Oh, what a day it's been!

You know that song? "Oh, what a day it's been! What a wonderful day!" That's not the song I feel like singing tongiht.This morning I ran errands--my former office, liquor store for those nice plastic plates, hardware for shower hooks (hate those fancy plastic ones and got old-fahioned metal), and grocery. It was relatively cool, and I put all the windows down--so neat that on a convertible  you can do that with one button. But I noticed the rear right window didn't go all the way up--it would go part way and then pop down. As soon as I got home, I called VW and they could work me in and get the car back to me tonight. Then the service assistant or whatever called to say it would be $406.99 plus tax. I said, "Well, we have to do it." Tonight, as I drove off the lot, with a list saying they'd checked every inch and function of the car including windows, the left rear window didn't go up. It went farther, and I'm pretty sure it would be hard for anyone to break into the car--but it is supposed to rain all weekend. If it waits until tomorrow afternoon, I'm home free--won't use the car Sat. or Sunday as far as I know. When I called the service assistant said it needs the same thing--there goes $800 for car windows! And I was so pleased to get off light for the passenger side mirror a couple of weeks ago! A friend told me she loved her VW until the extended warranty expired and everything started going wrong. I hope to heaven that's not what's happening to me--I intend to drive this car until the kids take the keys away. It's only got 22,000 miles on it; Susan next door has 96,000 on hers and it's not a VW--aren't they supposed to last forever?
Came home, did my chores, and treated myself to a ground sirloin sandwich!
My animals are developing bad habits. In the evening, Scooby dumps his food all over the back steps. Usually in the morning, it's gone, and last night I actually caught a possum eating it, while Scooby lounged in his dog house. But tonight, since I hadn't done chores earlier, I was out there with him when he ate, and he ate every bite. Do you suppose the poor old man just wants sociability with his meal?
Wywy on the other hand thinks I should feed her every time I stand up from my desk or go near the bathroom, where her food is served on a high counter to keep it from Scoob. I know she can jump up there, because I've caught her eating in the middle of the night if I get up to use the facilities. But when I'm around she sits on the seat halfway up and looks pitiful. If the food is not fresh, she turns away and looks even more pitiful. Sometimes I take it to the kitchen, stir it up, and bring it back--she often eats it. I think I have spoiled my animals.
Writing? What's that? Actually going to tackle that book review tonight.

Cooking and a dog day

My house smells so wonderful tonight. I put the carcass from last night's chicken in a pot of water with celery, onion, dried parsley, a bit of oregano, salt and pepper. Put it on just before I went out to supper and will leave it all night, put it in the fridge in the morning and strain it into broth to freeze sometime tomorrow. When I came in from supper I was overwhelmed by the good smell.
Scooby and I have had a hard day today--well it was harder on him physically (and maybe emotionally) but it was hard on me emotionally. I had to take him to have his teeth cleaned and was told they might possibly have to extract as many as five teeth (he's nine years old). Because I once lost a dog to the infection from rotten teeth and another to a cardiac reaction to anaesthesia from having his teeth cleaned, this is a scary thing for me. I finally got up my nerve to call about 2 p.m., figuring he really was fine or I'd have heard. He was indeed fine, some bad gingivitis but no teeth pulled. I was told not to feed him until 7:30 tonight and then only a third of what he normally gets (poor thing--I'm sure he's hungry). And he's on antibiotics. I brought him in a few minutes ago intending to take the bandage off his front leg, but he just saved me the trouble by chewing it off. It's amazing to me how wrapped up we get in our animals and how relieved I am to have him home at my feet in my office, even if he is noisily licking himselfl which usually drives me wild. My neighbors tell me that their dog gets into bed between them and begins that noisy licking until they've had to put an Elizabethan collar on him every night. I just wake up every so often and say, "Stop licking!" But tonight I'll probably be glad to hear the noise.
I had lunch with Fred, my mentor, today and told him the plot of my novel. He was much intrigued by plot twists and thought it was all working out well. He's going to read the portion I have written, which I much appreciate. And then I had dinner with Carol Roark tonight--she brought me a wonderful late Christmas gift--a coffee cup decorated with one of her photos of polar bears that she took when she and her husband went to Hudson's Bay or even farther north to see the bears. What a neat thing! It does not go in the dishwasher.
It's been sort of hectic today--including a run out to Jordan's to take her something she needed--so I'm turning in early.-

