A momentous occasion

...and another issue of mysterious timing.

Tonight, I passed the word count of my first manuscript, which lies wallowing in its uncertainty. I was at 37,099 apparently when I took a detour to work on Trading Faces, and very early this morning, about five minutes ago, I checked MS Word's wonderful word count feature and TF was at 37,954!

Okay, so let's hope that doesn't mean I'm about to give up and start writing another one.

Then, last night, or morning, about this same time, I was finishing up my current fiction read, By Bread Alone, a semi-recommended novel about a lady who bakes sourdough bread while doing all kinds of other crazy things, and in the last few pages of the novel, a previously unmentioned character was brought to light. I don't remember her first name, because she was only mentioned once, but her last name was...dum dum dum...Entwhistle! I'm not sure I've ever mentioned it here, but that is the same last name as my main character in TF. Now, how many characters do you see with the last name Entwhistle???? Todd picked it for me, and it was perfect. I'm not even sure where he got it. Oh, he says it was the last name of the bass player for the Who. Waddya know.

So, between that and the Appalachian Digital Library, this week has been an odd one. Signs?

I also signed up for my first ever real life writer's conference today! Very excited and nervous about that. I'll have a read-and-critique session with an agent who represents several well-known young adult and children's authors and hope to get some good feedback from her. I hope to have TF all polished and pretty well before September, which is when the first few chapters of the manuscript have to be sent in.

As my good friend, Boyd Pritchett, once said, "Joy! Joy!" And, I guess that's my Quote of the Day.