Ugh, Il est pluvieux

Ah yes, yet another rainy day here in lovely Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Dark cloud cover smothering any hint of light from the sun hidden somewhere beneath. We even had some rumbling thunder this morning. Now I don’t know about the rest of you, but to me that kind of weather translates to: ‘Hey Kelly, you should stay home, curled up on the couch with a cup of hot java and a good book, the pooch snoozing at your feet and a super hot manservant there to answer to your beck and call…’

But alas, I am at work. No handsome manservant, a lukewarm cup of coffee and waiting on a report that my boss still has to write before I can start compiling it before our deadline. On the plus side, while I sit here and do mindless little tasks while waiting, my imagination is free to roam about and consider which excerpts I should pull from my finished manuscripts and the works in progress to add onto my website. I picked out a couple last night, but I’m not certain those are the ones I want to use. The Outlaw Bride on I’m pretty settled on; but The Marriage Agreement, not so much. I think I need to pick a different one. I have an idea on the works in progress for D&B and DH, but I want to fix them up a bit before I upload them.

Which led me back to First Draft in 30 Days. I swear this book is dominating my thoughts of late. I even dreamt last night I was filling out one of the forms. Of course, I also had a dream that Geena Davis was my hairdresser and got angry at me for coloring my hair myself and then cut it all off so it was super short. Weird. But I digress. Now… where was I again? Oh right, excerpts and FD30.

As I thought about writing my excerpts and starting the First Draft outline for D&B in a few short weeks, I realized the way this system is set up it will help me with a part of my writing I feel needs some work – using the five senses to drop in those little details that make your story come alive. The setting sketches will be great for this, and having everything consolidated into the formatted outline, so it is right there before me as I’m fleshing out the first draft/detailed outline into the full novel length version, will keep me on track, reminding me of what I need to incorporate into the scene I’m writing. Sometimes I get so excited about telling the story, I forget about the little details that turn something good into something great, and have to work them in later in one of the umpteen rewrites.

The more I think about this, the more excited I am at starting my new manuscript for D&B. I wish I had time to go back and use it for The Outlaw Bride, but if I wait any longer to get it off to HQN, they may well forget they ever requested the full in the first place. Although I do plan on incorporating as many of the FD30 suggestions when I do my final read through with the hopes of making it the best possible read it can be and narrow my changes, howeverly slimly, at getting a dreaded rejection letter.