{"id":3322,"date":"2025-08-08T06:05:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T13:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/?p=3322"},"modified":"2025-08-07T05:45:41","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:45:41","slug":"summer-vacation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/2025\/08\/08\/summer-vacation\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Vacation"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s August, and I\u2019m on summer vacation. What does that mean? It means I finished writing the manuscript for Smoke and Mirrors<\/em> last Sunday, and it\u2019s currently in the hands of my agent for a session of reading\/editing. That mean\u2019s I\u2019m also holding my breath.<\/p>\n

Handing over a manuscript to my one and only agent is a lot like turning in a paper to Bisbee High School\u2019s Mrs. Medigovich. She was tall and model thin. Dressed in designer sheaths and high heels, she walked the halls with the stride of a gunslinger and cast a daunting figure. She was anything but beautiful. With a black mole on her chin, sharp facial features, and her black hair pulled back in an immense bun, she was downright scary. When she knocked her knuckles on the blackboard and said \u201cHell\u2019s bells, you hounds!\u201d even the toughest varsity football players sat up and took notice. But if you walked away with an A from her senior English class, you had a ticket to sail straight into any freshman honors English class at any college or university in Arizona.<\/p>\n

In other words, Mrs. Medigovich was tough, and so is my agent. Over the years I\u2019ve benefited immeasurably from their guidance. One of the smartest things I ever did was listen when, unable to sell my first manuscript, my agent suggested I write something else, and so I did. Instead of firing the agent, I fired that manuscript and wrote the first Beaumont, Until Proven Guilty<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Wait a minute here, you\u2019re probably thinking. Didn\u2019t she say she was going to be talking about summer vacation? Well, yes I am\u2014in a very roundabout fashion.<\/p>\n

When I was growing up, summer vacations were for one thing only\u2014READING. My elementary school, Greenway, kept the library open one day a week during the summer months. On those days, I\u2019d drag the family\u2019s RadioFlyer wagon to the school and come back with that week\u2019s wagonload of books.<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t an actual bookstore in Bisbee. By the time I got to high school, the books that came into our home were in the form of Reader\u2019s Digest condensed books. That\u2019s how I read James Michener\u2019s Hawaii<\/em>. I believe they boiled it down to about seventy pages, so I don\u2019t think I got the whole thing\u2014and I\u2019m sure they short-circuited a good deal of the material dealing with the missionaries who were focused on sharing a lot more than the gospel. And when I happened to venture into the Copper Queen Library? Mrs. Howe kept an eagle eye on my selections to make sure I didn\u2019t take home something she considered inappropriate.<\/p>\n

So I loved reading. I\u2019ve always loved reading, but when I\u2019m writing a book, reading someone else\u2019s poses a real drawback. Other people\u2019s characters take my attention away from my own, and that\u2019s a problem. So most of the time I don\u2019t read.<\/p>\n

But this week, when I can\u2019t work on my book, I have King\u2019s X. I\u2019ve read two so far\u2014a Louise Penny and a Daniel Silva. (Yes, I read mysteries. What a surprise!)<\/p>\n

One of the things Mrs. Medigovich insisted upon was COMPLETE SENTENCES\u2014something with both a subject and predicate. She didn\u2019t allow any sentence fragments. Ever. For any reason. Louise Penny uses sentence fragments. With wild abandon. And it works. Encountering one of those passages is like taking a breath. Of fresh air. And it doesn\u2019t do anything to keep her from telling her story.<\/p>\n

Daniel Silva? I love his geographical references. His art history references. His ability to create iconic characters. (See there? I can write in sentence fragments, too. If I have to.)<\/p>\n

Today the manuscript isn\u2019t back in my hands, my computer, or my head, so I\u2019m going to go shopping through Bill\u2019s massive ebook library and see what else is hiding there.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s summer vacation may be short, but I\u2019m enjoying every minute of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s August, and I\u2019m on summer vacation. What does that mean? It means I finished writing the manuscript for Smoke and Mirrors last Sunday, and it\u2019s currently in the hands of my agent for a session of reading\/editing. That mean\u2019s I\u2019m also holding my breath. Handing over a manuscript to my one and only agent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-RA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3323,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3322\/revisions\/3323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}