Monday, February 11, 2008

Nocturne Bites

I was feeling at a bit of a loose end last week writing wise. I do have a couple of projects on the go, but one of them is the bloody dead body book (which I think I might just bury... ha ha, I crack myself up). The other one I absolutely love, but am not entirely sure which direction I'm going with it at the moment.

So, basically I was procrastining around (hard to believe I know) when on one of my loops someone mentioned Harlequin were looking for shorts for their new paranormal ebook line, Nocturne Bites.

Well I don't know why but that really jumped out at me, but here's the thing. The previous evening I'd been on the internet surfing, and while I wasn't sure why I was reading all these things (they were related to each other but had nothing to do with anything I was actually writing) I just felt Compelled to Continue. And when I saw the guidelines for the NBs it all fell into place. Spooky or what!

The other thing I did over the weekend was glance through my query letter I've been sending out. Being of a slightly anal disposition when it comes to stuff like that, I tend to read through it each and every time I send it. So I'm reasonably sure there are no spelling mistakes etc. But this particular time I didn't just read the body of the email, I kept on right to the bottom where my address was.

And Oh. My. God. I had spelt Australua just like that. In capital letters. On every bleeding query!!!

9 comments:

Deborah Carr (Debs) said...

Isn't it horrible when that happens. I can check and double check and still manage to miss something quite obvious. Drives me mad.

Amanda Ashby said...

Yay on Nocturne Bites idea. I can't wait to read it, and argh on the typo - more annoying because you hardly ever make them (unlike moi!)

Christina Phillips said...

Debs, it was AWFUL! In my defence can I just say that when in the upper case, the U did look very much like an I!!!

Amanda, I'm pretty excited over the Nocturne Bites idea!!

Shelley Munro said...

I always worry about typos etc. I can read things ten times and still miss them. :(
I've been looking at the Nocturne shorts, too. All the best with your idea.

Anonymous said...

Oh no! I hate that Word defaults to not checking spelling for words in all caps. Not sure what they were thinking, except that it was clearly created by people who write code for a living, not actual words. Here's hoping nobody noticed, and that they just use your phone number, e-mail address, or SASE for all replies.

Christina Phillips said...

Shelley, I thought of you when I read the Nocturne Bites guidelines!

booklady, I hope no one noticed either, but I don't half feel mortified!

Sara Hantz said...

There's nothing wrong with spelling phonetically - I can hear you saying it in my mind!!! I bet they didn't notice.

Yay, on the nocturne thing! Looking forward to reading it.

Barrie said...

Don't sweat it. :) Guess what I spelled wrong in the queries I was sending to agents?? The title of my book!!! You know what? No one ever mentioned it. And I got an agent from that very letter. So, give yourself a break and don't worry. ;)

Christina Phillips said...

Eek Barrie!! Thanks for sharing that, it's actually made me feel a lot better (does that make me a Very Bad Person?!)