Don't Quit Your Day Dream
An update on my writing journey
On June 7th I started querying Meet Me At The Loch. Parker Peevyhouse looked over the opening pages and enjoyed them. She made a few suggestion which I changed. The query letter was looked over by Gina Denny The manuscript itself had several rounds of beta reader feedback. I have received nothing but rejections. Something clearly isn’t working.
What really gets me is when I was a teeny tiny baby writer (2022), I wrote a cozy mystery where a yoga teacher was the protagonist called Murder Under the Half Moon.
After querying maybe twenty agents and a handful of small presses, I received three full requests and an offer to publish that I ultimately decided wasn’t right for me.
I wrote another cozy mystery set in a nineties video store called Dead and Confused, then changed to Murder, She Rented. The Shit No One Tells You About Writing reviewed the query letter and opening pages. Cece Lyra literally said “A Plus.” I died. On The Thriller 101 podcast agent Emmy Nordstrom selected my submission to review. If you haven’t listened to that one Emmy goes over the three things she looks for in opening pages. It’s great insight into an agent’s brain. That manuscript got even more full requests, but no takers.
So, what is going on? Is it the difference of a couple years? Is the romance genre much more crowded? Does my writing voice work better in mystery than romance? Help!
I’ve included the first five pages of Meet Me At The Loch below. Look it over and let me know what you think. I’ve rewritten the opening pages so many times I have no perspective at this point. I’d love your thoughts. Honestly, I feel a little lost.
Things that have brought me joy:
My friend Nettie’s rollerskating birthday party (see first picture). Unhinged Pit on X. It was seriously such silly fun. Puppet shows put on by Thistle Theater with my sister and daughter. Summer.
What I’m reading:
Currently reading and enjoying The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley. I just finished Swan Song by Elin Hilderbrand and Summer Romance by Annabelle Monaghan, both of which I loved!
What I’m watching:
Presumed Innocent on Apple TV. It’s so good!
The First Ten Pages of Meet Me At The Loch
Chapter One
Skye
I’ll be the first to admit this castle can be a lonely place. Growing up an only child, I often imagined people filling the halls, but they were never quite so nosy. In the fantasy, they just hung on my every word, enjoyed my company, more interested in me than these old stone walls.
A little tug on my sweater stops me, and the group stops too.
“So, are you a princess?” The little girl with blonde ringlets asks me for about the fifth time before wiping her nose on her shirt sleeve. “Like Merida in Brave? Are you Merida?”
Her little face is so earnest I swallow my laugh. “No, I’m Skye Ainsle.”
The little girl squints her eyes. “Are you sure? You look a lot like her.”
Her mother, with matching blonde hair, hands her a tissue. “Is your family Scottish royalty?”
I shake my head, wrapping my sweater closer around my torso. It’s only early September but a chill is seeping in through the cracks in ceiling.
“How do you live in a castle, then?”
Not wanting this tor to take any longer then it needs to, I keep leading the group through the hall. “The answer varies depending on who you ask, but the one I believe is that my,” I tick these off on my fingers to get the number right, “great-great-great-great grandfather Maxwell Ainsle won the castle from the Mortimers in a card game. Loch Ness Castle has been in the Ainsle family ever since.”
I walk past the library I use as my writing room, wanting to keep my private spaces for myself.
“The joke was on Great-great-great-great grandad, though. The castle was in such disrepair it was hardly livable and stayed that way for generations. My grandmother did a ton of the renovations and moved her family in. Then my mother continued the work after she and my father married.” I run my hand along the wall, the stone rough under my fingertips. “This hallway used to be covered in cement. She spent an entire summer chipping away at it to reveal the original stone.”
We head to the staircase and one of the guests points to the right. “What’s down that hall?”
“It’s just our private bed rooms. We still live here.”
The man with greasy hair and sensible sneakers thrusts his shoulders back. “But this is a tour. We should get to see.”
Forcing a smile on my face, I say, “There’s plenty more to see, don’t worry.”
My phone vibrates in my pocket, but I ignore it to continue the tour. We head down the stairs to the kitchen, then through the main dining room, always an impressive stop with the carved wooden fireplace, hunting trophies on the wall and an enormous chandelier made from elk antlers. Next stop is the library on the main floor, what was my mom’s favorite room.
I open the heavy wooden door to the warm smell of fires in the hearth, slightly dusty books, and the whisky-ginger candle I light before every tour.
My group walks around checking out the carved plaster ceiling, the shelves of heavy leather bound books, and that’s when I notice the group is smaller than it was a moment ago. The man that asked me about the rooms upstairs is missing. My pulse pounds like a war drum on the side of my throat, my cheeks hot. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
Running up the stairs, I head straight for the hall to the right. I peek through every open doorway with no luck. As I get closer, I see my bedroom door at the end of the hall is open. I’m almost positive I closed it. I take a deep breath. I will not yell at the paying guest. I will not yell at the paying guest. Think of the online reviews. We need this income. I will simply ask him to rejoin the group.