Lots of stuff, none of it really major

I've been silent on the blog the last couple days, but life hasn't been exactly smooth--I had two crises a work that have really hit me hard. One made me think I have not been paying enough attention to my responsibilities, because some work requested by and sent to the press that headquarters our consortium was inadequate and inaccurate. I corresponded with a colleague there a whole lot--she was most patient with my guilt and angst--until she finally wrote, "This horse is dead." The other had to do with jacket design, and I overrode the designer and my staff to pick the jacket the author wanted. I felt like we'd had a family quarrel. Melinda always says she makes business decisions with her head, I make them with my heart. And my boss says she analyzes things, while I work on instinct. Both were true in this instance, but one of the things I like about TCU Press is that we're author-friendly, we involve authors in the process. I think it's one reason some authors come back to us and new ones are attracted. In this case, the editor of an anthology about El Paso had very firm opinions about what worked and what didn't--she pointed out to me that El Paso is not an overtly religious or Catholic city, the Virgin of the Guadalupe is hackneyed out there, and Franklin Mountain, with its lit star, is an icon for the city. Every opinion I got out of El Paso supported that; every opinion I got out of Fort Worth went for the much more complicated and stylish design. I went with an El Pasoan's knowledge of her city, plus the fact that she's going to be promoting the heck out of this book and she has to be enthusiastic about it.
One of my early novels was about Libbie Custer, published by Bantam. The cover, which they sent me in advance, showed Libby who looked, as one friend said, like Madonna in 19th-century dress, standing in a field of waist-deep grass next to a barbed wire fence, with a stockaded fort sitting on bare brown earth in the background. Well, we had Kansas in the foreground and Arizona in the background--the ubiquitous West. Plus the fact that there were no stockades in the American West--there wasn't enough lumber. Those were back in Michigan, Minnesota, New York, etc. Libbie herself wrote how surprised she was that the "forts" were just a collection of buildings with no fence, no clear border or protection. And barbed wire? It was introduced in San Antonio in 1874; Custer died in 1876. There's no way the West was fenced in time for Libby to be standing by that fence. But I was green and didn't know I could complain, so I let it go. But I learned a big lesson. (you can see the cover on my web page, http://www.judyalter.com/). So I guess I'm content with my decision, but I have this unnecessary desperation to convince my staff and the designer.
In happier news, we've found a lovely garden in a prestigious neighborhood for our 2nd annual Books and Music in the Garden event, and I'm looking forward to planning that. So yesterday had a bit of redemption about it.
One of the things in life I hate doing is taking the dog to the vet for his annual checkup. He is so excited to be in the car (and getting him safely in is no easy task) that he whines and moans and jumps about the back seat. When I get to the vet, I call and they come get him (what a blessing!). Yesterday when I picked him up I found he needs anywhere from $400 to $900 worth of dental work. He'll get it Monday, but I will tell them I'm a believer in conservative medical practices--no pulling teeth because they might go bad some day. I've said the same to my own dentist--and it's time for me to start revisiting my dentist, but I'm not thinking about that for a while.
I had a yoga lesson today, and Elizabeth concentrated on teaching me ways to deepen the poses I already do and make them have more effect. It was a really good lesson, and I thought I learned a lot--if I can only remember it. She was really proud of my boat position and my ability to flow from butterfly to boat and back. Nice to be getting good at something.
After the lesson, she went and got Weldon, her husband, and the three of us went to dinner at Chadra, a Lebanese/Italian place down the street. I had kibbeh, which I'd never had. It's ground sirloin, pine nuts, and I don't know what all, wrapped in ground lamb and deep fried, served with cucumber sauce. Delicious. And we had a delightful visit. As Elizabeth said, when I first met her--she was a work-study student in my office--she was ast a low point in her life. She has definitely blossomed and matured as an adult approaching--ahem--middle age. Tonight's conversation with both of them was lively, interesting, and fun, but I remember when Elizabeth and I used to go to dinner and it was hard to keep the conversation going. She remembers meals at my house, and says only once was she served something she didn't like. I have promised to make them meat loaf, which she thinks she doesn't like (but she likes kibbeh) and Weldon loves. Weldon has turned out to be a wonderful partner for her. They're a great couple, and sometimes I burst my buttons as though I were their parent.
So now the weekend. I have projects to work on, will go to Central Market tomorrow, to brunch with Betty on Sunday, and have neighbors Jay and Susan plus Charles for dinner Sunday. A pleasant weekend looms.
Oh, Facebook! I've rambled on too long tonight, but tomorrow I'll post more about Facebook--and maybe about Nadya Suleman and her exhibitionist pictures of her pregnant belly. Yuck!

