I was going to revise my short story "Cat on Duty" to submit to Cricket Magazine so that it had a young teenager in the cast, to hopefully increase its appeal for the Young Adult fiction magazine. Instead I did a minor editing job on "Nipped Red-Handed". Both stories are humorous mysteries featuring a cat named Nipper. My hope is that these Nipper mysteries become a series in a magazine and then eventually will lead to a short story collection and/or novels.

The reason I pick "Nipped Red-Handed" instead was because it already had a fourteen-year-old character. Saved time and editing agony.

This was the first submission that is going out under the name "Amanda Marie".

I still have "Swept Away" in my 'to do' folder and hope to revise it and send it out soon.

Mostly, I am just giving myself busy work to keep from dwelling on the manuscript that Avalon Books is considering.