What's With the Letter A?

So, onward and upward to female main character names. I read somewhere, and I can't remember where, that agents were sick of seeing female protags with a name that started with A. Yeah, in the one book I had written at the time, my MC was named Annie.

Le sigh.

I actually don't mind this. But since my post on male names with the letter K, I've been paying more attention to names in everything I read. Queries, synop's, books, manuscripts, whatev. I read a lot of stuff. And you know what? I've noticed a lot of Seth's. As the bad boy. One of my friends (Christine Fonseca) has a Seth in her WiP. I think she told me his name means something about darkness or choas or something. I'm sure she'll set me straight, and I'm too lazy to research it myself. I shudder just typing that R-word. *shudder*

But I haven't noticed that many A-names for girls. Maybe I'm just reading the wrong books, I don't know. One of my pals, Jessica Verday, author of The Hollow (which I get to read soon! Woot!) has named her MC Abbey. So there's an A. Oh, and Jenn, a real-life gal in my crit group just wrote a synop about a girl named Ava. There's two.

For me? I seem to choose pretty popular names. I wrote a book last winter with a Claire. That seemed to be a pretty popular name at the time. Lots of authors had Claire's. Sidenote: I need an eclair to get me through this week.

And of course, I have Vi, my Rule-breaking Good girl in Control Issues. And Gabby, my heroine-who-sometimes-pretends-to-be-the-hero.

Who have you got? There's major chartage in my future.

More Wordle Art

I seriously can't get enough of this stupid website. It's just so much fun! My writerly friends have made some cool art for their books, stories, whatever. Check them out.

Michelle McLean
Carolyn Kaufman
Kristal Shaff
and of course, the lovely Heather Dyer, who started this madness.

Wait, maybe it's just me who's gone mad. Either way, I made a couple more wordles. One is for a young adult paranormal novel, and the other is for a young adult dystopian science fiction novel. Since I don't have a synopsis for either one of these, I just used my query letter. I followed Kristal's advice, who said she typed in her MC's name a few extra times so it'd be bigger. Seriously, awesome.

Excited about ELITE

Status of my Life: I love my day off. After the house is cleaned, and my daughter is in bed, I get to write! It's a beautiful thing.


I've been getting a lot of feedback on my novel, ELITE. I must admit that I haven't changed a single thing--yet. I've been so busy editing and querying on SHADOWS that I haven't had time. But today, I'm going to devote a couple of hours to combing through the critiques and editing ELITE. Then I'm going to read a dear friend's manuscript and then I'm going to write some more of PLACEHOLDERS. I think I can do all that and still get dinner on the table.

What time is it? Only noon. No problem! Did I mention I loved my day off? Yes? Well, okay. Oh, and I'm getting my muse on by listening to David Archuleta's new song "Crush." Total YA romance song...thanks DA!

Reading: Just went to the library and got STORM FRONT by Jim Butcher, so I'm going to start that today or tomorrow.

Placeholders:

27996 / 60000 words. 41% done!

ELITE

ELITE is a young adult paranormal novel. Think X-Men meets Heroes, all while trying to fit in at your new prep school in another country. That's life for fifteen-year-old Hunter Poulsen, who thinks his ability to see numbers is a curse.

Hunter doesn't understand how unique, how valuable, how wicked awesome his ability is, until he's forced to move to Toronto and he winds up at Fenway's Academy for the Arts. Confused about why he's enrolled at a school for fine arts when he can't draw a straight line, Hunter discovers he's the only student in classes like Ancient Numbering Systems and Decimals, Percents, and Fractions.

Someone at Fenway's knows his secret.

Mingling among the next piano virtuosos, Hunter discovers the academy is a front for the real students with talents. He becomes the eighth and final member of the secret Elite team, a group of students with "talents" like aura detection, twisting time, and shifting into teapots. Hunter's ability to literally see the numerical information that underpins the modern world—on walls, sidewalks, even plastered on people's chests—is rare. Now someone at Fenway's wants to exploit it.

When the team breaks into a bank to retrieve a mysterious yellow envelope, Hunter realizes that the Elitists are pulling more than just pranks, they're training to be criminals. He'll have to work with his friends—and his enemies—to find the source of deception before the cops show up demanding answers.

I am a graduate of Southern Utah University, with a B.S. in Elementary Education and a minor in Mathematics. I have been teaching elementary school for nine years and live in Utah with my husband and two young children.

At 85,000 words, ELITE stands alone, but I have begun the second in the Fenway's Academy series, THE BIG SHOW.