SO to hold you over a tad, I decided to tease you with a little excerpt.

Things you need to know…

Annabelle – MC

Blake – Her brother, he has bipolar disorder

Tyler -Annabelle’s ex

The rest you’ll just have to wait for

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Blake is sitting at the table in a somber mood. The repercussions of Mom and Dad’s lecture from last night have gone into effect and he’s gone into the ‘I’m a failure’ mode. So not my favorite.

“Want a ride to school?” I ask him.

He looks up at me with glassy eyes. “Huh?”

I can tell he didn’t sleep a wink. I smile, trying to brighten his mood. “The Neon is requesting the pleasure of your presence this morning. She thinks it’s been far too long since she’s felt your ass cheeks against her tattered upholstery.”

He cracks a quarter of a smile. “I’m not sure my glutes are in the mood for her vicious bouncing a la no shocks.”

“Oh come on, if I have to go to school and face him, you do too.”

“Who, Tyler? I don’t care what he thinks. I’m just not in the mood to be around people.”

I sigh. “Blake, don’t do this.”

His head repeatedly bangs against the table. If it hurts, he doesn’t show it. “Mom and Dad hate me. They think I’m a failure.”

These words flow from Blake’s mouth on at least a biweekly basis. Sometimes there are variations. “You hate me.” Or “Everybody hates me.” But it’s not worth the trouble of trying to convince him otherwise. Sending him into a rage is the last thing I want to do this morning.

“So, have you figured out how you’re going to get back on the track team?” I ask. Changing the subject is always the best way to handle a Blake low.

“That’s not going to happen. Coach Lenny is sick of my mood swings.”

“Did he actually say that?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Coach Lenny is aware of your condition, I’m sure once things settle down he’ll reconsider his decision.”

“And besides, he didn’t make the decision. Mom and Dad did.”

Not good. Not good at all. Mom and Dad rarely go back on their punishments. They like to practice consistency. With Blake it’s quite necessary.

“Mom and Dad? I would’ve thought the school would have taken action, not them.”

“It didn’t happen on school grounds. There was nothing Delray could do about it. Unfortunately that did not satisfy the parents.”

Delray is our Principal, an overweight old lady who is due to retire – and/or die – any time now. Still, I’d rather endure one of her punishments over one of my parents’. “Then how did they even find out?”

He looks at me in way that insinuates I should already know the answer and I’m ashamed to admit that I do. “Tyler’s mom?”

“It wouldn’t be Tyler if he didn’t run home to mommy and cry about it.”

I shake my head. Tyler doesn’t cry to his mom because he wants attention. He does it because he knows she’ll retaliate on whoever hurts her precious son. I suppose it’s easier for him than actually dealing with his own problems. After our most recent argument, I’m pretty convinced he doesn’t know how to handle problems by himself anyway.

“We’ll find a way to change their minds,” I say. I’m not sure how the hell we’ll do this, or if it’s even possible, but I’m determined to make it happen. “Now come get cozy in the Neon. I don’t want to have to explain to her that you think your ass is too good for her lack of seat padding.”

So in the midst of the submission process I got this insane idea. I questioned others about it and asked if it might be something worth writing, and apparently they all thought it was.

So I’ve started a new novel called, Taming the Crazies. It’s a story about a teenage girl struggling with the impact her brother’s bipolar disorder has had on not only her, but her entire family. (You can read more about it on my Projects Page) As of right now I’m in love with it, but we all know how that goes…so this time I’m not going to shout from the mountaintops professing my love. (Though I may visit a hill…totally different!)

On top of that, and partially fueled by it, I got another insane idea. I started a new website. I’m not going to say it’s a blog, cuz really…it is so much more than a blog. I have teamed up with an amazing teenager who is also suffering from bipolar disorder. (If you didn’t know, I suffer from it also, as does my son) Together we have created www.askabipolar.com where we answer peoples questions about the illness from the perspective of someone who’s been there. So far its going well. I hope that continues!!!

