General Orders Twenty Eight

Yikes! October is nearly over, and I have done very little blogging this month. Not because I don't want to, but working, school, and writing papers for my masters has swallowed up a great portion of my time.

Now, I do have to admit, I would rather be studying the life of Jackson or Stuart than delving into the mind of Osama bin Laden or Lawrence of Arabia, but unfortunately, my degree is not in American History. Too bad!

I have also finished the eleventh draft (at least) of my novel. I have a very special person reading it now. If all goes well and she doesn't point out a major flaw, then, hopefully the manuscript will begin its quest for an agent. I have a new query letter to entice agents into representing me.

When people ask me about my novel and what I hope to accomplish with it, I think they find my answer disappointing. I don't think I've written the next Da Vinci Code or anything like that. My subject matter (an alternative history about the Civil War) is too limiting, I think. It's a book for a profitable market, but, that market is very small. But that's okay with me.

So, what do I hope to accomplish? Well, I think I can best describe that by telling you about my reaction to the mini-series, Lonesome Dove. I first saw it on T.V. way back in the 1980's and purchased the videos. I haven't seen it for a while, so I was at the library and saw the DVD's. I checked it out. I only have one more episode to watch and, you know what, I'm sad. I love these characters, and I don't want the story to end. Have you ever read a book like that? You start to panic when you near the end of the book because you know the story is coming to an end? Lord of the Rings is like that for me. When I finished Return of the King, I was sad. No more adventures for Merry and Pippin, Aragorn, or Sam and Frodo. That's what I really want to accomplish. To create characters that a reader can't get enough of. To have the reader sigh a little sigh of regret when they close the back cover. Have I done that? I don't know. I do know when I finished the first draft and there was no more story to tell, I felt like I had lost my best friends for a day or two.

So, in the future, I will try to make time for some more blogging! I miss reading and writing about the menof the Army of Northern Virginia. Now, it's back to Osama bin Laden.