List Dwindling.

Well, I recieved a rejection yesterday from Scott, so my list is down to Joe, Kristin, Mary Beth, Nephele, and Shawna. And I still have queries out to Robert (no weblink, sorry), Michele, Christine, and Miriam. After I hear back from these people, I'm done. I'm finished querying agents. From there I will go straight to publishers and see where the slush pile gets me.:)
Joe's exclusive expired yesterday and I still haven't heard from him. At this point I'm afrain no news is probably bad news but I'll hold out a little bit of hope. I expect to hear from Kristin any day between now and in two months.:) And the same with Mary Beth and Shawna. I am thinking that I will nudge Nephele on Monday because her blog mentioned that at the end of last months they had some e-mail issues. So I would hate to be sitting around waiting for another two weeks if she either already sent a reply and her computer screwed it up, or she never recieved it at all. (shrug). I'm getting way discouraged. Ammon told me his friend Josh (who has had a copy of my manuscript for six months) was going to give it back because he just didn't have time to read it (goes to school, works full-time, you know the type.) Well, like the day before he was going to see Ammon he had a spare hour and started to flip through Chain. Well, now he won't give it back! LOL! Things like that make me feel good because I know that readers would like this book if I could just get it out there.
I will pass 90K words today on Cymbals. I am anxious to get it done and out to my betas for two reasons. First, because I know they all want the end of the story! And I know they will really enjoy it. The first book never made me cry . . . the second book does so frequently, even though I know what is going to happen. If someone liked the first one, I suspect they will love the second. Scuze me tooting my own horn, but the first book is great--the second book is fabulous! The other reason if that people will tell me they like my book again. I need that sometimes when all these agents are telling me they don't. (sigh) So what I expect to do is work on both books throughout the summer, and in the fall, when my hubby starts law school, I'll pass the time by sending it out to publishers. I'll start with the big ones (Tor, Daw, Baen, Ace, etc.) but I have some fun-looking smaller presses on my plan B list . . . boy I hope I don't have to get that far.
I just don't want to shelve this series. It would be one thing if I was just getting lukewarm reviews from my betas, but out of the fourteen people who have read it, I've recieved four lukewarm reviews and ten stellar ones. I think that's pretty fair odds; don't you?
(Sigh) Just feeling a little down on the book one front today. Excited to get more done on book two though. I refuse to stop work on book two just because I don't know if book one will be published. Don't think about that, don't think about that . . . well, hubby's up, better go say good morning to him.
Ciao!