My Week Off

After submitting my rewrite, I decided to take a week off before starting revisions on my next book. I spent the week doing the taxes, looking for literary agents, honing my query letter, and thinking about how to fix my next book’s ending, which my critique group hated.

I also went to the library.

“We have to get out of here,” I told my daughter. It was our second trip to the library in two weeks and I already had a huge stack of unread library books at home, plus another six books on request. I knew I didn’t need more, but, “The books keep jumping into my hands, see? Oh, here’s another one that looks good!” I slid an enticing title off the shelf and turned it over to read the blurb on the back.

“There isn’t enough fantasy,” my daughter complained.

“People don’t remember this, but fifteen years ago, there wasn’t any fantasy being written for middle grade. That was before Harry Potter. Nowadays when you go to the book store that’s all you see on the shelf. But here at the library, a lot of these books are ten and fifteen years old.” I shifted the stack of books in my arms to keep my latest acquisition from sliding off. “Now what we need is for someone to do for science fiction what Potter did for fantasy.”

With a grin, I glanced over my shoulder at the dog-eared Harry Potter books lined up in their own special place on top of the shelf. Somebody do that for science fiction. Please.