The kind of date I hate

I had to stay home today to wait for the AT&T person to install U-Verse on the kitchen TV. All the other TVs in the house are on the system, but the original installation guy ran out of time, so he said, for that last one. So the man was scheduled to be here between 8 and 10--he arrived at 11, after I called to check, and worked until 4. He was really nice, polite, helpful, and all those good things--sincere about doing it right. But he spent a long time trying to take the cable across the attic and down the kitchen wall (and drilled a huge hole in the wall). Then he discovered because the way the house is built, he couldn't get the cable down, so he had to come in through the outside, which leaves a sort of ugly cable wandering around on one end of the counter. But the TV works.
Meantime, I was sort of trapped, juggling work, dog and cat. At one point I had both animals locked in my study with me, and they decided to spat. I think Scoob was playing, but Wywy was serious--good thing he doesn't have front claws. And Scoob got very needy about wanting attention from me, nosing my elbow until I couldn't write on the computer. I actually did get a lot done--mostly writing rejection letters or, as Jim Lee used to say, breaking hearts. I reviewed the month's financial reports and carefully read a short manuscript that I hadn't yet had to time to look at. Working at home gives me time for such things, whereas in the office I'm often distracted by phone calls, questions, emails etc. The result, however, is that I have a book bag full of copies, manuscripts, memos, etc. to be sorted, filed, letters to be mailed, etc. tomorrow. Probably take me all morning.
The evening ended better. Betty and I tried a new restaurant, Buttons. I wasn't crazy about it--struck me as a thirty-ish pick-up bar, and there was a stage where something was going on but I'm darned if I know what. Betty thinks they were giving cowboy boots and maybe a key to the city (I have one of those) to the chef. The dinner we both had was delicious--an appetizer portion of fried oysters on creamed spinach and then on thick, crusty bread. There was something just a tad spicy, probably in the batter for the oysters. One of the restaurant's signature dishes, brought from the chef's previous venue, is chicken and waffles. I can't quite bring myself to try it, but Betty wants to. As she said, you don't put syrup on the waffle.
Tomorrow is another busy day, starts with a meeting, then sorting all that stuff in my book bag, and trying to get some other work done. I guess the first week back after vacation is always hectic, but this has seemed worse than ever, probably due to doctors' appointments and today's work-at-home. I'm glad tomorrow is Friday.

Animals and dinner and family

This is Wynona in his favorite position in his favorite place--my bed. At 17, he is definitely an indoor cat. So imagine my surprise this afternoon as I walked from the garage to the front porch and he rounded the neighbor's fence coming toward me. With my arms full and my poor balance, I couldn't pick him up, so I called to him to follow me. Set everything down on the porch as fast as I could and turned to go after him, but there was no need. He had indeed followed me, and then, meowing loudly all the while, made his way to the front door, as though demanding, "Where have you been and why have you left me out here so long?" I'm relieved he didn't run into the neighbor's cat--they have regular cat fights through the front door, but I'm afraid at his age--and declawed--he would lose in an actual battle. Alos relieved that he didn't wander out into the street, which is a busy one. The woman who so wonderfully cleans my house said he had gotten out through the back door, which I suspect she left open when she went to clean the guest apartment. Anyway I am much relieved to have him safely inside.

And this morning, Scooby who is always reluctant to go outside and has to be coaxed before I go to work at 8:00 a.m.--I'm sure some day I'll forget and leave him leashed to his bed--demanded barkingly to go out at 6:45, when I had just stepped out of the shower, was dripping wet and fairly cold.

Betty and I went to Pappadeaux tonight and split the best ever scallop dinner--scallops with brown butter sauce served on green beans and crispy onions. I can never get scallops to have that nice brown crust that these did, and yet they were perfectly cooked, not overdone and rubbery.

A major triumph today: after my ignominous fall at the dentist's office, I worried about getting up. Elizabeth came and gave me some hints, but Jeannie today said the magic thing. If I walk myself down into down dog, I can walk myself back up. I discovered that if I get on all fours, and put my hands on the flour, I can bring first one knee up and then the other and stand up. I did it about five times to be sure, and I am so proud.

Colin and Lisa will arrive tomorrow night in time for supper; then Mel said she and Jamie would be here in time for supper, so in addition to all else I had planned, I'm cooking casseroles for five to seven adults and five to six children.. I think I'll make tamale pie with polenta--fairly easy and I can make a double batch plus a huge salad. And that's dinner! I am so excited about all of us being together.