Inside my room, standing next to my dresser, is the greasy haired man, his grubby hands holding my green satin bra. A scoff comes out of my mouth. It is unbelievable.
The man drops the bra. “It was on the floor, I was just putting it away.”
“Out!” All my well intentioned plans are out the window. “Get out!”
I stand aside and the man storms past me. “We are paying a pretty penny for this. We should get the whole tour.”
“The whole tour does not include my pants drawer, sir!” I yell after him as he walks down the stairs and thankfully out the front entrance.
I run my hands over my face, my fingers cool against my flushed cheeks. I’ll show the rest of the group the grounds and then conclude the tour. We’ll skip the ballroom: I haven’t fixed the broken tiles in the corner anyway.
The first thing I notice as I enter the library is one of the older guests has helped himself to a whiskey. I sigh. It could be worse. Then I see that is in fact much worse, the blonde woman is thumbing through an ancient edition of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, licking her finger each time she turns a page.
I’m about to take it from her hands when a crack stops me in my tracks. A man is holding a record sleeve, the record itself shattered into hundreds of pieces at his feet. My face feels numb as I take the sleeve from his hands. Turning it around to see which album it is. Please don’t let it be hers, please.
It’s the Rolling Stones “Sticky Fingers.” Relief washes over me. One of my favorites, but mercifully not one of mom’s.
“That concludes our tour.”
There are a few groans, and no movement to leave.
“Thank you so much for coming.” Again, not one person moves. The older gentleman still sipping on our whiskey.
“Everyone needs to leave. Now!”
The group shuffles out the door. With mutters of “money back” and we should’ve gone to Urquhart Castle. Once I am alone again it hits me what I’ve done. I can practically read the Yelp reviews now.
Dad’s at a ‘business meeting’ whatever that means. I’ll tell him in the morning. Today I’m done. I take a long bubble bath in our claw foot tub with a glass of wine and head for bed.
#
I’m up before the sun the next morning, as is my practice. Every morning, I rise in the wee hours and in my night gown and crushed velvet paisley patterned robe that I think makes me look extremely bohemian. I go to the east wing where I’ve made one of the small libraries—yes, we have more than one— into my writing studio. Beyond the shelves and shelves of books there are a large green sofa and a red leather wingback chair next to arched stone fireplace. In the corner of the room, there is a baby grand piano that used to be my mother’s. When I was little, she taught me how to play, starting with “Frere Jaques” and as my skills progressed, moving onto “Claire De Lune.”
Lately, I dread my morning ritual. Most days I have to drag myself here and then I sit in front of an empty screen and feel just as vacuous as it is. Occasionally, I’ll put myself out of my misery and practice the piano, at least some keys being pressed that morning, but not the ones I hoped.
First, I start a fire in the hearth. Second order of business, coffee. After filling the back pitcher of the Keurig with water, I wait patiently for the sweet aroma of coffee to fill the room. Thankful I had the bright idea to ask for one of these machines for my birthday to counteract my laziness of traveling to the kitchen, I bring the fresh coffee to my lips and take in the earthy aroma of the grounds.
Next to the window that looks behind the estate, I have set up my writing desk. The field below is black, silhouetted against the midnight blue of the sky. The sun still won’t rise for another hour or so. This is my favorite time to write. Just me and the faeries. It feels like using stolen time. I used to be extremely productive during this time of day. Used to be.
Last step in my ritual, I light my candle and shove the negative thoughts out of my brain. I will only entertain thoughts about my character and plot during this time. My blue tweed chair squeaks as I sit and open my laptop, diving right into the murder mystery novel I’ve been working on. My plucky protagonist just stumbled upon a body by the Loch.
Drip, Drip, Drip.
The drips aren’t fictional. I shift my focus from my laptop screen, my murder mystery once again failing to progress past the discovery of the first body. Cold, bulbous water droplets are sneaking in through the holes in the ceiling and onto my laptop screen. I wipe them off with the sleeve of my robe and move before any real damage can come to my precious computer. There’s no way I can afford a new one.
Moving by the fire and try to write more on Murder at the Loch, I’m distracted. What must it have been like to live in this castle in its heyday? When it felt like a luxury, instead of a duty. Before it started to literally crumble into the ground? No one in my family would know.
I sigh and try to bring my focus back on my manuscript. In February, there’s a manuscript contest in Edinburgh. The prize is ten thousand pounds, not a fortune but enough to cover the immediate repairs the castle demands to not sink into the loch. I need a completed, polished manuscript by then and so far I have a chapter and a half.
A few lines come to me and I type them off before remembering the text I ignored last night. I pull out my phone. It’s from Dad. I open it to find a link to a You Heard it First article. That’s weird. I didn’t even know Dad knew about YHF. He’s not really a film buff, or interested in celebrity gossip.
Miles Casey Headed for Scotland
Miles Casey’s career isn’t over yet. Hollywood heart throb and most recently the star of the box office flop Clean Up Hitter, featuring him as washed up pitcher and John Travolta as a talking baseball was recently spotted at Paris International Airport waiting on a flight to Scotland, in a kilt no less.
