...but I just have Enrui on the mind. Plus I'm running on about three hours of sleep, fueled only by several good doses of Mountain Dew. Headache approaching. I really want to sit down and do some serious illustrations for Enrui, or even begin Requiem, but with all my effing hard/busy classes, I just don't have time...

Well, after about a year of work, I finally finished the manuscript for Enrui book 1 a few weeks ago. I still haven't decided on a name. Currently I've taken to calling it "Prelude" since the titles I have for books 2 and 3 are both music-inspired, but it really doesn't fit or feel right. At all. *sigh* Back to the creative drawing board...

Anyway, right now I'm working with several of my professors to get the manuscript all polished up and ready to submit for publishing. The final draft is about 208,000 words. That's four times the length of Nicholas Sparks' "The Notebook," to give a general idea of how big my baby is... but I am excited. I gave a copy to the head of our English department to give to her daughter. Her daughter is 13, but is about as much of a fantasy book worm as I was at that age (I have a kindred spirit!). She's read pretty much every fantasy book I've heard of, plus some. (LOTR, Harry Potter, Eragon, Chronicles of Narnia, most of Brain Jacques...)

Anyway, I waited a few weeks to see how she liked it. Then my boyfriend texts me one day (waking me up from my nap- but it was a good thing to wake up to) and says that he just got out of a meeting with the department head. Her daughter hadn't actually initially been interested in reading it (I don't blame her- it's just a cheap binder stuffed full of a two inch stack of hole-punched copy paper. Looks more like an instruction manual than a real book) but she ran out of books to read over her Spring Break, so her mom coaxed her into reading it. Once she got started, she pretty much shut herself in her room for three days straight and read all 369 pages of it. When she came out of her room, the first thing she said was "This girl had BETTER be writing a sequel! This is my new favorite book!!!"

like I said, it was a nice message to wake up to. I just had a meeting with her today, actually, to get her input on the story. She actually literally had nothing bad to say about it. She understood everything and confirmed to me that this was her favorite book. She's reading it through again with her mom, who has also been writing comments and correcting things, but appears to be enjoying it as well. Scary- she can sometimes be a tough grader/editor. But her daughter is excited to see it get published and can't wait for Requiem. I can't wait to write it, buuuut...

Trying to get things published is scary. I've spent every free moment the past few days pouring over a trial query letter, synopsis, and example chapters to give to a professor to check and to help me before submitting it. I also have this freakishly thick book of publishing company addresses and information that I've been sifting through to see who is publishing my type of book. It's so intimidating... That on top of exams in my Physics and Pharmacology and Medical Terminology classes, and I'm just exhausted... Maybe I'm crazy for trying to do this right now...

Every agency that I really really want to submit it to doesn't take unagented and/or unsolicited work... curses. I don't have the money for that- I'm just a poor college kid! I keep praying that I find something good for Enrui. Really, in the end, I just want it to get published, and I want people who might enjoy it to be able to know about it and read it. I love my story- I wouldn't have written it if I didn't. *sigh* I guess all I can really do is pray and try...