenge. Twenty-nine passed the finish line. In 2011, 256,618 signed up with 36,843 passing the 50,000 word goal. Over the years, approximately 100 authors have published their NaNoWriMo works including Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.  So, although probably the vast majority of NaNoWriMo manuscripts will never (and probably shouldn’t) see the light of day, there are still a few diamonds to be found.

There is one aspect of NaNoWriMo that makes the challenge unique. The rule is, no editing while writing. So many writers get bogged down by constantly editing and re-editing chapters as they write they never make any progress. The key is to keep moving forward. If you’re persistent, you’ll actually finish the thing. Then, there will be plenty of time for editing and re-writing later. Sure, maybe you’ll pitch the entire thing later on, but the point is, you wrote a novel! Once you’ve written one, you may have the confidence to try another and the more you write, the better you’ll get (hopefully)!

It was 2009 when I decided to take the NaNo challenge. Like so many, I had always wanted to try writing a novel, specifically a kids’ novel, but lacked incentive. Then, my friend, Mackie, told me about NaNoWriMo and I was hooked. I vowed that this is what I had been waiting for – the incentive I needed to make me write an original novel. I figured it would be really bad, but if it got me to actually make an attempt, that had to be a good thing! Right? First, however, I had to figure out what to write about.  That had always been my biggest stumbling block. It’s strongly suggested you have a plot. And characters. And maybe a setting or two. I was in trouble right from the start.

As I pondered possible storylines, I thought about all the things I had liked in books when I was a kid. Things like mystery, ghosts, danger, time travel, and hidden treasure. Of course, I decided to try cram them all in. How could I lose? Then I recalled a story my sister had told me about the dry cleaning shop my father had purchased many years ago. In the storage unit of the dry cleaner’s, they had discovered an old raccoon coat with a bullet in the lining. Who had the coat belonged to and how did the bullet get in the lining of the coat? No one knew.  From that seed, my story, The Gangster’s Gold was born.

The following year, November crept up on me and I found me far less prepared than I wanted to be. I knew I wanted to write some kind of ghost story involving old mines in Alaska (we had recently visited the old Kennicott copper mines there) and again, I wanted to gear it towards kids. This book was harder to write in part because I hadn’t planned it all out. In fact, it’s still not finished. But it’s the story of boy who can communicate with the dead and finds himself in serious jeopardy when called upon to help the spirits of a number of children killed in an old mine. I will finish it one of these days.

When 2011 rolled around, I was so immersed with editing my Gangster’s Gold manuscript, November again caught me unprepared. I prefer to write with a general outline of how the story is going to go but all I had was a germ of an idea but not a lot of plot figured out. I was writing by the seat of my pants, as they say. It’s another supernatural tale. It’s titled Consuming the Soul and the rough draft is completed. Editing it, will be my next adventure!

Now, we come to 2012. November 1^st is just around the corner. Am I prepared? Ummm…not really. My agent had suggested I try writing another novel using the characters from my first book to create a possible series. I’m finding it challenging since I’d never considered Gangster’s Gold to be part of a series, but I have a few ideas rolling around in my head. The question is, can I pull together a possible plot that makes sense?

But, I am determined to make another effort regardless of how prepared I am! I’ve managed to surpass the 50,000 word goal each year thus far, and I don’t plan to fail this time round either.  Maybe it won’t be the next To Kill a Mockingbird or even the next Captain Underpants, but I figure any writing is a good use of time!

For those of you who think you might want to take the NaNoWriMo challenge, just head on over to www.nanowrimo.org. It’s all free. There are local support groups, write-ins, challenges, and just a bunch of people goofy enough to think trying to write a 50,000 word novel isn’t totally crazy. There are forums where you can learn everything from which poisons are best for leaving little or no trace to how do you saddle a horse. Anything you might need to know to write your particular part of the challenge. There are writers ranging from elementary school kids to octogenarians. So, if you’ve ever wanted to try writing a novel, now is the time!

My True Ghost Story

Ghosts…

Among other things, my story, The Gangster’s Gold, has to do with ghosts. A ghost that needs help.  

