Like a Virgin

Like a Virgin is a query competition.  I submitted at the start of April.

For the official site, click the image below.

Starting April 18, Like  a Virgin is hosting a blog hop that accompanies the competition, and the theme is firsts.

1. How do you remember your first kiss?
2. What was your first favorite love song?
3. What’s the first thing you do when you begin writing for the day?
4. Who’s the first writer who truly inspired you to become a writer?
5. Did the final revision of your first book have the same first chapter it started with?
6. For your first book, which came first: major characters, plot or setting?
7. What’s the first word you want to roll off the tip of someone’s tongue when they think of your writing?

1. My first kiss? Well, I don’t remember. I guess you could say I came from a kissing family. Kisses just happened. I remember kissing my little neighbor boy before first grade. I didn’t kiss the neighbor I proposed to naked. I kissed my first boyfriend, but I can’t remember anything special about it. In essence, the first kiss was unremarkable.

2. My first favorite love song was an oldies song. I remember marching around the backyard and singing Sunrise Sunset from Fiddler on the Roof back in middle school. I associate it as a love song because I first heard it when a mother sang it at her son’s wedding. My husband and my song is Amazed by Lone Star. So in the realm of important love songs, that one tops the list.

3. When I start writing for the day, I start by re-reading the last thing I wrote from the day before. I think it helps keep the tone of my piece more consistent, and it jogs my memory if I had an idea before I stopped writing.

4. The first writer that truly inspired me was Diana Wayne Jones. I always wrote as a child. I won my first school competition in 1st grade. In third grade, I discovered Diane Wayne Jones and read every book I could find. By fourth grade, I cobbled together my “first” “novel.” I think it was only 100 pages on word perfect, and I’m fairly sure it had no plot. Either way, it was a done deal. I kept writing.

5. The final revision of my current piece (which is the only piece I’ve ever liked enough to revise) has a completely new first chapter. The old chapter one is now chapter two. I have a tendency to write too little versus writing too much.

6. When I started writing this book, I pulled my characters, plot and setting from a list of ideas I keep. The plot started as the same plot I used in a previous attempt. I started writing it, but the feedback was that the piece lacked setting and the character was too immature. So I kept the same plot but pulled a different setting and character from the idea list. The plan centered around using a modern or more realistic setting and working on building small world elements rather than creating a world from scratch. My main character Tiny began after a long day on my feet. I took a hot bath and gave a quick prayer that I wasn’t a troll or a giant because my feet hurt bad enough as it was. So I wrote down a troll with sore feet in my idea list. I pulled her out again for this novel.

7. I don’t know what word I would like to have roll off a person’s tongue when they read Tiny’s story. I know the words I don’t want to roll off their tongue, (horrible, too sparse, remedial, poor setting) but I’d accept the faintest praise.

I’ll be hunting down other Like A Virgin competitors. Here is the Blog Hop list (I hope):

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For my blog readers, let me know your answers.