*enter expletive here*

I can't believe I haven't posted since October.  I've been so disappointed with my writing habits lately that I think even writing here has just felt...embarrassing. 

I have not submitted Where We Fell to any agents yet.  In fact, I have not finished writing the synopsis at this point.  Sad face.

I have, however, started two new stories.  But I've only written a few pages for each story, and I can't decide which one I want to stick with for now.  So, clearly, the option is to just ignore both of them, right?

I blame Breaking Bad.  And Netflix.

And Candy Crush.

These past several months have been frustrating.  And expensive.  The husband got laid off back in October from a job he was doing really well at, so that hurt.  Then I had my surgery and the bills started coming in pretty much immediately. Then Christmas came around, and even though we tried to cut back, we still spent waaaaay too much money on gifts. 

Then Gus got stuck in our neighbor's wall.  I swear to god, I could write a novel based on that cat's adventures.  Anyway, so that was a fun little unexpected $350 to the emergency critter removal company.  Perhaps I'll write a future blog post about this incident, although most people have already heard the ridiculous story anyway.

Then our furnace partially died.  Have I mentioned this has been one of the coldest winters in a long time? Because it has been.  Our house was at around 57 degrees for days until someone finally could come out and fix it.  Thankfully it was just a burnt out motor, but still.  Another couple hundred or so to fix it, which we delightfully pulled out of our asses. 

And now, our fridge has apparently decided, you know what? It's cold enough in your garage to store your food.  I don't need to work anymore.  So now the fridge and freezer are dead and we have two coolers full of food, including a ton of partially defrosted chicken and fish that will end up going bad, out in our garage.  Not to mention all the stuff I already had to pitch- probably at least $50-100 worth of food, sitting out on our curb to get picked up with the trash today.

I have to look on the bright side.  Or at least try to, anyway.  I have a lovely home.  We have nice cars and clothes.  If anything truly terrible did happen I know we have wonderful friends and family who would help us out.  But it's just...ENOUGH. 

I welcomed 2014 with open arms, hopefully thinking this would be the year things start to turn around for us.  Dan started a new job he's liking so far.  I'll get my writing back in order and start submitting WWF at long last.  I'm going to work hard at eliminating some of my stupid debt and medical bills.  I still have these goals, but life sure is working hard at making me want to just dig a hole for myself in our backyard to bury myself in.

Anyway.  I'll be back here more often again...I hope.

How I Spent My Summer

Clearly, I spent my summer NOT writing.  While this makes me sad and somewhat antsy to get going again, all in good time. 

June was the last time I posted anything here, and that's just downright shameful.  But it is what it is.  The summer months were crazy dealing with health issues, car issues, a crazy social schedule, and then, finally, a lovely beach vacation with my good friend Barra and her family.  Getting away from it all was EXACTLY what I needed.  I came home refreshed and raring to go.  I've started writing a new story, but so far it's really only in the beginning stages.  As in, first chapter is all that's been partially written.  But it's a start.

The past couple weeks I've been working almost every day on my query letter for Where We Fell.  I still need to update my agent list, but I think I'm juuuuuust about ready to start the scary submission process.  I believe in this book.  Everyone who's read it says my writing has come a long way since the first story- and for the record, I still think that one was good, too.  Just needs some more work   (and someday I swear I'll go back to it).  Thanks to some major help from my sister in law- I think we've emailed back and forth at least 79 times now- here's where my query stands right now:

If only Jane had given Connor the five minutes of her time he’d begged for, he wouldn’t be lying unresponsive in a hospital bed, stuck between this world and the next. But Jane had been upset, still raw from the pain he’d caused her, so instead she’d practically shoved him into the car with someone who’d had far too much to drink that night.

 

Feeling desperate and full of guilt, Jane heads for the old well in the Patterson fields. Town legend says that the ghost who haunts its crumbling ruin, Gabby King, grants wishes to a rare few she deems worthy of her help. Jane has always thought the stories of Gabby were just silly fairytales, and even if she did believe them, she isn’t sure she deserves anything at all. Yet if a simple wish can save her boyfriend, she’s willing to try.

