Mary's Christmas Vacation
So here it is, all laid out in front of me, full of possibilities. What do I want to do over the next 17 days??
Mail Hot Shot to Emily.
Finish revisions on Beneath the Surface.
Party at Cindi's.
Go see King Kong and Pride and Prejudice.
Go see Christmas lights.
Read.
Watch DVDs.
Stay cozy in the arctic blast expected to arrive next week.
Clean my house.
Get at least one home repair done.
Finish up last of my duties as The Golden Network treasurer, including getting the $$ to the new treasurer to start a new account.
Enjoy not having a schedule!!!
Raul report: He's coming home from the hospital this week!
Secret Santa report: Cindi didn't believe me when I revealed myself as her Secret Santa. Then she slugged me for tricking her. But she did love the joke.
School Christmas party: was a blast. My kids showered me with gifts, including a dozen tamales that we ate for dinner last night. I got Christmas decorations, classroom decorations, cookies, a teapot, candles....they spoiled ME for a change!
Oh, and have you heard the new page counts for the H/S lines??? They cut 60 pages of SIM! 60 pages!! I just added 60 to Hot Shot!
Anyone know WHY?
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- MJFredrick
- I'm a mom, a wife, a teacher and a writer. I have five cats and a dog to keep me company. I love bookstores and libraries and Netflix - movies are my greatest weakness.
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Breaking Daylight Review
Where There's Smoke
Where There's Smoke Review
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11 comments:
Wow, 60 pages off a SIM? Is that 65,000 words? That line has sure been changing in the last couple of years.
The why on the new word count, Mary, is about the books themselves. First, they're adding promotional pages to both the front and back of each book. It looks like they're going to work on more of an author focus than a line focus, which is good news for authors, so I'm not going to complain about that. ;)
Secondly, apparently there have been enough consumer complaints about small font sizes and too-narrow margins (putting some of the text into the crease and causing people to have to crack their book spines to be able to read everything). Trimming back the word count will fix both of those problems.
My June 2006 book won't be affected (which is good--by the new standards, it's about 10,000 words too long). But the book I'm working on and all future books will have to come in at the shorter word count.
And, unfortunately, I tend to write long on the first draft. Grrr.
I just heard that this morning and now I feel better. I think my SIM was a little low to begin with but now it looks like it might be a perfect fit. Maybe there's hope for me yet.
I'm all for bigger fonts in books :)
I've always written short, and I've just learned to write longer, so this is driving me a little bonkers.
I like bigger font, too, but cutting 15,000 words from a book? OUCH.
Here's what I know.
Desire - 50-55,000
SIM, SSE, Love Inspired, American, Blaze and Intrigue - 60-65,000
Bombshell, Everlasting and Super - 70-75,000
Hmm, now I'm hearing these new numbers are computer word counts. That doesn't make it such a big change, if that's the case.
I'm hearing the same thing about actual computer word counts and now I'm totally confussed. My computer word count is always WAY lower than the 250 words per page count.
I tend to write long, so I'll have to really tighten to submit to IM and Intrigue.
Unless it's computer count. If that's the case I'm still a little short. :-)
The information I have includes both lower computer word count and lower page count, based on 250 WPP.
Desire 200-220 manuscript pages
SIM, SSE, American, Blaze, Intrigue and LI 240-260 (I used to shoot for 320 with SIM)
Bombshell, Everlasting and Super 280-300 pages
Mary, this is news for me on the word count! I hope you'll have great vacations! And I'm glad Raul comes back from the hospital (it means he feels better, right?)
Thanks, Olga. Yes, Raul is doing better, thank heavens.
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