Agent Susannah Taylor was the first agent ever to request a full from me.  Although ultimately she rejected my work, she and I have stayed in touch over the years and, until I signed with another agency, I always gave her first crack at my stuff.  She's been supportive of my career when she had no real reason to do so, and answered my questions when I asked them, and for that I'm grateful.

Paper Rats has a new video out, Inside the Writers' Studio, Episode 2.  More awesomeness from Kristen Tsetsi and R. J. Keller!

I'll show you things never seen before

I finally got through the difficult Chapter 4 of Champion this week.  Every book I've written has one or two of these chapters which are a real chore to write, and consequently they take far longer to complete than they should because during those times, I focus on vacuuming the cat and other distractions.

Alicia Rasley is the other half of the Edittorrent blog, along with Theresa Stevens (who has already graced me with a SGSS post).  If you don't read Edittorrent, you're missing out on some extremely useful and important information about the writing process itself.  Here Alicia gives us all a lesson in her specialty: Point-of-View.

You figure it out

QueryTracker.net posted a brilliant article about publicity for authors and soon-to-be published authors.  Definitely worth going to check out here.

Take my rider by my side

In a marathon revision session on Saturday, I finished draft 3.1 of Blood on the Ice (the post-revision quick readthrough polish draft) and sent it off to my gamma readers.  I thought you might like to see how things change, so here's excerpts from the first and latest drafts:

I make my own hours 'cause I'm my own boss

Those of you "in the know" with me know that this summer, I'm planning to coauthor a book with Allison Dickson.  I can't tell you a whole lot about it yet because we're still in the development stages.  That being said, I've never written with another author before, and then I happened upon Jackie Kessler in the pages of Thousand Faces.  She wrote a book (about superheroes, even!) along with Caitlin Kittredge, and I asked her if she'd write a SGSS post about

Thanks to Kristen Tsetsi for this. It's awesomely funny.

If you're in the swing

Karyn asks:

What are my three most overused words in manuscripts?