News:
I have some news, but nothing that’s been made public yet.
Works in progress:
Cut down the synopsis for the Dracula reimagining, then wrote the query pitch and the short pitches. So everything’s good to go there, if sanity eventually prevails. As much as I don’t like writing synopses, it’s an important part of the process (and thus important for an author to do it themselves rather than have some LLM do it for them). You’re distilling your work down to a few pages, then trimming the fat to two pages, then a page, so you have a better idea of the essence of the story, perhaps more than you might have to begin with. That sets you up for writing a query/back cover copy, which in turn helps you come up with what is essentially your novel thesis statement in a short pitch or elevator pitch. Even the annoying parts of publishing are part of the process. The better you know your book, the better you can defend or sell it.
I’ve been trying to write two quite short stories before getting started on Tattered & Torn (Meridian 6) edits. I’m almost done writing one of them, but it’s hard to convince myself to write instead of immerse myself in the mess we’re in, looking for more than pinprick light of hope.
I’m furiously applying for jobs again, and although I planned to join the gig economy as a stopgap, I’m on a wait list, which I didn’t know was a thing. There were several things, actually, that came up while signing up that wasn’t in any the copy or discussions I read about it, which is frustrating, because I planned based on the incomplete information I had. Six days psyching myself up to call my car insurance provider was not on my list, either.
In retrospect, there’s a lot of things I would have changed over the last few years, which I know is easy to say in hindsight, but knowing that makes me feel like even more of a failure, even though I accomplished huge things that matter to me (and only me, at this point). For a different future. Sigh.
Books I’m Reading:
The Fisherman by John Langan
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Alien Secrets by Annette Curtis Klause
Things I’m Listening To:
Pop music playlist
Things I’m Watching:
Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo 2
Space Jam
The Menu
Blue Ribbon Baking Championship series (finished)
The Nailed It Baking Challenge series (finished)
Celebrity Jeopardy series
Grey’s Anatomy series
The Equalizer series
S.W.A.T. series
The Irrational series
Abbott Elementary series
Home Town series
NCIS series
Amanda M. Blake 