I have a good excuse...

Really. I do.

I've been trying to send queries. It's an incredibly time consuming project.

• Locate the agent
• Figure out if they're accepting queries
• Figure out which type they are accepting: email and/or regular mail
• Figure out what they want submitted -- they're all different
• Get their contact information right
• Track the process so I know who, where and when I sent the darn thing

The list goes on.

I've been stuck at the collecting data stage. Today, my one day off this week, I committed to sending out at least five queries. I had planned on printing out the packages according to each agent's requirements and then clean the house while they were printing.

Great in theory, right?

Would have been, except since the last time I looked most of the agents now take equeries. Some require them.

Sure, okay. All the better, right?

Only if you have a decent email editor. Try cutting and pasting three freaking chapters of a manuscript into hotmail and keeping it formatted -- just shoot me know. Seriously.

Over the past few days I've spent hours upon hours inside Microsoft Outlook trying to get it configured to send and receive from my website - joanswan.com. (Prior to that I had spent hours and hours inside hotmail trying to get things formatted.) I had Outlook configured at one point, but sometime between the last time I used it and now (maybe a year) it stopped working. While I was trying to fix it, the whole damn program stopped working. On both my desktop and my laptop.

Is the universe trying to tell me something?

Well, screw you, universe! I went out and bought a new version of Microsoft Office 2007. Ebay, of course, because I rarely buy anything anywhere else now-a-days. (Was even looking at cars on ebay, but didn't end up buying there - that's a whole other story.)

So...I will now wait for my software to come and effectively put off sending out those queries for another, oh, week or so, since that's about when I'll be home again.

See, I told you I had a good excuse!