Happy 2015!!

Okay, I know, this year is not so fresh anymore.

I can’t really start the new year until it’s been here a week or so. For some reason I wish I knew, the year has to gestate for awhile before I can jump in. I’m like that with books – I buy them, then they sit on my shelf, or on my Kindle, for months or years before I get around to reading them – and with exercise DVDs or kitchen appliances or cleaning tools or garden projects. I buy all the stuff, but then they sit there, accusing me, until I finally pick them up.

No more. This is the last time. I resolve to read the books, use the new vegetable juicer, exercise to those DVDs. I am absolutely going to hook up that scanner that has sat on my desk for almost a year and learn how to use it.

Anyway, happy new year.

I am restarting my journey toward publication. At this moment I imagine the nine unanswered queries can be assumed to be rejections. I have one query that led to a request for the full manuscript and another asking for chapters. So that’s encouraging. Fingers crossed. It takes forever to hear back.

With all that waiting in mind and with the bit of encouragement, I’m sending out another dozen queries. I’m also running Alex Bullied through my newest critique group, made up of four other children’s writers. In what I thought was a near perfect manuscript, professionally edited, they are making suggestions that will make it stronger.

So, I resolve to be more productive and less procrastinating this year. I will write another book. I will get an agent for Alex Bullied starting by making it even better. I anticipate awesome developments this year, a year of great change.

And if I wait long enough maybe I can get started on it by February nineteenth, the Chinese New Year.