This morning I sneezed and sneezed. When I got to work Melinda had the same problem, and when we gathered for staff meeting about ten she said, "I hope I'm not trying to get sick." Well, talk about the power of suggestions--I immediately thought maybe my head ached, and there was this post-nasal drip down my throat. I decided I was going to talk myself out of getting sick. No way I want to miss this holiday. So lunch with Jeannie, a nap, and dinner with Betty distracted me,and I'm fine. I also re-did the seasoned oysster crackers--I'd left a major ingredient out, made pesto out of the last of my basil, wrapped two Christmas presents, and am ready to get back to the cookbook.

As one of my authors said to me in an email today, life is good.

Stormy weather, a difficult dog, good friends, and long meetings

My good publishing friends, Gayla and Fran, spent the night last night. We had been to an all-afternoon sales meeting followed by dinner at Joe T. Garcia's for about ten of us. Gayla, Fran, and I had a quiet evening after that. They went to bed about ten and I rushed to catch up on email and ended up staying up too late. This morning, I remember in half sleep hearing a funny rumbling noise, and I thought vaguely, "Gayla's playing with Jacob's toys"--she always likes to sleep on the bed in the playroom. But I had wrongly accused her--it was thunder, and Scooby knew it. He refused to go out. I gentled, I did everything I knew, and then I got a leash. With great effort--I'm always afraid his 55 lbs. of pure strength will pull me down when he resists--I got him to the back door, but I couldn't get him out. So I thought, "Well, I'll just miss today's meetings," because I can't leave him alone in the house, and I knew he had to pee. The ladies loved on him, which led him to send me resentful looks like I was an old witch. He came as far as the dining room where we were having coffee and snuggled up to me, so I snapped the leash on and tried again. This time I got him, holding back, climbing on a chair, tangling his legs in his leash, to the back door, got the door open, and couldn't quite get him out. I called for Fran, who came and gave a final shove to his rear end--and he was out! We all three looked out the windows as he peed--and peed and peed. Gayla said, "I've never seen a dog pee for that long." Yeah, he really needed to go out, poor thing. Fran is the one who was here the night the cat bit me (almost two years ago) and she rushed me to ER, so I told her she's always here for my animal emergencies, and she said "It's just that you have more of them than most people." Scooby would never bite or anything--he's just terrified and can't help himself, and I understand irrational fear better than most people. But as I kept trying to tell him, life has to go on.
Fran went to Dallas, Gayla and I went to the sales meeting at the Botanic Garden where we talked about all kinds of things that are the changing world of technology--upgrades so that online ordering is more secure, amazon's increasing pressure on providers, print-on-demand technology. Things like that make me think it's time to retire. At lunch, it was pretty enough to sit outside with our box lunches; but when we left about 3:30, it was raining. Six blocks away, it was sunny and dry! I fed Scooby tonight, but I don't think he's forgiven me.
It's been a long two days, and I intend to do a bit of work, read a bit, and go to bed early tonight. Tomorrow I'm having lunch with my mentor, and I want to take him the newest version of my mystery, the now rewritten second book which has become the first book--all seven and a half chapters of it. Not much.
I'm going to start having guest bloggers so watch for an occasional new voice in the next few weeks. I hope you'll find them interesting, and I hope they'll deal with the things this blog is about--writing (especially mysteries), cooking--okay, I'll keep the grandchildren part for myself.

