Then We Came To The Beginning

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"Beta reader" comments to The Orphan's Daughter have started to roll in (my heartfelt thank yous, Betas!). They have had good things to say, including what I was most seeking, those moments where the book is impossible to put down. I achieved it in a few places, so yeah! for that. But I was equally relieved to get specific, constructive criticism also. It's like being a doctor with a clear x-ray in your hands. You know where the problems are.

So I've started to move things around and cut things out, even though I've lived with this book for several years now and am starting to look at it and want to say "when are you going to start picking up your own socks, please?" The book doesn't say much in response.

Once the editing and mutual stare-downs between me and the book have ended, I'll pitch it to agents. Soon, soon. I can't take my foot off the gas now. If there were a word stronger than "dread" to describe how I feel about this process, I would use it.

Meanwhile, I've started on novel number two, partly to try and absorb myself in something so I half-don't-notice the rejections (right!). I actually have about six novel ideas I'm excited about, but there's one that relies on the memories I still have of my past life in Corporate America. Those memories - expense accounts, meetings, quarterly targets, performance reviews - seem to be fading by the second. So it's that novel that I'm going to turn to now, before my impressions of that world are entirely cobwebbed.

Actually, why don't I let Maureen tell you about it:

Hi, Readers and Writers, my name is Maureen. It's nice to meet you. Melissa hasn't given me a last name yet, but she seems pretty set on Maureen being my first. So I guess I'll have to live with it. I live in suburban New Jersey with three kids, a husband, a Mexican nanny, and I commute every weekday to my hot-shot Corporate job in Manhattan.

I have a boss named Rebecca, the heir apparent to the division president. Rebecca is very polished, that's the word Melissa keeps scribbling to describe her. Rebecca unnerves me. She is smart, diplomatic, strategic, and always keeps an easy smile on her face. A midway showman... showwoman... showgirl?

Then there's Stacy, one of the women who reports to me. Stacy is not polished, but thinks she is. Stacy loves the Company, though. Loves. I'm worried they're not going to be compatible in the long run and it will be a tearful break-up that I hope I'm not around for.

Melissa's trying to figure out what the story is with Stacy, Rebecca and I. She doesn't want to write chick-lit or mom-lit, but it's been hard to veer away from those genres when women are at the center of the story. Can't there be a serious story - something (*gasp!*) even "literary" - with working women at the heart of it?

I hope so. Because there's no way I'm letting a publisher stick a sexpot picture of my legs on the cover of a book. No way.

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