Vacation, Queries, and Sequels

If there's one thing I've learned in the last few days, it's that everyone has a book inside them. I went to Barnes and Noble to pick up the requisite 2013 Writer's Market and had to endure listening to an entire synopsis of the cashier's as-yet-published book. While I'm usually all yay for those people, it just made me worry (also, she went on for about ten to fifteen minutes, and all I wanted was my book and a chai latte, and then to put some pajamas on. Sigh.). Now that I'm finished, is that what I have to do? 

The answer is...yes. Yes it is.

I'm starting query letters this week. It's a bit daunting to think about, but it's the next logical step, right? I figure inundating the emails and regular mailboxes of literary agents would be my best bet. I'll treat them like the cashier treated me, but they have the luxury of reading about my book in their offices with chai lattes already waiting for them. This should be interesting, as I usually suck at formal letters of all kinds. But isn't everything a process and that's how we learn? I'm hoping so.

But it's been about a month since I finished the first manuscript of AYLB, and I'm beginning to get the itch again. I know that I should start on the sequel (because wouldn't that be smart?), but I can't do it. Not yet. I'm one of those people who read a book in a day and then have to wait forever for the sequel, and I sit there the entire time thinking to myself, c'mon, people, just write it and get it out already, gah! But now I understand. As much as I love my characters and where they're going, I think to myself, oh, no, not these people again. So I think I'm going to take the summer off from Amory and the rest of the gang, and instead concentrate on another story that seems to be tugging at me. It was one that I originally started this blog for, and something about it is calling me.

Three months without Amory, without thinking about where those characters are going to go and what they're going to do. A mini-vacation from them. While getting a tan. I don't see one bad thing about that.