Agent or no agent??

Two days of solid research would seem to suggest that agent = foot in the door. Now all I have to do is land an agent - hah! all I have to do. When I say land an agent I mean a good agent - there are a ton of scammers out there. Did you know that there are no actual qualifications you can get to become a literary agent. No people there isn't a literary agents academy. If the agent is a member of the ARR - the Association of Author's Representatives then that's a good sign but some of the good ones are not members of ARR so go figure.

Cautionary tale - I very nearly fell into a scam within the first 30 minutes of searching. I won't name the agency but I had actually bookmarked their e-form but just to be on the safe side almost as an afterthought I ran a search using their name and came upon the site 'Writers Beware' which listed agency x on their list of the top 20 worst agencies!

Writing is most definitely the fun part. I love to write and I love to tinker with what I've written to hopefully make it better. This next bit is going to require some serious hard graft.

One thing that would really help me out. If any of you have had a bad experience with an agency or agent, names would be nice. Hard work is one thing but wasted effort is quite another.

time to bite the bullet

A number of thing happened yesterday that made me re-think well a lot of things - I'm being cryptic for a reason. But the point of this rambling is the following. Time to stop being an unpublished writer and throw my hat into the ring. Giving myself a month of polishing and then I'm going to submit my manuscript. Wish me luck.

On a lighter note the copy of Good Thief's Guide to Paris arrived at the store yesterday so that's me set for the weekend:-)

Mental Doodles

Off the grid for the last couple of days because of the Larsson (and several extra shifts). As usual I'll post the review when it comes out in June but I wonder if the guy knew he was dying because there are elements of 'something' haunting one of the characters and it would seem a bit odd if you didn't know what happened to the author. Off to write now at Divas. I was so pleased with myself on Thursday because of a plot device I worked out - which really exists - but then I realised that means a major rewrite. Plus it's only taken me three years to realize that working in the bookstore means that I have the perfect way to get all the books that I had to leave behind when we moved. But not the Judas Pair! Damn things out of print.

busy busy

At work yesterday picked up two of those arcs I asked for - although they weren't in my box just sort of lying around. Silent Man and Scavenger's Manifesto. I also bought Murder in the Museum of Man by Alfred Alcorn - not Acorn!! Tomorrow I'll be working on T'ball it's that or start a completely new project. Until I hear back from Jennifer I don't want to do any more to draft 3.5.

Sad to report that our writing group has pretty much bitten the dust. We're all doing our own things and although it was so great to see everyone again we didn't attempt to nail down a meeting date. The Rose and Cactus society however is up and running. We spent Sunday morning pounding keyboards at Diva's. They've opened up the green dome and even though there is a sign on the table at the far end people didn't read it or didn't really understand what it meant. I do that's why I didn't sit there, it's like the whispering gallery of St Paul's Cathedral in London. Every word clear as crystal from that table right into my ear!

Visiting Booksellers

What a lovely bunch! We had quite a few coming through yesterday and all of them were so nice.

Going to be a busy weekend there's the TW reunion tour Saturday morning - hopefully we can get the group back on track and start having meetings again. Sunday is writing with Donna so taking a page from our blogs The Rose and Cactus society! Also because its good to learn something new I'm adding Brazilian Dancing and Hoop Dancing to my day not just because they are fun to learn but I find that I'm much more creative after that kind of workout and don't laugh - no please don't - I was having a problem with ending a conversation between two characters - for months it's just had 'finish this' in caps at the end of it. I was thinking about it just before I went to sleep and with my brain in that loosened state the words I needed just jumped into my head and they stayed there until I got them down on the page the next day. Yay!