“A winner is a loser who tried one more time.”                                            March 13, 2017

I’m thrilled to announce that after a L-O-N-G dry spell from writing, but with the constant encouragement from my wonderful critique partner, Nancy Allen, (author of The Riddler and Forty Winks and Coming Soon:  Gone Cuckoo and Hiram’s Gifts);  not only am I writing again, I received my first offer of a contract! The quote above is how she summed up my efforts

During 2016, I submitted to three publishers. That’s it. Three! That’s almost begging for failure. And fail, I did. Oh, I had a near miss from a story I submitted in November, but after a couple of attempts of going back and forth, it was clear to me we were not a good fit. I was able to walk away with no regrets.

Then lo and behold! I submitted a different story in late January 2017. On Feb. 3rd, this publisher requested the full manuscript and six days later offered a contract! I didn’t believe it at first and even when it began to sink it, I still had my doubts: what if they want too many revisions and I can’t deliver? Or what if they change their minds after they work with me for a while? Or what if they made a mistake and really meant to offer the contract to the next person on the list?

Words of Wisdom: when you’re not writing something new, re-write something old. There’s always room for improvement, a better word, a sharper description, a fix for that dangling participle. Plots come, plots go, back-stories grow more important, and characters take on a whole new identity. So even if you are not writing new stories, spend time sprucing up old ones. It’s a process. I knew it in 2016 during the L-O-N-G dry spell, and I know it today.