Another response, less woo.

Well, I did get the final rejection from the publisher who asked for my revise and resubmit. It sucks, but being forced to look a little harder at my own writing is kind of eye opening. I would never have thought of some of the things the editors pointed out. Or the less than polite agent who just sent me an email that said "your book is too short." All in all I know all of this will make it a better book, but it's a tough pill to swallow sometimes. It's hard to be proud of something and then realize how flawed it is and how much improvement it really needs. Be nice to editors though, they sometimes will give you  helpful hints when they reject your manuscript. I can't really explain how grateful I am to those patient editors who wrote me personalized rejections instead of sending me a form letter.

Response! Wooo!

While I am aware it's by no means even remotely certain that my book will be published I am excited to have gotten a response. The lovely editor informed me this morning that my manuscript has been passed along to a content editor. I'm not completely sure what that means, but it seems like the next step and that's encouraging. Here's hoping it makes it all the way down the chain!

Also, I managed to come up with a title for my second book, which is nearing a complete first draft. Closing the Breech. And no, I don't mean breach. I mean breech like a gun. So, it will be The Nightblade Saga: Forging the Bond, then Closing the Breech. Not sure what to call the other five, but they're not done yet so it's not really urgent.

Still No Answer, so putting out more feelers

This is sort of an exercise in second guessing and torture. I still have not heard back yet from the editor. So, I'm going to try and put out more feelers. I'm redoing my synopsis and trying to shorten it up. Hopefully I can manager to make my submission packet a little more attractive. Turns out Harlequin has a Digital First imprint that I'm going to try and submit to. I didn't hear back from Samhain either, which was weird. I sent them back an email to make sure my stuff didn't get lost. It's been four months, so I waited out their standard time period before sending another email.

Waiting waiting

So it's back to the waiting game again for me. I resubmitted my manuscript on saturday, but I haven't heard back yet. It's one of those nail biting things where I can't expect somebody to breeze through my manuscript, but I'm still checking my phone every five minutes to see if I have an email. Then, every time my phone goes ding and says I have an email, I'm rushing to check it only to see it's just spam. Oh well, here's hoping I either get a response quickly or that that response is favorable.

Edit with input

Still thankful for the extra traffic headed my way from Autumn Dawn. Again, if anybody cares to email me comments or suggestions, my email is laney.stuart@gmail.com. I've adjusted the layout of my blog so you all can see some of my mental images over to the right.

Here is the updated passage using the feedback I've received so far:

“So what happened?” she asked. “How did you get me out of there?”

He sighed and set his plate on the side table. He had no desire to tell her.

“I heard you scream, so I ran outside to see what was wrong. They must have had riding beasts and moved faster than I could on foot.” His jaw clenched involuntarily as he remembered.

“I followed their trail to the military installation outside a tree city. They had you chained to the ceiling dangling by your wrists. I broke the door, killed the two men guarding the building, killed the man cutting you, and then brought you back here.” Steeling himself for her inevitable disgust and horror, he intentionally looked away so he wouldn’t have to see. He’d be lucky if she didn’t run screaming into the forest. In his experience, women usually seemed to have an issue with killers. Alan certainly wasn’t sorry they were dead and he wouldn’t apologize for it. He grimaced and plunked his mug down on the nightstand. Even worse, he noticed the blood still crusted beneath his fingernails when scalding coffee slopped over onto his hand. It was a wonder she wasn’t frightened of him already.

Sage reached out and threaded her small fingers through his larger ones, coffee, blood, and all.

“Thank you for saving me. Those Elves would have killed slowly, and it’s not the first time they’ve tried.” she said.

He was surprised to see tears running silently down her cheeks. He gently smoothed the tears away with his thumbs. Seeing her cry tore at something long dormant inside him. Sage didn’t flinch and she didn't seem afraid or disgusted. She nestled her face into his hand, the hand that had ended those lives, and laid a soft kiss on his work roughened palm.

At this point Alan didn’t care what race she was or wasn't. Heedless of alarms blaring inside his head, he slid his hand into the tangled mass of her hair to cradle the back of her head. Ever so slowly, he took her mouth in a searing kiss. Sage twined her fingers through his shaggy hair and returned his kiss with enough heat to burn the house to a crisp. Gods if she was this responsive to a kiss... He couldn't help but picture her writhing beneath him crying out his name. He wrapped one arm around her to pull her closer, completely forgetting about her cracked ribs. Sage blanched dead white, gasping in pain. It had about the same effect as a bucket of ice water being dumped over his head. He pulled away from her with a sick feeling in his gut, miserably slumping back down into his chair.

