A Week in Writing #21

Changed up my query letter for A Killer Blog. So far tested it out on one new agent I'd read about on Query Tracker. Too soon to tell if it's done any good. For every query, one new DNR to take it's place I'm afraid, so I'm still hovering at 11 queries and for those of us keeping track, which is me: 6 are for A Killer Blog and 5 are for Past Present. Still no word from the agent with the full manuscript (9 months since the original query). It's been a month since we last communicated. I really don't know what's taking so long or how agents read bits and pieces of a manuscript. Not sure how to take the delay. From my experience it usually takes months to get an answer on a full submission, but I still don't like the waiting. To paraphrase Tom Petty, it's the hardest part.

Made some good progress on my rewrite of Familiar Stranger. Decided to look at the beginning again, as sort of a running start for the rest. Added over 5,000 words so it was a good week for that. Trying to add some depth at the beginning with the characters. Sometimes writing seems like connecting the dots, you've got point A and B and C and more defined lines need to be drawn to connect them all.

Heard from my editor on Public and Private. It had been since the end of November. Good stuff, though it looks like we're going to be doing some major rewrites on the ending. But that's all good. I want to improve the book.

Really felt like a writer on Saturday with the rewrites on Familiar Stranger and Public and Private. Those fleeting moments of being in the groove are hard to come by, but I really like it when they come around.

Published a review on Trophy Unlocked for The Plot Thickens (1936), which you can read here:
http://trophyunlocked.blogspot.com/2015/01/stubs-plot-thickens.html.

Received some review copies from the Warner Archive that I requested: Blu-rays of The Picture of Dorian Gray and Out of the Past and a DVD of Sinners' Holiday. All future reviews, though Out of the Past will be a second look. Worked on a future review of Sinners' Holiday (1930), a film that I've seen once before and has come up in several reviews of Cagney and Blondell films. Realized that I had been misspelling the title in past reviews (Sinner's) as well, so I went back and corrected that.

Looking forward to sending some more queries next week and continuing on Familiar Stranger. And, of course, will report on all this in next week's post.