First, thanks for my LJ snowflake cookies! (I think I need to do some baking ...)

I had a pretty good weekend. Most of Sunday was taken up by the community Christmas concert, with a rehearsal in the afternoon and then the concert at night. That concert is always a lot of fun. It's very loose and casual, there are all kinds of groups there, and the entire audience is wearing Santa hats. I think I'm even starting to feel festive. Every year, I seem to resist the start of the Christmas season, and then it's over just as I'm getting ready for it. I think I function on the ecclesiastical calendar, where what we generally think of as the Christmas season is actually Advent, and then Christmas itself starts on Christmas day and continues until Epiphany.

I might put up my Christmas decorations today because I am starting to get the first glimmers of the festive mood. Singing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir arrangements of Christmas songs with a huge combined choir and orchestra will do that to you.

Saturday, I was pretty much a slug, and it was divine. I watched the local Christmas parade on TV while lying in bed and talking on the phone with Mom (who was watching the same parade on TV). Then there was a marathon of holiday movies on Lifetime. Normally, I don't watch Lifetime. I even had to look up what channel it was on. Most of their movies are either based on or are like the kinds of books I don't like to read -- women rediscovering themselves after divorce, sick kids, sick women, missing/dead kids, domestic violence, etc. But their holiday movies are pure chick lit.

One I watched was called something like Recipe for the Perfect Christmas (I suck at titles, but I think I could have come up with something better). It was about a food writer getting her big break as a magazine's restaurant reviewer just as her wild and crazy mother pops in for a visit. And meanwhile there's a hunky restaurant owner who thinks that the key to saving his restaurant is getting a mention in that magazine. The solution? The writer agrees to look into his restaurant if he'll ask her mother out to get her out of her hair. Hilarity and heartwarming moments ensue, but it was actually a lot of fun because Christine Baranski played the mother, and she is awesome. If you know anything about journalism, you have to force yourself to forget it (a monthly magazine is prepared several months in advance, so the restaurant would have to survive for months between the time the reviewer wrote the article and the time the magazine hit the shelves. Plus, no editor who's ever worked with a journalist would be worried when a writer hadn't yet turned in an article a week before the deadline), and there is the standard "I had one bad Christmas when I was disappointed, so now I have nothing to do with Christmas" attitude in the heroine (in these movies, you either have to be Christmas crazy or totally loathe everything to do with Christmas. There is no middle ground.). But still, it was a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Then there was one called Undercover Christmas, about a brassy cocktail waitress who agrees to testify against her sometime boyfriend who was involved in some kind of white collar crime scheme. The hunky FBI agent who's been on the case and who got her to agree to testify has to protect her during the Christmas holiday before the trial, and then a family emergency means he has to rush home with her, and since he can't tell anyone who she really is, he has to pretend she's his girlfriend, which goes over really well with his dysfunctional, snooty, upper-crust family. Of course the brassy, straight-talking cocktail waitress manages to thaw the family, while they help her learn some self esteem and give her a makeover so she can look classy, and everyone learns A Valuable Lesson. You have to forget anything you know about the legal system -- like you have to believe that someone arrested during a time when Christmas decorations are already up and cocktail waitresses are wearing sexy Mrs. Santa type outfits will go on trial and be convicted the day after Christmas, and you have to believe that the US Marshals wouldn't be protecting the witness in a federal case instead of the investigating FBI agent (while the witness spending the holidays with the FBI agent and getting gifts from his family would look a lot like federal witness tampering) -- but still, this was a lot of fun, though I was disappointed that there was no big shootout when the bad guys inevitably learned where the waitress was hiding. Part of the story was that the agent's parents were disappointed that he was "only" an FBI agent, so I was hoping the house would be under siege and he'd save all their lives, so they'd see what an FBI agent could do, but I suppose I've been watching too many crime shows lately and not enough romantic comedies.

And then, finally, there was The 12 Men of Christmas, in which Kristin Chenoweth gets fired from her PR job and loses her fiance when she catches her boss having sex in a bathroom stall with her fiance at the company holiday party, and then her former boss blackballs her with every other PR firm in town, so she can't get a job. Here, you have to forget everything you know about the PR industry, like the fact that other agencies likely would be eager to hire someone from a competitor, you'd never get all the agencies to agree to blackball someone who could give them a competitive advantage, and she wasn't much of a PR person if she couldn't manage to spread the word about the fact that she was fired for being mad at her boss for having sex with her fiance (that last one may be a sign that the world is very likely a better and safer place when I'm not working in PR because my biggest, most brilliant campaign ever would have been getting that particular message out.). But still, they had to have a reason that the only job this supposedly brilliant PR person could get was a one-year assignment in a small Montana town, where she's hired to lure corporate retreats. Once she's there and after a lot of typical "city slicker in the sticks" humor (which is amusing because Chenoweth never really loses her Oklahoma twang and isn't quite a believable city slicker), she learns about the valiant efforts of the search and rescue squad and their need for a helicopter, so she comes up with the idea to do a "naked" calendar of all the hunks on the squad as a fundraiser. One guy, with whom she instantly clashes, opposes it, and Pride and Prejudice ensues. Literally. Like, almost plot point for plot point, with some adjustments for time and place.

This one made a good tension breaker while I flipped back and forth between it and the Big 12 Championship game, which was a HUGE nailbiter. So it was like "Oh no! They let Nebraska score again!" CLICK "Oh, I just hate you, but I'll probably fall in love with you. Now, take your shirt off."

I still really want to try writing one of these movies. I'd probably have better luck writing a novel, getting it published and then trying to get it optioned, but I'd make more money writing a screenplay (selling it would be the hard part). I guess that's my oddball career goal: I want to write a Lifetime holiday movie or a book that will be turned into one.