If you get a chance, check it out and cheer me on!!

You will also see some updates being made to this site in the future. For now they are just basic (like I changed my photo and updated my projects) but I’m hoping to unveil something a little more spectacular soon!

Hope all is well!

I get to the question “What are the things you (or in this case my MC) good at?

Total FAIL moment!

I mean Epic FAIL!!!

I’ve been working on this book for almost a year now (ok so half that year the book was still in my head and not on paper…but still!) and I cannot for the life of me come up with something my character is good at!

How is this possible?!?!

I went through all the skills and talents a person can have (Google is full of wonderful information) and could not for the life of me choose one that fit her personality.I mean how is being able to do that going to help my plot along??? Has anyone ever had this problem? Should not having a talent just be one of her quirks? Would it be strange to give her a talent that has nothing to do with the overall story?

What are your characters talents? I mean everyone needs to be good at something!

What?

A kiss that hurts?

Oh yes. The kiss that hurts.

We’ve all been there. Kissing the man we love goodbye because he is leaving on a business trip. Or kissing him hello because something terrible had just happened and you thought you would never see him again. Or even a kiss that signifies a break up that you are not entirely sure you want, but know you need.

The kiss that means nothing but at the very same time means everything. The kiss where you close your eyes and your face tightens because your entire mind is wrapped around that kiss. The kiss where you place your hands on his face and hold on for dear life because you never want to let go, though you know you are going to have to in a very short amount of time. It takes your breath away until your lips part. And afterward you step away staring at each other and gasping for air. This is the kiss that hurts.

My unlucky character got to experience one of these. For a bit of a different reason, but it still hurt nonetheless. And to make it worse, my MC, who is painfully in love with him, had to witness the entire ordeal. It is possible that this kiss hurt more for her than the two involved.

They stopped on an empty street corner. It was dark and damp outside. The only lights surrounding them were from the street lamp above and the blinking traffic light beside them. “Rachel, I know you are going through a rough time right now with Oliver, but he is your husband. Regardless of whether or not I notice more than he does, he is the one you are with. Not me.”

I was proud of Michael for telling Rachel this. She needed to hear these words. Michael needed to hear these words. I feared he often forgot this himself. Unfortunately, as quickly as I was feeling pleased about Michael’s acknowledgment, Rachel was doing the unspeakable. She leaned in toward Michael. The next thing I knew she was kissing him. It was not like the kiss I had encountered with Greg. This was a kiss where I wished I could have been her. Their mouths had become one and his arms grabbed her closer until there was no longer any space between them.

I fought to think about my kiss with Greg, every little detail I could remember. I thought about the horrible breath that lingered from the extensive amount of onions he had consumed. I thought about his pointy tongue trying to penetrate through my firmly closed lips, but it did not work.

Time, up until this moment for the most part, had slid by unnoticed. But this moment – This moment where I longed to be Rachel’s lips pressed up against his, and Rachel’s waist held firmly by his arm, and Rachel’s hair flowing over each of Michael’s fingers – This moment lasted for what seemed to be an eternity. Again, I could not shake the feeling that there was something more, some force working against me.

The laughter was louder and more pronounced this time. It was also more malevolent. I knew it was near and knew it was meant for me. Someone was reading my thoughts or watching me. They were witnessing my failure to influence Michael, and they were entertained by it. I could tell the laughter was that of a woman’s, but did not see any other person or soul anywhere near. It was just Michael, Rachel and I as far as I could see. But the laughter continued, as did my frustration.

However, I continued to hold my concentration, to provide distraction. For one slight moment I felt confident it may have helped as Michael broke through their embrace and gently pushed Rachel back. When I looked into Michael’s eyes though, I knew the accomplishment was small. There was agony in his eyes as he stared at Rachel and watched her fight back the tears glistening in her eyes. It hurt him to see her hurt.

“I’m sorry Michael,” she said slowly, refusing to let the tears fall, she was feeling somewhat humiliated. “It was just that the moment was right, and I’ve wanted to do that for months now, and I just let the emotion overtake my common sense. It will never happen again, I promise. Please don’t tell Oliver.”

