Blog moved to new URL

Hey,

I finally found the time to set up a blog on my hosting server. Please visit www.asamariabradley.com/blog for new updates. I no longer post here.

-Asa

How about that? Two posts in one day!

I just had to tell ya'll about my friend Patrice Moore being interviewed at Allie's Musings. Patrice is a member of my local Romance Writers of America (RWA) chapter and such an inspiration to my writing. Go read the interview and you'll see why: http://allieboniface.blogspot.com/2008/03/writers-wednesday-interview-with.html

First Manuscript Request

Haven’t been posting for a while, but that’s because I’ve been busy with new and wonderful things.

My friend Jere and I traveled to the beautiful Whidbey Island for their writers’ association’s annual conference—and what a great conference it was. The fantastic nature, the excellent volunteers, and the intimate and casual atmosphere made this my favorite conference ever.

One of the reasons I’m so partial to it is because while pitching for an agent, I got my first FULL MANUSCRIPT REQUEST ever for Paved Paradise. So, that’s what I’ve been working on. Even though the manuscript was completed and reviewed by my writers’ group (twice) I still couldn’t let it go without doing some polishing and final edits.

More about the conference later—now back to grading my students’ finals and catching up on sleep.

Snowed In!

Am on my second day of no work because of too much snow. This is the first time in something like ten years that the campus has closed. I think the only times before this was when St. Helen blew and Spokane was covered in ash, and maybe when the terrible ice storm blew through town. Both of these events are before I became a Spokanite, so I don't have very good details.

Between shoveling snow--it takes about 2 hrs to clear our drive way--and staying warm, I'm actually getting quite a bit of writing done. I've done some shorts submissions to various places and also got caught up on some reviews.

Now I'm off to brave the roads for my weekly bowling night. A writer's life is so very exciting and diverse. :-)

To Blog or Not to Blog

I haven’t been here for a while, mostly because I decided to set up a blog on my own web server rather than using the blogger site. Then I looked at different free blogging software and although they are all great, there’s some work involved with setup and maintenance. So, I decided to just keep this one.

Quick updates:

• The Chad Little article was well received by the magazine editor. She asked me to do another profile on someone I had pitched to her a while back. The new article is almost written and the Chad Little profile will be in print next month.
• I’ve applied to graduate school at EWU’s MFA program in literary non-fiction. Don’t know yet if I got in, but do know that work finally agreed to give me 50% unpaid leave for next year. I didn’t think I could participate in a writing intensive MFA program and work full time.
• I joined Enchanting Reviews as a staff member and is having a blast reading and reviewing books. It isn’t paid, but I get free books. Let me repeat FREE BOOKS. What can be better than that?
• Larry Hippler emailed me to say he’d been on the site and was happy to see I’d mentioned his book. I met him at the PNWA conference where one of his short stories was a finalist in the contest. Check out his book at http://cathedralstreet.net.

Ta-ta for now. I’ll start blogging more often. Not sure if anybody is reading, but I’m enjoying it and that’s what’s important. :-)

First Paying Article

Actually, I did get paid for another article. It was a book review for a local bookstore's newsletter. My reward was in used book credit. I spent it right away.

This gig is for a small local magazine and it involves interviewing a former NASCAR driver who grew up in our town. I've never written a profile before, so I'm a little scared--but kind of in a good way. I've talked to the guy already, but our time was cut short due to his family obligations. We'll continue tomorrow again. I was really nervous and had tons of questions prepared, but my profile subject was as nice as he could be and it was more like having a chat with someone you're trying to get to know.

The main obstacle to this whole thing is having a full time job and finding the time to do a phone interview with someone that is in a time zone 3 hours ahead. The solution is that I have to get up super early in the morning and catch my NASCAR guy right when he arrives at work.

So far, this is a fun assignment. I'm not sure that it is healthy learning curve to have my first article comission with a very helpful and nice editor, while interviewing a cheerful easy-going guy. But hey, I'm not complaining--I'm having a blast!

First Rejections

I am officially a writer! I have received no less than two rejection letters, both from agents, and both very nice.

Considering that I have submitted my manuscript--each on the receiving person’s invitation--to three agents and one editor, I think two personal responses is a pretty good result. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m of course bummed that these are rejections, but if you talk to any published writer, they’ll tell you about the massive amounts of rejections they got before publishing.

I’m very proud of my two. One is from a senior agent at a big name house in New York. It’s a hand-written note starting: “This novel certainly has potential, however, it just isn’t right for me.” Now, maybe my writing sucks and the agent is just being nice, but I don’t care. I’ll take any encouragement where I find it.

The second was received via email and is from a small north-west agency that is highly respected by both writers and other agents that I mentioned their name to. My favorite quote from it is: “Your writing is quite good, although it could still use a bit of polish. It is better than 90% of the manuscripts I receive!” The email also includes specific examples of how I should polish specific sections. How’s that for great constructive advice!? It was worth my stamp just to receive that.

Okay, back to the grinding stone. I’m polishing the manuscript and sending out more queries.