A busy day, catching up with work stuff and some house stuff (finally got the last two set of blinds up in the new house, after almost 7 months here!) and preschool stuff (took Drew in and picked him up, and no tears by youngster or Dad!).

I finished up the polishing on the first three chapters of Sixteen Miles from Everywhere, and I feel really good about them. These first 50 pages are the key to getting the book published, really, because those pages are what I'll send out to potential agents and/or editors. If the agent/editor likes what they see in pages 1-50, they'll ask for the whole thing.

I'm trying to make their jobs as easy as possible. "Just send the whole book, Mr. Jasper!"

I also updated the excerpt page for the novel. Now you can see the new opening I was wrestling with for the past two weeks. The text in this excerpt represents the opening 5 pages, which are probably the most important pages of all -- those are the pages that will hook the reader and entice them to keep reading the dang book!

And just for kicks, I have a link to the older version here, which I've actually kept in the book, but moved to scene 2 of chapter 1. In case you're keeping tabs, and all that...!

And speaking of links, here's a fun link to an old, old bio page for me, for my first "pro" sale to Writers of the Future.



Wow, where's all my gray hair? Hard to believe that was SIX years ago. Time, it is flyin'. Later!