 

To her surprise, Gabby not only exists, but wants to give Jane the chance Gabby herself never got with her own first love. She offers to send Jane into the space between; the place, Gabby explains, where souls go to await their destiny on earth. Connor’s soul is there in a perfect world created by his mind, and if Jane can’t convince him to leave he’ll never wake. Gabby warns Jane of the dangers a living soul faces to enter this realm; she must go back when Gabby calls or she will get trapped there herself.

 

However, once in the space between, Jane realizes persuading Connor to leave is not going to be easy. He's angry, resentful, and has brought all the pain from that fateful night with him. But Jane will do anything to bring him back, even if it means trading her life for his.

 

WHERE WE FELL is a contemporary young adult novel with paranormal elements, complete at 75,000 words.

So I ask you, dear loyal readers of this blog, what are your thoughts?  Does this sound like something you would want to read based solely on the query?  Pretend you don't know me.  Seriously.  I will listen to any suggestions at this point.  These are soooo hard to write, and I only have one shot to impress an agent.

I have a lot more to discuss, but I shall save those thoughts for another blog.  Hopefully I'll get back to posting on a semi-regularly basis again here soon.

Thought for the day:  How can you have a beautiful ending without making beautiful mistakes? (this was from a fortune cookie and I just loved it.  I cannot take credit for this thought.)

The bandages inside the pen

"You found the bandages inside the pen, and the stitches on the radio..."

The line above is from the chorus of one of my favorite Gaslight Anthem songs, Boxer.  I remember singing it at home one day, and my husband shaking his head at first, saying he didn't get the lyrics.  To me, they've always made perfect sense: through writing and music, I find a way to heal.

For as long as I can remember, when I've been upset or angry or depressed, I write.  I think I got my first diary when I was in the fifth grade, a tiny, hardcover book with a real lock on it.  I would hide the key in my jewelry box, tucked away under the felt so no one would ever find it.  The thought of someone reading my most intimate thoughts scared the crap out of me.  I was terrified of being teased even more relentlessly than I already was.  Elementary school, and well, most of junior high, were not especially fun times.

As I grew older, I kept writing.  My journal entries were sporadic, but whenever I was feeling frustrated or sad, getting words down on paper always made me feel better. I wrote terrible poems and long paragraphs of angsty stream-of-conscious thoughts, scribbling like a madwoman in a beat up notebook.  Somewhere in my parents' house there are crates of notebooks full of stories and poems and probably a lot of really terrible writing.  I couldn't bear to throw any of them away- each notebook represents a piece of me and who I was becoming.

Music became more and more important throughout high school, too.  I loved punk rock; fast poppy songs by Bad Religion, Lagwagon, Pennywise, etc.  Their songs were the perfect anthems to my crazy, confused life at the time.  But I also found myself weeping to music from the Indigo Girls and Tori Amos. They inspired me to write better, to really try to create beautiful imagery and say what I wanted to say without flat-out saying it...if that makes sense.

My latest novel, Where We Fell (a real title!!), was inspired by two songs, both about wishing wells.  The Airborne Toxic Event's Wishing Well is where I actually got the title from; it's a haunting song about feeling low and being full of regret.  The other song that inspired me was A Silent Film's Danny, Dakota and the Wishing Well, a lovely song about being afraid to take a chance but then throwing caution to the wind to go after what you really want (Sidenote: these are my interpretations and how the songs make me feel.  Music is so subjective, though, that someone else may get an entirely different feeling from these songs.  Just sayin'.).

I understand that not everyone feels the same way about music that I do.  Some people can listen to a song and not feel anything at all, even though they may appreciate the beat or the singer's voice.  But I love being moved by a lyric, getting that ah-ha! moment when it seems like the band just gets me.  Like they got inside my head and made sense of all my jumbled thoughts and came up with this beautiful song just for me, to make me feel better. 

And I thank them for that, for giving me the words I can't find on my own sometimes.