Kristian Mercer

These past few days have not been kind to Book #2. No, my attention was diverted to Duchess in the Mirror, for a variety of reasons.

#1. As mentioned earlier, I'm shopping for an agent. So I've been polishing my query letter, tweaking my synopsis, and making sure my sample pages end on a great hook.

#2. I decided to enter RWA's Golden Heart contest. For those of you not involved in the romance genre, the Golden Heart was established "to promote excellence...by recognizing outstanding romance manuscripts." In other words, if you're an unpublished author--this is the holy grail. But the contest rules allow for 55 pages of combined synopsis and partial manuscript, which meant that--yes, you guessed it--I spent more time tweaking the synopsis and making sure the sample pages ended on a great hook.

#3. I read the ENTIRE manuscript OUT LOUD to myself, based upon the recommendation of Anne Mini over at the Author! Author! blog. (Let me just add that those are her caps, not mine.) And to my shock and dismay--and utter relief--I found more typos, a few place name inconsistencies, and a whole lot of "that"s just begging to be corrected. All I can say at this point is WHEW (my caps, this time).

But now I'm back on track, and hoping to make up for lost time. My NaNoWriMo goal is to be 75% finished with the manuscript by the end of the week. Wish me luck!