"I shouldn't have done that." he muttered, jaw clenched in frustration. Sage carefully propped herself back up against his headboard, breathing in short, shallow pants.

"What do you mean?" She gasped, her cheeks flushed from the combined effect of his kiss and the pain in her side. He grunted and raked his hands through his hair.

"You are injured, I am taking advantage of the situation. Take your pick." He grumbled. She gave a short laugh and winced.

"I don't think that kiss requires any apologies." She blurted. He looked up at her sharply and she blushed. She looked away from him, self consciously clutching the blanket to her chest. He watched her grimace when she tried to run her fingers through her snarled hair.

His expression softened and he offered her his hands, smoothly changing the subject. "Would you like a bath?" She looked so grateful that he almost laughed despite the guilt roiling in his stomach.

"That would be wonderful." She slipped her small hands trustingly into his and he pulled her to a standing position. Wrapping one arm carefully around her waist to keep her steady, they walked the ten steps to the bathroom. 

Excerpt from Forging the Bond

I'd like to give a huge thank you to the wonderful Autumn Dawn for being willing to throw some feedback my way. She's awesome and her books are awesome. Please let me know what you all honestly think of this excerpt, or if you want more. If you hate it, or just hate a piece of it, I'd like to know.

UPDATE: If you have any comments you don't care to post on here, or they are too complicated to add in a comment, please send them to laney.stuart@gmail.com. I generally respond to email very quickly.

“So what happened?” she asked. “How did you get me out of there?” He sighed and set his plate on the bedside table. He had absolutely zero desire to tell her.

“I heard you scream, so I ran outside to see what was wrong. They must have had some kind of horses and moved a good bit faster than I could on foot.” His jaw clenched in anger as he remembered and his grip tightened on his mug until his knuckles whitened. “I followed their trail to the military installation outside a tree city. They had you chained to the ceiling dangling by your wrists. I broke the door, killed the two men guarding the building, killed the man cutting you, and then brought you back here.” He steeled himself for her inevitable disgust and horror and intentionally looked away from her so he wouldn’t have to see it in her eyes. He would be lucky if she didn’t run screaming into the forest. In his experience, women usually seemed to have an issue with killers. Alan certainly wasn’t sorry they were dead and he wouldn’t apologize for it. If given the same choice again, he’d repeat it. He grimaced and plunked his mug down roughly on the nightstand. Even worse, he noticed the blood under his fingernails when the scalding coffee slopped over onto his hand. It was a wonder that she wasn’t scared of him already. He was still staring at his hands when Sage reached out and threaded her small fingers through his larger ones, coffee, blood, and all.

“Thank you for saving me. Those Elves would have killed me and they would have done it slowly.” she said, “It isn’t the first time they have tried to do something like that. I am grateful they are dead.” He looked back into her eyes and was surprised to see tears running silently down her cheeks. He did the only thing his shocked brain could think to do. He let go of her hands and gently smoothed the tears off her cheeks with his thumbs. Seeing her cry tore at something long dormant inside him. Sage didn’t flinch away and she didn't seem afraid of or disgusted with him. She nestled her face into his hand, the hand that had ended those lives, and laid a soft kiss on his work roughened palm.

At this point Alan didn’t care what race she was or wasn't. Heedless of the alarms screeching inside his head, he slid his hand into the tangled mass of her hair to cradle the back of her head. Ever so slowly, he took her mouth in a searing kiss. Sage twined her fingers in his shaggy locks and returned his kiss with enough heat to burn the whole house to a crisp. Gods if she was this responsive to a kiss... He couldn't help but picture her writhing beneath him crying out his name. He wrapped one arm around her to pull her closer, completely forgetting about her cracked ribs. Sage blanched dead white and gasped in pain. It had about the same effect as a bucket of ice water being dumped over his head and he pulled away from her with a sick feeling in his gut. He miserably slumped back down into his chair.

"I shouldn't have done that." he muttered, clenching his jaw in frustration. Sage carefully propped herself back up against his headboard, breathing in short, shallow pants.

"What do you mean?" She gasped. Her cheeks were flushed from the combined effect of his kiss and the pain in her side. He grunted and raked his hands through his hair.

