Maggie World

Maggie World. That's my husband's nickname for the fictional land where I reside most of the time. It's based here in my office, stretches inward through my imagination and out through all of cyberspace.

Things are swell in Maggie World. The new agent is marketing Bubba Done It. Avon passed on it, and Berkley is taking a look. The new agent also took on my nudist colony murder mystery (she contracts individually for each book). She does a good bit of editing, which she will get to after her vacation in early July, at which time she will send it onward. It's been at St. Martins and Berkley in their slush piles for 1.25 years, after a request for a full from a conference I attended last year.

Meanwhile, I finished the revisions requested by Five Star on the sequel to my golf mystery. Here's hoping they fall in love with this version. I would definitely like to continue this series, and I already have the title of the next book as well as a wisp of a plot. But if they were to pick up On The Nickel, they wouldn't want to see the next one until 6 months after OTN was out to make sure sales were good enough to warrant another book. Bottom line, that book wouldn't be considered until late 2011 or sometime 2012 - that seems a lifetime away.

I'm editing the sequel to Bubba Done It. About a hundred pages to go and a coupla complete read throughs. I'm running this one through a new critique group I formed in the mystery writers group (Southeast Mystery Writers).

Once that's done, I'm not sure if I want to clean up a previous effort on my shelf or start fresh. It would be nice to put out another romantic suspense, but I don't have one written. For me, a rewrite takes about 3 months whereas a fresh book from scratch takes about 8 months. That's a long time to spend on a book that I'd have to market extensively on my own.

I'm continuing to enjoy newspapering, though I will be putting in some extra hours in the next few weeks as my boss hares off to Italy. I'm also moving towards certification as a yoga instructor. That exam is on July 26.

I like having multiple irons in the fire. Not a lot of irons, but just the right amount.

Happy 4th of July everyone.

Maggie

a fresh voice in Southern fiction