No need. I forgot to note the xpost. I'll pop over and read. Thanks!

Whoo-hoo! Thanks, Susan.

I occurs to me that for the first time, I may not have a chapter section of Matty to read at writers group, assuming I do it next week. With essentially five days unavailable to me for writing - Thursday is baking, errands, packing, Thursday night is Eddie Izzard, off to LA with no computer come Friday morning, not back until late Monday night - I likely won't get this section done. Also, there's a skosh more research I have to do on family crypts, and mausoleums.

Ah well. Maybe I'll read the first chunk of TET instead...

And here's me off for the evening. My cake has arrived and my pork with fresh beans and noodles in about done.

And Astarte has betas. This is of the good.

Deb, have you seen this site for research into English historical details? How much information it has varies from county to county, but I use it a lot to give an appropriate sound to character or place names, and to remind myself of geography. And for many counties, it at least provides clues toward where to go for more detailed info.

Ah well. Maybe I'll read the first chunk of TET instead...

Do do do! It will blow asses out of water like chunks of whale hit by torpedoes!

t /overly enthralled and overly invested

And I'm going to have to trim my novel a bit somehow. I want to keep it under 125K words or so, just to keep it marketable, and I'm sitting on 90K now, with almost 100 pages of longhand still to enter and three chapters that still exist solely in my brain. Eek! I think the thing is trimmable--I've already thought of two major scenes that could go on the cutting room floor--but this will be my first big challenge in self-editing.

And I need to sign off, or I'll be falling asleep at the baseball game tomorrow night.

gronk.

Susan, that's one my already-bookmarked sites, but the specifics - the crypt itself, laid out how (shelves? coffins? shrouds? does it change from generation to generation as they learned that dead bodies rotting under shrouds might be juuuust a skosh unsanitary>) and whatnot, is what I need. Although the next bit is actually going to be in the mausoleum, Lady Susanna's monument. I have to convey the first clues to the reader as to why Andrew Leight-Arnold's ghost is so pervasive: that he's buried in the grounds of the house, unmarked grave, unconsecrated ground, and has basically leached into the place like evil incubistic toxin in the psychic groundwater.

(grinning at Plei)

Oh, I wasn't thinking about the mausoleum question so much as general research questions that might come up over the course of doing a series like yours.

I've decided I'm going to have to go through my novel, scene by scene, and make each scene that doesn't directly involve the hero and heroine interacting with each other justify its existence. I don't want to write a skimpy, bare bones story with the two of them interacting in a vacuum, but the length it's heading toward at this point is both unpublishable and kinda silly.

Susan, can you split it out and perhaps is it two books? A novel and a sequel? (enabler)

Also, remember that when you do send it off to Marlene, it may be a few days; she's back and forth to NY and she's getting one daughter to the far end of the state and off to music college. So no panicking if she's not right back to you. Sounds obnoxious, but if she says she'll put it on top the pile if she sees my name in the "re:" line, then she will. She was one of my primary beta readers for all the Child Ballad mysteries, and spent a week at my house last year, reading Still Life for me. She's also the one who shoved me to contact Ruth in the first place.

We gots history, Marlene and moi.

(Edit: why do I keep typing "me" instead of "my"? I haven't even seen the Big Gay Pirate movie yet.)

Oh, also, let me know when you're ready to send and I'll ping her first; that way, I can not only remind her it's coming and give it priority, but also ask her the preferred format (jpg, word, paper) and save you some trouble.

Susan, can you split it out and perhaps is it two books? A novel and a sequel? (enabler)

Eh, not really. It's just one fairly simple story arc. Basically, I just made a bunch of mistakes out of inexperience that made me go too long:

1. If I thought of it, I threw it in.
2. I've got cast bloat issues, and need to discipline myself to let certain peripheral characters just be spear carriers instead of fleshing them out.
3. Wacky as this sounds, I went too far in certain cases with "show, don't tell." Just because I can make several interesting little set-pieces about Lucy's interactions with the dressmaker who makes her first ballgown doesn't mean I should, for example, and the story won't suffer at all if I just have Lucy say that she likes the dressmaker, particularly because she sides with her on trimming her new dress in red rather than a pastel like her aunt/guardian wants.

Stuff like that.

I'll definitely give you a heads-up before I send it to Marlene. I think sometime early next week will be realistic. Also, I won't expect an immediate response. BTW, I know you're not supposed to simultaneously submit to editors, but it's OK with agents, right? So if I meet an agent at conference who's interested and haven't heard back from Marlene yet, I could go ahead and send it out to the second agent?