Yes, it's true. I raided a cattle herd over the holidays.
OK, not really. I just wanted to give you a funny visual because I couldn't come up with an original title for my Looking Back On 2011 post.
Obviously 2011 was really, really good to me. I got an agent, Adriann Ranta (who has a lovely speaking voice) in March, and a book deal with Sarah Shumway (nice voice, check) at Katherine Tegen / Harper Collins just recently. So, I can't complain. And I'm not going to.
What I am going to do is talk about what my goals were, and how I managed to hit one by the skin of my teeth. (And what the heck does that mean anyway? Huh... guess that's my Wednesday post accounted for).
I backed my self-enforced WIP due date to Thanksgiving, but took some digestive time off when the book deal happened because I needed to roll around in sloth for awhile. And I highly recommend rolling around in some nice, hot sloth every now and then, because I broke into December like a rabid animal chasing uh... something non-rabid and much smaller.
As of yesterday evening I can claim that the WIP is in fact, finished. I don't have to do my usual guilty sashaying in front of RC Lewis and muttering that I only have one more section to get through. And I checked my numbers: I wrote 113 pages and 32,000 words over the last week of November through yesterday evening.
2012 is looking good for a few reasons. The initial word vomit of the WIP first draft is finished, NOT A DROP TO DRINK is on Goodreads, and just yesterday it cracked the top ten in the Goodreads YA Novels of 2013 list. So drop in, put me on your to-read shelf, and vote for as many 2013 YA titles as you like - I want the Mayans to feel our hope trickling back through the ages. :)