And without any notice she had turned away and began sprinting down the road away from Michael. Michael stood there, like a statue. He seemed stunned by the passing events. I could only imagine the thoughts cascading through his mind.

I knew the thoughts running through my own mind. I felt guilty. I knew this was my fault and I knew he would not have continued to kiss her had I not had the idiotic moment of weakness where I wished I were Rachel. I couldn’t stop Rachel’s actions, but I did have some small control over Michael’s. I had to make this right.

So that is my kissing scene. It’s actually the only kissing scene in that manuscript. Sorry for all the poor grammar and such. It was my first novel and I had MUCH to learn after I wrote that. Well enjoy you kissing fest! I’m off to read some blogs!

On Linked In you put your resume up and connect with former/current employers and/or employees and/or co-workers. As you connect you are able to leave each other recommendations (As long as you have worked together in the past) and boost one another’s credibility. It’s an awesome feature and I don’t doubt it helps in the hiring process.

Our conversation began when we started talking about agents I like and how I know some of their clients via blogging/twitter.

He said, “You should get recommendations!”

Now I think this a great idea, but I felt like ‘eh’.

I explained that to me it seems like an unspoken rule between writers that we don’t cross that boundary. Kinda like the unspoken rule that you never date your best friends ex. Or the one where it is mandatory to tell a good friend that they have food in their teeth.

Nobody flat out makes these rules, they are just kinda there.

OR maybe it’s just me. I love my bloggy friends! I would never want them to think I am stalking following them just to earn me some recommendations. That is totally NOT the reason I stalk follow/read my favorite blogs and chat it up with my twitter folk! (Now in twitter language would that be Twolk? I’m totally trade marking that one!)

So what are your thoughts? Would you ask a friend for a recommendation before you queried their agent? If you have an agent, have you ever had anyone/everyone ask for a recommendation?

Please share your feelings. I am incredibly curious! (And I’d love to prove to the man that I am right about my unspoken rule that I may or may not have created all on my own)

She got the call today
One out of the gray
And when the smoke cleared
It took her breath away

She said she didn’t believe
It could happen to me
I guess we’re all one phone call from our knees

We’re gonna get there soon

If every building falls
And all the stars fade
We’ll still be singing this song
The one they can’t take away

I’m gonna get there soon
She’s gonna be there too
Cryin’ in her room
Prayin’ oh, Lord come through

We’re gonna get there soon

Oh, it’s your light
Oh, it’s your way
Pull me out of the dark
Just to shoulder the weight
Cryin’ out now
From so far away
You pull me closer to love
Closer to love

Meet me once again
Down off Lake Michigan
Where we could feel the storm blowin’
Down with the wind

And don’t apologize
For all the tears you’ve cried
You’ve been way too strong now for all your life

I’m gonna get there soon
You’re gonna be there too
Cryin’ in your room
Prayin’ Lord come through

We’re gonna get there soon

Oh, it’s your light
Oh, it’s your way
Pull me out of the dark
Just to shoulder the weight
Cryin’ out now
From so far away
You pull me closer to love
Closer to love

Cause you are all that I’ve waited for all of my life
(We’re gonna get there)
You are all that I’ve waited all of my life

You pull me closer to love
Closer to love
Pull me closer to love (You are all that I’ve waited for)
You pull me closer to love
Closer to love
Closer to love (Cause you are all that I’ve waited for)
Closer to love

Pull me closer to love

Yeah I super did yesterday…And I’m talking like a MAJOR plot hole!!! Like a plot hole the size of the freaking my Great Aunt Bertha’s belly button….ok so I totally don’t have a Great Aunt Bertha, but you so pictured how big my gaping hole was didn’t you!

Well anyways my day had already gone rogue when my dear wonderful fantastic perfect friend Mindy followed through with my super awesome fantastic Mission.