Supposedly, we had a chance of snow flurries during morning rush hour, so because I am five, I looked out the window as soon as I got up this morning, and it was sunny! Now it's cloudy, but according to the radar, the snow is to the south of us. Instead, it's just cold. If we have to be cold, we should at least get something pretty to look at.

For those who were curious, I ended up not going grocery shopping. Instead, I bundled up and walked to the library, since I didn't make it on Wednesday and I'd just got the message telling me a book I'd been on the waiting list for was ready to pick up. While I was there, before I braved the cold again, I went to the coffee shop and had the best cup of hot cocoa, ever. I'm sure it was so good because it was loaded with high-fat milk or cream and topped with whipped cream, but it was divine. I also got a brownie. And here's why I love this little locally owned place: The brownies were displayed in the bakery case individually wrapped in plastic, so I was expecting to just get handed a plastic-wrapped brownie. Instead, they brought it out to me on a plate, with chocolate swirled over and around it, like at a fancy restaurant. You can tell the owner used to be a pastry chef at a 4-star hotel. This falls into the category of affordable luxury. For less than four dollars, I got a big cup of the best hot cocoa ever (with chocolate swirled on top of the whipped cream, I might add) and a brownie, all served with the elegance you'd see at a fine restaurant. I need to do that more often. And I need to take the long way around to walk there and back when I do. Carrying a backpack full of books adds to the workout, right?

And before any northerners accuse me of being a weenie about cold weather, I have to say that I think things feel colder here. I haven't lived my whole life in Texas. I've lived in Germany, and it seemed to feel less bitter there with several feet of snow on the ground than it feels here in the mid-40s. I've walked all over the place in New York with temperatures in the mid-20s and it didn't feel that bad (unless you get one of those bitter cross-town, river-to-river winds while you're on a cross street. And I don't recommend going to the top of the Empire State Building when it's 27 degrees and windy. Trust me on this.). I've been to Chicago a few times in the winter, and the temperatures will be in the single digits there, but then when I get home to temperatures in the mid-40s, I actually feel a lot colder -- in the same clothes.

Fortunately, the same thing seems to work in the summer (so I guess I can't accuse northerners of being weenies when they whine about high temperatures in the 80s). When I went to New York in August, the high for the day the first day I was there was supposed to be about 80. Here, 80 is almost borderline cool. You're not wearing a sweater, but you can be outside all day without feeling hot. But when I was walking around Central Park, I got uncomfortably hot. It felt like a truly hot day. People were sunbathing, which not too many people would do around here on an 80-degree day, and it was warm enough to be wearing just a swimsuit. When I got back to my hotel that evening, I caught the weather segment on the local news, and the weatherman teased it by saying the forecast missed the mark. I was sure he'd go on to say that it had been 95 or so. Nope. 76 -- in Central Park, where I'd been eating Popsicles and sweating. At 76 here, I'd be wearing long sleeves and wouldn't even open the windows.

I don't know if it's wind, humidity, the angle of the sun, or what, but it does seem like the temperatures feel colder here. I was chatting about this with some of my neighbors, who all moved here from elsewhere, and they agreed with me. The 105-degree summer days sound horrifying, but really they're only the equivalent of a 90-degree day up north. Meanwhile, 44 degrees doesn't sound all that cold, but it feels about like 20 degrees.

And it's currently 35 degrees, so I won't be leaving the house today. The neighborhood Christmas tree lighting is tonight, but I don't think I want to be standing around outside in the cold. I'll be warm inside, watching the series finale of Monk, the mid-season finale of White Collar, and then I'll catch the late-night repeat of the mid-season finale of As the Stargate Turns (for mocking purposes).

I'm currently trying to talk myself either in or out of going grocery shopping, and I'm still not sure which I want. It is a nice (but cold) day, and tomorrow we're supposed to have snow all day, but there isn't anything I absolutely must have in order to make it through the rest of the week. I do need to get a new strand of lights before I can put up my Christmas decorations, as one died on me last year (it was only ten years old, so I don't know why it wasn't working), but that's not crucial. I may focus on work today, haul the Christmas stuff in from the garage, and then have "snow day" tomorrow if it does snow. Then I can put on the Christmas music, put up my tree and maybe start baking.

I tried writing a prologue for the current book yesterday, one that introduces the fantasy element right away and dramatizes the crucial backstory event. Now I just have to figure out if it gives too much away and ruins any surprises from later in the book, or if I managed to just drop a few tantalizing hints that increase interest in the rest of the book.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to get through all the reader mail I've been letting pile up. I only seem to manage to answer a few at a time because the questions are pretty much all the same. I suppose I could create macros and copy and paste the answers, but there's also usually at least some other little thing to respond to.

In case anyone is still wondering and hasn't heard back from me, here are the FAQs:
Will Book 5 be published?
I haven't given up on it, and my agent has some plans to pursue in the coming year, so we'll see, but at this point, no. There's a lot that could change this, though. If the Enchanted, Inc. movie does get made, that could change everything. If I sell a new series and become a bestseller, all my backlist becomes more valuable. The plague could sweep New York and the people who made the decision not to do book 5 could be gone, with different people in their place. A celebrity could be seen carrying one of my books. Etc.

Will you put it on your web site so we can find out what happens?
Would you volunteer to work for six months for free? Besides, posting it to the web might decrease the chances of it being published because then publishers will assume that the people most interested in reading it will have already read it. If a few years go by and it looks like absolutely nothing might happen, I might look into some alternative publishing possibilities, but I still haven't given up on doing it the right way.