If you go on television right now, you can view a plethora of ghostly related programs: Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, Paranormal Witness, Celebrity Ghost Stories, etc.  There are innumerable books on ghosts – “true” ghost stories, local legends, and myths. Not to mention hundreds of movies and internet websites devoted to the paranormal.  Go to youtube and you can find tons of videos related to ghosts People simply love stories about ghosts and the supernatural.

Why do people love stories about ghosts? Is it because we like to be scared? Or perhaps it makes us happy to think there is something after we leave this mortal plane? I looked this up on the internet and answers ranged from “I like to be scared” and “I love the mystery” to “There’s always a naked girl in the movies”. Hmm.

Of course, the big question is, do ghosts really exist?

I think they do. Or at least some sort of energy we can’t explain does. I experienced this myself as a child. Here is my “real” ghost story.

When I was young, growing up in New Jersey, we lived on a dead end street. The last house before you got to the woods belonged to the Hoffmans and had a detached garage with an apartment above it. It always seemed rather creepy to us as kids.

One fall afternoon, my brother and wanted to try and make some money raking leaves. So, we decided to try the Hoffmans and see if they would hire us. No one answered the front door. As we were leaving, we noticed an old man looking down at us from one of the windows of the garage apartment. My brother asked if we could rake his leaves and the man nodded. So, off we went to the back yard to begin raking.

A short time later, a car drove up and an elderly woman got out and walked behind the garage to see what we were doing. We explained that the old man said we could rake the leaves. She was confused and asked us to describe the man, which we did.

For a long moment, the woman said nothing, just stared at us. Then she said, “That’s sounds like my husband but he died a year ago. You couldn’t have seen him.”

My brother and I looked at each other, then explained that he’d been looking at us through the window and nodded when we asked about raking the leaves. We knew we’d seen that old man! The woman seemed to get a little upset and told us to go home. Needless to say, we were seriously creeped out!

That was not my only experience with the Hoffman house. One early evening, my friend, Kim, and I were walking past it to the path leading to another friend’s house. I looked up and saw a person I thought was an old lady moving down the front yard towards us before disappearing behind a bush. I told Kim someone was coming but no one was there! Ooooeeeoooo.

Right now, my daughter lives in an apartment that appears to be haunted by the spirit of a little girl. She’s had mysterious writing appear on her refrigerator. Things have moved by themselves. For example, she had a plastic flower sitting on her kitchen counter. The next morning, she found it by her front door. That sort of thing has happened several times. She once watched a carton of milk move across her refrigerator shelf. More than once, she came into her kitchen and found every cabinet and drawer open. She’s heard voices and laughter and even saw a figure dash by her bedroom door. Although she’s gotten sort of used to all of this, she’s moving to a new apartment next month!

This was how she found her kitchen one morning.

 

 



So, ghosts…real or not?

In other news…editors from two more publishers have asked to see my manuscript! Keeping my fingers crossed one of them thinks it’s worthy of publication!



 

The Next Big Step

I have some very exciting news! Before we left to spend last week in New Hampshire where we’re building our retirement house, I made sure I got everything back to my agent. I put together a marketing plan, I wrote my blurb, and fixed those last few editorial changes. I wanted to make sure I had all my ducks in a row before we headed to New England to determine the fate of numerous trees on our land before the construction guys came to clear it.

This morning, I got an email from my agent telling me she had sent out queries on my behalf to a bunch of different publishers. I found that so exciting. To think we’re taking the next big step!  Then, I got a second email not long after saying that an editor at Random House, one of the big ones, wanted to read the entire manuscript! I was absolutely dumbfounded. I had to reread that several times!

Okay, I know this doesn’t mean they’ll want to publish it, but it’s one of those cases where it’s an honor just to be considered. It means someone thought my synopsis sounded interesting enough to make them want to read the entire story. To me, that’s huge! I guess I still have trouble imagining someone actually publishing it, but to get even this far is just so amazing to me.

My agent asked me if this book was going to be part of a series. Frankly, I hadn’t actually considered that as a possibility. She told me before she sent off the queries that maybe I should give it some thought in case an editor liked it enough and would like some additional similar stories. So, I think that’s going to be my next project: try and come up with a sequel to Gangster’s Gold. Hmm...another ghostly time-traveling mystery...can I do it? Only one way to find out!

