Wading through the murky waters of seeking an Agent

I never knew it could be so hard to actually get a book published!!

The other day, I finally broke down and went to the bookstore and bought three books that were recommended to me:  "Writer's and Illustrator's Guide to Children's Book Publishers and Agents" by Ellen R. Shapiro and "How to Write a Children's Book and Get It Published" by Barbara Seuling and "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Children's Books".  (I should qualify there!) I have my work cut out for me! 

I think I am going to set the actual writing aside for a bit now and just try to get through most of these books.  I've completed two of the "Petie" books now; one is on the website and has actually sold 4 or 5 copies so far!  I'm excited about that!  The other one is in the finishing stages and about to be uploaded, but I'm trying to decide if I want to do that or wait until I find an Agent first.  Then I have a third book that I wrote many years ago and my Mother helped collaborate on the art work; that one has to be typed into the software and uploaded also.  Until then though, I need to get through these books I've purchased, make submissions of query letters to Agents and see what happens.  Making all of the submissions and keeping track of them is the hard part!  Writing is the fun part!

The exciting news for this week though is that I should have my first hard-back book in my hands by this Friday! I'll be so excited to actually hold something I've written, in book form, in my hands!  We're supposed to be leaving for Mississippi on Friday so I'm hoping that the Fed Ex guy comes early before we have to leave so I can take it with me!

We're going to have a busy month the rest of this month now. Next weekend is our own conference that we administer and then the end of the month we'll be traveling to Illinois to see my Mom. She is going to be 80 years old on September 28th!  I'll say more about that later.  When we return from Illinois, we are taking a break and going to Florida for a few days to just relax.  THAT I'm really looking forward to as it will give me some time to just READ and get through these books I've purchased.

More on this adventure later!  I hope all of you have a wonderful week and weekend!

(The picture of the sunflower at the top of this post was taken by my Sister Dawn! 

It's growing in her back yard and is twice as tall as she is!!)

My Book is Selling!

 

Can you say "Excited"??  I'm so excited that I have had a book sell already and I just put my book on the website a  couple days ago!  I'm submitting it to other publishers now and am praying that it will be picked up by the best one!  I have  ideas for several more episodes in the life of our little "Petie".  Getting all of the artwork done though is very time-consuming and I'd really like to have a better artist do the illustrations. I'll see about that when I hear from a publisher.

In the meantime, I'm working on the formatting for the 2nd book and have scanned the illustrations into my computer for uploading. Today I made my first formal submission to a publisher! wow!

I'm running short on time today for getting my allergy shots and then going to my Grandson's birthday party!

I'll keep you posted on the latest on little "Petie"!

New Book!

What have I been up to lately besides painting portraits?

Well....... I have started writing children's books! I have just uploaded my first children's book for sale! I'm working on the second one now and it should be finished soon. I'm so excited! I've always wanted to write and finally just dug in and did it!

You can preview my new book here:

http://www.blurb.com/user/LindaH1248?profile_preview=true

I hope you'll look at it and buy it for your children or grandchildren. There aren't many books on the market for children today that teach obedience, character and manners. This is my aim in writing these books.

Who knows? I may decide I like writing so much I'll even venture out into adult fiction!

Painting! Painting! Painting!

I'm afraid I haven't taken much time to blog lately because we went to Atlanta for three days and then I was so tired from the trip that I didn't do anything for two days! I've found that I enjoy painting more than anything else I've tried for self-amusement. Mostly, I work in oils, but while I was in Atlanta and part of the time in the hotel room, I decided to try to do something with pastels. I had taken some books with me and decided to try one of the paintings in the book but to change it some so that it's an original. After I finished that, we went to supper with our friends and the restaurant manager came to talk with us after we finished. It turns out that he is a very interesting person!! He told us how he used to "ride the rails" when he was younger and then later on decided to go to college and he studied Art there. He finally settled on graphic art and his love is calligraphy now. He took out a piece of paper and made each of us a calligraphy writing and wrote our names for us along with his name. I asked him if he'd look at the pastel portrait I did of an Indian Maiden and give me his honest opinion since he too is an artist. He said that he loved it!

Here is the pastel of the Indian Maiden that I showed to him:

He was so kind and pleasant, that I asked if I could take his picture and try to paint him! He agreed and also let us take pictures with him. I went back to our room and decided to do a pastel portrait of him.

This is the result:

And finally, this afternoon, I decided to get back to my oils and paint my husband and I from a prayer card picture we had done a year ago.

Here is the result of that painting:

I LOVE TO PAINT!!

I spent the afternoon painting again today. I did the same thing on Sunday afternoon. Oh how I love to paint. I'm by far not a professional artist and can't hold a candle to many others out there, but it's something I love to do to pass time and it takes my mind off of everything else! I find it to be very relaxing! I've prayed about many things in the past and being able to paint is one of the things I've asked the Lord to help me to do, because I love to do it so much. I want to be good at it but really can't afford to go and take lessons! So I bought a few books and am teaching myself. Here are the newest paintings that I did Sunday afternoon and today with my new art set! These are not originals, but were copied from an art book I bought called "Flowers Wet-On-Wet". They're done in oils. Now all I have to do is buy the frames!

I spent the earlier part of the day going through my pictures from my trip to Florida with 2 of my daughters and 3 of my grandchildren. I printed out the ones I wanted and now will put them into a photo album.

I'm not sure what I'll paint next. I think I might just practice more on flowers before attempting more originals. I want to paint our Boxer soon though. Here is a picture that I did back in 1999 of our companion and friend "Sam". He was a Sheltie and the best dog we've ever had. He died from cancer at the age of 12 1/2. We miss him still.