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Posing As Normal© The Humor of Mary Tompsett |
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My First Novel
........Imagine Tina Fey saddled up in the Horse Whisperer, or Ellen DeGeneres mucking stalls in Black Beauty. Holy hippophilia!! My first novel, WHINNY FROM THE HEART, has hit the cyber bookshelves! The Story: Kitt Burnett is a wisecracking 35-year-old who loses everything in a Boston fire and returns to the Midwest. Resurrecting her childhood love of horses, she takes work at a resort stable. But unlike typically savvy equine heroines, Kitt quickly tumbles off the edge of her naïve, book-based knowledge. She wrestles with unfamiliar saddles, and flounders through the “good ol’ boy” dynamics at the resort. Over the summer Kitt befriends a vulnerable teen, falls for the local farrier, and tangles with a predatory co-worker. The novel should appeal to those who enjoy reading stories of adventure and humor. I believe it will also resonate with many horse lovers—whether their horses are out munching on fence posts or collecting dust on a curio shelf. My Horses: “Paper or plastic” refer not only to grocery bags but also to the horses I had while growing up. Later, the parade of unrelated occupations I call a “work history” included repeated horsey ventures that yielded no prestige but invaluable stall-cleaning expertise. Eventually I became a farrier and horse owner, and continued painting my fingernails to hide the dirt. The Writing: I wrote the first draft of WHINNY FROM THE HEART from 1995 to 1998 before and after my job as a secretary. Then I set it aside while muddling through a series of life changes, and later slogged through umpteen revisions and professional editing. Now, thanks to the emergence of e-readers open to unpublished authors, I can stop stalking agents! Where to Buy: Barnes & Noble sells Whinny from the Heart as an e-book and offers a free download of the NOOK e-reader application directly to one’s computer, laptop, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or BlackBerry. Customers who desire convenient reading on the go can also purchase B&N’s hand-held NOOK reading device. Big Thanks to Chris Roerden (www.marketsavvybookediting.com) for her outstanding editing and practical advice, which helped transform a raw manuscript (100 pages too long) into a polished, marketable novel. More Thankses to my sister Pat for the cover photo. With any luck, my book and her butt will be widely known. *Note: People don’t have to buy the $149 NOOK reader from Barnes & Noble unless they really want the small handheld device. They can get a free download of the e-reader application from the B&N website directly to their PC or Mac computer or laptop. Then they can browse, sample, and buy from all the e-titles available. |