Imaginary Friends

It's time for another cheerful post about suicide, kids! Seriously, I hope my kids never find this blog. It's not like they don't know what Drivers  is about. They're too curious not to ask, especially the oldest. And I've certainly discussed the topic with my wife in front of them plenty of times. But you know what I think? This is just off the top of my head, but suicide as a conversational topic is kind of like lice. (Ha!) If you've had lice, no one wants to hear about it. They don't want to know how you got rid of them or where you got them. They'd just as soon not have to think about tiny blood-sucking bugs laying eggs on hairs. Heck, just writing this makes my scalp itch! People are usually more open to discussing the topic if they've had lice, treated lice, OR if they're not old enough to be aware of the social stigma. Case in point, my oldest daughter caught lice at school a few years ago. We saw it pretty quickly, treated it, and

Go Team Krista! I was a pawn participant ;) in a competition (The Writer's Voice) between four writers to see who could pick and coach the most other writers into successfully grabbing a literary agent's attention. Except it was more organized than I just made it sound. See here for a complete explanation. Anyway, Krista Van Dolzer picked me to be on her team, and we won! She did a great job helping me improve my query and did the same for the other ten on the team as well. It was a huge time investment for all the coaches. Thank you, ladies! And what else did I get? Votes from two agents, which translates to a request for more material. I also got a whole lot of nice comments from other people in the contest. Take a look at my original entry here (if you haven't already) on my blog, and then read the new and improved version here on Krista's blog. Full results are here .

I listened to an audio version  A Tale of Two Cities.  It was awesome. Let me tell you, if the only thing you've read by Charles Dickens is A Christmas Carol , you don't know how good a writer he was. (Confession:  Until this audiobook, I was in that boat. I tried reading Two Cities when I was eighteen, but didn't get very far. It was too slow to start. Now, after having read a few of Jane Austen's books, I think I'd do better. But listening to a good voice actor is a treat.) So:  This book is about a Dr. Manette who was imprisoned by French aristocrats for eighteen years in the infamous Bastille. On his release, he meets his grown daughter Lucie who wasn't even born when he was locked up, and who was raised in London after the death of his wife. She marries another French ex-pat, Charles Darnay, an aristocrat who gave up his inheritance to be a good guy instead of an oppressor. Meanwhile, the book also follows some very bad stuff happening in Paris, most

This is part of a blogfest that's part of a contest and it's all explained here . It's run by four popular writer-bloggers and I was lucky to secure slot 149 out of 175. It's a writer-eat-writer world out there. Rawr. Anyway, Drivers: Ash arrives in a foreign country to begin an exciting, high-stakes job. He’s young and inexperienced, but his new employer sought out and recruited him because of one important qualification—Ash is suicidal. He’ll be inside an armed robotic vehicle that’s supposed to be unmanned and autonomous. Ash will ride until the artificial intelligence reaches its limits, and then because his boss oversold the robots’ abilities, he’ll be given control to drive and fire the weapons. It’s meant to be Ash’s last suicide attempt, but he just isn’t any good at dying. He survives the first mission. One other driver also makes it back, a girl named Zephyr. As Ash gets to know her, his perspective changes. There were so many reasons to die,