Wednesday Updates

No news this week but I did send out three more queries. I try not to think about it too much or I'll get really anxious. One of the agents considering my novel posted her stats. She reads 36,000 queries a year, requests the first thirty pages of about 1,200, and looks at full manuscripts of about 100. Wow. I'm still in that 1,200 category.

I can't dwell on what I can't control, so I made some writing goals for 2012.

1. Finish, edit, and polish all four novels--Forbidden, Forgotten, Forgiven, and Fairy World, MD. (Okay, I just realized today they all started with the letter "F". Must have been the letter "F" day on Sesame Street or something when I picked these.)

2. Write query letters and synopses for all four books.

3. Send out query letters for all four books.

4. If I still have time to kill, start a new book, hopefully something not starting with the letter "F".

And there you go. Now that I've posted this, I feel I really ought to follow through!

Stats!

# of queries sent since I started querying: 27
# of requests: 2!!!

Can you tell I'm happy about this?

     And just for fun, I want to post a snippet from my second book, FORGOTTEN. To get you up to speed, this scene takes place with my two main characters, Susan King and Grant White. Grant is over a century old though he doesn't look it and he is half-demon. He's just traded his demon half with a witch to save himself from a horrible death.
     Susan and Grant are returning from a place called the under-spirit world when this scene takes place.

            Storm clouds roiled, covering the sun, and Grant felt as if he were back in the under-spirit world. He hated that place, hated what it did to him. When his demon returned, he knew he’d have to go back. He knew he’d never come out.

            Susan walked next to him, biting her nails as they made their way down the forest path. He couldn’t tell her. She’d find out soon enough. “You bite your nails?” he asked.

            She paused, looked at her hand as if she didn’t realize what she’d been doing, and then sighed. “Nervous habit.”

            Under the thick rain clouds, Susan’s face seemed paler than usual, almost sallow. He still thought she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. He couldn’t understand why. He’d met plenty of women in his lifetime. Duchesses and wealthy heiresses with finer clothing and more alluring features. Something about Susan baffled him.

        A damp wind rushed past, rustling the pine boughs and making them hiss as they brushed against each other. Susan stared at the forest as if it were a foreign place.

        “Something wrong?” Grant asked.

        “I’m not sure. This place. It seems almost . . . I don’t know.”

        “Magical?”

        She raised an eyebrow. “No.”

        “Then what?”

        “Pretty, I suppose. Almost.”

        “Thought you hated Texas.”

        “I do.”

        “Thought you said everything here was ugly.”

        “It is.”

        Susan didn’t hold his gaze. A few moments later, she started biting her nails again. Grant caught her hand in his and grasped it. “What are you doing?” she asked.

        “Keeping you from ruining a perfectly good set of fingers.”