How Much Is Enough... or Too Much?

Writing a query letter is much like walking a tightrope. You have just so much space, and falling to either side of that space can be disastrous. (And part of the problem is you don't know you've fallen until after you're already smushed on the rejection concrete below.)

Yesterday Kristen asked if Blink has any romance, since I didn't hint at it in my last pass at the cover copy. It does. I mentioned it in one of my other drafts, but I eventually elected to delete that information. Why?

As I said above, there's only so much space. You have to make a decision on each story element as to whether it's crucial enough to stick into that space. In the case of the romance angle, I decided it wasn't germane to the crux of the story. It's like the suspense angle, or the betrayal angle, or the mystery. It's there, and it adds conflict for Mary, but the real story is her journey from crawling to fighting.

The urge is there to put in a snippet about the hero. I'd also like to mention the villain, but in the scheme of things, it's enough to use the Union and not mention the man who heads it. If I had the space, I'd talk about the grandfatherly Russell who introduces her to the Order.

I could delve into Mary's search for identity, because as a 'foundling' she doesn't really know her past or her family, and it's key to discovering who she really is as an individual.

See why writing a query blurb is so damn hard? It was actually harder for this book than any other so far. There's a lot woven into those 94K words.

Anyway, I think I hit the right balance. The book is broken into three parts, and each is represented in the three paragraphs - albeit not in any encompassing way. Time will tell if I got it right or it fell off the tightrope into the abyss. I just need to hook them, so they'll want to read more.

Now I have to write the synopsis (something I neglected to do last year for my aborted query pass). There's where I can let it all hang out - in five pages or less.

Heh. Is it any wonder I'm a wee bit loony?

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Next!

And here we go again, with extra query verbiage added:

A foundling raised in a state home, Mary Jones should be a meek servant under the Union’s dictatorship. Instead, she has a tendency to wander where she shouldn’t be, and this time it’s straight into a forbidden store run by a member of a secret society—The Order and they need help. Before she can blink, they decide she’s perfect for a mission they’ve planned for decades. Now, she can either stay home where the Union Guard already has orders to kill her, or she can escape the city to search for traces of mankind outside.

If she survives long enough to return, that is.

Beyond the ravages of a long-forgotten war, she learns freeing her city means eradicating the Union—by herself, if necessary. The problem is: when she promised to free her people, she never dreamed they wouldn’t want her help.

Blink of an I is a 94,000 word speculative :or other pertinent genre: novel set in America’s distant future.

After reading :personalization:, :more personalization:. Almost four years ago, I quit the big city and my life in corporate America to write full-time in the relative solitude of tiny-town Colorado. Since then, I have five completed novels under my belt—Blink of an I being the most recent work.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

(BTW, I don't really space between paragraphs - that's a no-no - I just can't get the blog to indent text without becoming a huge pain in the hiney.)

Better?

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Hamster Wheel

Write, rewrite, edit... go back to previous draft... Edit, tweak, revise... Start over fresh... Revise, rewrite, edit, tweak...

Aarrgghh!!

Can you tell I'm trying to write the 'cover copy' portion of my new query for Blink? I feel like a friggin' hamster, running in his little wheel. Round and round. Never getting anywhere. I've been at it for two hours this morning already. Every time I think I've almost got the jist of it, I look at it and realize, something not right. It's driving me fruit-bat.

:sets hair on fire and runs down the street screaming:

Ok, not really. But that's what I feel like doing sometimes, ya know?

And it occurred to me this morning that I started this book over two years ago. For some reason I was sure I started this in '07, but no. First file date? August 2006. Yuck. I started it in August, finished the first draft in December, redrafted a couple times and then sat on it for a year. I re-redrafted it, and in January of '08 I sent out a couple queries. No nibbles. Then I got distracted again writing another book, and another book. Editing each of those, querying each of those... More Hamster Wheel activity... And finally, here I am with Blink re-written - yet again. And yet again, I'm rewriting the submission materials. First the query, then the synopsis.

Then submission.

Hamster Wheel. Run little furry guy, run.

Ever see a hamster get running so fast that when he falls, he just rides the wheel all the way around to the bottom again before either falling off or getting a fresh grip? Pretty funny stuff. Unless, of course, you're the hamster.

(Okay, so it's pretty funny even then.)

Of course, as frustrating and irritating as this writing business can sometimes be, I wouldn't trade it for any other job. And for all my occassional whining, I do love this endeavor. I just wish it was easier sometimes. Know what I mean?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have miles to go on before I sleep (considering it's only quarter after nine and I'm only really running in circles). ;o)

When I get it to a version I don't hate, I'll post it for y'all. Then you can tell me if you think it sucks or not. Maybe I'll make it an anonymous poll. LOL

Wrap up

Just a quick wrap up before I cruise off to bed. I know I took my word meters down. (Had to. The pressure was killing me.*) But I got 1200 words out on C&D tonight. Yay me.