Writing the Novel was the Easy Part!

Last week, my “Gangster’s Gold” manuscript came back from my agent and I’m happy to report, it’s ready to roll! Well, it’s ready to roll, but all my ducks aren’t quite all lined up yet.

When I decided to write this book, no one ever told me that writing the book was going to be the easy part! I mean, I whipped out that rough draft in thirty days. Then, of course, came the editing. That turned out to be far more involved than I expected. I mean, wasn’t it perfect already!? Um. No.

But still, I survived that step (although if we sell it to a publisher I will very likely be going through another round or two) and figured we were almost home free. What a silly, naïve fool I was! I hadn't counted on The List.

When my agent sent me back my manuscript, along with it was a list of additional items my agent needed. I studied this list with some alarm. A marketing plan? Wasn’t it the publisher’s job to sell your book? Ha! Not quite. They’ll publish it, but unless you’re Stephen King or James Patterson, you better be expecting to be out there hustling your own novel. So, if you see me out by the side of the road with my trunk open waving books around, be sure and stop by.

Next, she wanted a tag line and a cover blurb. I figured those should be easy. I mean, how hard could it be to condense a 70,000 word novel into a paragraph or a single enticing sentence? The answer to that is: really hard. In fact, I spent an hour at the bookstore one day just looking for tag lines and cover blurbs. I mean do you write a cryptic and mysterious tagline like A girl trapped between two lives separated by time or a more descriptive one like A girl travels through time to prove the innocence of a ghostly boy unjustly accused of stealing a fortune in gangster’s gold. Beats me. So, I’ll write one of each just to be safe. Then, the blurb (that descriptive paragraph on the inside or back of the cover that convinces you to buy the book). Again, I need to make it sound like the most exciting book ever so you’ll want to buy and read the entire thing before you even reach your car. It took me less time to write the first half of the book!

But I’m lucky. I have helpful friends. Mackie sat down with me and helped me think of ways to market my book. My critique group gave me suggestions on writing my blurb. My brother Brian even made me a little video teaser to put on my website to help (you can see it by looking in the right hand margin for the youtube link). Others also threw in their helpful two cents. My ducks are lining up quite nicely now.

So, by the end of this week, I plan to have this all back in my agent’s capable hands and see if she can drum up any interest. Granted, it’s not a paranormal romance or a fractured fairytale, both of which seem to be very popular right now, but hopefully someone will find some merit in it, publish it and make me Rich and Famous (or at least give me bragging rights that I published a book!) . I still need to find some other time traveling, treasure hunting ghost stories similar to mine. Oddly enough, there don’t seem to be a lot out there. If you think of one, let me know!

Consuming the Soul: The second novel arrives

I'm happy to announce the completion of another milestone in my writing "career". It's only taken me ten months since I started it, but I finally completed the first draft of my second novel! Okay, technically, it's my third novel since I have another one about two thirds completed that I started after "Gangster's Gold", but it's the second I've actually completed.

For the past three Novembers, I have participated in the National Novel Writing month writing event. The goal is to write a 50,000 word in thirty days. My friend, Mackie, told me about this back in 2009, and I decided it was a sign. It told me the time had come to write My Novel. You know, it's that novel everyone has tucked in the back of their head. The one we just know we'll write Someday. For most of us, Someday never seems to arrive, and if Mackie hadn't told me about NaNoWriMo (yes, that's what they call it), I suspect my story would still be loitering in those back alleys of my brain. Thus inspired,  I wrote and actually completed "The Legend of the Gangster's Gold." The following year, I started a second novel about a kid who sees ghosts, forced to work in a carnival, and eventually has to save the souls of dead children who were murdered in an abandoned mine, and finally the year after that, my third, "Consuming the Soul".  If all goes well, I'll start a new story come November 2012.

