Angele McQuade.com the online home of author angele mcquade

Way back in 2002, after publishing a couple of non-fiction books and a ton of magazine articles, I thought, "Hey, writing a novel couldn't be so tough, right?"

Um, yeah. I finally finished Novel #1 in May 2004 then promptly shoved it into the storage box it deserved. Novel #2 was a lot more fun, especially once I realized I wanted to write for kids and teens, not grownups. Sadly, even that realization couldn't make me much better at fiction, so when I finished that YA it got banished to The Box, too.

I wrote the first draft of book #3 - a middle-grade novel about a 13 year old girl with an ailing grandmother and a seriously great idea for getting other kids to do good deeds- for NaNoWriMo 2006. When I started revising in late 2007 (a pesky move from NY to FL getting in the way of a more timely edit), I realized my main character was actually a boy --Gib-- and that his story was a lot more complex than I'd first thought.

I finally finished those revisions in mid-2008 and sent the book off to a trusted writer friend. As any true friend will do, she pointed out a few sticky issues I'd really hoped were just a figment of my own inner critic. They weren't, though, and though this amazing friend's suggestions meant I'd need to start over from page one, I knew that's what I needed to do to tell Gib's story the right way.

And so I did - tossed the whole thing out (including the sick grandma) and wrotewrotewrote for many months (okay, more like a year) until...tada! A new book. I'm claiming it as Novel #4, that's how different it is. I gave it a new title, too: The Alexander Hamilton Project.

I sent it off to my writer friend and my two new critique partners and my heart got all fluttery when they all said they loved it since I really loved it, too. It was finally time to send it out into the world.

Then the very same week I was going to start querying agents, I went to a writing conference and received a thoughtful, insightful and thoroughly spot-on manuscript critique from a superstar editor who really liked what I'd written but suggested raising the stakes even higher.

Insert big sigh here. Though I was more than ready to move on to the new YA project I'd been thinking about for months, deep down I knew she was right. And so now here I sit, mid-May 2010, in the middle of yet another revision. But I can see the end approaching, an end I'm hoping will in time mean a new beginning in my almost decade-long quest to leap from non-fictionista to novelist.

And I just keep writing...