I also sent a snail mail query off today. Just testing the waters with an agent I hadn't heard of - with a reputable agency, so no worries. We'll see if she likes RTL. If not, she might be a good one for Blink. We'll see what she has to say. Over the next few weeks, I'll be sending out others - and for other books as well.

You see, between the comments from my lovely blogpals and this book I'm reading, I got the kick I couldn't give myself. I'm going to publish. I'm going to get an agent. I will see my books in print. (And not just off my own Lexmark.)

In other news, I'll be taking the hubby's computer in for service tomorrow. Not a yay, but if it fixes the problems, it's worth the lost work time. Here's hoping Walmart has Monica McCarty's latest Hot Highlander novel. Kill two birds with one stone. ;o)

What are you up to? Any progress in what you're doing? Any good things to report? Have you read Monica's new book yet? (If you haven't read her others, they are hot hot hot - and the stories are awesome, too.)

*Kidding. I just got bored with it. They might come back later.

Good Rejections

*yawn* :blink: :blink:

I feel like Rip Van Winkle this morning. Not that I spent yesterday sleeping or anything, I just feel like I did. In fact, I probably should've, but that's a whole nother story. After the weekend writing marathon, I was just bleh. To combat the blehs, I sat on the couch and watched TV, and I read most of a book. I also played some poker, but that went badly so I'm trying not to think about it.

Now about that oxymoron of a subject...

In the midst of my bleh-defeating day, I received a rejection letter from a partial of RTL I sent back in May. And yay, it found me, since it was sent before I knew I would have to move and therefore the SASE had the old address. On the rejection scale it was a really nice letter. She said she really liked my writing, but... 1) with the economy sucking like it does, she has to be extra super selective, 2) the synopsis didn't wow her, 3) from said synopsis, the bad guys all seemed one-dimensional, and 4) she was concerned the politics of the plot would overwhelm the suspense.

I'm hanging on to the 'really liked my writing' part. I'm also cursing the economy and the people who got us in this mess. As for the synopsis thing, I'm going to have to take a look at it and see where it fell apart, because it obviously wasn't doing its job.

For instance, I really don't think my villains are one-dimensional. Sure, they're all evil (because I don't do diet evil) but each of them has many layers to their personality. Perhaps that's not quite apparent in the first few chapters, and obviously not in the synopsis, but the layers are there.

There's nothing I can do about the politics. They're integral to the plot, but IMO they don't overwhelm the suspense of the book. I purposefully wrote the novel in such a way that the politics are an undercurrent, but not the main thrust of the plot. *shrug* I guess my synopsis didn't tell that tale very well.

So anyway, I'm taking that one as a positive letter. Have to take the positives where you can. I'm also calling another RTL rejection positive (I got this one back in November from a partial sent in September). In that one, the agent said she liked the premise but she thought it was more suited to the SF market, with which she wasn't familiar. *shrug* Miss Snark always said : Query Widely. Since RTL is one of those stories that crosses genre, I was trying everyone who represented any of the three genres it touches.

Anyway, as I approach the end of the year, and the end of another novel, I'm starting to think about the query process again. I'm taking the lessons learned, and working to apply them to the next round.

Oh, and speaking of rounds... Karin Tabke is getting ready to host another First Line Contest. I think I'm entering RTL this year. Here's hoping my first lines make the cut. I could really use some good news this month.

Your turn: Any thoughts on my rejections? I'm trying to stay positive about it, but I don't want to turn into Pollyanna. Have you ever gotten a good rejection, or is the oxymoron just too much?

Happy Morning

Nothing like getting a partial request first thing in the morning. What a wonderful way to start the day. =o)

Wading Into the Ocean Again

Okay, I've only ever waded into the actual ocean once, but I'm trying to be literary here. ;o)

To put it a more straightforward way, I'm querying again. I sent out the first small batch this afternoon for Dying Embers (aka Manhunter). Keep your fingers crossed that I did everything right this time, and the agents getting it are in the right frame of mind, and they're also looking for this particular genre right now, and... Well, you probably know the drill. So many things are out of my hands that sometimes the query business drives me batty.

