I know some of you are curious about the agent search, and I want to talk about it – really, I do. The thing is, with all the steps involved,  the process can take a bit of time, and it’s chock full o’ peaks and valleys, good surprises and bad. A ‘yes’ at step 1 can quickly turn into a ‘no, thanks’ at step 2, just as long weeks of hopeless silence can be a resounding ‘yes’ in disguise. That’s why I’d rather not blab about the minutiae of the search until I land that elusive agent who will undoubtedly throw me down the path of fame and fortune. *Ahem* For now I will say that responses have been largely positive, and the manuscript is out there being reviewed. Now, let us not speak of this again until we have something to celebrate!

*Sprinkles fairy dust*
*Crosses fingers*
*Forwards 19 email chain letters to 37 people within 6 minutes, just in case*

So last night I was working on the outline for my next book. I’d already sketched much of it, including main characters and setting. But I couldn’t quite nail the big crisis – the point of no return, after which comes the resolution and conclusion. In some novels, this might be a fight, a chase, a discovery, naked people doing what naked people do best, whatever. I also didn’t have much of a plot.

I started typing up my notes last night, and suddenly, as if by magic, it hit me. The crisis! The resolution! The whole damn plot! I typed up 9 pages of notes. Yes, 9 pages. I outlined the entire novel, start to finish. Next, a little bit of online research to fill in some preliminary gaps sparked an idea for a sequel, so I wrote up a few paragraphs on that. And then, pondering the genius of this 2-book literary marvel while flossing my teeth, I came up with an idea for a 3rd book in the series. Brilliant! In my mind it’s brilliant, anyway. Who knows what publishers will think. Too risqué for the shelves of B&N? Too ‘been there done that’? Boring? Over the top? Under the top? Feh. All I can do is write it and watch it take on a life of its own.

Besides, I need something to distract me while waiting for agent responses on book #1 (other than gnawing off my own appendages which, while entertaining, does not bode well for my writing career). Not that I need much encouragement toward distraction – if I was distracted at work during the writing of book #1, imagine now, with 3 books simultaneously writing themselves in my head. Good thing I have that writer’s retreat coming up in July.

All right, off to send out a few more chain letters. By the way, I got one on MySpace from my cousin-in-law last night, telling me I had to post the name of my high school in the subject line and then press F6 to see the names of all my crushes. Not that the promise of seeing the names of all my crushes isn’t intriguing, especially since I don’t know who they are and should probably let them know. But the last sentence in the missive informed me that if I don’t forward it to my entire MySpace friend list in 143 seconds, I will be dead in 1 hour.

*Sprinkles more fairy dust*
*Hopes for the best!*