The Mission -Should she choose to accept – Read the remainder of my manuscript and tell me any and all questions she had left so I could ensure they were answered before I ended the book.

Well being the super, awesome, fantastic friend that she is, she accepted! I LOVE YOU MINDY! I got my email back from her and read through her questions. The first couple made me giddy. I was all like, “I can’t wait till you see how I plan to answer that one!” and “Oh my word are you in for a surprise with that this one!” It was magical I tell you!

Then I came to the next one and the world stopped. My five part harmony choir halted their voices and I could hear them mutter in my head, “Dang girl, your screwed.” and “How could you miss that!” and “That’s crappy.” Apparently my choir isn’t very sympathetic. (Memo to me: Find a new happy choir to celebrate with!) Then the fuzzy, fury, adorable animals dancing in my field of happiness stopped bouncing around and stared at me like I was the biggest idiot they’d ever seen … and can you believe those little rodents ran away!?!? The gall of that future road kill! And to top it off my white dress of perfection, you know the one all girl authors made of awesomeness wear when they write a perfectly awesome book, fell off my body into little shreds as though I wasn’t worthy of it’s covering. It was a crappy dress anyway. Didn’t even enhance my best features…

So I cried a little, pulled out like half my hair, ate a whole box full of cookies and three boxes of mac and cheese then sat down and stared at my ruined story. I swear it muttered at me, something about “Thoughtless Author” and “Maybe I should be writing with Crayons instead of a computer..” but I’m sure that was all in my head.

I had nothing.

The question was humongous.

And so my dear, wonderful, fantastic, awesome sister got online after seeing my world had been crushed via facebook (What? You don’t tell facebook every time your world gets crushed. Oh come on…you can’t fool me!) and offered to help. So we sat on IM and fought it out. Then my dear, wonderful, fantastic, awesome, super friend Mindy got online and fought it out with me too. I love my friend and sister. My sister had to go, family to tend to and all, by my favorite Mindy sat online with me for like three hours. I’m in love with her!

And now I am proud to announce … drum roll please … can someone find my choir and stupid dancing animals? … I have solved my problem!!!!

HOORRAYYY!

So what was the worst problem you’ve come up against in your writing? How long did it take you to fix?

So of course, like all other awesome ideas, I had to wake up and write it down. Now I didn’t want to wake up the husband so I stuck my hand in a drawer and fished around till I found a pen and a crayon. Then I grabbed one of my old journals off the night stand and turned it over. The pen didn’t work of course, so I wrote, in complete darkness, my idea down with crayon on the back of the notebook. I love ideas that come at inappropriate times!

The idea is about a new book I want to write. It’s about a kid who ………… well I don’t think I want to tell you yet! I seriously think it is totally original and I can’t remember reading any books about this and it is awesome and fantastic and I can’t wait to get started.

BUT

I haven’t finished the book I am currently working on. I need to focus on this book so I can complete it and edit it and get my queries out there! I love this book!

BUT

I love my new idea too. I mean it is a REALLY good idea.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

One idea at a time please!!!

So has this ever happened to you? Did you finish what you were working on or did you toss it aside to start the new project?

OR

Am I the only crazy writer here?

***Double Warning*** I may regret posting this…Though my opinions usually are pretty low key…

****Triple Warning**** Ok there isn’t a triple warning, but a double warning seemed kinda boring!

I read AWESOME agent Rachelle Gardner’s post today, ‘The Power of Words‘. It’s a wonderful post!!! It just goes to show you what a wonderful and considerate agent she truly is. Though not all agents are super wonderful and considerate, I think we as authors tend to forget that they are people too.

OMG What!?!?! Agent’s are people?!?!?! You mean they are little robots at the end of the email tunnel sending out monotonous form rejection letters just to make us feel bad and crush our dreams?

Not even close.

Here’s how it is for a writer. (And let me tell you…it sucks!)

