Kay Elam Writes

If you look at my June blogging calendar it appears I took the month off. I know I said I was cutting back, but three blogs…geez. Maybe I can blame it on the heat. Nashville had a record breaking 109 Friday. I’ve spent the weekend holed up in air conditioning–reading, writing, and napping. This heat zaps my energy and makes me want to sleep. Hubby, on the other hand, washed and waxed the cars and cleaned out the garage. We did go to two movies where it was oh, so cool…until we stepped outside into what felt like an oven.

I’m amazed at how quickly I can get behind on my blog reading so it was nice to have a weekend to get caught up. I’m also reading some fifty-page entries for a writing contest, and I worked my way through a few more of those. That’s actually been an enlightening exercise that has shown me a sliver of what agents must experience. Some of the entries have been exceptional–some not–but regardless, it takes time to get through them and give each author the individual attention he or she deserves.

Some fun news: In a couple of weeks I’ll be writing a chapter for a blogvel. “What’ the heck’s a blogvel?” you ask. It’s a round-robin writing project started by Michelle Simkins aka Greenwoman over at Agent Query Connect. On her blog, she wrote the first chapter of a novel establishing characters, setting, etc. Following her lead, every Monday for the next fifteen weeks, a different blogger will write a new chapter and post it to his or her blog. Then Michelle will write the final chapter on her blog giving us a complete blogvel entitled Bloom. To catch up with the story thus far, hop over to Michelle’s website for an index of the chapters already written.

Her debut project was last summer with blogvel called Skeleton Key. It looked like the authors had so much fun writing it, I jumped at the opportunity to write for it this year.  I will be writing chapter seven (of seventeen). Of course I can’t start it until after chapter six is posted a week from today. You can read chapters 1-5 now, chapter six next week, my chapter the following week and I’ll post a link for each remaining chapter on Mondays so you can follow the rest of the story.

This will be a busy week in the Elam household as the Grandbaby is coming to visit for the first time. Of course, his parents are coming too. They arrived on the mainland from Hawaii a couple of weeks ago and have been visiting her folks in North Carolina until today. We are so excited. On Saturday, we’re hosting a reception for my youngest step-son who got married in December. All three sons will be home as well as hubby’s brother and his wife from Phoenix. Hubby’s sister and mom are Nashvillians, so we’ll have the whole crew. The heat is supposed to break by Wednesday. Of course, the Phoenix guests wouldn’t know the difference.

Whatever your plans for the fourth of July, be safe.

~Til next week.

Kay