where have we been?

Of course I mean the royal "we". Since it's been nigh on 4 years since my last post, I thought it might be something to resurrect the ol' girl. After all, I finally "finished" my BIP (Book in Progress, for those not in the know) and have been lackadaisically submitting it to literary agents with the encouragement of the excellent Ms. Reisman. A couple months ago I also started a YA novel, which I unfortunately put on hold to do more tweaking and revisions of Ambrose's story. Not much time to write a full post now, but I swear I'll be back! And soon!

suck it!

man, do i suck at this! going to blogher in 3 weeks and i haven't put up more than 2 posts in the last 2, oh, make that 3 months. yeesh!
i'd like to say that work (boss has been mia off and on since the beginning of the year & we've had 3 new people to train. guess who most of that responsibility falls on?), the (town)house (so many more places to get messy that need picking up!), the puppy (stop sleeping on our bed! 2 goodly-proportioned adults & a 25lb dog do not fit well on a full-size bed) and my health (after 9-ish years, my gi doctor no longer knows what to do with me & wants to either pass me on to mayo clinic or another large hospital because he's exhausted all treatment options for me with my gi-induced excruciating joint pain) are all to blame.
weee! what an interesting life i/we lead. thought i would be able to get back into the swing of things and work more on my bip, revising and whatnot. possibly even working on the 2nd book in the series that i started just after finishing up with the draft of the first one. or maybe even getting down to the nitty-gritty and submitting to publishers. yeah, right!
but that doesn't mean things aren't going swimmingly here in i-o-way. in fact, despite the work stress, house stress, health stress i feel in a good place. life really truly is good and i can't wait to see my ladies in nyc! so excited!
more again soon; i promise.

in the saddle

this is yet another (hopefully not in vain as it's been over a month since my last blog post) attempt to rejoin the blogosphere. work has been more than a pain lately (case in point, i received a text message from my boss on thursday at 5 to 8am that she was on her way to california & wouldn't be back until unofficially leaving me in charge. also friday was supposed to be the last day for a coworker who started in february, but then was poached by one of the clinic doctors as a research assistant; she only committed to working as a scheduler for a year when she started because she was eventually going to grad school. not cool.)
despite the pressures of the 'real world' and not winning the lottery (how many times must a i hear 'you have to play to win!), i would like to resume working on my bip and possibly getting back into the swing of blogging. the new house seems to have drained any ambition from me once i get home from the daily grind, but i don't consider that to be too much of a bad thing. we've now lived here for over 2 months and it was such a good decision! i barely remember the apartment i spent 8 years in; this feels so much like home. we still have yet to put anything on the walls, but we now have grown-up living room furniture (an awesome entertainment console, new couch, chair-and-a-half and a beautiful matching ottoman). next step is to clean up the 2nd bedroom, which has become the catch-all room. and we're saving our change and recycling money to buy an actual bed/headboard set. whee! we're grown-ups. sortof.

5 years

today is grover's first birthday. can't believe my baby puppy is a whole year old and that we've had him for almost 10 months. (at the moment, he's hanging over the arm of the couch and digging through his toy box for something else to play with.)
i also realized that i missed my 5 year blogiversary. apparently i started blogging in january of 2005. whoa! that's kindof unbelievable. and it makes me think i'd better get back on this blogging horse for the umpteenth time. perhaps i'll have something of a portfolio or theme by the time blogher rolls around. or at least get back to work on my book i haven't touched in over a year. yowza! bad mar!

1st rejection

just over 2 hours turnaround time for my 1st rejection (e-mail).

"So sorry your submission isn’t one for me. Interesting, but I’m afraid I don’t love its premise quite enough to feel I can represent it successfully for you."

ack!

i just hit 'send' on the first (e-)submission of my manuscript. omigosh! omigosh! now i sit & wait for a response/rejection. okay, well i'm in the thick of it now. after procrastinating for months about making the first submission-this to a literary agent- here we go.
i certainly don't expect a positive offer on my first go-around, but i feel a little dizzy that i actually did it. took nearly 4 years to write the thing & now it's mostly out of my hands until someone picks it up & then i'll have to start the editing process.
*sigh*
can i go home now? i'm exhausted. and more than a little nauseous.


greenhouse literary

meet ambrose

hi, i'm ambrose dossel! read about my accidental trip through time when maren publishes her first book. coming soon!

25k pyramid

i'm done! i finished writing my bip!
at least the story part is finished. i still have mucho revision to do, but i can't believe i did it. i wrote a book. whoa!
now comes the hard part, as suzanne pointed out.

so tgif

i am so incredibly relieved that it's friday. it's been yet another long week. i still find myself exhausted from the all-day infusion on wednesday. doesn't help that i bashed my head into a metal shelf in the bathroom while i was there infusing. derrr...
long, long weekend with no plans. other than to write, that is. hopefully i can manage to get a big chunk done on these three days. over two thousand words written this past week. now if only this headache would go away...

long time comin'

i just opened up a file on my zip drive and it said i had last accessed it on 5.3.2007. i can hardly believe that because it means i haven't worked on my bip (book-in-progress) in a whole year. how is that even possible? definitely a sign that the past year has passed me by. that doesn't mean that it wasn't a really excellent year (or at least the 9 months before the past three break-up months), but like suebob commented 'keep moving forward'
i'll try.

and without further ado here's the first paragraph of my bip for your consideration.

"Ambrose Dossel hurtled back against the wall from the force of the explosion. His headphones dangled precariously from around his neck, and he felt a little singed around the edges. Not really burnt, the way he liked his hotdogs. It was more of a warm tingly sensation, similar to standing too long in front of an open oven or campfire. Shaking his head to clear his ringing ears, Ambrose cautiously opened his eyes to seek the source of the blast. And then he rubbed them with the back of his hand in disbelief. Before him, in his very own bedroom, sat a strangely glowing object roughly the size and shape of a large soda bottle. It hovered in the midst of scattered books, CDs and the dirty laundry he had neglected to pick up the night before. The glowing shape bobbed a bit as it radiated a wide array of changing colors. Blues and greens, pinks and reds, turquoise and heliotrope flashed on the walls."

btw, if you hadn't noticed, this isn't the great american novel. it's a children's book.