Have a relaxing Easter Weekend!

Mink loves it when I do the housework ...

That missing apostrophe on the Housekeeper's Box drives me crazy, but I have yet to think of a good way to add it attractively. And I suppose it gives rise to an interesting image - women in aprons with boxing mitts strapped to their hands.

Writing a query letter

I'm home today working on the revisions, with that familiar gremlin sitting on my shoulder saying "This is bollocks, you're a terrible writer." I've grown almost fond of him. Almost. Although this may just be due to Stockholm Syndrome (a psychological condition in which captives sympathise with their kidnappers).

I have some fairly major changes to make, which I'm tackling this morning. I've given myself till Friday to finish this batch of revisions. This afternoon, however, is given over to starting work on that dreaded thing, the Query Letter. The golden ticket that will open the magical doors to that most mystical and elusive of creatures - a literary agent.

Query letters are hard. They have to be concise, compelling and punchy. They have to make the agent want to read your book. They are painful to write.

Nathan Bransford, a literary agent based in San Francisco, has posted a basic Mads-Libs-type formula for query letters on his always excellent website. It goes like this:

"Dear [Agent name],

I chose to submit to you because of your wonderful taste in [genre], and because you [personalized tidbit about agent].

[protagonist name] is a [description of protagonist] living in [setting]. But when [complicating incident], [protagonist name] must [protagonist's quest] and [verb] [villain] in order to [protagonist's goal].

[title] is a [word count] work of [genre]. I am the author of [author's credits (optional)], and this is my first novel.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best wishes,
[your name]"

So, for example:


Dear Grumpy McShortandfat,

I chose to submit to you because of your wonderful taste in cat crime, and because you have a cat. I think. Or used to.

Furball is a hard-bitten, hard-biting inner city cat cop living in the back alleys of Chicago. But when a well-known mouse crime syndicate kidnaps his burlesque-dancer girlfriend, Furball must go back to his own long-supressed criminal roots and track down the mouse mafia's Big Cheese in order to save his lady and, ultimately, his city.

'Mousetrap' is a 80,000-word work of cat crime fiction. I am the author of several very well-crafted letters to the editor, and this is my first novel.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best wishes,

Catlover O'Restrainingorder.

I will leave you with some pictures of my cat wrapped up in a blanket.

Oh, and don't forget to enter the giveaway if you haven't already! The post is below, or there's a button on the sidebar that will take you directly back to the giveaway page.

Statistics

Sick cats - 1
Trips to the after-hours emergency vet last night at midnight - 1
Puddles of cat urine in the car - 2
People before us in the queue at the emergency vet - 1
Minutes spent waiting for the emergency vet - 45
Cats with a urine infection - 1
Catheters inserted into cat - 1
Yawns - 1,000,000
Worries about cat - 1,000,000
Cats kept at the vet's overnight - 1
Hours of sleep last night - 4
Cats picked up from the vet's this morning - 1
Vet's bill - ouch, but ...
Healthy and happy cats - 1

(Interesting outfits Andrea is wearing - 0)

Slaving over a hot wossname

Tonight is Romantic Dinner Night with my husband (although I have an ulterior motive - if these recipes work tonight, I'll make them next time it's our turn to entertain the in-laws). I am making pork chops in a mustard sauce, carrots in orange juice and baked new potatoes, with bread-and-butter pudding for dessert. Assuming everything works. Otherwise it's fish and chips night and we'll pretend this never happened.



Mink apparently thinks he's entitled to his own personalised place setting. Tough luck, mate!

A warm welcome ... sort of

Home from the movies to find yet more cat spew on the carpet. The second time Mink has thrown up over the weekend, since he started on antibiotics for the war-wound on his forehead. He's booked in for surgery on Wednesday, but I think I'm going to take him in tomorrow as well - the poor wee boy can't be absorbing much of his medicine if most of it is sitting on our floors in a puddle. Oh dear.

Frustrated feline genius

Sorry for all the doom and gloom yesterday. My mum hasn't been very well on and off for a while, and I had a bit of a scare the other day when she went to the emergency room. She's in England at the moment, so I feel a bit helpless, but I think she's going to be fine. And she's home next Saturday (the day after my birthday, hurrah). I have also been thinking Deep Thoughts lately about Life, and some of the conclusions I have drawn have been less than cheerful. But, essentially, everything is fine. Except that I have done no work at all on the novel this week either. Official start date for the revisions has been moved to Monday.

The cat has been behaving strangely. Last night he spent a lot of time sitting on a dining room chair in front of my laptop, staring at the screen. When we went to bed he didn't come and sleep on our feet as he usually does - he was mysteriously absent. In the morning we found that LOML's computer was on (it was off when we went to bed, but moving the mouse wakes it up) and there was a small, furry indentation in the office chair. Obviously he wants to write a novel, but has no opposable thumbs. I'm not sure how to tackle this problem. Perhaps I will offer to take down dictation.

Cat treasure hunt

I have a lot of cat things in my house, quite apart from the real cat. I don't notice, usually, but visitors often look around and say, "Wow. Um, you really like cats." And then I realise that I am rapidly turning into the Crazy Cat Lady.

I'm quite comfortable with that.


















And then there's the real one.

Cats have the right idea