Ending radio silence

It's been awhile. A long while. A six months and ten days while. To my single follower, I apologize.

First off...Haiti. Wow!! If you have a heart to, help these people. You already know about all the organizations that are taking donations (Red Cross, Doctors w/o Borders, etc.) so please skip a dinner out, or a movie, or hold off on the new shoes, and send that money to the people suffering down there. God bless them.

Now, to explain my absence, I give you two words: Grad School.

I've returned to school to obtain a Master's Degree in English (WARNING: the next condescending ***hole inquisitive person who asks, "well, what do you plan to do with that?" is going to get a Call of Duty Tactical Nuke aimed at their house). I have my reasons for pursuing that particular degree...'nuff said.

My first semester (despite a few hiccups) turned out well. I'm currently sporting a fresh 4.0 GPA on my transcript and loving it. More exciting than that, I finished writing a new novel. And even more exciting than that, several agents have expressed interest in the manuscript and requested to see more. How did I do this while studying, being an attentive husband, and holding down a day job? Let's just say when I finally got some time off around Christmas, I took a 3-week nap.

Fingers crossed on the agent thing. Representation is a big step towards the ultimate goal of a book deal, but there are no guarantees at any point in this process. Having agents request your full manuscript is encouraging, but the potential for a "no" forever looms.

If this thing goes my way, I'll post my agent-getting query letter for all to see (tell your writer friends). And if it doesn't go well, I'll talk about that, too. Because that's what you all pay lurk to see.

I promise more frequent posts, by the way. I've got a pretty good handle on this life-balance thing now, so I can work some blogging in without issue.

Soon, people (I mean it this time).