K.E. Skedgell

A s of last night, I could finally say, I had completed the first draft of the rewrite of my novel! Pretty exciting stuff for me. Even though the original intent was to rewrite the entirety of the ancient first draft, it just isn't going to happen in one book. It is going to have to be split into two. Which is okay. As long as the first sells. But I'm getting way ahead of myself here. At 189,600 words, the story is too long according to publishing standards for a first time author. There are those, like Elizabeth Kostova (I'll use her as an example since her novel is also based on Vlad the Impaler), whose first time novel— The Historian —clocked out at over 200,000 words and got a pretty good chunk of change for an advance, say, the seven figure range. That doesn't mean it'll happen to me. I'm pretty sure it won't, no matter how much I fantasize over it. My chances of getting published only increase with a smaller word count. Even at 150,000 words, whic...

I swear, my cat has some sort of mental connection to me, because every time, or nearly every damn time I open one of the documents to my novel to start working on it, Biggie has to make a pain in the ass of himself. As of typing this, he is sitting on my lap content, but usually he can't just sit on my lap like a good kitty, he has to pull on the zippers of my jacket, he has to get up and stand in-between me and the computer, making sure his fluff tail is in my face, rub his face on the corner of my desk and give it a bite for good measure. If I don't allow him on my lap, he tries to get on my desk where he and the other cats aren't allowed, or bite my foot or chew on my peace lily or do something else naughty just for the attention. It isn't that the cat never gets attention, he gets plenty of it. He just decides the best time to do it is when I'm trying to work, or trying to sleep. He's cute, he's fluffy, and he has no shame exposing his fluff to th...