I'm excited about this newly completed novel. Its current working title is "Consuming the Soul" and is based on an old New England supersition. In the early eighteen hundreds there were those who believed that when a number of people, especially those in the same family, died from consumption (aka tuberculosis) it wasn't due to disease but due to an evil force inhabiting the body of the first victim. That force subsisted by consuming the life energies from living souls. Some believed if you dug up the body of that initial victim, you would find fresh blood in his heart or liver. You must then burn the organs and feed the ashes to those afflicted by the disease. This would supposedly cure the ill and stop the deaths. Needless to say, not many adhered to this "Yankee vampire" supersition, although for awhile, it was somewhat popular in the backwoods of Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire. Regardless, it was the inspiration for this book. A "vampire" book without vampires!

This novel was a actually lot of fun to write. It's a young adult novel and my first attempt at writing in first person. There are historical aspects, danger, mystery, and even a little romance. I'll have to admit, romance isn't really my thing. I usually prefer the thriller stories where romance doesn't get in the way of a good old-fashioned gunfight. I'll take a fun-filled fiery explosion over gooey mush any day.  Yet, I threw some in just the same. However, we are definitely not talking "Fifty Shades of Grey"!

So, now that the first draft is completed,  I've put the story away for the time being. I'll let it simmer for awhile and eventually go back and start the editing process. As I have learned, that can be a long, drawn out process. In the meantime, I'll start thinking about my next story. November is only a few months away!

Confessions of a Fanfiction Nerd

People have frequently asked (well, maybe twice) how I got into writing. Was it something I had been doing all my life, or did I just one day sit down at a computer and start writing? Well, to be honest, it was a little of both.

As a kid, I used to write and illustrate little books all the time. My favorite was a series called “The Spooks” which obviously was the inspiration for the “Addams Family”. It was just that original. Then, of course, there was the previously mentioned book I wrote in seventh grade about how my entire middle school was captured by Nazis and dug tunnels with spoons. It was over a hundred handwritten pages of hairbreadth escapes, witty adolescent banter, and nonstop adventure. I still have that someplace but sadly, it was never finished. I’m sure it would have made a terrific Nickelodeon movie. As an adult, I wrote a few stories for my then two year old daughter when we spent a summer in Norway and I quickly discovered we had not brought nearly enough books with us. I bought a couple of books in Stavanger, but since they were written in Norwegian, it made reading them aloud a bit difficult. Did help me work on my cheesy Norwegian accent, however.

Beyond that, I didn’t really write much, but in the back of my mind, I knew one day I would write a children’s book. That was my dream. However, I needed to actually write something in order to accomplish that goal. That’s actually a substantial hurdle to get over. What should I write about? Could I even write something like that? Then, my daughter introduced me to the world of fanfiction.

To the uninitiated, fanfiction are stories written by fans of particular books, movies, TV shows, video games, etc. Writers take the characters and settings and create new stories. Now, as a kid, I used to do just that but in my head. I’d take the Star Ship Enterprise on new adventures, create new versions of events in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or provide new missions for the prisoners of Stalag 13. I had no idea anyone else did that, much less wrote these stories down. I was intrigued and headed to www.fanfiction.net to begin my investigation.  I was immediately hooked. I started reading stories about every show, book or movie I had ever loved.

Some of the stories were actually extremely well written and more than a few were as long as an actual book. Some were obviously written by teenaged girls who wanted to be part of the action and wrote themselves in as a new character (these are often referred to as “Mary Sues”) and sure, when I was 13, I did that too. I was amazed at the number of stories out there. On fanfiction.net there are over 600,000 Harry Potter fictions alone! That doesn’t even include the private websites people have created for their own fanfiction stories.

So, I read and read and read. Then, the little niggling idea got in my head that maybe, just maybe, I could write a fanfiction. I was quite immersed in the whole Lord of the Rings thing going on when the movies came out so that seemed like the most logical starting point. I wrote a short little fiction, just over 8000 words, then took a very deep breath and posted it on the site for others to read. Mind you, when I wrote it, I assumed it was my little secret and would never see the light of day. I mean, writing fanfiction? How dorky is that!?

Then, I got a few reviews. Positive reviews! That was all it took. A monster was born. I began another, much longer LOTR story. This one was 34,000 words and 18 chapters! I had never written anything that long in my life. And the drug that is reader reviews fed my addiction. I wrote four more LOTR stories, the longest over 91,000 words and had over 400 reviews. I knew then I couldn’t stop. I continued writing in other genres: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, NCIS, and yes, Hogan’s Heroes.