"You are injured, I am taking advantage of the situation, take your pick." He grumbled. She gave a short laugh and winced when her ribs pained her again.

"I don't think that kiss requires any apologies." She blurted. He looked up at her sharply and she blushed. She looked away from him, self consciously clutching the blanket to her chest. He watched her grimace when she tried to run her fingers through her snarled hair.  

His expression softened and he offered her his hands, smoothly changing the subject. "Would you like a bath?" She looked so grateful that he almost laughed despite the guilt roiling in his stomach.

"That would be wonderful." She slipped her small hands trustingly into his and he pulled her up to a standing position, wrapping one arm carefully around her waist to keep her steady while they walked the ten steps to the bathroom. 

Resubmission and Eggplant lasanga

While my gluten free eggplant lasagna(which I hope is good rather than gross) is in the oven, I figured I'd post about my revisions on my resubmission.

I did break down and completely restrict each chapter to one character's perspective. Even after I changed it to each passage, it was still too much switching. My best friend in chicago read through part of it and the perspective changing was the first thing he mentioned. I think overall that all of the changes have made it a very different, but significantly better book. The extra sexiness is up for interpretation as to whether or not it makes the book better. If I were going to try and publish it in the mainstream rather than as a romance I probably would remove some of it and tone it down a bit.

If anybody actually reads this blog and has been through either eggplant lasagna or revising and resubmission, please give me some advice. I want everybody's negative/positive/neutral commentary to sort through in order to make my book better. It can be hard to hear sometimes, but I know it makes my stuff better.

UPDATE: My eggplant lasagna turned out more like a casserole and less like a lasagna. I think I'll just stick with gluten free noodles.

Hopefully, I've just finished my final draft

My best friend in Chicago started reading my book two days ago, god bless him. He managed to get nine chapters in before we talked and he pointed out an obvious flaw. I can't just separate my POV changes inside chapters. I just need to stick to one POV per chapter. So, over the past day and a half, I submerged myself in rewrites again. Hopefully this will be the final draft before it goes back to the publisher. I really want to get it back to her before she forgets or isn't interested any more, but I am glad I didn't send her the previous copy. This one is much better. Is it just me or does it feel like a book is never done? Have any other authors felt like their book was just as good as it was going to get after their beta readers got done with it?

Active Directory Slow Logins

So, we've been struggling for quite some time with a slow login problem. It's apparently school districts all over having these troubles. I will hopefully be sharing my solution with one of my fellow districts sometime soon and I hope it can help them.

So, logins had been taking up to 45 minutes, which is ridiculous. By the time the kids got logged in, it was time for them to go. Usually, they didn't even get logged in before they had to go, so they tend to hold in the power buttons to turn the computers off by force. This causes a completely separate problem that can only be solved my reimaging the machines. Microsoft knew about it and had been working on a fix for quite a while. Amazing the difference it will make in the higher ups blaming you when people all over the place are having the same problem after microsoft puts out a 90, let me be very clear, NINETY hotfix rollup.

I'd found that a combo of a profile cleaning script and two hotfixes on shutdown had a profound effect when combined with a high lsass utilization hotfix on the server. For profiles that hadn't been created before the hotfixes were applied, logins came down to three minutes or under. Still a little pokey, but a vast improvement. After the 90 hotfix rollup was also pushed out to the workstations and servers, it halved the three minute logins. So, long story short, don't don't don't do this on startup. This will make people freak out, because it takes about four or five minutes to run as a shutdown script in group policy. Most people couldn't care less how long it takes for their computer to shut down, but they will squawk like biddies if their computers hang on startup. They are also likely to force them to turn off instead of letting the scripts run. This will corrupt their computers worse and make them even slower.

So, in short, what it appears to take to fix slow computer lab logins in a large scale k-12 AD domain is to:
1. Clean student profiles on shut down. Use a profile cleaning VBScript with an exception list so you don't delete public and default profiles by accident. Make sure it doesn't clean teacher profiles either. They like to save stuff to their desktops.
2. Install the 2 hotfixes for Folder redirection and item level targeted group policy shortcuts. If anybody actually reads this blog, comment on it and I'll include the specific hotfix numbers.
3. Install the high lsass utilization hotfix on the DCs. Again, ask me and I'll provide the numbers. I can't remember them off the top of my head.
4. Install the 90 hotfix rollup to both the DCs and workstations.
5. Make sure you don't have duplicated stuff in your group policy. Also make sure shortcuts that don't have to be targeted aren't and you aren't pointing to stuff that doesn't exist.
6. Disable IPv6 in the registry. Don't lie, you're not using it.

