The Connections & Continuation

Working on the 4th book & news.

I've got a lot of friends, and when you are connected--on facebook esp.--you can put a question out there and you will probably get an answer within 24 hours. I asked one person I know from work what old car had big tail fins. He told me the '59 Cadilac. He is to send me some link, later, I guess so I have a visual.

I need the visuals--who doesn't--when working on a book. I've got a lot happening, pretty much all at once. I've discussed here how I keep notes, but also write note cards so as to keep scenes in order when I go to write them.

This book is slightly different in that I'm going with two different POV's. I'm using the 1st person for Sabrina, but everyone else I'm going with 3rd person. This is the first of this series where I'm showing the thoughts of other characters. I think while a 1st person book is good, you are very limited in telling a story. You really have to think about what your story is about, before you begin writing it in any POV. So many people are involved with Sabrina I felt I needed to bring their voices into this story, and let them tell their own background and reasons why they are persuing her.

Meanwhile, my publisher, who is located in Maine, has said that everyone is fine after Irene hit. I'm sure there is a lot of cleaning up going on. But we are discussing the book cover for the second book. That's sort of fun. I didn't complain about the first book's cover at all, since it was so awesome. But this one I want it to capture a little more of what the book is all about, rather than keep it with any theme or whatever. He agreed with me. So, I'm waiting to see what he comes up with next.

Other than that, I've won a contest. Since I chose to have something critiqued, I'm going to send the first 1,000 words of my 3rd novel to Sylvia Ney of Writing In Wonderland. I know that it isn't perfect, and I'm not expecting her to gush with "Oh, this is wonderful! blah-blah". All I want is to have someone look at it, find the dumb mistakes, let me know what I might be able to do better, and go from there.

I once went to some site that said they would "critique" so many words of whatever, about 2 years ago and got insulted six ways to side ways--and on line no less! I thought the person running the thing was rather brutish about it and allowing other people to sling crap at it was not instructive at all. It was almost like being thrown to the lions. I really didn't think that was fair. It took me a long time to get over that.

So, not wanting to go through that again, I know Sylvia is kind hearted and will review my opening of the third book with an editor's eye, so that I can at least find anything I might miss otherwise.

Anyone out there send out for critiques? Have a critique group? It's nice to have good people who will give you honest helpful critiques of your work, I think.