  For a long time, I wouldn’t tell anyone I did this, but now, I don’t care! I have fans! People who ask me to write more stories. People who put me and my stories into their Favorites lists! If that’s not worth writing for, what is? And fanfiction isn’t just for nerds anymore.  In case you didn’t know, that infamous Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy started life as a Twilight fanfiction.

As much as I’ve enjoyed writing about old favorites, there was really a very important consequence of this activity. It got me writing. I was able to experiment, work on plot and character development, learn to craft sentences that made sense, evoke emotions, and figure out how to write dialogue. It was like a writer’s workshop. And because I had been doing all this writing, I finally got up the confidence to try writing my children’s story, the one I had always dreamed of writing.

So, here I am today. I just returned the revised manuscript of that first original story to my agent. Hopefully, we will soon move onto the next step of approaching publishers. And for this, I have to thank my love of old TV shows and books!

I would also like to take a moment to thank all of you that signed up to follow my blog. You guys are the greatest and when I’m Rich and Famous, I’ll be sure and wave to you as I drive by in my chauffeur driven Rolls Royce. I know how to treat my friends right! :-)

P.S. If any of you are dying to read some of my fanfiction stories, go to www.fanfiction.net and look for the author, yellowrose. FYI.

The Quest for Perfection

As I slog through my manuscript accepting all the editorial changes my agent requested, trying to figure out how to reword passages, clarify particular points, etc., I'll admit, I'm experiencing a certain level of frustration.

Don't get me wrong. I am in full agreement with the changes my agent wants. They tighten up the writing, fix littly niggly problems and so forth. What is frustrating is despite all the effort I put into trying to get it right, it still wasn't. After I got it back from her assistant,  I went over the manuscript myself so many times I could have recited the thing by heart. I even read it aloud. I went through my agent's list of "Look for and fix these things..." and went through the manuscript several more times. Then, I joined a critique group. Individual chapters were critiqued by several people in the group. The entire manuscript was critiqued by two different people, including a university English professor. Despite all that, I still didn't get it right.

Obviously, my agent outranks all others at this point. If she wants a comma put here instead of there, so be it. If she doesn't like the way a sentence is worded, it gets changed. Yet, it's frustrating when she continues to tell her clients we need to make sure our manuscripts are as clean as possible. I doubt any of us is purposefully sending in bad manuscripts. I think we all hope that ours is up to par. I know it makes her job harder, but until I got mine back from her, I didn't really know exactly what she expected. I thought I had gotten rid of the passive verbs, the extraneous "said" tags, excess exclamation points, etc. I learned very quickly that my idea of what was acceptable differed greatly from my agent's. It was an eye opener.

I've learned so much during the process of trying to get my book published. Every step educates me further. Sure, it can be frustrating. I'll look at current bestsellers and  quickly identify a variety of things  they can get away with that I've been told are no-no's (i.e. prologues, lots of said tags...). I try and listen to my agent because she is undoubtedly more up on what is currently preferred by publishers. Why have an agent if you aren't going to listen to her?

So, I will continue in my quest for perfection. It won't be easy, but now I have a much better feel for what she's looking for. That can only help me with any future manuscripts I might ask her to represent. In the meantime, I think I'll go read up on commas!

The Return of the Manuscript

It only took four months, but at long last, my manuscript, Legend of the Gangster's Gold made its way home again. To be honest, as many times as I had gone over that manuscript, I was quite content with it being gone for awhile.  Yet, I was still eager to know what my agent thought of the entire thing. She'd only read the first few chapters prior to this, so it was all new to her.

That was my biggest fear. Would Dawn require me to rewrite massive parts of the book? Would she have second thoughts about even representing it? I know it wasn't perfect. It was my first  book ever (well, if you don't count the story I wrote in middle school about how the entire school was kidnapped by Nazis and we were forced to escape by digging tunnels with spoons. That was during my "Hogan's Heroes" phase). I knew it would need work, but was it trash? Yes, I know people have told me how much they enjoyed it, but I'm as insecure as the next fledgling writer, and I knew Dawn's opinion was going to be the one that mattered most.

