The Great Return...Okay you can take your seats now.

So...

Here I am after a prolonged hiatus. Much has happened but nothing has changed. I am still unemployed, still scrambling to make ends meet.

You may ask "what happened???"

I read what I thought I would never read. Twilight. Then New Moon. Then Eclipse. Then Breaking Dawn. In 3 days, I finished the over fifteen-hundred page saga by Arizona native Stephenie Meyer. The whole craziness that surrounded these stories had no bearing on my life, or so I thought.  I guess I was wrong. Not only did it move me, but it motivated me. Idea after idea streamed into my waking mind as well as my unconscious. So I did what any crazy person does...

I began to write.

It was difficult at first. I had no concept of properly fleshing out characters for the page versus the visual explanations I was used to in film. Plot points were abysmal failures for me since I couldn't link one to the next.

Then, like a gift, I found my story.

I am not having the same frustrations that I had before. The story is advancing itself and I even am having luck with plot line for the companion series I will write for it. I have a crazy idea that I am not sure any publisher will want to even entertain. I think I can make it work though. Time will tell.

I have researched literary agents and publishing queries and all of the rest. I have picked the brains of friends that have been published and even received some insight from one of my favorite authors. I know it will be a long, hard road. One that will be full of detours and roundabouts where there should be traffic lights. Maybe I will get lucky?

All I see is post after post on most agents' blogs that decry an increase of volume with a frustrating lack of substance. Every unemployed secret novelist is taking the time that they used to dedicate to job searches and using it to write what they think to be the best story known to man (or woman). I see lamentations that manuscripts are being submitted that are barely fifty-thousand words and horrendous formatting that would require the reader to don magical glasses. I can assure you that I will not be making those same mistakes. Maybe my uncanny need to do things the right way will, finally, make an impression. I will submit no less than eighty-thousand words, properly formatted in double spaced paragraphs, with proper punctuation.

I have 2 chapters down, over seven-thousand words complete and lots of inspiration for the remaining chapters.

Wish me luck. I will need it. A LOT of it, as a matter of fact.