The rapidly decaying spiral toward success, destruction or both

To start with, I think it's a sin to occupy the only chairs at Barnes and Noble near power outlets when all you want is to nap. Sleep in chairs I don't need!

Second I have lots of news in the world of Threadcaster. Firstly the novel and I went to the Missouri Writer's Guild's 2012 conference here in town. I learned lots of things about voice and character. I also pitched to two agents and both asked for partials! So that was good news.

I worked for a week after the conference on my first three chapters. Getting them beta'd, read aloud, edited, the works... then Monday I took the plunge and sent them off.

Ten minutes later -- ten minutes -- I got a reply from one of them asking for the full. This is the dream of any author! A full draft read by a real agent!? Elation.

Or by elation I mean panic... because I was kinda counting on those four to six weeks agents ask for to do the whole beta-read-aloud-edit-final draft stuff on the REST of the book. So I asked for a couple weeks which she was gracious enough to provide and went all-in on this draft.

Which brings us to now. I'm sucking down chocolate milkshakes and tea in Barnes and Noble praying the amount of books around me will radiate brilliant literary confidence and lucidity because my brain is a curly fry and my emotions are just as frazzled. It makes you wonder why people are writers at all... but only for a minute. The fact is that for all the pain I am LOVING this. I'm collapsed in a mound of drool and tears but I wouldn't have it any other way. I have an excuse to write forever. Forever and always. If I didn't need food or rest I'd be golden, it's the rest of the world that's making me crazy...

I'll update when I'm further on.

OH and btw if you all are interested, Threadcaster has a tumblr now. http://threadcaster.tumblr.com/
I'm a visual thinker so a lot of my character and plot brainstorms come out as pictures which I'll post up there. If you're interested in seeing Threadcaster art on the casual follow or bookmark! I predict a lot of frustrated Cats and Peters coming up... and maybe one or two Sharons with holes in her head.

Progress

It's been a while since I updated so here goes.

I've launched rewrite number3. I like the place it's at a lot better, it leaves less to the characters to figure out by themselves, meaning they can focus more purposefully on the task at hand and having relationship moments. No bamboo traps for me, only exposition as exposition requires.

I got myself a tumblr account: http://threadcaster.tumblr.com/ Where random art and discarded excerpts go up every so often.

I'll try to cross-post every so often to spread the love around, but if anyone out there has a tumblr and wants to share thoughts, art, encouragement, likes and reblogs I would love the company :) Writing a book is sometimes tough work. I spent all yesterday writing an argument between my mains and could use some commiseration. Thankfully my biggest fan @SassyDetective is over there, you can see her artistic cheerleading on tumblr as well, its far too cute.

I'm looking at writing Water Town by next week. I've got some paid work to do for a change - I do so much pro-bono art getting a check seems like a novelty - so that might delay it. We'll see.

I'm also half a month into the Insanity workout program to counter-act all the sitting/staringatthescreen/frustratedlipgnawing I do. Maybe by the time I'm done with I'll have a book AND a set of rockin' abs!