Keeping busy

I thought I'd have a lot of time to write this weekend, but I realize that I have friends coming Saturday night for a light supper--gazpacho and egg salad sandwiches with smoked salmon and tarragon--and the neighbors Sunday night for leg of lamb, which is a thank-you to Jay for taking Scooby for a grooming. It occurs to me that I invent all the things on my calendar that keep my busy. If I wanted to write every evening, I could do it--I'd just have to cut out entertaining, eating out with friends, occasional literary evenings, wine on the porch with the neighbors, and all the things I enjoy. At this stage of life, no thank you. I like the activities I create, and I've gotten good at not doing what I don't want to.
Wynona is back home from the vet with clean teeth. I am tempted to tell him what life without a cat is like if he bugs me again, because last night I had a taste of it. He wasn't sitting on my desk, stalking me until I fed him; he didn't demand food just before I went to bed. And this morning, the neatest thing of all--he didn't get me up at 6:15--Scooby and I slept luxuriously late until 6:45, and then I was so rushed I set off the alarm when I let him out. But again, no messing with Wywy's food and antibiotics. Still, I missed him. And tonight I feel sad for him--he hasn't quite got his back legs into action again after the anesthesia. He tried to jump up to where I usually keep his food, out of Scoob's reach, and he fell down backward. I picked him up and soothed him and let him eat, but then I moved the food down to the floor, at least until Scooby comes in for the night. Just now he jumped up on my desk but almost didn't make it--one back leg gave out on him visibly. I do not want to talk--or think--about what I've spent on animals in the last two weeks, between Wywy's health and Scooby's haircut and tooth brushing.
I'm working away on the mystery, and it's going well. The more I write, the more I think of what's going to happen next. I've thought about Robert Parker,who never goes back to rewrite, because I get to a certain point in chapter five and realize some thing that happened in chapter two is all wrong, and I have to go back and change it. A character that I had a straight, upright man in his fifties really needs to be a nervous, milk-toast man in his sixties, with a combover hairdo, and similar things. But still I'm pleased with the progress. A bit more on chapter five, and then I'm going to go back and study the first four chapters one more time--this is, maybe, the fifth time. My mentor and favorite crime novel authority has agreed to read them. When I realize what little luck some of the writers on the Guppies (going to be published) blog are having, I feel strangely optimistic--like the gods of publishing are going to smile on me. Maybe that's smug.
I spent a hot hour in the guest apartment today, undoing plastic bags of linens, seat cushions, books, etc., and then I did four loads of wash. I figure all those linens got dusty while stored in the garage, even if they were in plastic bags. Jeannie came over for a glass of wine and brought the rest of a jar of pickled herring I'd left at her house. After we had our wine and herring, she helped me put the dust ruffle on the bed. So tomorrow I'll get the main bed made and collect linen for the other beds. It's really beginning to look like a room.

A miscellany

Hmm. Maybe it's an omen. I debated over what to call this post, couldn't decide, finally chose "A miscellany" and somehow hit the wrong key and was cheerfully informed that my blog had published. Not quite what I had in mind.
It's a hot, muggy night. My dinner plans cancelled, so Jordan suggested I come eat barbecue and potato salad (left over from Jacob's birthday). When I arrived she met me in the driveway and said, "Didn't you get my message? I asked you to stop for a bucket of chicken. Christian ate the barbecue." We made a salad, which was really good, and had some frozen pasta/chicken/carrot/broccoli thing out of a bag. Since she and I are both trying not to eat pasta, that wasn't a great choice. The worst of it was though that it had 940 mg. of sodium per serving. When we sat down, she sweetly asked, "Want salt with that?" It was okay--the company was better. It's obvious that day care tires Jacob out--he lies in front of the TV and rubs his eyes a lot, rousing himself occasionally to play with a balloon or ask to be pushed on the trike that he has not yet learned to steer let alone peddle.
It's also an animal day. Just now I heard rumbles of thunder, though nothing is forecast--darn! I let Scooby in because thunder scares him. On my way to Jordan's tonight, I left Wynona the cat at the vet so [she, he, it] can have a tooth cleaning. (Wynona was named as a kitten and was nearly grown when the vet said he could tell us why she'd never had kittens--she's a he; now we have big pronoun trouble, and every time I call him he Jordan says, "You know I hate it when you do that!"]. The vet said [he, she, it] could have no food or water after 10 p.m. tonight and I decided he would make my life miserable, so I boarded him overnight. He's 17 or 18, but the vet says cleaning his teeth and curing his gum infection will help a lot. He's been on antibiotics now for almost ten days.He's still lively, eats ravenously, and pees and poops, so I figure he's in pretty good shape. All his lab tests come back borderline. A lot of us should do so well at his age.
My garage apartment is finished and it looks--well, charming. I hope to get in there tomorrow and put things in order--bags of throw pillows and other decorative things are thrown on the bed now, and I'll have to wash linens and make the beds (all eight of them). But the furniture is in place. The futon is good looking--I didn't sit on it, but it looks okay, probably not a comfortable bed but just fine for some kids. The double-bed bunk beds are lovely looking, beautiful wood. Hmmm. I wonder if Maddie will put linen on the top bunk for me. The hardwood floors gleam and the paint is a lovely soft yellow. Mini-blinds are passe, I know, but they're a lot better than the curtains we had. I'll post pictures when I get it back together again.
Our neighborhood is in the midst of a flap. Most of us signed leases for gas drilling on our property--I really didn't want to but if everyone else signed, one house holding out was a joke--they'd drill under my property anyway to get to the adjacent land, so I might as well deposit the signing bonus. Now another gas company is threatening to put a gas drilling site too close to the neighborhood (this is a big deal throughout Fort Worth with the discovery and tapping into the Barnett Shale). The owner of the property says if they neighborhood is successful in blocking the drilling permit, he'll put something really obnoxious on the property, which is unfortunately zoned industrial. Chesapeake, the gas company, is offering to install sound barriers, landscaping, and other neighborhood-enhancing things, so it seems logical to me to negotiate. I've said as much on the e-mail chat line and boy! have I heard from the bullies, who are all for rushing in with hot-headed anger and boasting that no threat will stop them from standing up for their rights. Doesn't seem to me that's the way to get anything done, nor is it the way this neighborhood has accomplished the many things that make it a lovely place to live.
Guess I'll retreat quietly to writing my mystery which is going better and better. I now have four chapters in draft. I want to polish them and then my mentor from graduate school, who taught genre lit for many years, is willing to read them. But tonight I have some ideas about chapter five that I want to get down first. It's fun to be so involved in the story. And then, late, I might let myself read some of the Deborah Crombie mystery. I've read only a few pages, while riding my stationary bike. (stationery bike?)

