Forty-four Days and Counting

Forty-four days until the ACFW conference, where I can finally discover who will win the Genesis Contest, Romance Genre. Sounds like forever, but not so long ago I had several months before the conference. Forty-four days are going to zoom by!

My precious friend, Jess Ferguson, is helping me prepare for the conference, telling me what I need and don’t need, who to talk to and who’s time I’d waste if I approached them. She’s been walking that delicate line between encouraging me and keeping me from getting my hopes up too high. And she reminds me frequently that being in the top five of my genre is a big deal whether I win or not, or whether I get published or not.

So far, as per her guidance, I have my business card ordered and my one-sheet prepared. My first gitch with the one-sheet is the picture of the cowgirl (shown under the Give the Lady a Ride tab). All three people who responded to my query considered the pic too racy. One even told me my one-sheet would wind up in the trash with such a sexy pic on it. Oops! So, I’ve changed it to this one.  I don’t like it as well because it doesn’t have the same implications the other one does. The cowgirl, dressed and ready for action, wind through her hair, eagerly awaiting her turn in the arena. But no one can accuse the new one of being over the top.

I’ve got my one-page synopsis done, but I may need to change it to illustrate more of the romance and the faith issues. Back to the drawing board on that.

My three-page synopsis is an absolute killer. I hate it. There oughta be a law against having to condense an entire novel, short as it may be, into three tiny little pages! Whoever came up with that torture technique in the first place? Arrest that man!

While I work on my three-pager, I’ve been rereading and editing my book so it would be more palatable for Heartsong. I have to change the opening bull’s name from Dang-It (which may be construed as cursing) to Danger Sign, take Frank’s cigar away from him, slow down the pace between Marie and Chance, convert Patricia from a divorcee to a widow, and simply pray over my street dance scene. There’s nothing sexy about the scene. There are three dances: one funny, one romantic, and one that brings out Patricia’s jealousy and sets up the next few scenes. Maybe they’ll allow the street dance–they said they look at dance scenes on a case-by-case basis. Maybe mine will pass the test.

Y’all pray, ‘kay? If they knock that scene out, it’ll affect the next chapter, and references several chapters away!

Anyway, while I’m rereading, I’m looking for openings where I can make the book longer. It fits within the limits of Heartsong and Love Inspired, but it wouldn’t hurt to get another three or four thousand words in it just in case they go after it with an ax and start whacking things out. Which, I understand, is exactly what they’ll do. No one writes a piece so perfect as to escape the editor’s ax, right?

I’ve been asked if I’m nervous. Yep. Scared? Uh-huh. Anxious? Ya betcha.

I don’t sleep.

Between Mom, and my computer, and this conference coming up, I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since February. I wake up anywhere from one-thirty to five-thirty. If I awake at five-thirty, I believe I’ve slept well. Seven is sleeping late.

My house is a mess. We’ve been living on left-overs and my own version of thirty-minute meals–shove something in the frying pan and open a can of whatever as a side dish. But I keep the litterbox clean and the laundry done. Dishes too, don’t want roaches.  It’s not just the conference making me the world’s worse housekeeper, I know–everything going on this year has added to my decline. Time is just getting away from me. And when I do have time to sit at the keyboard (when Mr. Puter decides to work), I’m brain dead. Can’t think, can’t write, can’t string along two coherent sentences. Which frightens me. I mean, look at it this way, I’m either truly brain dead and beyond hope of functioning properly, or I’m talentless and the novel was a fluke.

Let me weigh this in each upraised palm: Beyond hope . . . Talentless.  Beyond hope . . . Talentless.

Nah–I’ll toss ‘em both over my shoulder and just take a nap.