And cabbages and kings…

Well. I’m happy to report that I finished Cat Girl Saves the Day today. Or rather, I should say that I’ve finished the *first* final draft. Though I guess it’s not really final in that I’ve already got one more thing to write up and include. So, um, well, I finished a draft of the book. Okay?

Finished enough to send a copy off to my agent, Larry Kirshbaum. I’m sure he’ll have some comments back for me. No book, after all, is ever really complete.

I really struggled with the end of this one. I had to jump my outline because I’d basically gotten to the end of where I’d outlined and realized that a) it wasn’t really long enough and b) there were too many things I needed to still wrap up and c) all of those things were necessary, but not a good note to end on. Then I just felt like I couldn’t find a good BOOM moment to end on. I finally did manage to come up with something and overall I’m pretty happy with it. We’ll see if it ultimately stands. It also felt really long and drawn out because we had company pretty much the entire month of July. I do love visitors, but I pretty much got no writing done the entire month. I did, however, see even more of Chicago than I’d ever seen before. Isn’t it weird how people don’t see the sights until visitors come? We need to make more of an effort to get out there and do stuff.

It was actually a nice thing for the book as well, since it is set in the Chicago area. I included a lot of landmarks, most real, but some made up. The Wrigley ballpark tour was Max’s favorite part of researching.

Part of the book’s background is that a movie is being filmed that the main character winds up involved with. So one of the exercises I’d done for myself was to write up a scene or two from the movie. I wound up sticking that in the book too and I think it works, though now I need to write up another one as well and work it in (Larry liked it). So right there you can already see that the book isn’t “done.”

Now comes the pins and needles part. Will Larry like the whole thing? Will the publishers he sends it to like it? Who’s he going to send it to? This is actually my first time having an agent send out a book for me. I sold my first book myself and then, even though I had an agent for the second one, it was a sequel, so there really wasn’t any “shopping” around with it. And this is my first time working with Larry too (if you followed that saga on my blog, I switched agents this last year). So it’s all new. Kinda scary.

I do like this book though. I like the main character, who I named after one of my nieces. I like the supporting characters, one of which is based on a friend of mine in high school.They’re fun. They’re funny. I embarrass them a lot.

Anyway.

Someday, I hope you’ll be out there liking it too.