“I’m not dead.”

When I started this blog almost four years ago, my goal was to share the journey of crafting and ultimately publishing my daughter’s and my middle grade novel.  I was determined to post every week. And for 186 posts I was successful.

However, for the last two years, the journey has been “revise, find critique partners, enter contests, query, repeat.”  I’ve written about as many posts about The Value of Revising, How to Get Critiques, and Twitter Pitch Parties as I can reasonably write.  So I’m of the mind that at this point, and until something changes, it’s better to post nothing at all rather than post watered-down drivel.

I have no fresh advice, no new insight.  Unless it is this: Never give up. However, I’ve said this before,too, so it hardly new or fresh.

In case you’re interested, here is the current status of my daughter’s and my book:

• We’ve renamed it Princess Material.
• We paid a freelance editor and got some fantastic advice.
• We paired up with some awesome C.P.s and got even more fantastic advice.
• We are mid-way through revising the newly-named ms with said fantastic advice.
• We have a goal of being ready by February, which is when many agents re-open their slush piles after a long winter’s nap.
• We plan to query and Twitter pitch at full steam, then, with fresh pitches.

Fun fact: we learned from several reliable sources that it is perfectly acceptable query etiquette to re-query an agent who has passed on a full, as long as the ms is substantially revised and you say so in your query.  So we will be eagerly revisiting a few near-misses in the new year.

It is our plan to get back to work on our sequel — and perhaps even another project — as soon as we’ve finished polishing this revision of Princess Material.  Which means, hopefully, our journey will continue and I will again have something to share with you on a regular basis.

Wish us luck. And stay tuned!