Like, how much to you divulge about your affinity for a particular agent before it comes off as insincere gushing? On the other hand, how little is too little? Here's hoping I hit just the right balance, and that if I didn't the blurb about the story is enough to make them forget I missed the mark on personalization. *shrug*

Truth be told, I've been querying so long, my personalized paragraphs are all beginning to sound the same. I mean, if I've queried the same agent for each of my previous books, plus this one, she's definitely heard the sentiment before. Chances are there really isn't much I can say in the presonalization that a hundred other writers haven't said before. And they always say, it's the story that counts. Right?

If that's so, then why does the personalization even matter? *shrug* I dunno why, it just does.

Some people advise that one should mention the agent's authors and how your book compares or contrasts. Other say not to do that because they probably know their authors' work better than you could anyway, and saying it's like Patterson - because you think it is - could just piss them off because they don't think you're anything like Patterson. (Or Brennan or St. Claire or Follett or... pick a name.)

Personally, I think Manhunter is a little like Patterson (but happier) and Brennan / St. Claire (with less romance) and Follett (but less harsh). Hell, I can even say I'm like Crichton, but less technical, with more suspense and less thrill. When it all boils down to it, I am myself. I think readers of suspense and romantic suspense will enjoy Manhunter.

But I'll just have to wait and see.

If you could compare your writing to any author (or authors), who would it be?

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Not Dead, Just Tired

Well, the move is 90% over. We're in the new digs, and the majority of our stuff is moved out of the old place. Had the moving sale, and did better than I expected, but there's still a ton of tidbits left to get rid of. All that's left now is one last sale to try and ditch the rest of the stuff, and then cleaning it. Yay.

Needless to say, I'm tuckered out. I'm also covered in bruises, and scrapes, and scratches, and sore muscles. :shrug: Actually it feels pretty good to get out and so something physically draining every now and again. With all my work in my head, the only part of me that gets a workout is my fingers. (And even those are sore.)

The problem is, I haven't written anything in a while and when I go for too long without writing, it's kinda of like push-starting a car. Uphill. So, I sat down and worked on my query letter for a while. It looks pretty good. After all the work I did on it before I finished the book itself, it better be. And really after all that, the only parts of the letter left to work on are the personalized parts. Since those have to be tailored to each agent, I'm can't really do much tonight. (I have a system, and it involves using my printer which isn't hooked up yet.) I should have that taken care of by tomorrow. I'll try and write tomorrow night, too - when I'm not still so bushed.

Anything interesting going on in your worlds?

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Notes From the Battle Lines

Lesson: Always check and double-check submission guidelines before you hit send.

Lesson: AgentQuery, while awesome, isn't always the most complete source of information.

Too bad I forgot those lessons this morning.

Sure, I only did it with one query letter, but it was enough. AQ had a particular agent listed as accepting only query letters via email. As the agent in question point out in her rejection letter, her agency asks for 10 pgs and a 2-pg synopsis. D'oh!

Now, this is a big huge forehead smacking moment. Almost as bad as when I misspelled an important reference in my initial query letter for this book. (If you're an agent and reading this post, I'm not usually scatterbrained, my brain just scatters every once in a while - usually at the most inopportune times.) But that wasn't the worst of it.

You see, the agent in question somehow must've completely misunderstood** the intent of my book. This person either didn't bother to read past the subject line, or she skimmed the contents, and without the additional information, mistook what the book was about. I know agents don't have a great deal of time to read each query letter, so I don't blame anyone for skimming. The solution to that would've been in the materials, if I had been smart enough to include them. With a misconception like this person must've been laboring under, I would've sent a rejection, too.

What this person said was: "I've read too many novels that are similar and just come across as preachy."

First off, since I researched Amazon looking for similar books, and came up empty on any with this angle, I was stymied about the response. (If you know of any pro-choice speculative fiction set in America after abortion has been made a capital crime, let me know.)

Second, it's hard to be preachy when there's nothing to preach. The other side of the debate usually gets sole use of preachy. I'm just telling a story about one woman trying to make her own choices in a world that wants either her pregnant or dead, the man who falls in love with her, and their fight to make everything right again. Sure, there are ideas woven into the story, but the story is the main thing. There's action, there's romance, there's suspense, and like all my stories, a happy ending* (or if not exuberantly happy, at least positive).

*sigh*

Maybe I'll just resubmit with the appropriate materials and try to remedy the misconceptions. The worst that can happen is she rejects me again.

Your turn to chime in. Do you think any books with deeper ideas are preachy? Can books be both an entertaining read and thought provoking?

*As I've said before, books with a negative, depressing, unresolved or just plain unhappy ending irritate me to no end, so I don't write them.

**Of course, it's entirely possible that she didn't misunderstand, but instead wasn't in-line with the pro-choice philosophy. In which case, it's just as well.