We spend months to years writing a book. We put blood sweat and tears into it. Our hearts get poured out onto the page. We laugh and we cry with our characters. We fall in love with our stories. We spend hours upon hours gagging over editing our poor sentence structure, prepositions, adverbs, punctuation. We try our hardest to show when we are telling .(Even if we barely know what that means!) We remove all our was’s, thats, hads, justs, and every other word including very and surely just to appease our readers.

Needless to say, these books are our lives. Some of us spend more time with these stories than we do our families! (Of course I would never do that because that would be wrong and over the top and completely inappropriate…especially on holidays! I’d never write on a holiday!)

Then the moment of truth comes. We write our query, our synopsis, our outline and our elevator pitch. We are ready to sell this book!!! Am I wrong? And the same goes for the query as goes for the manuscript. All of the editing and blood sweat and tears spent on the manuscript gets doubled on the query letter.

AND THEN… we send it out!

AND THEN… we get a form rejection, and another, and another, and maybe a request for a full or a partial, but that turns into a rejection and then another form rejection and another form rejection and and and… you get the point.

It sucks!

We are defeated and we want to quit…but we don’t. We just do it all over again with a new story until it happens for us. An agent picks us up and we sell our books and we are in heaven…(Though it doesn’t even really work that way does it? Well unless your name is *cough* Stephanie Meyers *cough*)

With me still????

But here is how I see it from an agents perspective, and I could be totally wrong….this is just an opinion….

Agents wake up in the morning to mounds of emails. Queries full of blood sweat and tears and each author’s hopes and dreams sitting in each email waiting for that agent to make their dreams come true!!!

Hundreds upon who knows how many dreams to make come true!

Let’s be realistic friends….they can’t make all our dreams come true.

And goodness knows probably only 1/3 of those queries are formatted correctly and follow the agency guidelines. And out of those probably only 1/8 have a personal tone to them and haven’t been sent to a email group listed “cool agents to submit to”. And just look at all of us submitting. Do you think everyone one of us has a publishing worthy manuscript??? (Well of course I do, and I’m sure you do too, or you wouldn’t be reading my awesome blog! These agents would be better of surfing our blogs to find us!!! Right?!?!) Doubtful. We are all full of ideas and we are all great writers. But that doesn’t mean we are all publish worthy.

And how many of those do you think are first time authors!!! How many queries have I sent out with “This is my first novel”??? Um yeah…well looking back at my first novel, though I love it, it kinda sucks. I didn’t know what I was doing.  And I’m sure numerous queries are similar.

Then on top of that think about how many queries are absolutely dreadful. We know they are out there. Heck it could have even been mine!

Would you want to be an agent?

Just think about ALL the rejections they have to send out. We do complain because it seems they send out too many, I know we do. But how do you think they feel when they send them out? Do you think it goes like this???

Agent, “I love sending out rejections left and right today. I just love crushing people’s dreams!!! This is so fun. LALALALALA! Crushing dreams is fun. I love my job!!!”

Again…doubtful!

And then on top of that they have to read manuscripts and deal with the clients they have and and and….I don’t know about you but it takes me at least two days to read through my own manuscript. Imagine having a crap load of them sitting in your email, all of which are awesome but you can only choose a few out of that bunch because publishers just don’t want to publish unless they are super freaking awesome! (Like mine of course…….right? RIGHT!!!!)

THEN on top of that they have to read blogs and comments and tweets about how we think they suck. How we think its rude that once in awhile they gripe about their job. HA! How often do WE gripe about OUR job on twitter and blogs and comments? Goodness let them vent once in awhile!!! In my opinion I think their comments are funny, even if they are occasionally inappropriate. Those are the comments that show me they are human. Those are the comments that make me less intimidated by them. Those are the comments that make me sit back and smile and think, “Crap, being a writer sucks, but being an agent sucks WAY more!!!”

So maybe…at least during this holiday season…we can give agents a break. Maybe even be thankful that they are out there fighting FOR us, not against us. Or heck, be thankful we aren’t them! At least we get the fun part!!!

Just saying….

Now bring on the comments of anger…I know they are coming I can handle them! (I think….)