I probably shouldn’t have posted that entry that went up a couple of hours ago. I’m not sure it made sense. Even as I was typing it I wasn’t sure it made sense. But at the time, to my still-sleeping brain, it was a brilliant ramble.

I’ll leave it there as a reminder of my shame, but I have something much more coherent (Hopefully) to share with y’all. As I mentioned previously, I’m revising my second novel I wrote last November. Parts of it feel forced and contrived and extraneous and I don’t like them. I’d like to cut them, but I don’t know what to replace them with.

The story is all wrapped-up except for this handful of scenes I’ve only kept because they inflate word count. If only I didn’t feel like this story needed to be 50-70k words…then I could trim the extraneous and move on with my life.

There’s another flaw with the story too. Actually, flaw isn’t the right word. To me it’s not an issue. To the general populous, it might be. The romantic interests in the story run a software gaming company. That means the story is littered with lingo appropriate to the characters. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense if you’ve never been ganked and then tea-bagged by a scriddie-noob with a plasma cannon. (okay, so technically I’ve never seen anyone try and combine scriddie with noob, but that’s artistic license right there).

Given that, I recognize that if I leave the terminology as-is, it greatly limits my target audience.

And then, after writing my muddled blog post this morning, I remembered something I had seen on the Entangled website. A call for submissions for…(dramatic pause)…20-40k word novellas with strong romantic elements and geeks as the main characters. What? Really? *Swoon*.

And then, not even twenty minutes later, this showed up in my Google reader…YATopia is hosting a pitch contest today, and the judges are the editors from Entangled publishing.

Now, the original submission call is open until April 15, so that’s my real target. I can take the time to write a query and polish it, and submit the story. But…I’m having a hard time passing up this opportunity and I’ve already blurbed the story because I do that when I write. I just need a little feedback before this evening’s deadline. So, if anyone has a moment or two and would like to read my nice, simple, two-sentence pitch and give me your brutal, honest feedback, I’d <3 you for bunches and bunches *bats eyelashes* The pitch (revised) (I don’t get a lot of room, and I’m having trouble balancing interesting with romantic elements with plot)

Amid insider trading indictments and an intellectual property lawsuit, Zach finds himself falling for the one person who has a solution: Rae, his best friend and business partner’s ex-girlfriend. If Zach can’t find the balance between business and romance before their company’s next video game hits shelves, he’ll suffer financial devastation, lose the woman he loves, and destroy a life-long friendship.