Mysteries Revealed!

Okay, maybe not THAT mystery...

Thank you to everyone who commented yesterday! Your inquiries will now be answered:

Amy asked: If you were a book character (outside of your own), who would you be?

• Hermione Granger. Smart, beautiful, and magic-wielding. What's not to like? (Don't tell me she's not beautiful. Have you seen Emma Watson?)
  

Marybeth Poppins asked: Can you roll your tongue? Have you ever sat on a donkey? Did it smell bad? How long have you been writing....wait that's kinda boring... If you could write a story about lamp posts knowing it would get published would you want to include your favorite street sign?

• Not really, although I can kind of fold it.
• I have never sat on a donkey, but I hope to convince my daughter to ride an elephant with me this weekend at the Topsfield Fair. I'll report back about the smell.
  
• Too many answers to the writing question! Somewhere my parents have a "novel" that I wrote in elementary school (main character had the same name as me, was smart, and had magical powers... and possibly a dragon, but I don't really remember) and I took tons of creative writing classes in high school and college, and I submitted some poems to magazines back in 2002, but I didn't start a real novel until 2005's NaNoWriMo, and I started thinking seriously about publication in 2006.
• There's an awesome photo of my husband and me on our wedding day under a lamppost with the Wall St. sign on it in NYC, so I think I'd have to write about that one.

Sierra Godfrey said: I want to know more about your novel. What's it about? What's the status of it?

• Here's my back-of-the-book summary for In Name Only (current working title):

What's in a name? Just ask Dani Kobayashi, a 26-year-old graphic artist of Irish and Russian descent who must constantly explain her Japanese surname. A designer of calling cards and other personalized stationery, Dani can tell you the origin and meaning of any name she comes across. She has an apartment in Manhattan, a career plan, and a comfortable relationship with her boyfriend. But when Dani discovers she is accidentally pregnant, she starts questioning her path in life, and ultimately learns that her identity is much more than just 13 letters.

• The novel is still at the query stage... there are still five agents who requested partial or full manuscripts who have not gotten back to me. Remember how back in July I said that I have a ninja manuscript? Remember how I said that pretty much only one agency hadn't misplaced my manuscript, probably because I sent a hard copy? Yeah, well, I recently did another round of follow-up calls, and that hard copy went missing, too. They accepted a resend by email, and promised to get back to me in a few weeks. I am trying to remain patient and zen about this.

Andrew Jack asked: where do you see yourself in five years?

• Sorry, I've been rendered temporarily stupid at the thought of my daughter eventually being 7-and-a-half years old... okay, I'm back. I don't know if this was intended to be an aspirational question (where do you hope to be?) or more realistic (where do you expect to be?) but I'll say that in 5 years I really do think that In Name Only will have been published, and I hope it will be just the first in a career of writing a novel every 1-2 years.

• I also hope that I'll have found an amazing part-time or reasonable-hours attorney position where I can continue to do the legal research and writing that I love, preferably for a cause I care about... I love writing fiction, but I also love the law, and I'd hate to give it up entirely. (I tell other litigators that I'm a research monkey at heart, and in our field that includes the writing as well.) If writing really takes off for me, maybe I'll just do pro bono work on the side for fun.

Thanks again for your questions, and I hope the answers provided you with the information you were seeking!

Now, I know that some of my favorite bloggers are not online every single Thursday (especially those of you with M-W-F posting schedules), so just in case you missed it yesterday, I'm going to let today be round two of Ask Me Anything!

Go nuts in the comments, guys, and I'll answer on Monday.