Contest Queen

"Contest Queen, Young and Sweet, Only Forty-Three, Contest Queen, hear the beat from the tambourine, oh yeah!"

Well, I'll be forty-three after my next birthday, but you get the idea. All of a sudden after having avoiding contests for years, I've now entered 3! Yes, I have added the Golden Heart and Amazon's Breakthrough Author Award to my list of contests which include the Brava Novella Contest.

I'm not sure why I've avoided contests, the only reason I can think of is that I've been so focused on writing, and querying agents that I just haven't had the chance to enter. Also, the contest has been a deterrant. Up until two years ago, I was living from paycheck to paycheck temping while I pursued writing and acting. Much of 2003 was spent unemployed. I only had enough money to pay rent, pay my therapist and take yoga classes five days a week. I was down to eating like two meals a day or sometimes one in order to have money. Unemployment only pays $364/week.

But now I'm a little flush, so I thought what the heck! Of course, sending 6 partials, 6 synopses, and the full is not going to be cheap, but I'm sending the full on a disk, so that should make it lighter.

Now I just have to figure out what my next step is in terms of writing. I have two chick-lit romantic comedy paranormals to rewrite, and I still have to finish the YA that I started several months ago. Of course, since coming back from NJRW, my mind has been teeming with ideas, including two erotic romances. MF and I came up with a fun idea, which actually might work better as a screenplay where you have the visuals.

So right now, I have one YA partial, one YA idea, 2 full length novels that need to be rewritten and a chick-lit paranormal that needs to be researched and written. Since NaNoWriMo is coming up, I thought I would finish the YA to see if it actually works as a novel, and just plug in later the stuff that I need to research.

Unless I change my mind.

EKM

Oh, and I went to see the Jennifer Lopez/Marc Anthony concert on Sunday. If she's not pregnant, then she's lost whatever fashion sense that she had, because her costumes all consisted of variations on a caftan! They were so beyond fugly. He was electrifying, she needs to stay away from ballads because she has a hard time staying in tune. But they looked very adorable together when they sang their two duets at the end.