Where I'm At (status report on BBQ smoker and 1st full writing submission)

Results on the first ever BBQ smoker experience....success! We smoked 3 pork shoulders (Boston butts) with 3 different rubs. Smoked them for 12 hours. Yum. Me. Getting up before 5 am to start the smoker and throw on the meat wasn't too painful, but you can't really go back to bed since you do have to be awake to check on it every hour or so to check water level and throw on more wood chips. It was so good that we are looking forward to attempting to smoke a turkey for Thanksgiving.

On the writing front, I sent off my requested full from the on-line pitch opportunity. The manuscript has been complete for awhile now, but there was still so much editing to do. My CP was catching things my eyes/brain didn't. And then I had my daughter read it and she caught things that neither I, nor my CP had seen. And then...I went through the editing list from the Angela James 'Before You Hit Send' on-line class, and that resulted in a lot more editing. Her very first assignment is to read the MS aloud. During the class, I did read one chapter aloud, but yesterday decided to read the whole thing aloud. Good lord! was that a good tip. It took hours, and my voice hurt after awhile, but guess what? Yep, reading aloud caught things that I, my CP, and my daughter never caught when reading silently. Way more stuff than I would have believed. Do I feel like I could keep finding more stuff if I edited more? YES! But I have to move on. I have another WIP that I abandoned to get Delaney polished and out the door. It's been so long since I worked on my WIP, that I'm nervous I'll have lost my connection to it. Crossing my fingers I can slip right back into it. Hopefully, it will keep my mind off waiting on the full submission for the next few months.