The 14th is this Saturday. Luis and I always do something a little special since we first started dating—and got married—on a 14th. I wanted to come to D.C. this time and explore the redesigned Air & Space Museum. But the Mall is going to be full of people and all kinds of militaristic stuff I don’t want to be around. 😞 So we’ll save that for another time (possibly another 14th) and go get pizza and books instead.
We went with his family to another fun escape room in D.C. last weekend. My main mode when I do those things is finding all of the useful parts and giving them to others to actually solve, haha. When a room is open, I look all around for puzzle pieces, flashlights, etc that will aid in getting out of the room. I’m pretty good at doing it quickly. The other day, I opened a combination on a door flap. That felt special.
Luis and I are working on designing a Haunted Mansion escape room in our house. I’m so excited, because—as you know by now, I’m sure—The Haunted Mansion is my favorite Disney anything. He’s been asking for my input and we’ve been using a lot of our stuff to create a fun story. Last year’s Batman escape room was a real hit, so hopefully this one will be, too. Luis even creates videos for them! One of our friends asked who made the Batman one and was amazed that he did. We could start a small business, performing home escape rooms, but it would be complicated because we’d have to go to people’s houses, like birthday clowns or magicians or something. I wonder if that’s already a thing.
Since I’m working on retooling my Nerdfighter novel, I’ve been paying more attention to similar books again. One tough thing in the whole query-writing saga is finding good comp titles. They’re supposed to not be too old or too famous, and they don’t have to be extremely similar to your plot or your characters. They’re mainly meant to have some similar themes or even just evoke similar feelings when you read them, so they give literary agents some good examples of how your book would do in the market.
I read the other day that a comp title can be older than five years as long as the author is still releasing books. I think I’m going to hold the internet to that, because I found a great comp that’s from 2021 and the author has released several books since then. The story in this one just happens to fit my novel the best.
Luis and I will be looking at books on Saturday, though, so who knows? I may come home with a brand new perfect comp title instead.
Sara Mazariegos 