Last Jobs... For Now

After several days of scouring QueryTracker, the acknowledgements sections of my favorite romance authors's novels, and online lists of successful agents, I have compiled a list of ten agents/agencies to query right away, selected six agents as "replacements" to query as the rejections roll in, and found six dream agencies that are currently closed to queries to keep my eye on in case they open up. 

It's a start. 

But there is still so much to be done before I send those letters and fill out those query manager forms...

1. I need to polish my query letter, short and long synopses, and one sentence pitch (which is actually two sentences...). To this end, I have hired Nathan Bransford to do a critique.

2. I have consolidated two years of post-it notes, notepad notes, and iPhone notes onto one master list of clever ideas and bits to check. There are 143 notes. This will take a few days.

3. I need to finalize comps. I have discovered three excellent comps for the celebrity/common person + Hollywood/small town tropes and one brilliant novel that's set at Christmas featuring forced proximity with a celebrity, but I could still find a nice British/American couple comp. It doesn't bother me to keep reading!

4. I need to get back into the regular blogging habit. I know Insta/Substack/Discord is now standard. What can I say? I love this little blogspot.

5. I need to reread the beginning of my story so I can confidently send the requested samples (5 pages, 10 pages, 3 chapters, 50 pages). Although to be honest, the opening has been revised the most. It's pretty clean and shiny. I probably need to stop fiddling around with it.

Additionally, I need to print and do a final edit on the last 10K of the novel, which is relatively new after all the cuts. But this will only take a few days and can wait until after the queries are sent. I have a two week window of time before the first day of the last year of my day job. 

Funny thing... My mom mentioned recently that she'd love to see me have a week off before school starts. But I'm having more fun working on Dash Away than I'd have being bored around the house doing nothing. 

This calls to mind something Sandra Tayler said last summer at the Writing Excuses ReGenerative Retreat. Here's my note:

That's the plan. 

A Delightful Task

I have a few weeks to dedicate to gathering my comps, which are books in my genre that overlap Dash Away in setting (Christmas time, small town, a holiday trip to England),  plot (celebrity/common person romance, forced proximity, British/American couples), theme (accepting one's struggles, being confident in who you are), or style (commercial, closed-door spice, HEA). 

To that end, here are some of the books I am reading:

My judging criteria:

    * Romance, preferably celebrity/ordinary person, although I'll also read holiday, small town/Hollywood, librarian, and British/American tropes, with closed door spice and a HEA ending.

    * Published in recent years

    * Rated highly and sold well

    * Enjoyable read (in my opinion)

Katherine Center's The Bodyguard, published in 2022 will make the cut. It'll also be on my favorite novels of the year list. So will Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan and Abby Jimenez's The Happy Ever After Playlist. I'm in love with these authors and their work! It is taking a lot of willpower to not keep reading their other novels immediately. 

One great part about finding my comps AFTER finishing my novel is that when similar details pop up in the comp novels, I know for sure I didn't subconsciously lift them from other writers' texts. But it sure is daunting to read so many fun stories and imagine my own book in their company.

Cutting Dash Away

My first writing task of summer 2026 was to cut Dash Away down to a pitchable size. When I finished the draft in 2024, it was over 130K words. Industry standard for a contemporary romance novel is 80-90K. I figured I could at least pitch it if I could get it under 100K. So that was the goal. 

I began by thinning each chapter, removing adverbs, double descriptions, and details not related to the plot. I worked on paper first, circling and revising sentences to make the prose lean and smooth. Then I moved to my sunny kitchen nook and firmed up the changes on my laptop. My goal was to cut a minimum of 20 words per page, but cutting 50+ was ideal. 

Even though some world-building color had to go, and I had to kill many "darling" sentences, the process was more fun than I expected. I kept track of my progress, marking an X on a whiteboard for each 1000 words that I successfully lopped off. 

After finishing the Minnesota-set portion of the story, I had cut the full text to 114K and was at the 92K mark, meaning that I could keep about 8K of the remaining 22K words. Drastic, right?

Luckily, I wrote those last chapters two summers ago, and my editor's eye was smart enough to cut with objectivity. 

At first I thought I would just summarize Charlie's day trip to Austen locations around England. But it was quickly evident that two full days of London sightseeing had to go as well. And that forced me to rearrange her entire holiday schedule. 

Although I need to reread the final result, I like the ending better now. I'm a little above 102K, and that is pitchable. 

Wish me luck!