Old cats and old people

My cat, Wywy is an old man at 17, almost 18. Wywy is a shortened version of Wynona (after Wynona Judd--Jamie's idea) but it's led to complications. Wynona is a male, and over the years we've vacillated between "he," "she" and "he, she, it." I've known he was failing, as they say--the vet told me in January he had the beginnings of kidney failure, and he'd lost half a pound. But, essentially, he got a clean bill of health. The last couple of weeks, though, I thought he looked thinner, and he began to lose coat, so I took him back to the vet. Putting him in a cat carrier and taking him to the vet is almost on a level with the dentist in things I don't want to do, so I was most proud of myself today. Expensive, but probably not a mistake. All his blood work was "borderline"--not bad but on the edge of being bad. His kidney function was a little bit off, so they gave him IV fluids, and they sent him home with vitamins and antibiotics, the latter in anticipation of cleaning his teeth and gums next week. He's not a happy camper tonight--doesn't think I've fed him. I really have, but if he won't eat it, I can't do much about that. And I put the antibiotics in the food! I know he won't be with me for a long, long time, but I'd like to make his final years as comfortable and graceful as I can. But now I have to put him in the carrier again next week--yikes!
I'm afraid I'm less successful with my cousin in Canada. She's 74 and bipolar, has been institutionalized most of her adult life and in trouble when she wasn't. I'm now her only living relative and so responsible for her, with power of attorney. She has gotten so difficult that the assisted living lodge where she's been has decided it's time for her to go to a nursing home. In Canada they're all provincially owned, but so far two have rejected her for behavioral problems (she can't share a room--it wouldn't be fair to the roomie). But what came as a great lesson to me today is that the second home rejected her because they don't allow smoking and have no services to deal with people with "that addiction." Of course, it makes perfect sense. If you had nursing home patients smoking willy nilly, you'd have fires all over the place. I just hadn't thought of it. I know we can't get Jennifer to quit smoking at this point, but beyond that I'm bumfuzzled--my being in Texas and her being in Toronto doesn't help, but I really don't want to have to go to Toronto to straighten it out. Strikes me as a futile trip. She does know who I am and is grateful I'm handling her finances, but I have visions of her anger if I told her to quite smoking! Another reason to give up the filthy weed.
I'm writing my mystery, averaging about four pages at a time--sometimes I'm very pleased with it and other times I think it's trash. I'm not querying, because the editor to whom I sent it suggested I wait a while. I will, but then I'll query him again if it gets to be too long. I've decided the thing to do is complete the second novel and then move on to a different series. I'm amazed at the number of unpublished books some of the unpublished writers on the Sisters in Crime AgentQuest listserv have written--and the science they make of querying. I think they spend much more of their time at that than writing. I'm also finding that quite a few of the published ones are ebooks only, small publishers, etc. The writer who makes it with a NY publisher, even a mass market house, is rare. And today's listserve messages made it clear that the writer who earns as much as $12,000 a year is also rare. The consensus on the listswerv was that we do it for our own enjoyment, which which I would agree, except that writing without an eye on publication seems pretty fruitless--and publication to me still means print media. Maybe I'm a Luddite (took me a long time to learn the meaning of that!).