Author - Dana Lockhart

I have a lot and nothing at all going on at the same time.

I got five agents that requested material while I was at Gateway Con. I didn't like one of them because he sounded like he came from a vanity publisher, and another one told me to submit it via their website but their website isn't accepting submissions?  So I sent varying requested lengths of The Un-Life to the remaining three and so far I've only gotten a brief response from one that didn't say yes or no.  So I'm not sure what's going on there. I suppose I'll see what the others say before I start digging in too deep.

Gateway Con was amazing. I recommend it or any other writing conference if you are an aspiring author. I met several authors that have become acquaintance-friends.  Made some connections, I hope, with editors and agents.  Learned some.  The hotel was pretty and expensive but amazing.  I bought some signed books.  Conventions are a great way to boost confidence, meet people, and broad…

A lot is going on in my life right now that has distracted me from posting on a regular basis. I ended a bad relationship as well as a bad friendship and I'm taking it hard. I'm a little over a month into my new job and I'm loving it! But more importantly, I'm nearly to the next step in my publishing adventure.

I will be attending the St. Louis Writers Guild Gateway Conference this weekend. There I will network with authors, editors, and agents, and the best part of all is that I will be pitching to two or more agents to try and get The Un-Life of William Moore published traditionally.

It is a little conflicting.  From how much Kindle Scout wanted to turn my novel into a crime thriller, I'm afraid of what an agent or publisher would want to do to it before they'd say yes. But I can't just ignore the opportunity.  So often when you submit queries it can take months, even years, before you hear back as to whether they want your  novel or not.  I don't wan…

-Where Have I Been?-

Well, nowhere, really. I'm just in a wonderfully weird spot right now. I got a new job, which is great, but it did put me in this unsettling limbo as I waited to start my first day. As I discussed in my post announcing my resignation, when I quit I was sent home to finish my last two weeks as "vacation." This was upsetting due to not being able to say goodbye to anyone, among other reasons. It was also off-putting because I couldn't start my new job immediately despite my sudden availability.

They were expecting me more towards May 1st, and here I was free on April 17th. Both bosses were away, one for almost a week, another for a week and a half.  Three days after I quit I got a hold of one, who said that the other one needed to be back before we could get started. Okay. I passed another week in this uncomfortable stand-still. I binge watched a lot of TV (Sherlock Holmes two times, two seasons of Supernatural, the Lost in Space first season, lots…

I've been wanting to talk about what I do for a living for awhile now. But every time I tried to talk about my job, it always went south into how much I hated it. And since it was my only source of income, I couldn't exactly start complaining about it on the internet where they could find it and make the excuse to fire me.

But I quit today, so there's not much holding me back anymore!

Now, I know what some of you are going to think.

"Oh, look at the whiny millennial complaining that life is unfair, awwww. All jobs suck, get over it. There will always be gossips and teacher's pets and lazy bosses and grumpy seniors. Just do your fucking job."

And I mostly agree; if you told me you love your job, I'd probably not believe you. No job is really going to be perfect. There's toxic people and ideals everywhere. You just can't get away from it. Que Bowling for Soup, High School Never Ends.

But you know what saying something like that really means?

"…

-I Was That Kid-

When I was still just in middle school I once caught myself with no less than ten novels in my back pack.  I devoured books like I was starving for literature.  I always checked out the maximum number of books from the school library and picked the biggest books I could so they would last longer. 

But after I left high school, my time spent reading dropped drastically.  At school I burned through homework like a wildfire and often had spare time during class to read.  My bus commute was no less than two hours even though I lived 20 minutes from the school.  But once I graduated high school, I didn’t have the obviously free time anymore where reading or staring into space were the only options I had to occupy my time.  During college I’d bring my laptop with me and during my down time I leeched off the college’s wifi to play games and watch videos.  During this time I became a Netflix account parasite and binged seasons upon seasons of TV shows.  I had this dream of g…

It's honestly been a hard month. Full of stand-stills and unexpected pitfalls.

I'm disappointed that most things I'm trying to achieve in my life right now just aren't going according to plan.  But that's fate for you.  Try as you might, the universe can off-set you at a whim.

I'm also sad to announce that just three months after my campaign, Kindle Scout has thrown in the towel and will no longer be accepting submissions.  I had planned on continuing to submit my work to them in the future, but now that is no longer possible, unless by some miracle they reopen submissions.  But right now, I'm assuming they are just shutting down the program for good.

But!  All is not lost.  I'm reconsidering my plans for The Un-Life of William Moore.

I am wanting to get it out as soon as possible.  My plan had been to self publish.  However, I am strongly considering changing my mind and giving my novel a chance to be traditionally published.

Normally the traditional …

-But What If I Ever Need It?-

I’m a little bit of a horder.  Not like an extreme horder that you see on TV, but I do collect odds and ends that I think might be useful someday.  I think part of it is because I’m an artist.  I have a whole drawer dedicated to odds and ends.  I keep small pieces of construction paper leftovers, charms that fall off necklaces, shiny material, ribbons too short to use to wrap a present, anything that I might be able to use on an art project someday.

I also have a slight obsession with keeping boxes 1) because I am an Amazon Prime addict and used to mail things to friends all the time and I never fell out of the habit of keeping boxes to ship things in and 2) because I’m saving them for the day I eventually get to move into my fixer-upper when it’s fixed up.  I love containers in general, and keep a few empty pill bottles, spice jars, and tiny boxes that had held rings or bracelets.  You never know when one would come in handy to use to keep something safe…