What can we do to help make book 5 happen?
It mostly comes down to sales of the previous books, so keep telling people about them, and make sure that if they get the first book, they know about the rest. Don't post these books for free download on BitTorrent because sharing popularity doesn't equal sales. The publisher doesn't care how many people read the books. They only care about how many books sell (and it's depressing that most of the Google Alerts I get on my name or book titles are about my books on Torrent sites for free download). I don't even know how much book sales will help because it seems to be largely an issue of the publisher not wanting to do books like this. They think of these books as chick lit, not fantasy, and they see chick lit as dead. If you want to write to the publisher, perhaps the best thing to focus on would be complaining about not finding these books in the fantasy section.

Will the fourth book be published in Dutch?
So far, the Dutch publisher is saying no. Apparently, the first book sold really well, and then most of the Dutch readers who could also read English didn't want to wait for the translation and bought the English editions instead, so sales of the later books tapered off. Oddly, they say they get more reader calls/e-mails/letters for this series than for any other, but that doesn't seem to make a difference with the bean counters.

Will the fourth book be published in German?
I haven't heard anything about it, one way or another. They haven't asked for it, but they haven't said no.

Is the movie of Enchanted, Inc. going to be made?
The book has been optioned for film by a production company affiliated with a major studio, and a screenwriter has been hired to write the script. I don't know anything beyond that. The option will be ending soon, so I guess we'll find out if they renew the option or do an outright purchase at that point. It does seem like movies in this general category have done very well lately -- both romantic comedy type films and paranormal stories aimed at women. But you'll go mad trying to predict the whims of Hollywood.

Who do you want to play the characters if a movie gets made?
I'm trying to stay out of casting thoughts because I have zero say in the matter and it would only be frustrating if I had my mind made up. I try not to mentally cast so I won't be disappointed in who they do pick, and I don't want to go on record with my casting choices because that isn't fair to any actors they do pick (how would you like to go into a role knowing that the author actually had someone else in mind? Okay, maybe they don't care, but I don't want to run the risk.).

There, I've now answered about 90 percent of my e-mail. I'm still trying to get around to personal responses, but if you've written me, your question was likely answered above.

We started the day with snow, but then it went back to raining, and as it was above freezing, the snow was soon washed away. I might not have even seen it if my mom hadn't called to alert me while I was making breakfast. I still had the blinds closed and hadn't gone out to get the newspaper yet. There's more snow in the forecast for Friday.

I did discover a decadent trick for cold mornings: While I'm brushing my teeth and washing my face, I throw the clothes I'm planning to wear in the dryer for a few minutes. Putting on cold jeans is icky, but it's lovely to put on warm jeans and a warm sweater. It would probably be just as nice to do that with flannel pajamas while I'm in the shower, but that would then mean dashing through the house to the laundry room to get the pajamas out of the dryer. I'll stick with putting the pajamas in the bed when I turn on the electric blanket to warm up the bed while I'm in the shower.

I put in my work time yesterday, but didn't accomplish much. I'm trying to fix the opening scene, and the hard thing is that it's actually okay as it is. It's a lot easier to make a bad or weak scene good than it is to make a decent scene great, and in today's publishing climate, it needs to be great. One problem is that the setting was lacking in specificity. It was like a portrait vignette painting, where you just see the person's face, and then the rest of the background is vague and blurs around the edges. I had the characters and their actions there, but they were just floating in space. The introduction also served mostly to set up the next big action without having any tension or emotional impact. But if I make that opening bit more specific and detailed and really flesh it out, it delays getting to the start of the plot and the discovery that this story isn't really about what the opening scene makes it seem that it will be about. That's the trick with contemporary fantasy when your main characters aren't initially in on the magical secret -- you need to show their world before things change, but then you also need to find a way to show readers that yes, really, this is a fantasy novel. With today's attention spans, I'm not sure how much time you get for that. So then I was trying to decide if I should skip that scene entirely and go straight to the twist, with the opening scene being just backstory that could be covered in one sentence, or if there's a way I could flesh out the scene while bringing up the hint that a twist is coming. At any rate, getting specific required research, and then I realized I'd better research something else I was assuming to make sure it really existed (it does). And then it started raining, and I had a good mystery novel, so I figured I'd set the subconscious to work on the problem.

Hmm, I wonder if I could get away with a prologue. I've never written a prologue before, and there is a past incident that's very relevant to this story that gets talked about as backstory and that I could dramatize. But would it give away too many surprises about the characters? I guess I could always write it and find out, and even if I don't use it, the exercise of writing it will make it more vivid for me as character background.

One thing I am realizing is how much current technology affects plots. We used to be stuck with the news cycle -- that evening's TV news, the next day's newspaper -- for spreading information. Now even the newspapers post articles online as events happen, and then there's stuff like Twitter, so that the moment something happens, it's going to be out there -- and it may or may not be accurate. Not that newspapers were always perfectly accurate, but if your deadline is 6 p.m. and the news isn't going to get out any sooner if you turn your story in before then, you have more time to double check and find additional sources. If your story will be "published" the moment you turn it in, then there's more time pressure, and it's better to have something out there that can then be added to or corrected than to have nothing until you're sure. And meanwhile, anyone with Internet access can Tweet and it can become like a game of Telephone, where you can't be sure if something was posted by an eyewitness who really knew what was going on, by an eyewitness making assumptions, or by someone who heard what people were saying about what happened.

For book plots, what that means is that people are likely to find out about things going on a lot faster -- no more shock when reading the morning newspaper -- and there's more of a chance of miscommunication, which may or may not complicate things. It's also a lot harder to show that someone has special abilities in being able to get a jump on things. There's a fine line between having psychic powers and knowing the moment something happens and being addicted to Twitter so that you see a post about something happening just a moment after it happens. I guess you have to go all the way into seeing the future. Or someone with the ability to know something when it happens could hide that ability by pretending to just be addicted to Twitter -- and then get tripped up when it turns out that nobody found out about it to Tweet it until a while after it happened. Oops.

