Thursday, January 8, 2015

A Lot of Livin' to Do

Look at that – first post of the new year!  Happy 2015, everybody!  I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe holiday season.  My sister and I spent New Year’s Eve watching Live at Lincoln Center and Michael Feinstein New Year's Eve at the Rainbow Room on PBS.  I took the very first song Michael sang as the title of this blog for numerous reasons.

Bye,Bye, Birdie was the first professional production I ever saw and it helped mold me into the crazy Broadway fan I am today.  I was twelve and my grandmother took me to see the show at the ForrestTheatre in Philadelphia.  The show starred Tommy Tune, Susan Egan, and a number of other great names.  In fact, twenty-something years later Tommy Tune sat across the aisle from me at a show and it was one of the few times I’ve truly been tongue-tied in front of celebrity.

Also, it was a great song to start off the new year.  We have lots of livin’ to do with so many new beginnings and possibilities.  I have such great hope for 2015 and I’m so excited to see what’s going to come next.  I will get an agent this year – I will!  And I will keep saying that until I do.  No doubts, no questions.

The details about a new query contest were announced today.  Michelle Hauck and Amy Trueblood are hosting Sun vs Snow and I’m already gearing up to enter in a few weeks.  I’m very hopeful about getting chosen this time around but I know I’ll still get something out of it if I don’t.  I have gotten positive things out of every contest I’ve taken part in – followers, friends, and feedback.  I even have a whole new opening to my manuscript thanks to slush reader feedback from Nightmare on Query Street.  I was close last night so maybe this time there will actually be a cigar.

I was reading an article about the Hollywood sign and the residents of BeachwoodCanyon today.  This upscale Los Angeles neighborhood is where Suzy, my main character, makes her home and I have been wondering where she would fall in the debate as a resident.  She has a great love for the sign and often blows it kisses from her bedroom window for luck and would hate for people not to have access to it.  But, she wouldn’t care for the drunken tourists messing up her beloved aunt’s home.  It’s a tense situation and sadly there will always been rude and stupid tourists. They’re not all bad but enough are that things get ruined for everyone.  Even though I have visited Hollywood on several occasions I have never made a trek to the sign.  It’s a bucket list item for me.


Enough of that for now – there’s such much work and livin’ to do.  Let’s get to it!