Luray Caverns, Luray, Virginia

Some genius called them fried eggs, and that's probably what they looked like, ten or fifty years ago. The yellow blob in the middle of each is almost a perfect heisphere. Well, not really yellow any more, so much as gray. Skin oils, you know. Affect the formation. But there are postcards in the gift store, reproductions of a photo taken during the Nixon adniminstration.

There are black chasms of the dramatic sort, stalagmites arranged in a square like a four-post bed, ribbons of drip-stone, seemingly delicate. That last behind ropes, so you can't touch. The fried eggs are right there next to the path, spared from the federal grant long ago that chipped stairs into that low rise, for the tourists to climb. A little sign, in linotype, glued to the wall: Please do not touch. A couple decades of human fingertips, blessing the gray yolks as they pass.

“But I really want to go, mom. Pleeeeeeeeease?? What could happen? It’s a school trip!”

“You could fall, you could hurt yourself, you could get lost.”

“But you got to go when you were my age! Those things didn’t happen to you! C’mon, mom. I’m begging. Pleeeeeeeease?”

“Go ask your father.”

“He told me to ask you. Please please please????”

Minutes fly by. I can tell she’s gonna let me go. The big family rule about airplanes is gonna go right out the window. Just a few more minutes…..Almost there. And then, she sighs.

“You can go.”

And she caves.

Writing career advice request:

I'll finish the WIP this week, barring unexpected timesucks--I just need to finish the scene I'm working on now and write a nice epilogue. I'm trying to resist the urge to submit it until I've had time to revise it properly, since I think that got me in trouble with the first book. There might've been a publishable novel in there somewhere if I'd had the willingness and knowhow to edit the thing properly.

That said, I'm hoping to have at least the first three chapters whipped into some semblance of publishable shape by mid-October. That way I'll have a partial ready to send out to any contacts I make at the writers conference and to enter in the Golden Heart. And I'd like to have completed an initial polish of the whole manuscript by the GH deadline in late Nov./early Dec., just in case I get lucky and make the finals (first round only partials are judged, but in the finals the judges get the whole thing). But I'm not planning to start my big agent query push until January, just to give myself plenty of time to polish it to the best of my abilities.

I have a #1 favorite target dream agency in mind. They have a very good reputation, and I really liked what one of the agents had to say in response to something I asked her in a Q&A a few months back. They're still open to submissions by unpublished authors, but every once in awhile they'll close to unpublished submissions for a month or two, saying it's just to catch up on their backlog. I've noticed those closed phases are happening more frequently, which makes me think that A) their reputation is spreading, so they're deluged with submissions, and B) they may not keep taking on new authors forever.

Anyway, they're not currently accepting new submissions, but plan to open back up in a month or so. Should I take the risk of querying as soon as they reopen, even if my work isn't quite as polished as it might be in January? It's not like I'd be submitting a raw rough draft.

(no need to say it twice)

Answering queries takes a while (thus the closing to submissions once in a while) so there's every chance that even if you query when they reopen in ... October? November?... it might not get read until December, by which time you'll be much closer to an edited draft.

Short answer: yes, query when they reopen.

Thanks, Amy--that's where my instincts lie. It's just so nervewracking. I really want to sell this book, not just because I want to sell sooner rather than later, but because I love the story so much and want to get it out there so other people can love it too. And I believe this particular agent would improve my chances a lot. But I also want to make sure I take the time to make the story as strong as it can be, both to improve its chances and because it deserves better than to be told in a half-assed slapdash manner.

Lunch drive-by:

Yeah, Allyson! And yeah, Deb. The Kincaid Chron's. should so be publishable -- I can't imagine that they won't be.

And on the drabble, I have no time for 100 words, so...

I retreat into my Teaching Cave.

Bye!

(this is from a glorious memory I got back with some music, just today.)

Animal

A bright October afternoon, celebrating the huge unexpected royalty cheque with a nice dinner before your gig.

I remember the blue velvet jacket; I remember a lot of things. I don't remember what you ate. I know what I ate.

Back at the Keystone, there's no one there; guy lets us in the backstage door and leaves. We're hours early.

You check the piano, we look at each other. Grin. The heat's rising.

Into the tiny bathroom. You, up against the sink with your trousers half-down, me on my knees.

Two rutting animals in a porcelain cave, and loving it.

My cave drabble. I learned something about myself writing it. There are two caves in her mind. One is the warm welcoming place where she would like to be able to bring her friends and loved ones to protect them when she feels they need protecting.She pictures the firelight flickering on the cave walls and herself smiting enemies with a big pointy stick.

The other cave isn’t a choice, but a sentence. When she is depressed and rejected, it is hers. Empty, cold, and far from the hearing of others, it is the place where she ventures forth seldom, hair in tangles, wearing the one rag somebody thought to toss in there.When she is sad; this feels right, like destiny.

erika, that's - yep.

One of my favourite novels was written in the thirties, called The Chinese Room. The title referred to that place in everyone's soul where, in the end, no one else ever gets to go, no matter how frantically we wave them in.

The ultimate cave.

Any librarians reading? Booklist review is out today, page 35.