About Me

Independence Day: A Non-Writing Related Post

Today our country celebrates its independence. I was thinking about how independence for a country is a wonderful thing. But as individuals? Not so much. The Christian life is all about my dependence on God. Marriage is about interdependence with my husband. Parenting is about my children’s dependence on me, and allowing them to be…
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Weekend Update and June Stats

Do you ever read the blogs of those New York literary agents? I do, and I love hearing about their exciting nights on the town in Manhattan and their cute co-op apartments and their urban child-free lives. But here in Colorado, more specifically, here where I live, you haven’t had an awesome weekend unless you’ve…
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Roughing It

Unbelievably, I am now spending an entire weekend in the wilderness, completely away from technology. No computer, no email. Where I am, my cell phone doesn’t even work. (Okay, there’s no running water either. Who needs a shower when you’ve got trees and, um… dirt?) Not sure how I will survive, but some folks tell…
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Balancing My Work

Great discussion on “balance” in the comments yesterday! Everyone deals with this question and we all have our own challenges. Just to give you a little insight into the life of an agent, I wanted to write about how I try to organize and balance my work itself, separate from family and other considerations. This,…
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The Work-Life Balance

Several people have asked me to blog about how I balance work and family, but I’m NOT an expert in this. In fact, I feel like a failure at it almost everyday. Today, for instance. We’re on a family vacation but I’ve put in work time every night (not easy after a long day of…
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Blog Celeb

So, here’s something weird. Lately I’ve met some new people. And several of them, the first thing they said upon meeting me was, “I feel like I know you—I read your blog.” Hmm. I know I set myself up for that, but it feels weird. Like I’m suddenly at a disadvantage everywhere I go—people know…
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Ask the Agent: Christian Worldview

“You’ve said you’re looking for books with a Christian Worldview. Why do you say that, and what does it mean?” First, almost all agents specialize in a particular type of book they represent. (I am talking about the entire universe of U.S. literary agents, both ABA & CBA.) Some represent mostly romance. Some specialize in…
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Why Are We Doing This?

My writer-friend Richard wrote poignantly last week about the pain of repeated rejections, and how it sometimes makes it hard to stick with this gig. Why do we keep writing? Why do we stay in this business? If you’ve started submitting your work to agents and/or editors, then you’ve probably joined the ranks of the…
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You Be the Judge

Okay, I’m opening myself up to criticism here. You may already know that I sometimes have a hard time holding myself back from ranting about things that bug me. This holds true even when I’m responding to email. Sometimes I find myself getting a little testy. Then after I hit “send” I experience some regret…
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