I'm feeling in a low confidence phase again. Probably from a bit of struggling with the start of 23 along with two of the beta exchange people going inactive. Also, I ran over my desired word count for 22 and it's looking like 23 will run long too. I may have to depend on losing words in the next revision more than I was hoping.

If I get rolling in the rest of 23, 24, and 25, I'm sure I'll start feeling better about it.

...Exactly how many teen zombie romance books are there?

And since some teenage girls in fiction seem to be brainless, how much appeal will they have for the zombies?

Hey, may I please have a bit of quick hivemind editing/beta reading on a line for the next GCS column. One of my beta readers questioned something, saying that she thinks this particular line doesn't read as a sentence to her and seems kind of awkward. But it makes sense to me, and none of the other beta readers flagged it. This is the line:

Lightweight panne velvet or satin-finish fabrics scream costume, generally with an undertone of costume that came in a big plastic bag to that screaming.

Jilli, it makes sense to me, but I think perhaps putting the first "costume" in single quotes might ensure clarity.

I would remove "to that screaming" from the end, Jilli. It's unnecessary and, I think, what is causing your beta to find the sentence awkward.

I would also take off the "to that screaming".

Hmm, okay. I'll remove the "to that screaming". Thank you, gang!

Last polish sent off to agent, and then she'll send off to publishers, likely tomorrow. I really need to change the home page on my website.

I figure with the holidays approaching, I won't hear back until February.

On to the next book...

On to the next book...

Good on you. That's EXACTLY what you need to be doing.

And you know what? You just never know when you might hear anything. Yeah, we're coming up on the holidays, but it's possible someone will read over Thanksgiving and want to make an offer in December. It happens.

Hang in there.

Good Luck Allyson!

I made good progress on 23, but it's taking longer to get past the new stuff than I thought. Thank goodness I cut out a bunch of stuff at this point in the plot. I guess I will press onward with 23 until I hit a point that would make a good chapter break. I think there is some slack in my chapter plan that I can use to prevent word count from exceeding my goal.

In my plan, I had always thought about splitting it off in two directions during my next revision. One, the straightforward revision and two, a modified version without the more adult stuff solely so my daughter could read it. Now I wonder if I could turn that second version into a full-fledged YA derivative. Food for thought, I suppose.