So. That's it. Appears to be the snazzy fix for slow logins, at least for us. I've rolled it out to three middle schools and they are happy about it. Soon high schools, then other districts. Again, if anybody reads this and I can help with your slow login ridiculousness, let me know.

Getting people to read your books in a timely fashion is hard

Just for informational purposes, getting people to read your book when you're not paying them is a time consuming and infuriating problem. Even my husband hasn't finished the edits on my book and it's hard to be patient. I want to get the book back to the publisher as quickly as I can, but I don't want to send it back without someone else reading through it first. Oh, and bribery with baked goods doesn't work either, by the way. If you're waiting on people's good will to read your book, expect to wait a really long time.

I found an amazing writing spot

So, there used to be a corner bar not far from my house that was once a bait and tackle shop. I loved going in there, but it didn't get enough business so it closed. I think being next to a railyard and a rock quarry wasn't good enough to keep a bar going(I'm being serious. It's within spitting distance of both a railyard and a rock quarry). Well, within the last six months, the building was purchased by someone else and covered with wonderful murals. It opened as a sort of bar and restaurant and I haven't been in here since then. Today, on a whim, since I didn't have class, I decided to come here after receiving a hair cut. It's perfect. It's not slammed. It has wifi. There is beer. And it's just the right amount of distracting and not super busy. I love it. It's amazing. This might become my writing spot. I'm about to try the food and we shall see if I'm sold forever. Hopefully my husband won't mind me lurking here if I buy him a beer occasionally.

My Ninja Status Seems to have been Cemented

My grouchy boss is grudgingly giving me the first several letters of "Ninja". So, he is rather amusingly walking around responding to my ninja assertions with a strongly voiced "ni" vaguely reminiscent of Monty Python. To cement my ninja status, I managed to automate the several hotfixes and registry changes necessary to apply the profile fixes. I also included a vbscript that wipes out only student profiles. So in short, my fix cleans the machine of damaged profiles without reimaging, applies registry changes to disabled IPv6, and installs two windows group policy hotfixes. The only thing I have to do manually at this point is run the high lsass utilization hotfix on each of our DCs. Granted, there are 50+ DCs, but that shouldn't be too difficult. The only thing the technicians have to do is manage to correctly remove the teacher profiles if necessary after doing a thorough backup. Will they do this? Maybe. Can they do it correctly? Even less likely, but I can't follow all 26 of them around and hold their hands, nor would they let me since most of them hate me.

Now, Laney, why would the majority of 26 people possibly hate you? Because the vast majority of them are so lazy it should be criminal. The laziest of them are also intractably stupid. A goodly portion of those also dislike the fact that I was promoted very quickly and I am significantly younger than they are, despite the fact I was the most qualified applicant. They drive me crazy because it's practically impossible to fire them and frankly most of them need to be fired. If you don't know how to find an IP address, you should not be a "technician" of any sort. You especially should not be on the same pay scale as me. It's insulting and infuriating. I'm totally fine with people telling me they don't know something that isn't basic, in fact usually I like it. The problem comes in when it's something fifth graders know how to do or something you can easily google. If you don't know how to install a complicated piece of software, please ask. I'll be happy to make you instructions with big ass pictures and arrows. If you don't know how to rename a computer (when there is a tool in a folder on the desktop to do it that you've been informed of repeatedly in training), get the hell out of my office.

Final passthrough

Finished my POV and sexy rewrites today. I now have to read critically back through the entire book to make sure all the changes I made didn't turn it into utter shit. Then, my lovely husband is going to read through it to make sure I didn't miss anything. Then, it gets to go back to the lovely editor. Wish me luck. This is a task that might require chocolate.

Also, I finally managed to find gluten free bread that isn't disgusting. I made my husband a pair of sandwiches with it and he was super excited(He doesn't really do well with gluten). For some reason it's really really small bread. Like the size of a cocktail napkin. And if anybody hasn't had a glass of Punto Final Malbec, you should remedy that immediately. I rarely get drunk, but I drank an entire bottle of it by myself last night and woke up with absolutely no hangover. I bought it on a whim at Earth Fare(my favorite place) and it turned out to be an excellent whim. I usually have Bodega Elena de Mendoza Malbec, but I may have to switch for good.