I have freelance work to do today and a choir rehearsal, plus I need to make a return trip to the library now that it's stopped raining, so writing time will be limited even if I don't get sucked into a mystery novel. It turns out that one of the books I picked up Monday (which is somewhat work-related genre research reading) is the second book in a series. The author's note at the front claimed it was a totally standalone book, and you wouldn't need to know anything about the first one to read this one, but here's a list of the characters and what you need to know about them. The list went on for something like three pages, and it wasn't just like a cast listing for a play (Lord Whoever's daughter, in her mid-20s). It was more like a soap opera episode summary for each person (was poisoned by her then-fiance, but recovered and pretended to be dead so she could confront him later and trick him into admitting his guilt, but before she could do so, he was murdered, and now she has to stay "dead" or else be the prime suspect). (By the way, I made that up. It has nothing to do with this book.) I figured it might actually be easier to keep everything straight if I just read the first book.

And, finally, my ballet slippers are starting to wear out. I consider that a badge of honor. I'm more of a dabbler in most things, so sticking with ballet long enough for my slippers to get holes in them is an achievement. They're not quite ready for the trash as it's just the outer part of the canvas starting to wear through, but next spring I'll probably need a new pair.

My effort didn't quite match my ambition yesterday, but I did re-read all I've written so far of that project (aka The Misty Idea) and while I can see some areas where it could be improved, I also still really like the story and the characters. In fact, I was planning to revise as I read, but I got caught up in the story. Today I plan to do the actual revising. It's a cold, gray day, so it will be perfect for curling up under the electric blanket with my laptop.

In the meantime, I've got another Girlfriends Cyber Circuit guest author, Laurie Faria Stolarz, author of Blue is for Nightmares. She's got two new books out. Black is for Beginnings, a graphic novel that tells some of the backstory of the Blue is for Nightmares series, and Deadly Little Lies, the sequel to Deadly Little Secret.

BLACK IS FOR BEGINNINGS reveals the never-before-seen backstory - and what lies ahead - for the young, spellcasting lovers Stacey and Jacob. Ever since he lost his memory, Jacob hasn't been able to remember Stacey - his own soul mate. He leaves Massachusetts, returning to his childhood home in Colorado, hoping to jog his memory. What he remembers is Kira, his ex-girlfriend. As Jacob works to piece together his past, will there be room for Stacey in his future?

In Deadly Little Secret, Sixteen-year-old Camelia fell for Ben, a new boy at school who had a very mysterious gift – psychometry, the ability to sense the future through touch. But just as Camelia and Ben's romance began to heat up, he abruptly left town. In DEADLY LITTLE LIES, brokenhearted Camelia has spent the last few months studying everything she can about psychometry and experiencing strange brushes with premonition. Camelia wonders if Ben's abilities have somehow been transferred to her.

Ben returns to school, but he remains aloof, and Camelia can't get close enough to share her secret with him. Camelia makes the painful decision to let him go and move on. Adam, the hot new guy at Knead, seems good for her in ways Ben wasn't. But when Camelia and Adam start dating, a surprising love triangle results. A chilling sequence of events uncovers secrets from Ben’s past – and Adam's. Someone is lying, and it's up to Camelia to figure out who – before it's too late.

I asked Laurie a few questions about her books:
Could you talk us through the process of developing a graphic novel to go with your series? How did this come about, and what was it like writing for a graphic novel, as opposed to a regular novel?
I wanted to try something different. The arcs of the first four books are similar in many respects, and so I wanted to do something new with the series. I felt the series was finished at four books, but readers kept asking me for a fifth. When my editor approached me with the idea of writing a graphic novel, I was very intrigued, because it gave me the opportunity to not only try something new, but to really picture the book as a movie. I have a background in screenwriting and wrote BLACK IS FOR BEGINNINGS in screenplay format, adding in ideas for illustrations and sidebars. It was an absolute thrill to write, and to have the opportunity to work with an illustrator for these characters and situations I’d created.

Did you already have the backstory of your characters planned before writing the "backstory" book, or was this something that you developed for this project?
The backstories were already created in my mind, though I did add a couple twists to make things more interesting and mysterious.

You've got suggested playlists for your books -- is music a big part of your creative process?
I use music to help get me into a particular mood. I think it can be a useful tool for writing a scene. But, other than that, I find music distracting while I’m writing.

How do the playlists suggested by readers fit with what you had in mind while writing the books?
I choose the winning playlists carefully, based on not only the variety of music, but how much care the reader took to relate the music to a particular scene, and the degree to which the selected song resonates with the scene itself. The winners I’ve selected accomplish all of those things.

What writing projects are you working on now?
I’m currently working on DEADLY LITTLE GAME, the third book in the TOUCH series.

For more info, excerpts, book trailers and playlists, visit Laurie's web site. Or you can get BLACK IS FOR BEGINNINGS" and DEADLY LITTLE LIES" from Amazon.

Now my "vacation" (such as it was) and holiday are over, so it's back to normal. Actually, the plan was to be better than normal. Last night, I was so gung-ho about what I wanted to accomplish going forward. I made lists and an ideal schedule for the day and planned everything out.

And then I woke up this morning.

It was cold, and I was so cozy all snuggled up in bed. I was having pleasant daydreams. So I was about 40 minutes late for my idealized schedule and haven't really caught up. It didn't help that I mostly stayed off the Internet over the weekend, so just reading my usual industry blogs took longer than normal.

