More of Braga and an Update

 

 

 

First, here are some more images of Braga, that I took in May during my trip. This is the Catholic Church of the Congregados, at Central Avenue. In the beginning of The Secret Life of Daydreams, Sofia is on the phone with her friend Guida, in front of this church, when she notices a ‘tourist’ taking pictures of it.  😉

It’s a wide avenue and traffic only runs on the opposite side. It makes for a great place to take a stroll, or sit down for a bit when you’re wearing high heel shoes and your feet hurt, as Sofia would tell you. On the second image, on the right side, if you look closely, you may see the small kid’s park. The church dates to the XVI century, by the way.

And now for the update. When I started this wonderful writing  journey, I decided early on to publish independently, for a number of reasons. I still very much believe in those reasons (which will be fodder for another blog post), but I have since taken a little detour. In May, I had the chance to go to the LDS Storymakers Conference, in Provo, Utah. On a crazy impulse, I signed up to pitch my story to the managing editor of a major LDS publisher. She loved my story pitch and asked me to submit my manuscript to her. Once I send it in, it will take 4-6 months to receive a reply from them (it has to go through a lot of steps, including a team of people who make the last decision). What this means is that I won’t be publishing The Secret Life of Daydreams on Amazon in September of this year, as I had previously planned. For the time being, I’m still deep in revisions and edits, and I hope to be done in a month, at which time I’ll submit the story. And then I’ll wait.

This doesn’t guarantee an acceptance, of course, and it doesn’t even mean I will decide to go with them if it’s accepted. It may seem crazy for some people, to think of rejecting a publishing contract, but there are a lot of factors going into this decision, the main one being, I will ultimately do what is best for me and my story. For now, I’m reserving my opinion until I have all the details.

The good news is that I won’t be twiddling my thumbs while I wait, and making myself insane in the process (I’m not a patient person; anyone who knows me can tell you that). I’m excited to report that I started writing my second novel last week. It already has a title (but I’m not ready to share, sorry), and it’s about Simon and Isabel Maria. Simon is a British professor of English Literature who specializes in the Romantic poets (swoon!), and Isabel is a Portuguese university student who waits café tables in the summer and housekeeps in the winter. The story is set in Braga, of course. They are very different from Josh and Sofia, I can tell you that. I’ve written some of the first chapter but had to shelve it until I’m done with the last revisions of The Secret Life of Daydreams. I can’t wait to know more about them, and write their amazing story (I have it on good authority that it’s a good one, if I can make it justice).

So there you have it. Sometimes you have the best laid plans, and then something happens, and life offers you another road you hadn’t planned to take. I’ll be sure to come back and update more on this, including what I think of indie publishing and traditional publishing.

Xau for now!

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