It was with great fear and trepidation that I opened the innocuous email entitled simply "manuscript". This was it. I opened it and quickly scanned through all the red editorial marks swarming across the pages. Yet, despite their numbers, none of them were serious problems. They were where Dawn had eliminated the apparently never popular "said" tags, excess wordy words, changes in tense, etc. There were a few places she felt needed some clarification, but again nothing like "rewrite the entire second half of the book." I couldn't believe it. I was thrilled! Honestly, with as many time as I and my critique partners had gone over that manuscript, I would have thought we'd have found all the passive tense verbs, excess exclamation points, and improperly placed commas, but apparently, I was wrong. But, that's okay. I knew that having Dawn finally read it was the only way I would finally understand exactly what SHE wanted to see. Now, I know.

So, I am currently going through all 237 pages of my manuscript, making all the changes she requested as well as looking for additional ways to improve it. My goal is to have it done by next week prior to leaving on a trip. I think I'll make it. Then, I'll be just that much closer to realizing my dream!

It only took a year...

About a year ago, I received my manuscript, "The Legend of the Gangster's Gold" back from my agent. Yes, one year ago! I dutifully went over all the notes her assistant had included and carefully made those changes. Then,  I reread the manuscript numerous times looking for typos, missing words, etc. However, my biggest stumbling block was having to delete my beloved prologue. I knew I had to do it, I just wasn't sure how.

Then, came the bad news. We were leaving Alaska, our home of 6 years, and returning to the urban blight that is Dallas, TX. I was not a happy camper. I knew I had to work on my book, but I just couldn't concentrate on it. All I could think of was the heat, the traffic, the crowds, and how much I dislike Texas. The only bright side was having lived in Dallas twice before (so I knew perfectly well what I was getting into), was two of my children, a sister, a couple of cousins as well as numerous friends were here. They made it bearable.

Anyway, I knew I had to get back to my manuscript. Then, my agent sent out a message to all her clients about more things she wanted people to look at before they returned their manuscripts. So began another round of rereading and editing. Then she suggested everyone try and join a critique group. Sooo...I did that. I had them help me with my prologue dilemma (they assured me that losing it wouldn't ruin the story!) as well as lots of other little issues. I had one person read the entire manuscript, made those changes then had a second read it over and made those changes. Then, I decided that was it it. Enough was enough. I could nitpick that thing forever. Besides, it had reached the point where the story was barely making sense to anymore!

So, on March 16, I put together my synopsis, my character summary and my manuscript, zippped them all together and sent them off. I know it will be awhile before my agent gets to it but that's okay. Just as long as the ball is out of my court for a little while!

Now, I can go back and work on my other Works in Progress!

Value of a critique group

My agent told everyone in her agency to find and join a critique group. This can be easier said than done,  but it made sense to me, so I set out to find one. In the course of writing my book, I quickly discovered that although it can really be gratifying to have friends and family read your manuscript and gush about how wonderful your masterpiece is, it isn't really very constructive. They don't want to hurt your feelings, and having someone close to you tell you your writing isn't all it's cracked up to be can be painful in a very personal way.
   
Thus the value of finding a complete stranger and ideally a fellow writer, to read over your work and tell you what's wrong with it, as well as what works. Sure, it's still painful, but not nearly as personal. It's easier to be a little more objective about comments when you don't really know the person giving them. At the same time, they don't worry so much about hurting your feelings as they do helping you improve your writing.

I can't tell you how invaluable that is. I found an online critique group  taking new members, and over the past few months I have learned an incredible amount about the value of editing and critiquing. Evaluating others' work helps me to look at my own writing more critically. I see what works or doesn't in other stories and that helps me  search for similar issues in my own. Plus, it doesn't matter how many times you read over your own work, you will miss things. It might be typos, missing words, sentence fragments, whatever, but you will miss something. Your brain knows what is supposed to be there so it simply fills it in. Looking for these problems is another invaluable service provided by your critique partner.

I don't claim to be an expert in any of this. In fact, most of the time I feel completely lost when it comes to trying to follow the labyrinthine path towards publication. But it's nice to know I have a group of fellow writers trying to help me along!