an about face!

Uh oh. I'm changing gears again. Eeeeeps!

The book I have ready, I originally planned for Harlequin Romance, and as such wouldn't need an agent. Then I read, well, you should have an agent anyway even for category romance. So I thought, alright I'll go that route--maybe there are other category lines (in other companies) that I don't know about, plus it's always better to have someone to do the negotiation for you.

But I've just read some advice (by published Harlequin authors, or authors with agents) that is pushing me back in the other direction--to submit directly to Harlequin. They don't negotiate with unknown authors anyway, so you don't really need an agent. Plus if that's the only place to submit to, then the agent has nothing to do for you unless you've got another title ready to go. Which I don't.

Hmph!

So it's back to square one. Not that I've wasted my time, I still want an agent at some point. I'll finish up my agent listing.

Man, I've flip flopped back and forth on this a couple times. Time to commit! Move on!

A brilliant theme for a conference!

what i be doing with my time

These days I'm spending my spare time researching agents who represent romance, listing them all in my Scrivener program file, rating them by how interested I am in them, writing little notes about who they rep/their philosophy/their success etc., and also listing them according to whether they accept e-solicitations, and whether they want just a query, or query & outline, or query, outline and chapters. (I brushed up on Scrivener's many features before I started, to help me out.)

I've got 23 so far. I lurv Scrivener--SO useful. Don't know how I ever wrote a school paper without it.





And I lurv this website of agent listings--the best I've found so far.

http://www.agentquery.com

You can sort out just the AAR agents, who are almost-definitely legit. After that, the only ones I find *suspect* are those who don't list the works/authors they rep! (Just one so far, and sure enough she's seen as a bit suspect by Preditors and Editors.)

I also sort out the ones who rep romance, and then--if they have a web site--I research more about them, the sorts of things they rep, the personalities of the agents. Man... this is so much better than The Olden Days. Not to mention there are SO many agents and editors with blogs, there's a never ending flow of advice and you can get answers to any question imaginable (and things I'd never heard satisfactorally addressed before, despite all the writing books I've read.)

As I research I'm also noting and buying authors who look popular, but also interesting to me (or similar to me), to get a better feel for the market. Right now I'm reading a romance where the hero is a dragon. (It's not as creative as it could be, but it's cute.) Working in a large format bookstore for 11 years has already given me a good impression of every genre out there, but because I read in every genre (mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, literary, historical, teen, romance, a smattering of horror and of course non-fiction... I only haven't read westerns, and the only High Fantasy I've read is Tolkien) I'm a generalist rather than a specialist. I've got to increase my romance reading.

It took my years to pick a genre to write in, but I finally decided romance is actually the broadest. As long as you have a love story in there, you can write sci-fi, fantasy, horror, mystery, historical, contemporary, funny or serious. And having a romance as a common denominator is easier than having futuristic science, or dragons, or magic, or a murder as the common denominator. It's the only factor that isn't really genre-specific, since most humans experience a romantic relationship of some kind.

So I'm enjoying myself. Here's my fave author photo so far:


Plus I get to listen to tons of music while I work. Weee! "Light it up everybody light it up!"

More bug cooooolness

OH MY GOD bugs and animals etc. are sooooo interesting.

I was just reading about the Asian giant hornet (it's as big as a human thumb) which love to invade honeybee houses and steal the larvae (to feed their own larvae... sick!) Check this out: (from wiki)

a single hornet can kill as many as 40 honey bees per minute thanks to their large mandibles which can quickly strike and decapitate a bee. It takes only a few of these hornets a few hours to exterminate the population of a 30,000-member hive, leaving a trail of severed insect heads and limbs

BUT. While European honeybees get killed off because they haven't developed a defense against these hornets, the Japanese honeybees have a chance to hold their own if they detect the hornet's "pheremonal hunting signals." Check THIS out:

When the honey bees detect these pheromones, a hundred or so will gather near the entrance of the nest and set up a trap, keeping it open apparently to draw the hornet further into the hive or allow it to enter on its own. As the hornet enters the nest, a large mob of about five hundred honey bees surrounds it, completely covering it and preventing it from moving, and begin quickly vibrating their flight muscles. This has the effect of raising the temperature of the honey bee mass to 47 °C (117 °F). The honey bees can just about tolerate this temperature, but the hornet cannot survive more than 46 °C (115 °F), so it dies. Often several bees perish along with the intruder, but the death of the hornet scout prevents it from summoning reinforcements which would wipe out the colony.

WTF! A giant honeybee ball of heat! How interesting is that! If bees don't bother you, check out the photo.

(And everyone mocks the Ewoks for being able to kill Imperial soldiers. Hmph!)

buggies!

Do you ever have a web site, or type of web site, that you just can't escape... and you come back to, like, once a year?

For me it's bug identification sites. Whenever I find a new bug in my home, I wonder what it is and what it's eating and why it's hanging around, and I end up googling until I find a likely candidate. I always end up on What's That Bug (and similar sites) and can't get away! It's all creepy and fascinating. I admire all these bug lovers who write in.

Oh oh... I see they have a "Worst Bug Story" page. I feel it sucking me in! Ahhhhh...... I once spent a whole afternoon reading about people who get "delusional parasitosis" where they think they have invisible bugs all over them that no doctor can help them with, and it drives them nuts.

I'll spare you and not post any pics.

Mad Skillz Step Momma

My step-mommy repaints dolls, sells them on eBay, and gives the money to an orphanage in Mexico. This is her latest one--it's crazy good! She got mad skillz!

"You don't know me!"