Tides Across the Sea

I've decided to bring my baby out in the public. Although I've worked on this novel for nearly the entire fourteen years I've been married, drafted, rewritten, and submitted it to several places, I'm now taking the marketing and selling of this manuscript more seriously. Alexandra Penfold, Assistant Editor at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, asked for chapters after we talked last March at the UVSC Forum on Children's Literature. You all know how busy my life can be, but I finally completed all the last minute fine-tuning on those chapters, likely bored members of my critique group silly as they looked at yet another synopsis, and worked, then reworked the query, finally realizing she asked for these pages so all I really needed was a cover letter to remind her of that. Cover letter done, all the necessary pages printed, and this baby is off to New York City. Of course, my husband is taking her to the post office. After all, I have a broken elbow and can't do oh so many things---like drive!

Last night, Annette Lyon forwarded a blog to our group from Nathan Bransford, an agent with Curtis Brown, Ltd. , about trends in writing which seem to include Mayans. Well, my novel happens to be about Aztecs, thank you very much, but I started reading Nathan's blog and realized he is in the market for YA novels. Tides Against the Sea is YA---the human sacrifice scene alone should guarantee that. So instead of working on my final graduate paper like I was supposed to be, I spent the rest of the evening reading his submission guidelines and drafting a query to ask him if he thinks my baby is pretty. Hey, I figure it can't hurt. I haven't sent the query yet---that dratted assignment is still weighing heavily on me--but I will by next week. After all, I have to have a minute to recover after my surgery!

In the meantime, if any of you would like to read Chapter One of Tides Across the Sea, you'll find it posted at http://tidesacrossthesea.blogspot.com. I look forward to hearing what you think.