Dear Alice,

Yesterday was a downer day. First my computer crashed. It took me half an hour to get it working again. Then I ran to the copy store to get more paper for two query letters I was sending out. They only had the paper in cardstock. Cardstock? Who sends out resumes on cardstock? So as long as I had to leave the island to get paper, and totally rearrange everything I'd had planned for the morning, I ran the 40 minutes up to Office Depot. That's the big bummer of living rural...if you really need to get anything it will take you half the day to do it.

Office Depot only had resume paper in stacks of 250. Really? Who sends out 250 resumes? There was no way I was going to be that pessimistic so I only purchased the mailing envelopes and presentation covers for the two agents that want your first 50 pages with your query.

Since I still needed paper for the query letters I stopped by the UPS store in town, which is 20 minutes from my house. We've got a few things on the island, such as the small copy store and a small grocery store. The town just on the other side of the bridge to my island has a few more things, such as a decent grocery store, some restaurants, and a couple of chain pharmacies. Would you believe that the UPS store only had two choices for resume paper? One that was a deep gold (Look at me! Look at me!) and a white linen. I hate white for resume paper as the contrast makes the words a little hard on the eyes. Do you really want someone who's been reading lots of resumes or query letters to suffer eye strain reading yours? I don't think so. But I had no other options so I had to go for white.

Came home and thankfully my computer still worked but there were two more rejection emails in my in box. I know that finding an agent is like dating but still...I told my husband I felt like I'd been on a speed dating night and hadn't gotten a single request for my phone number.

I got the two snail mail queries with the partial manuscripts sent off when I ran back into town for the planning session for my mother-in-law's funeral. She passed somewhat expectedly last week. I'm at the age where everyone my parents' age is dying. For the last two years I've been averaging nearly a funeral a month. It's totally depressing. Everyone once and a while I'll have a little pity party about that but then I remind myself that at least it's not all my friends dying. A friend who's 15 years older than I am had said to me at church on Sunday that he doesn't know why they're called the "golden years". Sure you're done with work but your days are truly numbered and all of your friends are dying off.

I hope I haven't totally depressed you, too. It got worse from there but I won't share the rest of the gory details with you and totally ruin today for you.

I'm not doing anything with the book today...no searching for other agents, no making a decision on whether or not to query one of my best friend's sister-in-law who is an agent, no working on the sequel. I have the morning off and then will be teaching 5th grade this afternoon at my favorite school. I had to turn down two other full day requests at that school as I already had that one booked. That's the one thing I hate about subbing...I'm either sitting at home wishing I was working or turning the work away because I'm already booked. Sigh. At least I've kind of made peace with that compared to the previous years I've subbed. Now if I'm not subbing I at least have the book to work on.

My husband totally believes that I'm a wonderful writer and will sell this. I just keep thinking about all the agents that passed or absolutely hated all the blockbuster material out there. I don't think my book is a blockbuster but it is a pretty wonderful story and I'd like to be able to share that with more people than my immediate friends.

Well, that's it for today, Alice. Enjoy the spring weather and I'll try to touch base again tomorrow.