Still, I'm eager about the writing part of things. I was getting antsy over the holiday. I found myself thinking about the book I was working on earlier, before the latest round of revisions hit. I even spent part of the holiday weekend reading a book on writing and thinking about how it would apply to this book. I think that's the main benefit of taking time off. Forcing myself not to write really makes me want to write.

I have a few errands and things to deal with today, and then I'm going to fall back into this book. I'm trying to avoid going all gung-ho about it to where it's an all or nothing thing, since this is a really busy month in general, but I'd like to have the dedication I had toward the end of those revisions on the days I do work or have time to put in that time (when I don't have choir rehearsals, performances or parties).

My Thanksgiving was delightfully boring, just a lot of eating, football and TV with my parents, plus a lot of reading.

My weekend movie was Australia, and I have to agree with my mom, who said that the scenery was fantastic -- and the shots of Australia were nice, too. That may be my favorite Hugh Jackman role. He looks equally good scruffy and cleaned up. As for the movie, I think it might have worked better with some editing, or else as two separate movies. There was the save the ranch story and then the WWII story, and they didn't really connect, aside from the characters and the mustache-twirling villain. I liked the second half of the movie a lot better, as it seemed tighter and I was less likely to find myself mentally editing the story.

And now I need to make a quick trip to the library, as I have no books checked out and have made a serious dent in the pile of books I've bought but haven't read, and I don't currently have anything on the shelf that I'm in the mood to read.

The Internet was really buzzing last week with the announcement that Harlequin, a well-established major publisher, would be starting a vanity publishing venture and marketing it in rejection letters to people who submitted to their usual publishing lines. The legitimacy and worth of vanity publishing is its own topic, but the part that bothered me the most about this announcement was the fact that they'd be advertising in rejection letters. In other words, they'll be telling people whose books they reject that this book isn't good enough for us to publish, but you can still have your dreams come true through this other opportunity where you pay us money to have your book put in print.

People receiving rejection letters are in a vulnerable state. They've just been told that their baby is ugly, that their book isn't good enough. They've just realized that their dream isn't going to come true this time. To me, it's on a par with ambulance chasing to hit people at this vulnerable time with a sales pitch, especially one that holds out the very slim hope that having your book published this way may increase your chances of them publishing it the real way. Again, that's its own topic (short answer: don't hold your breath), but I thought it might be useful to offer some tips on dealing with rejection so you'll be less likely to fall prey to this sort of thing. Rejection is something I've developed a lot of expertise about, believe me.

1) Start writing something else as soon as you submit a project to an editor or agent.
I suppose this is pre-rejection advice, but it's not necessarily pessimistic. If they like what you submitted, it's good to already have something else ready to go. I wouldn't necessarily recommend writing the sequel if what you submitted was the first book in a series, but it might not hurt to have the first 50 or so pages of the sequel and a synopsis written. Otherwise, write something entirely new. That way, you've got your bases covered. If they like what you submitted, having something else is good and could get you a two-book contract. If they like your writing but not this book and ask to see something else, then you've got it. And if it's a flat-out rejection, your emotional energy will be tied up in your current project, which makes the rejection sting a little less. I find that when I'm already writing something else, getting a rejection on something I wrote months ago feels more like, "Oh yeah, that," than a true slap in the face.

2) Let yourself have an emotional reaction.
Unless you're a robot, getting rejected hurts, and it doesn't get that much easier as your career progresses. Give yourself a day to feel the pain. Cry, yell, curse, throw things, vent, eat chocolate, take a bubble bath or do whatever allows you to get the hurt and anger out of your system. I wouldn't recommend doing so publicly, like on your blog or on a public message board where you can be identified because editors and agents have been known to Google authors before deciding to work with them, and you don't want to look like an unprofessional diva having a temper tantrum. You also don't want to advertise to the industry that you're being rejected. And you really don't want to name names while ranting about that person's lack of literary judgment because editors and agents generally reject books, not people (unless you've shown yourself to be a person they don't want to deal with). You may find yourself working with this person in the future, and having a public rant about this person won't help that relationship. You may want to shred or burn the rejection letter, but make a copy first. You'll need it for tax purposes and you may get helpful information out of it.

3) Put it in perspective.
After you've had your temper tantrum and told yourself that this editor/agent wouldn't know good writing if it slapped her in the face, get over it and get over yourself. Remember that they are rejecting the book, not you, and the rejection may or may not have anything to do with the quality of your work. Books get rejected for a lot of reasons. They may have just bought something too similar to your book. You may not be hitting the current trend at just the right point. The editor may be in the wrong frame of mind for your book. True story: After Enchanted, Inc. was published, an editor bought a copy in a bookstore, read it and loved it, and then called my agent to complain about not getting a chance to publish it. But she'd rejected it -- and it was probably the meanest, nastiest, most critical rejection letter I got on that book. The manuscript only went through copy editing after she saw it, so what she read in the book wasn't that different from what she rejected.

Or it could be your book. If it's not just a form rejection letter, is there anything in there that gives you any information that you might be able to use? Be aware that there are form rejection letters that don't look like forms. There's one publisher that basically puts the marketing copy for the line you submitted to in the rejection letter as "we're looking for books that ...." with the implication that what you submitted wasn't sweeping, intimate, emotional, or whatever they're promoting about that line. After a few of those, I figured out what they were doing and realized that didn't mean that my book wasn't any of those things. But if there is anything personal in the letter, read and analyze it.

If the letter asks you to rework and resubmit, do so. They mean it when they say that. They're not just being nice. On the other hand, even if they offer you pages of advice, if they don't ask to see that project again, they don't want to see a re-worked version of it.

