Totally glossing over the fact that there was no Fiction Friday last week and that this week’s installment is happening on Saturday.

First things first, Snooki sold a book. Say it with me: WTF?

It’s bad enough that Tori Spelling and Lauren Conrad are crowding the shelves at my local Barnes and Noble. But now Snooki? Really, seriously?

I mentioned in my last post (eons ago) that I found a fabulous beta reader (okay actually, she found me on Absolute Write.

I was blown away by the amount of time she spent on my manuscript. I sent her a PDF of the first fifty pages and she edited them, scanned them, and sent them back. On the left margin, she made a note of the things she liked,

The are two things driving me right now: my beta reader’s feedback is the first. She said she thought I had a real chance with this story. I wasn’t sure how the premise would be received, or if it would “work”, so it’s very encouraging to hear that. To me, the writing can be fixed, but if the premise doesn’t work, you’ve got a problem. And I am firmly in the “story versus writing” camp. I want to read a great story, and if it keeps me turning the pages, you won’t see me getting all highbrow about the writing. People love to criticize Stephenie Meyer’s writing, but if Twilight can make me stay up until 2:00 AM reading, she’s doing somethign right (and probably laughing her ass off all the way to the bank).

I’ll write more about the premise as I get closer to querying (and I’ll post the query letter too so you can see what I’m sending to agents).

This has been the most amazing experience and I encourage anyone who’s ever wanted to write a novel to, in the spirit of Nike, just.do.it.

I probably won’t be querying until after the first of the year which means my novel took about nine months to write. I’m rewarding myself with a Kindle as soon as I type THE END.