I might be an Active Directory Ninja. We shall see.

Rewrites for my book continue. I have two chapters left to adjust and then a final read through before I turn it over to the husband for commentary. Here's hoping it's awesome enough.

So, AD Ninja. Maybe. We've been battling a slow login problem ever since our tree was rooted..ahem. Couldn't help the pun. My predecessor was tearing his hair out about it before he left and I was equally stymied and vexed. Essentially what's happening is logins are consistently over a minute, sometimes up to forty five minutes at the high schools and middle schools. That's a lot of computers and a lot of frustrated kids and teachers. Also, the weirdest thing is it only seems to be happening in places were large groups of machines are located. We could have a 40 port switch completely full with one lab on it and five classrooms and still only the lab is effected. It's frustrating. My cohorts and I have pushed out a profile cleaning script that runs on shutdown, but it only seems to be helping so much.

So today, boss man and I went out to one of our schools that was having an issue specifically in their media center and the lab off the media center. Apparently nobody before me thought to look at the damn cables going into the machines because there was a loop in plain sight under the table. A network cable was plugged into a drop, plugged into a cable extender(HUGE boo hiss), and then plugged back into another drop patched into the same switch. This is not good. If certain protections aren't enabled on that switch, it will cause a flood of traffic not unlike rush hour. This slows things down. Again, not good. So, I removed the loop. Logins sped up a little bit. Still not perfect, but slightly better. I ran two hotfixes for the local workstations that deal with Folder Redirection and Group Policy Item Level Targeted shortcuts. I also ran a hotfix on the local DC that deals with high lsass utilization. All of these things combined with me cleaning up the login and startup scripts made for zippy logins. Like 17 seconds zippy. Keep in mind, our network has about 15,000 machines in it. Ish. That's my rough estimate and I'm not counting printers, ipads, copiers, etc.

The reason for the "might be" in front of "Active Directory Ninja" is because we're still seeing weird periodic delays on bootup. I'm wondering if the machines just haven't gotten the policy updates or if they all just need to be wiped out. I personally am in favor of wiping. The machine I worked on primarily had been freshly imaged and I got a brand new profile to load in 45 seconds. 17 seconds for second login. That's pretty damn fast for us. So here's to hoping that my fixes work. That will solve a lot of stress at work for me if I can solve the mystery of the slow login gremlins.

Crap day

Today sucked, just kind of in general. It rained buckets, I had someone ctrl+alt+del a computer I was working on remotely and shut it down(When I called, she claimed to think I was a virus, despite my large text box that indicated who I was and what department I was with), my to do list got longer than my work log, had to deal with a woman who thought us not answering our phones was a malicious choice(she doesn't understand how a rollover system works. Even if all the lines are in use, it still doesn't give a busy signal), and just like every day I got asked a plethora of stupid questions. A good portion of the stupid questions were asked by the woman who insulted me, my department, and my coworkers outside the server room on our very helpful help desk. I'm not being sarcastic. They really are super helpful.

Just for reference to anybody who doesn't know, being a nasty superior witch to your IT staff is like being a nasty superior witch to your custodians. Neither is a great idea. Do you want your trash taken out every day? Be nice to your custodians and learn their names! Do you want your IT people to go out of their way to help you and not dump you to the bottom of their list? Don't be a jackass on the phone and blatantly accuse them of screening your calls out of laziness. It kinda makes them want to screen your calls. DON'T TYPE YOUR EMAILS OR WORK ORDERS IN ALL CAPS. Oh, and don't complain that you no longer have the right to install software. If users could be trusted not to install sunset cum virus screensavers, IT departments wouldn't have to lock down user logins.

Whew. There's my rant for the day. I think "be nice to your IT staff" sums it up. Granted, that's a hypocritical statement coming from me since I'm grumpy cat the vast majority of the time.

So...rewrites are hard.

Rewrites are hard! Whine! I didn't realize quite how much my book changed perspective until I had to go back and fix it, geez. I had to make myself a spreadsheet to keep track of what editing I'd done on what chapter. Also, I'm going to have to renumber the chapters. All big buckets of no fun. Granted, it's making my book a whole hell of a lot better, but it still sucks to do.

I have to admit though, writing the new sexy scenes was pretty fun. I increased the sexiness by 75%. That's a decent increase, right? Who am I kidding? Pretty sure nobody is reading this. Maybe you will read my blog someday, internet! That's right. I'm addressing the internet. Cause that's not weird at all. Blurgh!

