But I'm impressed by how far it's come. The first incarnation rounded out at around a bloated 118,000. The second was almost 115,000. The one I submitted?
110,128.
*Phew* It was a lot of hard work. And I have to thank Laura again for her help. If you haven't checked out her blog yet, you should. All of her posts are great, but I'm a personal fan of her Mental Monday posts. Those are incredibly helpful.
So now, I think I'll start querying again. Just a few to test the waters. I'm proud of my query (thanks Phoenix and Disgruntled Bear!) I'm happy with my product. And I can finally put "Duality is complete at 110,000 words" in my query! W00T!
OK, that's not all I've been up to recently. I had the privilege of reading Jennifer Armentrout's debut YA novel Half-Blood. It's not out yet ;) But it's great. If this one's not on your radar, it definitely should be. The story's great, her writing is so solid and so so so good, and if you're anything like me, you'll fall in love with her characters, although one is near and dear to me (Aiden, if Alex breaks your heart, I'm right here!). HB drops September 15, 2011. Jennifer's on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads, so go drop her a line and tell her how pumped you are for her book! NOW! Ok. You can wait a few minutes... At least after reading the blurb:
The Hematoi descend from the unions of gods and mortals, and the children of two Hematoi--pure-bloods--have godlike powers. Children of Hematoi and mortals--well, not so much. Half-bloods only have two options: become Sentinels who hunt and kill daimons or become servants in the homes of the pures.
Seventeen-year-old Alexandria would rather risk her life fighting than waste it scrubbing toilets, but she may end up slumming it anyway. There are several rules that students at the Covenant must follow. Alex has problems with them all, but especially rule #1:
Relationships between pures and halfs are forbidden.
Unfortunately, she's crushing hard on the totally hot pure-blood Aiden. But falling for Aiden isn't her biggest problem--staying alive long enough to graduate the Covenant and become a Sentinel is. If she fails in her duty, she faces a future worse than death or slavery: being turned into a daimon, and being hunted by Aiden.
And that would kind of suck.
Hop over to www.acovenantnovel.com for more info, quotes from the book, and more info on Jennifer's projects.
5 comments:
Congratulations! And good luck! Sounds like you put a lot of effort into it. I entered, too, but it was more of a "what have I got to lose" deal. I figure, since the first round is based solely on the pitch, if I don't make it past, then my pitch sucks and I need to rework it. If it makes it past the first round, then I'm on the right track, anyway.
Dan
For me, writing the query is way worse than the actual story. Good luck querying and with the contest!
Yay! Congrats and good luck!
Sounds like you've trimmed down to lean and mean. ;-)
Wow! Good luck to you in the contest! Can't wait to read more of Duality when it's in print :) I read the *old* first 5 of QT forums and liked it a lot!!!!
@ Dan - Thanks! Good luck to you, too! I'm in the same boat--what do I have to lose? Besides, I want to know if my pitch is working before I send out mad amounts of queries. I'm gonna send a few to test the waters, but not a crazy amount, maybe five or so. Feb 27th feels like forever away.
@Nicole - I think there's so much pressure on the query that we panic at the thought of writing it. Good queries are like gold. I think I rewrote mine about 16 times. No joke.
@Deb - Thanks!!! I've worked really hard on word count. Fingers are crossed.
@Roberta - Thank you! :) I hope it lives up to expectations... I'm always incredibly nervous about that.
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