"Keep Moving Forward!"

Did you see the Disney animated film, Meet the Robinsons? I'm not going into it—really cute, though—but I'm going to steal their line: Keep moving forward!

Now that I've finished THE WITHERING VINE, it's time to move onto other things...and for me, that means revisions. I've got a small pile of old manuscripts, written with a newbie's enthusiasm and lack of structure, I'm afraid, that my critique groups have kindly torn to shreds and left for me to glue back together. I love my critique groups so much, in all seriousness. They have the courage to tell me what I need, and they always manage to do it without making me want to hide my head in a hole and give up, which is an achievement in itself.

So, first on the metaphorical chopping block is THE ART OF ELSEWHERE; you may recognize the title from my “about me” because it is the manuscript that won the Tassy Walden Award in 2009. (Though that seems like ages ago now.) I have a lot of excitement and love for this work, which is about...well... As I'm already wearing out the cut/copy/paste keys in all my revisions, why don't I paste a little description here?

The Pieta disappears. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is left white, dry, and peeling. The tomb of Julius II is gone (good thing old Julius wasn’t actually buried there). David is missing, from the curl on his forehead to his perfectly chiseled toe and, well, everything in between.

Every Michelangelo work in the world disappears in a single moment—and there's only one lead. Twelve-year-old Walter D'Angeli doesn't exactly seem like the thieving mastermind type . . . even if he is the son of the late foremost expert on all things Michelangelo . . . even if he happened to be locked in a room with a Michelangelo sketch when the heist occurred. As the worldwide extent of the theft becomes evident, Walter's involvement appears less and less likely—that is, until something happens that leaves the police stuttering with surprise:

Walter vanishes.

He finds himself in Gambee—a world where time-traveling villains are obsessed with stealing Earth's art. And as grateful as he is to be out of Tazer-range, he has absolutely no idea how he got there or what he's supposed to do. Luckily, he's not alone. He soon meets Michelangelo himself, fifteen years old, plucked from history, but alive and kicking…and spitting and swearing and yelling and punching; and Cassandra, the only girl in Gambee with the courage to stand against her corrupt world. When Michelangelo and Walter learn the role they are meant to play in a scheme masterminded by Gambee’s leaders, the three children are determined to stop it by any means necessary, from eavesdropping to espionage to art forgery by a boy who will become one of the world’s greatest artists—if Walter can find a way to get him home.

Ok, so that's actually most of my query—which perhaps you'll find interesting, because the old, pre-revision query will be up on Matt Rush's Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment tomorrow, with my comments. If you happen to read both, I'd love to hear what you think about the changes!

Anyway, that should explain the artsy background change...and I apologize in advance if I start randomly spouting about art, Michelangelo, the Renaissance, etc.

Do you know what the hardest part of revising is for me? The not-writing-my-new-idea part. I have an idea for a story about Antonio Stradivari's daughter, similar in style to THE WITHERING VINE, that's been brewing for months...but I'm holding it over my own head as a reward for getting the revision done. Wish me luck!