Post Thanksgiving Musings:Writing that Book Proposal

My mother, who we called "Mum," was the original "hot ticket." She had many funny expressions, some lost to memory now, that nailed a feeling or state of being.

And I'd characterize my life right now just as she would: I've been busier than a one-armed paper hanger. First, there is my non-fiction travel guide about New England craft beer. I have one month, well, let me calculate for sure, 34 days to hand it in to the editor. I want to break down laughing, or break down crying .... saying intentions like "I WILL hand it in on time," hoping I have 62 fairy godmothers who drink beer listening in the ether, who have nothing to do but help me.

So I had to make a decision about interrupting the flow of work on that project in order to write a book proposal for an agent whom I'd approached after the Crime Bake conference. He liked the ideas I had for two cozy mystery series, but I'd need to write proposals for each series idea. And that required time away from my work in progress. I hemmed and hawed to myself, but told the agent that of course I'd work on the proposals ASAP.

Then I committed to do it. It took three days of constant researching and asking for help coming up with "comparable" books, book series similar to yours that had been renewed (showing good sales), conjuring up three books in the series, writing a synopsis of each without actually having the books written, writing a bio of my work and experience, presenting evidence of my potential market and editing the first 30 pages of the manuscript to make it enticing to an editor.

I finished it last Tuesday and looked Heaven-ward before I pressed "send." Then I plunged into Thanksgiving preparations. My son was the only one of my three kids to be able to make it home, and we had a great two days. No work on the beer book was done, except making a pumpkin pie with a local stout. That recipe can go in the book, so I guess it was research. And the pie was delicious.

Today is Saturday. We've managed to not participate in any Black Friday insanity, we got our Christmas tree up and some lights on it without killing each other (close, though) and today I get back to work on the beer project.

I will do some deep breathing when I open the master doc, see how many breweries I still have to write up, and keep going. "Bird by bird," writer-goddess Anne Lamott says, bird by bird.

Special thanks go to Wicked Cozy Authors Sherry Harris and Barb Ross and to bookseller Beth Kanell of Vermont's Kingdom Books. Your help with finding comparable series was what encouraged me to finish the proposal and not flop in a heap of tears.