K.E. Skedgell

E rr, or maybe not. We all know what 2020 has been like so I'm not going to go there. However...ugh! It was the beginning of the new Roaring Twenties. It was supposed to be a good year. Only it has been so tiring, so frustrating, so...so... Anywhooie! Back in May I attempted fate and sent out my query letter to seven agents. Five rejections and two CNR's was the result. I know it wasn't very many to judge by what my failure could have been. Maybe wrong timing, maybe it wasn't the query letter but the sample pages that made them go, not for me. Who knows? Agents don't usually tell you why they reject, if they even respond. I have been wanting and meaning to rewrite the query letter but my desire just hasn't been there, especially after going back to work at the end of May, and work for the past few months had been chaotic to say the least. Things are simmering down though, and now I'm starting to think about that query again. This time of the year should hope...

B ack in 2012 I posted progression photos of a pencil drawing I was working on of Oscar Wilde. I've worked on a few other drawings since then. Drawing is something I don't do much anymore. I may create one finished drawing a year. That was the case last year, although I did start another, but I have yet to finish that project. 2019's pencil drawing was of 1920's actor and heartthrob Rudolph Valentino. I was on a Valentino kick, watching every movie that he starred in that was available on YouTube to watch, and I wanted to draw him. I found a still of the movie Blood and Sand that I really liked, and proceeded to draw it, in both graphite and colored pencil. Most of the photos have a yellowish tint because of my dining room lighting, and because of the shininess of graphite the darker areas in the drawing may not show as dark from one photo to the next, something I can't help. I started the drawing in early December 2018, set it aside for a few weeks, and when I got ...

Q uick update on the book: -It's finished, as you know from my last post (we won't look at the date for that). -It's had betas and been edited to the best of my ability, although I still tinker with little bits here and there. -I've written the materials needed for querying after spending what seems like too much time learning to write them, such as: the query letter, synopsis, pitch, bio. -Sent said materials out to a few agents to see how things roll. I'm already thinking about tweaking or rewriting the query letter. I don't update this blog very often because anything I want to share or say gets put on Facebook where it's faster and more convenient. I don't have a Twitter account but have thought to open one, only because it seems to be a preferred platform for agents, writers, etc. I don't know, I'm still up in the air on that. Last year my hometown had its sesquicentennial (150 year) celebration, and because I had written a book that takes p...