4) Take another look at your manuscript.
It's probably been a while since you finished that book, and you've been working on something else (haven't you?), so you'll have an entirely different perspective on that book now. Re-read it with any comments from the rejection letter in mind. If there was feedback, is that feedback valid when you look at your book? Even without feedback, be honest with yourself and assess whether the opening grabs you, the plot holds together, the characters are interesting, etc. If you were browsing in a bookstore, would you buy this book? Can you think of ways to improve this book?

5) Consider the market and develop a plan.
If it was an agent rejection, there are lots of agents out there, and they all have different tastes. Depending on what you write, there may be other options for publishers, as well. What one editor says about the state of the market may not be what another editor thinks.

If you spotted ways your manuscript could be improved, then improve it and submit it again to someone else. If you're absolutely certain that this book is the best it can be, then go ahead and submit it again elsewhere. If you're not sure, put it aside for a while longer and keep working on your current project, submit that, and then take another look at the other book.

6) Re-evaluate with each rejection.
If one editor/agent says something, then that's one person's opinion. It's something to take into consideration, but it doesn't mean that person is right. If you hear the same thing from multiple people, then that's something you should probably take a look at. Chances are, you'll get a lot of contradictory feedback. I've had one editor say that the premise is clever and the characters are fun, but the writing doesn't live up to the premise, and then another editor say that the voice and the writing are lovely, but the premise is trite and the characters are boring -- about the same book. You'll go nuts trying to please everyone, so you ultimately have to go with what feels right to you and hope you find an editor who shares your vision.

7) Don't throw it away.
Unless this book now strikes you as so amazingly awful that you don't want anyone to ever see it, don't trash it. Hang onto it. You may someday be inspired with a twist that can make this book sing. One of the characters may be perfect for another book. The current trend may change, and this book could then be exactly what they're looking for. The annual publishing turnover could happen, so you'd have a whole new range of people to submit to. You may sell something else, and then you could work with an editor or agent on the older book to make it something they want to publish. You could hit it big, and then they'd be willing to publish anything you happen to have lying around.

I would consider vanity publishing to be throwing it away because unless you really hit it big with the vanity-published version (and though there have been self-publishing success stories, that's a different ballgame, and it's still incredibly rare), having that book "published" makes it less appealing to other publishers. Before you go the route of paying a publisher to print your book, at least try some of the electronic publishers. You may not make an advance, but the money flows in the right direction, and you can build up an audience there. I still think, in general, that unless you're really pushing boundaries so that the problem isn't with your writing but rather with the fact that you don't fit into any comfortable niche, you're better off shelving a widely rejected project and working on something else instead of taking any opportunity to publish that project. You have to be really, really honest with yourself about whether it's a niche thing or a writing thing because it's comforting to tell ourselves that we don't fit the niche rather than to admit that our writing isn't good enough, but until you can be that honest with yourself, you'll probably keep getting rejected.

First, a little housekeeping note: If anyone has been following me on MySpace (or knows someone who was), they've "updated" their site to the point that I can no longer access it with my current browser. I can't upgrade my browser without upgrading my operating system, and I can't upgrade my operating system on my current computer. Since everything else I need on the Internet seems to work perfectly fine with my current computer, I don't see the need to buy a new computer just to access MySpace, so I'll no longer be posting my blog there, adding friends, or anything else.

Now, about the only thing vacation-like I've managed to do while I've been taking a break is read, I've got a good-sized book report. In chronological order:

Elfland by Freda Warrington -- I suppose this would be an example of "suburban fantasy" that we were discussing in a FenCon panel. It's a contemporary fantasy set in an English village and the countryside around it, so it's not really "urban fantasy" the way the industry seems to see it. It deals with a fairy-like people (called Aetherials here) who fall somewhere in the middle ground between the cute fairies (which I'm admittedly guilty of using) and the punk street gang type fairies of a lot of urban fantasy. The Aetherials are from a kind of otherworld, though some of them live in our "real" world, which is connected via a set of magical gates to the otherworld. But the gatekeeper closes the gates due to a feared threat, and that may rip apart the community. The first half of this book has only the slightest touches of fantasy elements and is more of a drama about two families that are linked while being at odds. Then the fantasy elements become more and more important. The writing is very evocative, and the author managed the impossible: she actually made me end up liking the bad boy jerk character. It looks like this will be the first of a series, and I'm curious about what happens next because this book felt like it had a real, definitive ending. I also thought this book had some of the most beautiful cover art I've seen in a long time. I'm not a visually oriented person, so I usually don't even notice cover art, and I'm not usually a fan of fantasy art because it can get kind of twee -- it's okay for a book cover, but not something I'd want hanging on my wall. With this book, though, I wouldn't mind having a painting of that cover.

Restoring Grace by Katie Fforde -- This would probably fall into the category of "chick lit" in that it's a female coming-of-age story, but it doesn't have the stereotypical chick lit tropes -- urban setting, shopping, gay best friend, etc. Our heroine, Grace, lives alone in an empty old (like, centuries old) home she inherited from her aunt. Her siblings inherited the furnishings (and resented only getting that much) and removed everything that wasn't nailed down, but that was okay because her husband had furniture. But now her husband has left her for someone else, taking the furniture, and her siblings are hounding her to sell the house and give them some of the proceeds that they think they deserve. Grace ends up taking in a struggling young artist who finally got the nerve to dump her selfish boyfriend and her ex's teenage daughter from his first marriage, who feels unwanted after both her parents find new partners. The three of them team up to find a way to get their lives back on track and save the house from dry rot. Katie Fforde's books are like crack for me -- I can sit down to just read a few pages, and next thing I know, it's two in the morning. She tends to cover subjects I find interesting, like restoring old houses, canal boats and cooking. In this one, there's the old house plus cooking, as well as a bit of art. I don't think this is my favorite of her books (I thought it ended rather abruptly), but it's a nice "comfort food" read.

