News and Notes

It's continues to be a busy, but positive, time of year.

I finally closed on a multi-book deal for a non-traditional series of books that I have been working on for over a year. This is the deal that I had to fly to Chicago for. I wanted my client to meet the people he would be partnering up with for the next few years. And that was certainly good advice, because now everyone really knows everyone. He not only got to meet his editor and the book's designer, but the special sales and marketing people, as well as the actual owner of the company. Win, win all around.

I've also had three meetings with another publisher in the past three weeks where I have been developing a series of books. Again, this is exciting, but very time consuming. But it is also opening doors for all my other clients as well.

I took these last two weeks to have lunches with some of my agent/editor colleagues, because it is important both professionally and personally to know what's going on in the agent part of the book world. It was great to see people I hadn't seen since the summer, and to hear that we are all extremely busy this year, so it's not just me.

And my clients continue to deliver proposal after proposal and book after book. I made a list of things to do over the weekend, thought I was finished by Sunday night, sat down to watch Desperate Housewives and checked email before I went to bed only to find a new partial, a proposal and a whole new, unexpected novel. So I was already late before I started the week.

And on top of that, my cousin got a new job in San Francisco that starts on Monday and decided to come to New York to shop for new work clothes, so I had a dinner for her Wednesday night with more relatives and went out to dinner tonight.

Tomorrow is a paper work and reading day and it couldn't have come at a better time.

Catching Up

This is the first weekend I've had home in three weeks. I went to the New Jersey Romance Writers conference last weekend (Sherlynn Kenyon gave an inspiring speech, which I wish I had taken notes on, because she said she was retiring it, but, basically it was about believing in yourself and never giving up. She told the story of how her home was almost in foreclosure, she had medical bills up to the ceiling and hadn't sold a book in over a year. She has one stamp in her wallet and she received a list of editors names from the RWA newsletter and found that a woman who had once been her agent was now an editor, mailed a partial to her and sold her novel) and had a mid-week one-day trip to Chicago to close a deal. So, I was exhausted this weekend and spent a good part of it sleeping in and then sorting through the carry-on debris of my life, meaning books and bags and pens collected at the various writers' conferences.

Also decided that this was the weekend to separate the summer from the winter stuff and box it up again.

I guess in an odd way I'm thankful that the Yankees aren't in the play-offs because it gives me a little extra time to catch up. (I am a devoted Yankees fan from April through October, but I watch no sports the rest of the year, so I guess this is when I do most of my reading). For the record, I do not hate the Red Sox. I have always said that if the Yankees didn't exist, and the Mets weren't playing, I'd be a Red Sox fan (they are always a good team, and I do love to beat them), so I find myself in the unusual predicament of rooting for the emeny because I cannot bring myself to root for a team with such a racist logo in this day and age.

And I have decided that this is the time to dig out that copy of THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON, so that is what I'll be reading for pleasure.