A Life in the Day

Courtesy of The Art of Alba I'm always genuinely surprised at the sheer volume of queries I receive on a daily basis that I end up having to reject for simple reasons: they're not what I'm looking for. Queries that didn't hit the mark this week include works I don't represent, weak character and/or plot development, stories with clichéd storylines/heroes and genres I'm not currently seeking works in. While it can appear frustrating to go through so many queries in a day and not be able to request a partial or full, I do enjoy seeing the creativity displayed in the vast number of stories I get to weed through on a daily basis. Some stories, while intriguing to me, fall outside any genre I represent or appear great as story ideas but then fail to capture the essence of what the query tried to convey. For example, a new twist on the werewolf/vampire dynamic that in the query shows promise but in the sample provided proves it's just another werewolf...

I'm not a fast reader. Even if the Staples eReader speed reading test stays I read faster than 60% of the nation, I just know I'm not a fast reader. Never have been and it has frustrated me in the past because friends would finish books hours (in some instances days) before I would and sometimes spoil the ending for me. In high school, I started "skimming" through texts I had to read just to avoid this and the bad habit stayed through college. Mind you, some of the reading material we had in college was boring as hell and skimming saved my sanity (and my eyesight) but it made it difficult and sometimes even more frustrating when someone would catch something I missed. When I started working in the textbook publishing industry, one of my first jobs required me to do a Quality Control check (QC) on page elements. We were expressly told NOT to read text but to review the "look" of the page. Were there widows, orphans on the page? How many sentences started w...

Continuing with my Blog challenge : 100 Things Important to Me, I've decided to post today about personal reading interests versus professional reading interests. While these are usually the same (genre, pairings, etc.), my professional reading interests also include those of the editors whose lists I'm hoping to pitch my clients' works. Here are a few personal reading interests and how these then translate to my professional ones. My Personal Reading Interests include: M/M erotic romance in all sub-genres with my tastes leaning more toward BDSM and Sci-fi. Combine the two and do it well and I'm in reading heaven! Some of my favorites include Christine D'Abo's No Quarter . I also love it when books remind me of a world I'm already familiar with and enjoy. In this case, it was Star Wars with Han Solo and the Bounty Hunters. While the story is not fanfic, per se, it has a taste of the world I've always loved and explores aspects of the world I would ...

So, I'm kinda late to this party but I figured it can't hurt to start it but not sure what to post about so I'm keeping my 100 things to various sundry and whatever strikes my fancy. I may post about movies, books, music, coffee, traditions, cultures, photos (could put my Pinterest account to good use then), quotes, fandom things or dog pictures. You just never know what you're going to get with me. I'm going to call it 100 Things Important To Me . If you'd like to participate as well, click on the banner below to get started. {Take the 100 Things challenge!} My first post: My grandmother, as some of you know, was (and continues to be) the most influential woman in my life. When I think of everything she endured and lived through in her lifetime (1922-2007) and the way she embraced being a human being, not just a GENDER, I'm humbled to be part of her legacy. I've started writing about her life and fictionalizing a few things I'm not 100...

Was having a pretty good day today despite the unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach that something bad was going to happen. I've been feeling "off" for a few days and today the feeling was a bit stronger. When I've had these feelings before, I've ended up in a car accident or with a family member in jail. I should've listened to my gut and stayed ho me. 14-year-old girl with autism. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Instead, I took the kids to Barnes & Noble at Waterford Lakes as we often do when we're bored and don't have much money to spend. We were there for less than an hour when David rushes to me to tell me they are kicking him out of the store. When I turn around, there's the manager of the store (must be a new one or a weekend one because I've not seen her before and I know most of the staff there, we've spent more time at that store than we have anywhere else in the city) telling me she's received complaints ...

If you've submitted a query in the past month or so, you know I'm out of the office on medical leave. Had a hysterectomy in March and have been laid up (forced bed rest) since. The entire experience has wreaked havoc in my life as I'm not one to sit idle and just... rest. My idea of resting (pre-surgery) was going through manuscripts on a Saturday while finishing several loads of laundry, cleaning the kitchen and talking clients down off the ledge. I realized, while being on bed rest the last three weeks, that I've forgotten how to rest. I mean, even while I was on my cruise last year, I was working so this forced bed rest has been very difficult for me. I'm eager to return to the office in a few weeks and get back to work. In the meantime, I'm reading books I haven't had a chance to read and playing games on my iPad. In other words, I'm bored out of my ever-loving mind. What do you do when you're on forced bed rest?

Spent a good portion of the past two days watching documentaries I've had sitting in my Netflix Instant Queue for months (ok, some close to a year... don't judge me) while working on a million things at once. If you've followed this blog at all you know I can't just sit still and often have several things going on at once . Such was the case with the documentary watching. Most of it was watched on my iPad while I helped kids with their homework and housework. (Love being able to lay the iPad down beside me while folding laundry!) The problem with watching so many documentaries back-to-back is that you start to feel like you're starring in your own documentary and find yourself providing commentary for every day tasks. "While brushing her teeth, Saritza checks her to-do list on her iPad prioritizing items before consuming her first cup of coffee." I even had background music playing from my iTunes library on my iPad. The funny thing is I used to do ...