Revise and Resubmit

I have received my first request for a Revise and Resubmit. I'm so excited! While I already knew this and hoped it wouldn't matter, I need to fix my POV switching problem. I took care of that in the manuscript of my second book, but it was kind of a problem in the first book. I think that's a completely reasonable request for revision. The other item was not enough steamy scenes. Also fixable. I'm pretty pleased. Here's hoping that once I make these changes, the editor will like it enough to want to acquire it. Apparently the plot and the characterization are fine. I just have to fix those two things. It might take some doing to fix the POV stuff, though. Blurgh. To rewrites! Tally Ho!

Received a response that wasn't a rejection

It's amazing! I finally got a response from a publisher that wasn't a resounding "no". All the agents I queried have rejected me at this point. I'm down seven. I figure nineteen more and I'm in the Dr. Seuss category. It wasn't an "I want your book" but it was an "I'm keen to read the rest of your manuscript." I'm completely thrilled with that. Even if this editor doesn't end up wanting it, it's at least a positive step.

Back Pain and Rejection

I've managed to garner both my sixth and seventh rejections today. Hurrah. To top it off I've been fighting some pretty horrific back pain all week. I have no clue what I've done to myself. I just wish I could undo it. Sitting in my desk chair all day has been an exercise in torture. I even let my husband cook dinner on Monday and Tuesday. I also had a position upgrade interview yesterday that I didn't do as well as I'd hoped on. So, to sum up, today really isn't my day. I turned in my python homework and just came home. We're supposed to get about an inch or more of rain tonight. Joy.

Scifi Anyone?

Since my first book is out and about in the publishing ether waiting on responses and my second manuscript is waiting on my small bunch of beta readers to get through it, I figured I'd give that world a break for a little while.

I had a weird dream a while ago that managed to spin itself into a scifi novel. It's currently hovering around 16,000 words so It's still in the beginning phase but I'm enjoying delving into the scifi. While I love the world Alan and Sage live in, It's nice to be able to whip out a space ship.

Telepathically bonded Companions, secret government agents, and a galactic conspiracy lurking under the surface of a picture perfect society make for fun writing.

Forging the Bond

Ok, so little overview on my first book. Here's hoping this doesn't sound silly. It's a bit hard to explain without sounding a little odd. 

Forging the Bond is a blended science fiction/fantasy novel with a strongly romantic storyline.

Half-elf Istyáre ‘Sage’ Aieto has been alone her entire life. Born a pariah due to her mixed blood, she escaped to become a powerful Guild Mage. Living with humans, she had never before encountered one of the blood drinkers, the Lipitori. When inky haired Lipitoare Alan Centuri approaches her in a roadside tavern, she’s drawn to him like a lethal magnet. Her abduction by the Elvish military forces them together under harrowing circumstances. Once she allows him to draw her in, she’s not expecting the man she finds beneath the menacing exterior.

I find drawing out my characters one of the best ways to cement my mental picture. My lovely friend Phil helped me out by critiquing both of these while I was drawing them.

Sage

Alan (I'm aware the burn scar on his side looks a bit wonky. If I erase it one more time it will ruin the paper.)

Inaugural Blog Post

Well, here it is. I've been advised from all over the internet that if I really want to become an author I should have a blog. Thus, the blog. Hopefully I'll manage to gain some readership and you all can help me with writing ideas, etc.

A little about me:

Laney Stuart is my pen name, obviously. I would love to be able to publish books and post blogs under my real name, but I work in IT and when you work in IT your coworkers can be really excellent at finding things online. Writing is kind of a personal thing. I enjoy it and I love to share it with people who appreciate it, but I'd rather not have it plastered satirically all over my server room by an unpleasant coworker. I'm a Domain Administrator in a large school district. I've been working in K-12 Information Technology for the last six years or so.

I've always wanted to be a writer ever since I was in middle school lurking about the AOL fantasy and scifi roleplaying chatrooms. I met a great friend there who helped me develop my ideas over the years. Last year I decided to finally go ahead and sit down to write my first book. It took me about a year, but I finally finished my manuscript. Now I'm up to my neck in submissions to publishers and agents and rejection letters. Second book in the series first draft is done now also. More details on the series in future posts.

So, that's me. Full time server whiz, part time evening student (don't ever drop out of college. It's a bitch to go back as an adult), aspiring author, wife, and caretaker for two dogs and two cats.