Congrats to the New Orleans Saints! They won 23-20 over the Carolina Panthers in a kickoff in the last few seconds of the game! Awesome! On the flipside, my team, the Rams, got creamed. By the 49ers. THE 49ers??? What the...! Okay, okay, enough about that. I won't turn this blog into a football blog. :-)


Okay, I'm jittery and I'm not getting any sleep. I'm excited. Now, you probably would think I'm excited about the release date the day after tomorrow. I would think that too. But that's not the case. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited about it. But that's not what's keeping me up. It's the completion of this second book and actually turning it in to my editor and awaiting her feedback. The more I revise it, the more I get excited about it.

And this process is a bit different than Counting Raindrops. With the first book, I had tons of feedback--although I didn't believe them when they told me that they liked it because I thought they were just trying to be nice. LOL The first to read it and give me feedback was Tiffany in Cincinnati (You'll see her in the acknowledgments). I remember going to her house and she read it for me in installments as I wrote it. It was nerve wrecking for me, although I don't think she knew that. I was sitting across from where while she read pages. She'd read silently, then all of a sudden, just burst out in laughter. And I'm wondering, "What? What? What's so funny???" And she'd read some more and just laugh. And (she probably doesn't remember this) her first feedback comments to me were, "Oh! You got skillz!!!" LOL And I'm sitting there, grinning until my face hurts, but wondering, "Okay, what does that mean?"

I find that I'm analytical. It feels so good when people say they enjoy your story or enjoy your writing. But I always try to capture it. To put it in quantifiable terms so I can understand. So I can create a formula that I can repeat over and over. I still don't have that yet and that's the only thing that makes writing nerve wrecking for me now that I have one (and almost 2) completed novels under my belt. On the other hand, maybe it’s good that I don't know because if I knew exactly, I would probably try to concentrate on that as I write instead of writing freely. With the first and now the second book, I just wrote without worrying about style. And perhaps for those who like it, that's the reason they like it. Logically, I'm sure this is the case. But still, there's that knuckleheaded nerd in me that's trying to figure out a formula.

Okay, last day of revisions!!! Got to make it good because right now I'm running on caffeine, adrenaline, and no sleep! LOL