Looking for Andrew McCarthy by Jenny Colgan -- I'd been looking for this book for ages, but her books are hard to find in the US (I first discovered Jenny Colgan on a trip to England), then I found the British edition in a used bookstore here. Unfortunately, it didn't quite live up to the anticipation, mostly because the plot was so outlandish, in the category of "nobody in the history of ever would really do that, right?" The book is nearly ten years old, so the characters turning 30 were 80s teens, and they realize that adulthood hasn't quite turned out the way they thought it would, based on all those Brat Pack movies. Ellie figures that Andrew McCarthy might have some thoughts on the subject, since his career was so hot in the 80s but he then fell off the face of the earth, so she comes up with a scheme to go from England to America, find Andrew McCarthy, and talk to him, which she's sure will help her figure out how to deal with her life. It turns into a cross-country road trip when she neglected to do even the most basic research and automatically went to LA, since that's where movie stars are, and then discovers that Andrew McCarthy lives in New York. Unfortunately, that reveals some research issues, as you get the feeling that this British author may possibly have been to New York or LA, but has certainly never been anywhere else in the US, so she has no sense of the scope and gets a lot of details badly wrong -- like the book takes place in November, but the characters run into a high school prom at a hotel along the way, and they go to a county fair in Missouri (Texas has a late fair in October, but up north, the agricultural expo type fairs take place much sooner). I guess I also had trouble relating to the premise, in spite of being in the same generation as the characters. I didn't see any of the Brat Pack films until I was in college, so I never really had those people as teen idols. When you're a mature, sophisticated college woman, a high school character is sooo beneath you (never mind that the actor was probably older than you even when the movie was made). The supporting characters and subplots are a lot of fun, reminding me of a lot of those British romantic comedy movies where the main characters are a bit annoying, but the supporting cast of their wacky friends is great. I suppose this was a fun read, but it didn't quite live up to the "I've been searching for this book for ages and finally found it!" anticipation.

Witches Incorporated by KE Mills (on LJ, karenmiller) -- this is the sequel to The Accidental Sorcerer, which I read on my trip to New York in August, and I think I may like the second book better. The first book was setting up the situation, but then this one was more of a fun adventure. Our hero Gerald has been tested and trained to be a kind of magical secret agent, and while he's off doing the testing and training and then going off on his first assignment, he hasn't been allowed to see his friends. In his absence, his best friend Monk has inherited a house that gives him room to conduct his crazy magical experiments, and Princess Melissande (from the first book) has escaped her royal duties to go into business with Monk's kid sister and Reg, the witch queen trapped in the body of a bird, in a sort of "No. 1 Ladies' Magical Detective Agency." A seemingly petty case reunites them with Gerald when their paths cross, and he has to decide between following orders and having success with his case by getting help from his friends. I LOVE these characters, and after plowing through this book I immediately wanted more, but the next one isn't out until February 23 -- and it's called the final book in the trilogy. That makes me sad because I felt like this book set up a situation that could run for many books. There doesn't seem to be a major plot arc linking the books, just a character arc, and I'm not yet ready for it to end. There may be pouting. I've said before that it's usually the guys that get me into a book, and while I adore Gerald as a hero and would love reading any book with him in it, I also would be totally willing to read a book entirely about "the girls" (as they're referred to in the story) because they're the kind of female characters who can carry a book for me. "Princess Pushy" (as Reg calls her) is so delightfully stubborn and practical. Reg is a hoot. And the kid sister, Bibbie, seems like the kind of character I'd hate -- basically a Barbie doll, ridiculously gorgeous and seems like an airhead -- but then she turns out to be something of a mad genius who does not like being patronized.

I was surprised when I went to Amazon to see when the next book was coming to find that the reader reviews were pretty negative. I feel like these books are the closest I've found to being along the lines of what I write -- that scratch that particular itch -- without me having to write them. The setting is different, but I think the tone and characters are similar in style. Gerald, Monk and Owen would totally be best friends (and the world might not be safe if the three of them teamed up), and Katie might fit in with the girls, even if she did want to knock their heads together every so often.

Now I'm in the mood to read more of something like that, and there isn't really anything that I've found, so I don't know what I'll read next. My parents have the new Dick Francis book, so I'll be reading that over the holiday, but now I have to figure out what to read today and tonight. I have hundreds of unread books on my shelves, but I'm not really in the mood for any of them.

I continue to fail at vacation. In fact, I've given up on calling this a vacation. It's more of a rest/regrouping. The only thing I've managed to cut out of my schedule is the fiction writing. Otherwise, the business end of things keeps coming up, with stuff to deal with. Some of that was because of just coming off finishing a book, so it had piled up, but otherwise it's just bad timing of things coming up while I'm trying to take time off.

So, basically, "vacation" has meant business as usual except for the fun part. I may gripe a bit about the agony of writing (or, really, the agony of rewriting), but still, making up stories is the reason I do this. Unfortunately, I can't think of a way to eliminate the tedious business end of things for a week while I still take time to do the "play" part.

I was kind of stressing myself out about my failure to "vacate," but then I decided to re-label it. I do need to regroup and get my brain into the space to work on something different, and spending additional time just reading and catching up on errands has been nice. Once I get a few more business tasks done, I may even be able to relax better, and the rest of this week I shouldn't have any real business stuff to deal with (though I do have a book club meeting tonight I've been invited to, but that doesn't feel like "work" because some of the people I knew from my pre-author days).

I may go "light duty" during December. I'll never be able to entirely eliminate the business stuff, but I'd like to focus on writing because I'm in the rough draft mode on the project I'll be working on, and that's playtime. In fact, that book is already seeping back into my brain.

