Immediate Goals

The one really great thing I got out of this conference was that I pushed myself to finish my edits to The Flower of Knighthood in order to have a manuscript to take with me, even though I ended up not showing it to anyone there. I am setting a goal for myself of April 10 to finish a read-through of what I accomplished with that draft, and a second goal of April 25 to finish any further edits it may need. I picked the second date because the L.A. Times Festival of Books occurs the weekend of April 26-27 at UCLA and I want to take my manuscript to that and hopefully talk to some people about it. There are dozens of publisher's booths at the festival and many speakers and events. I went last year but was horribly sick, and it was unseasonably (and unreasonably) hot, and I had to bail after about an hour. It was truly a dreadful experience. I was too sick even to talk to people, scary sick from mold exposure I got in New Orleans while doing hurricane recovery work a week or two before. It may be just as well. I thought my book was ready at that point, and I found I was wrong about that. If it is not ready right now, it is close enough.