I got my laptop packed and am ready to head to the airport for our trip to Canada and the UK. Hope to make at least one post from London.
Today I am going to LA to meet one of my best lifelong friends, Kelly, who is also an author. She's down in LA researching her next book and we haven't seen each other for years (although we've managed to stay in touch).
My kids and I absolutely love Kelly's books. You can check them out on her website at www.kellymilnerhalls.com
Kelly and I have known each other since high school, when we both worked for our school paper and both aspired to one day grow up. And be writers. I guess we made it (the writers part, at least). And we terrorized the teachers at our school, too. Well... at least I did. Kelly's always been so dang nice.
Kelly also works with the amazing author Chris Crutcher, which must be ultra-cool.
Anyway, about this whole "Kelly being nicer than me" thing... She really helped me out SOOOOO much when I was in the process of seeking representation for my first novel. I can't believe how stupid I would have been if it hadn't been for Kelly saving my butt and telling me I was being stupid. So I ended up getting signed by an agent that I had designated my top choice (Laura Rennert of Andrea Brown Literary Agency... if you look them up, you'll see how many big deals she makes!), mostly because Kelly helped me take all the stupid and rambling stuff out of my query letter.
And, believe me, my first attempt at writing a query letter was stupid and rambling.
Now that I have an agent and a publishing contract and a great editor, I guess I don't have to worry as much about the perfect query letter as I do about my tendency to be stupid and rambling. But Kelly will keep me in line on that, I guess.
