This is less a “story about revpit” and more a “here’s an update on the last 12 months”

Previous posts about my writing journey:

The Evolution of Ancient History

I’m an AMM mentee!

Let me flash back to one year ago. It’s September 2022. I am beginning to query my third manuscript, The Shining Palais, which is my AMM manuscript. I’d been worried about mixing a very traditional spy story with science fiction. A lot of agents who do SF don’t want that type of thriller, and vice versa. But I had such a blast writing the spy stuff, and despaired at how hard it is to publish adult SF. So you know what? It was time to–

So. I wrote a contemporary spy story.

I can’t quite explain how I got the idea for the structure of Counterclock Spy. I had had scenes from it in my head for months by that point, but some scenes would only work if the reader understood what was going on, but before the character knew, etc etc. Eventually I decided I wanted to write it in reverse chronology. Not a new idea, but I had forgotten it was a thing. (I’ve… Never seen Memento.)

(Read about Counterclock Spy here)

What’s weird about that is I had, for the first time, a loose outline going in. Usually I have a vision for the beginning of a story but have no idea how it’s going to end. This time, I of course already had the vision of the beginning (chronology -wise), but I also knew the end! Because of this, I could write pacey, and churn out chapters fast. (I faltered, however, in the murky middle).

Anyway, I wrote the first chapter and then posted in the AMM Round 9 Slack that I was looking for a beta just to review the first chapter. Since the story is backwards, I wanted to make sure the reader wasn’t totally lost, but still intrigued. My new personal hero, Katie, volunteered. I sent her the first chapter.

She wrote: do you have any more???

As any fanfic writer knows, when a reader downs your first chapter and begs for more–you’re chasing that high forever. I never experienced that with original writing because of my methodological pantser personality. I usually need to spend time with my manuscript, pruning and gardening and editing as I go, so a read-along CP doesn’t usually work.

But this time, I knew the basic outline of the story. So I wrote chapter 2, and sent it to her the very next day. And so on and so forth.

I was going so fast I legitimately thought I’d finish the draft in 30 days.

But like in any good story, life didn’t quite work out as planned. Just as I hit that murky middle, I unexpectedly started to home school my 5 year old. (It’s a long story, and there was legitimately no notice). Okayyy. Now I have to educate a kindergartner. Cool, cool.

Then my nanny quit (okay nanny sounds so privileged but the now-6-year-old has a lot of special needs and having an extra adult on the scene allows me to deal with everything else on my plate, including my other children)

Then I found out I was pregnant. (Surprise!!)

Then I got the worst flu of my life. (Yes it was the flu, not COVID, yes I had the flu shot, yes I was much sicker with it than when I had COVID but part of the reason I was sicker is because my body never recovered from COVID etc etc).

Except I couldn’t drink because I WAS PREGNANT

Amazingly enough, it still took only about 90 days to finish the manuscript, with the best CP ever cheering me on the entire way.

By the time February 2023 rolled around, I had a few writing things going on. I had decided I was going to self publish my very first manuscript (Ancient History, which is still going through a few name changes), which meant learning about the business, and starting to write book 2 in the series. And I was getting Counterclock Spy ready for RevPit. I have an amazing AMM mentor so I would never submit an SF manuscript to another contest, but contemporary thriller ain’t exactly her thing.

Then I got COVID. Again. Yay.

While lying in bed I got an awesome email–a R&R on Shining Palais. Cue panic, but like, a happy panic.

That week, my eldest child spilled water on my Chromebook. I would have to do the entire r&r on my phone.

Somehow, as usual, I pulled it off.

Fast forward. It was April, day of Revpit results. Announcement would be at 12pm Eastern. At 11:30 Eastern… I finally finished the r&r for my other manuscript. I was seriously going to send it off –but decided to wait 30 minutes for RevPit results, in case that changed anything.

Of course, I didn’t think I would get in.

But as these things happen, I did get in. And got paired with the best editor ever, Miranda. (Seriously. I do well with no nonsense people, and the universe somehow knows that, pairing me with Melissa for AMM and Miranda for RevPit.)

Okayyy.

Revpit has an agent showcase. It was 8 weeks away.

I was due with my fourth child in 11 weeks.

Now, the thing about the RevPit showcase is that you don’t need to have the revision completed. So that deadline isn’t a hard deadline. In fact, a lot of my fellow RevPit winners didn’t have their edit letters yet. (Of course, I had mine immediately. It’s Miranda, after all).

But I had a deadline of my own. Baby due, and I was holding off on sending the r&r of the other ms until I could get this ms sent off too.

I was still stuck with only a phone and Google docs for revising.

Then our second nanny quit. (It’s not us, I swear! Just bad timing!)

However, though it took a few weeks, I got the first version of the revision done.

And then got hit with another edit letter [image error] Major revisions this time around.

I legitimately was about to name the baby Archer but changed my mind at the last minute

It was probably only two weeks until showcase? Okay, fine, I’ll have the showcase materials ready at least! Maybe 4 weeks till baby time. Could I pull it off yet again?

(reader, I could not)

June 2023. My husband’s grandmother passes. A few days later, my town gets hit with 100mph straight wind–with only 30 minutes notice at midnight. Needless to say it was like Mad Max the next day.

No one had power. Eventually my in laws got power back and we moved in with them. At 10pm one night, days later, we got the notice our power was back. I went into labor 1 hour after that.

I was joking, but kinda not joking, that I would be doing my revision in labor.

(okay that sounds really bad but I wanted to do it! Hyperfocus! It’s a blessing and a curse!)

I did, in fact, open up the doc and was about to write, but then shit got real and I wasn’t even in a shape to talk.

But would you know it? That night, holding my newborn, I started to revise again.

The End (for now)