I've been mostly a slug, which has been nice. I've done a lot of reading, caught up on OnDemand TV, and Saturday night I had a real blast from the past, thanks to one of the HBO channels. They showed Xanadu. The movie itself is pretty awful, but boy does it bring back memories. I was living in Germany when it came out, and we had the soundtrack album even though the movie hadn't yet made it to the base theater. The album had a lot of stills from the movie, so my friends and I tried to figure out what the movie was about based on the music and the pictures. There was some big band stuff, the Electric Light Orchestra stuff, the Olivia Newton-John stuff, and then photos of Olivia in clothing from a variety of eras. We were guessing at time travel or something like that. That was the album we played on the boom box when we went to the school parking lot to roller skate on weekends. Finally, the summer after seventh grade, one of my friends got a bootleg copy of the videotape, and we got to watch the movie at her birthday slumber party, and our reaction was a resounding "HUH?"

I don't think I've seen it since then, and yeah, it's still pretty bad, but the music and the musical numbers are actually decent. The duet between Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John is really nice. The mash-up between big band and modern (circa 1980) rock is still kind of awesome. The context for the skating on the rooftop scene was silly, but the scene itself was nice. The animated sequence is really cute (and I wonder if any of those animators went on to work on The Little Mermaid nearly a decade later, because the character design was eerily similar), and there was Gene Kelly dancing to ELO. I don't know if it says something about how sadly uncool I am or maybe about my capacity for learning and memorizing music, but I still had most of the songs memorized, and I still like that music (hmm, I have that album on vinyl, and my parents have a turntable. Guess what I may be listening to at Thanksgiving).

It's just a pity about the plot, which has a huge fundamental flaw -- Our Hero is supposedly a very talented artist, too good to be wasting himself in a job where all he does is copy and enlarge album covers (didn't they have machines for that, even back in 1980?), but he's lacking the spark of inspiration about what to paint when someone's not giving him orders. So he gets a real, live, official Muse to inspire him -- and she inspires him to open a roller disco? We don't even see him painting cool murals at the disco. Her solution had nothing to do with his problem. It might have kind of made sense if maybe he'd aspired to be a painter but lacked the talent, and she turned his creativity in a different direction, but they went on and on about what a brilliant painter he was and how he just needed some inspiration, but then the inspiration of the Muse had nothing to do with painting. Meanwhile, we were supposed to see it as horribly tragic that she had to go back to Mount Olympus, and he was left feeling like life had no meaning with her gone, but we never really saw anything of their relationship other than them skating in a musical montage. Then again, actually developing their relationship would have required giving more dialogue to Olivia Newton-John, and that wouldn't have been good for anyone (especially the audience) and probably wouldn't have helped show that there was anything to their relationship.

Now I'm almost curious about what they did with the stage musical, if they fixed the plot at all. Apparently, they kept the roller skating, so I'm guessing they didn't change that much. It wouldn't take much to fix the plot -- just make Our Hero a struggling musician instead of a painter, and then it makes sense for him to make friends with the old musician and let them inspire each other -- though I'd have them create a really cool sound that mixes big band touches with modern music instead of opening a roller disco, especially since we know how quickly that trend flamed out, so we know they didn't exactly have any kind of long-term success in living that dream.

I'm not sure if it's a reflection on my current age or on the fact that quality is timeless, but even at the age he was in this movie, Gene Kelly was way hotter than the young leading man. Though that could also have something to do with the fact that the young leading man was kind of a drip, was a terrible actor and wasn't at all hot.

In other news, I just saw a report on the noon TV news about the Twilight phenomenon, and according to the "experts" they interviewed, the main reason people are so gaga over those books and movies is that there's no actual sex, just a bunch of longing. Huh. I write books with no actual sex, and as far as I know, people aren't having lines from my books tattooed on their bodies. I suspect there's something else involved. Or maybe my lack of sex is a different kind of lack of sex.

I'm starting to see why I haven't taken a real vacation -- as in extended time off, without any work -- in forever. I totally fail at vacation. I'm not even really vacating yet. Part of it is that this comes right after crunching a book, so that I shoved everything else aside, which means I still have a lot of work and personal stuff to wrap up before I can really relax. Yesterday, I did one set of radio scripts (the writing I know I'm getting paid for, so that can't slide) and the research for another set. I didn't quite make it on the supply run because I was just too tired. I did manage a couple of hours of reading a book I didn't write, which was bliss.

Today, I have another set of radio scripts to do and a bunch of business and personal e-mail I need to reply to. The e-mail is going to be a problem because anything I got on my personal address before yesterday is trapped in my client that the server will no longer accept, so I'll have to copy addresses into web mail to reply. And now I really, really have to make that supply run, not just to have some fun vacation treats but also to have any food at all in the house. Plus I have to make a trip to the post office. I never thought of myself as a workaholic, but the work never really seems to go away entirely, even when I'm not actively working on a book.

If I stay quiet for the day and stay hydrated, my voice should be back enough to sing the soprano part of The Messiah tonight, so that's good.

And then tomorrow maybe I can enjoy true vacation. I was thinking that tomorrow might be my big day out -- maybe playing tourist locally, go to a museum, take the train somewhere. Right now, though, I kind of just want to hang around the house and chill. I think if I have the energy, going out would be a good idea because that will jolt the brain into the sense of it not being business as usual, and it would force me to stay away from the computer all day. Friday's supposed to be rainy, so I think that will be my curl-up-with-a-book day. I'm thinking Saturday I'll go hiking down to the river, and I might go for "Glee: The Live Version" because the local high school show choir has a concert.

But for now, I have to get some groceries. And answer e-mails. And write medical radio scripts.