Chapter 17 is started & Anne's chapter 22 has been uploaded

I repaid Anne for excellent critique by critiquing her Chapter 22 today. Cordelia gave me a good critique on my chapter 17 so I decided I'd work on it a bit while PJ's napping. Got the first scene done :-). I'm hoping I can work on the new gal's first chapter this weekend. We'll see how it goes. I have that women's expo to go to with my sister & mom on Sunday but I don't have anything planned for tomorrow.

I also dropped a note to my hubby about getting my contest entry printed up. Hopefully, he'll get that back to me soon so I can send it out. I'm a little bit nervous about entering my first contest but I still believe this is my best work yet so I'm confident I'll get a good response.

Chapter 17 has been uploaded & I already got a crit back on it :-)

Anne, you rock :-). I can't believe how quickly she got chapter 17 back to me. I just uploaded it this afternoon & already she gave her crit & posted it. I know I'm still pulling my punches a bit but at least I know now where I'm lacking. & she gave me some good info about Josiah. I was thinking Olivia should have a little bit more resistance to his charms but I wasn't sure. It's nice to have a good crit buddy who knows what I need in my story.

We had two new ladies sign up for our group & I downloaded one new chapter already. Lisa writes Scottish medievals (ah braveheart, be still my heart :-)!) & I'm looking forward to reading her work. I'm down to 2 days a week now at Penney's so I can spend more time revising my own work & getting my crits done. Next month I'll probably have slow it down a bit due to Jennifer's wedding & Easter but this month I don't have anything to slow me down :-)

Snowy St. Patty's Day

We had a major snowstorm yesterday in good ole Cleveland, Ohio & the snow is still blowing out there. I did manage today to take advantage of the crummy weather & begin a little revising on Chapter 17. I also spent a little bit of today & yesterday helping my nephew, Michael out with a project for school. He sent me a little flat person in the mail (just a picture with "flat Michael" written on it.) and I have to write him a letter back & send the letter & the flat person back to his class along with some pictures & stuff. I described our entire plans for the trip to California for Jennifer's wedding in the letter and I have some pictures from our previous trips to CA that I can send. It was actually a lot of fun to write :-). It's due back to his class by April 1st so I'm hoping I can send it out when I send my contest submission out.

Distractions, Distractions everywhere :-)

Phillip, my hubby went out & bought a memory card & a few new games for the playstation I our friends Glenn & Cheryll loaned to us. They look like fun but I keep telling myself. "No Playing until you finish The Locktender's Daughter, Dana!" I don't want to get involved with starting a game until after all my revisions are done. I've invested far too much time & energy in my current ms to push it off to the side :-). Plus there's so much on the net, I browse and not to mention my two websites & this lovely little blog. I have enough distractions as it it LOL. I'm happy that I did manage to get a little bit of work done on Chapter 16 and I think I'll be able to finsh it off and get chapter 17 ready for my crit group by the end of the week.

In other news, another gal from my crit group will soon be published (way to go, Mel :-)!) & we were e-mailing each other back & forth about her publisher, Whiskey Creek Press. They recently redid their website & it looks excellent now. They look very romance-friendly and are definately an option if I don't get picked up by Harlequin or Dorchester. It's nice to have my options open :-). It would be wonderfu lto get published by a large press but since I'm just starting out, I'm not sure how realistic that hope is. The most important thing to me, however, is too see my work in print & if I can find a good small press to take me, I'll be just as happy :-)!