Sources close to Casey tell YHF he’s been preparing for the starring role in the latest Natalie Rodriguez film at his L.A. Bungalow. This role as a Scottish recluse is a departure from his recent family friendly and arguably terrible films back to a film with what our source called, “substance.” He’s been hitting the gym in order to—
A loud crack startles me and I run to find its source. A chunk of ceiling fell in the hall, rain lashing in. My slippers smack against the stone floors, as I hurry to the room we keep supplies and haul the ladder out first, struggling with the heft of it. Next, I cut off a bit of tarp, grab the tools and patch up the gaping hole as best I can, my stomach dropping with every teeter from the extremely tall ladder. It’s just my father and I taking care of the place, and while I heard him come home a bit ago, seeing his large frame up on this ladder makes me more nervous than the wobbles when I’m up here. So, I take a deep breath and move to the leaks above my desk, tying up a bit of tarp over those too.
Light is just starting to peak up over the hills. The Highlands are waking up and with them the chickens will want their feed. It’s time for my morning chores. The body in the loch will have to wait, again. Poor girl’s probably water-logged by now.
Making my way down to the kitchen, I find my father already bustling around, humming Ally Bally Bee. Putting a hand on his shoulder, I move past him to make the coffee.
I take a deep breath. “The tour didn’t go so well last night. Honestly, dad, I’m done with strangers wandering around our house. It’s crazy, and it’s not bringing in enough money to really fix anything. A hunk of roof fell down in the long hall off the library upstairs.”
“Nah. Another one?”
I nod.
“Pet,” my dad says apprehensively. Which freezes me to my spot. Dad is never apprehensive about anything. He’s more the jump in head first and figure it out when you land kind of guy. We have a lot in common in that way. “Did you get my text?”
“Yep.” I have no idea why he sent it though. When I was younger, I had a massive crush on Miles Casey, but he hasn’t teased me about it in nearly a decade.
“I think I have a solution to some of our financial troubles. Do you remember mom’s friend Anita, from the States?”
“Mom had a ton of friends from all over—“
“That she did.” Dad smile is warm and wide. “That she did. This was the actress, with the daughter just a bit older than you. They came to visit, gah, how old were ye? Must’ve been three.”
I shake my head. “I don’t remember dad.”
“Right well her daughter, Natalie reached out to me.”
My jaw clenches tight.
“She’s making a movie set here in the Highlands. Miles Casey is the star. Very big movie. Nice people.”
My teeth grind against one another.
“She’s looking for a castle near Loch Ness to film.”
Every muscle in my body feels tight.
“So, they’re going to film here. At Dun Loch Ness. It starts in two weeks.”
Heat flushes through my limbs. I’m dumbstruck. A movie, filming in our home—starring Miles Casey, no less.
“What about the tourism board? Will they allow it? You have to get permits—“
Dad’s neck is red. “There was a meeting last night. Vote was unanimous. They're all on board.”
“You took it to a meeting before talking to me about?”
Dad sighs. “Didn’t want to get your hopes up if they turned it down.”
I laugh, but it’s brittle. “Hopes? You think I want all these strangers to traipse around our home? Where are they supposed to sleep?”
“Pet. It’s a castle. We have more than enough room. That’s part of the problem as you well know. They’re staying here and they’ll be paying a pretty penny for it. Don’t worry.”
I shake my head. Miles Casey’s going to stay in our home. I must’ve seen Undercover Quarterback a billion times. Miles made my heart race, much like it is now. He has these dark eyes. They twinkle when he laughs and simmer when he looks at the love interest in the movie. Even remembering how he looked at her sends tingles all the way to my toes. I went down the full rabbit hole and read every magazine article about him I could get my hands on. Not only was he smoking hot, but he also volunteered at beach clean-ups and made regular visits to children’s hospitals.
I sip my coffee and tell myself to pull it together. It’s been over twenty years since I was that little girl with a crush. And despite my bodies reaction to the thought of being in close proximity with Miles Casey, I don’t want to host a film production in our home. Who knows what hours they will keep, with their lights and camera and action. What if they want to shoot in my library? There has to be another way. “I wish you had discussed this with me before agreeing to it. They're going to turn our home into a circus. What would mom have said?”
My father sighs and guilt slicks my stomach. I shouldn’t have gone there. “She would’ve understood there’s no other way to keep the lights on.”
I don’t meet Dad’s gaze, knowing full well he’s right.
“Maybe they’ll bring more of their Hollywood people and shoot more movies here. It could be a significant source of income for the future too.”
I put down my coffee and stride toward the doorway, shrugging on my jacket. My father follows me.
“It might be fun even,” Dad reaches out to brush a lock of hair out of my face. I put on a woolly hat trying to tame the mass of auburn curls and to show him I don’t need his help. “New faces, fresh perspectives. You’ll see pet.”
I bite my tongue, slip out of my fuzzy velvet slippers, into my wellies and out the door.