Hitting the Books

Ack! I must be crazy. Oh, that’s already been established. Okay, I must be crazier than usual. I did it. I went out and entered An Uncivilized Yankee (my historical romance) in the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart contest (for unpublished books–the RITA is for published authors). Not that I think it’s the best book ever written, or even that it’s really got a snowball’s chance. No, this was more of the I’ve-got-to-get-over-my-issues-and-go-for-it type entry. So now I get to write a short synopsis (under 15 pages), print out the first 3 chapters and a full manuscript, and get the whole shebang out to Texas before December 2.

On the NaNoWriMo front, I finally decided to work on one of my historical romances after all. This one is set during the War of 1812, so I’m spending much of my free time doing background research now and getting an outline in place before October 31st. Bright side–Internet research is going much faster now that we finally got broadband (Hallelujah!!! And there was much rejoicing.). Dark side–I know next to nothing about Boston at the turn of the 19th century. At least with An Uncivilized Yankee, much of it was set in the Fredericksburg/Richmond area, which is where I live. I know the area very well, the public library had a ton of resources, and I was already a Civil War enthusiast. I’ve been to Boston twice now, for a total of about 12 hours, I don’t think the Virginiania section of the library will have much on the heart of Yankee-dom, and let’s face it, the War of 1812 just ain’t one of the more exciting wars. But the story is pretty good (I think), so I shall endeavor to persevere.

Thankfully, my mother just came into town for a visit = the Punkin has another playmate for a few days. Hopefully I’ll get my tail in gear and tackle my backlog of projects while she’s here. That’ll give me some breathing room come November. Sigh, and somewhere in there I’ve got to start in on Christmas shopping. Ack, ack, and double ack.