Another rejection

Slider's Son garnered its second rejection this week. "Not enough historical detail" is what Calkins Creek said. George is baffled by that (maybe more than I am, even), so he's going to ask them what they meant by that. In the meantime, I'm going to spread in some more Depression-era details into the manuscript. I was mostly concerned with the character in the small town and making his life real. Guess I'll try to make the national news come home to roost more than it does already.

I have some ideas. I'm going to add some of them this weekend.

I wish I could get a book right the first time. Or second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth. Wonder what it means that I have to revise at least TWELVE times before anything gets published.

It mostly means that I should do nothing but write and maybe I'd get a book done WAY faster (and be with my kids, and be with friends, and ride my bike, and play with Freya--oh, yeah, and teach and grade papers).

Oh, well. I'm heading out on my bike to THINK in a few minutes.

Slider's Son

So, finally, finally, finally, with weddings and all the other stuff going on in life (oh, and there's full-time teaching and paper-grading, too), I FINISHED editing Slider's Son. It's as good as I can make it until some editor tells me what he/she wants me to do with it.
I like the story. A lot. I sure hope some editor snatches it up fast, so I can have a book coming out in 2013.

This is the story of a 12-year-old boy growing up in North Dakota on the tail end of the depression. All he wants is to be a major league pitcher. His dad is the county sheriff, and there's a murder in town... Lots of things get in the way of his dream...
I'll keep you posted on how this manuscript does.

In honor of my dad

Thinking a lot about reading. How what we read affects us. Affects how we think. Affects how we view the world.

I just realized that all my main characters in the books I write are readers. Maybe that's because I don't really understand the inner workings of people who don't read. Maybe it's because I best understand people who do read.

At any rate, Grant--the protagonist--in the novel I'm working on now, is an avid reader. He's also a baseball player who wants to make it to the big leagues. When I started working on this story, he wasn't such a reader. He was too "active" to want to read.

Then I sat talking with my Aunt Ruby--my dad's sister--who told me that my dad, Orland Fjelland--always had his "nose in a book" when he was growing up--that he read constantly. I knew my dad loved to read, but I'd never thought about him as a reading kid. I'd heard stories about using barrel staves as skis, sledding the hills in the timber in winter, swimming in the creek, riding bucking horses, riding the draft horses home from the fields, about sneaking away as a young man to ride in the rodeo...but I never thought about him as a voracious reader.

So in tribute to my dad, my character is now a voracious reader. And it's been fun to figure out which books he would be reading in the mid-1930s.

Just wish my dad were still around. I think he might like this book. At least, I sure hope so. I guess I have my "ideal reader" for this one.