Query Tips and Other Helpful Stuff

Since I haven't secured an agent myself, I'm not really the most qualified person to shell out advice on this topic. I am, however, skilled in surfing the web and finding information that may or may not be helpful to my blog visitors.

The most recent awesome query tips come from Lucienne Diver (of The Knight Agency) in her post: Query Dos and Donts. Some of her suggestions seem fairly obvious, but they're there for a reason - and you don't want to be one of the people who become an example of what NOT to do.

Another interesting discussion on a big query don't (at least for Ms. Faust) is over at BookEnds in her follow-up post: Thank You For Your Time. Apparently this whole issue has drawn a shit-storm for her, but I think what it boils down to is: 1) Research each agent and follow their preferences in addition to their guidelines, 2) Don't obsess over every little word. She doesn't like being thanked for her time (at least not upfront), but she's not going drag you out and shoot you for it either. I get her point: Don't grovel. I also get Janet Reid's point: You can look forward to hearing from someone, but telling them 'soon' puts a level of expectation you don't need in your query letter and one an agent doesn't want to deal with. They'll get to you when they get to you. My experiences with Ms. Reid show that she will get back to you soon, but don't give her the impression you're standing over her shoulder tapping your foot.

Personally, my own query letter is now the best it can be. In October (I really thought it was September but the date on the letter says otherwise), I'll be looking at the four year anniversary of my first query letter (and it's subsequent rejection). I've learned a lot since that unfortunate attempt. Now, in honor of everything I've learned, and the subject of this post, I present to you the first query letter I ever wrote. It sucks... HARD. Let's look at it as a lesson in what NOT to do.

Recently I completed work on my first novel, Spectacle, and am now looking for an agent to represent me. After careful consideration and research, of the dozen or so to whom I am considering sending submissions, yours is the agency that I chose to contact first. I was especially interested in your agency after reading the interview you gave for an article in the book Agents, Editors and You. Once you read the materials I have enclosed, I believe that you will be as interested in representing my work, as I am in having your agency represent me.

Spectacle is a literary novel about fighting for the truth against popular opinion and against deliberate ignorance in a world controlled by misinformation. It is a novel about fighting and winning.

When the human race is told it has just four months to live, only Dr. Michael Montgomery has the knowledge that will save mankind—not from impending doom but from itself. A comet is hurdling towards Earth and the scientific community has issued a death sentence to the world. Dr. Montgomery, however, knows the truth about comets and he knows that the scientific community is wrong, but when he tries to make that truth known he is thwarted at every turn. It seems that Dr. Kingsley Hall has other ideas. If the truth were known, Dr. Hall would lose his chance for prestige, his chance for notoriety, and ultimately, his chance for control. While Dr. Montgomery and his allies work to make the truth public, Dr. Hall and his lackeys work to hide it from the world—as civilization slowly decays around them all.

Mr. Maass, I began writing stories twenty years ago but until recently I had neither the time nor the drive necessary to consider writing as a career. I now have both and I am committed to the achievement of this goal. In addition to Spectacle, I am currently working on my second novel and am in the planning stages for several others.

For your consideration I have embedded a synopsis of this novel as well as the first five pages, per your submission parameters. I am prepared to submit the entirety of my novel (MS Word count: approximately 137,000 words) at your request. If you require any further information, please contact me at your earliest convenience. I look forward to hearing from you.

I was actually pretty proud of this sucker. On it's face there's nothing tragically wrong with it, but that's only if you look at it from outside the industry as a standard business letter. Obviously, the first agent I queried was Donald Maass. (Sorry, Mr. Maass.) Needless to say, I didn't even get a rejection - since Mr. Maass only replies to equeries he's interested in.

Don't worry, folks, I've completely fixed these problems (including the inclination to write 137K word novels). Spectacle is now a much shorter book, and my query letters don't suck. This is a learning process. I hope that by giving you these links, and showing you my own foibles, you can learn to make your own queries that much better. And win an agent of your own.

So, if you have an agent, what advice do you have for querying writers? If you're still searching, like me, what mistakes have you learned from along the way?

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Persistence or Pestiness?

You may recall back in April I wrote a SQUEE post about a request for partial I received. Now it's been two months without a word and I'm wondering if this agent even received the email I sent her.

Oh, I know some agents take months on partials, and I'm willing to wait if I have to. But see, here's the thing... On a popular writerly forum, several people talk about her quick lead times. It seems that usually this particular person usually responds to a partial in 4-6 weeks. And I'm at 2 months.

Last year... or was it the year before?... I got a request for partial on Caldera from an agent with a stated 4 month lead time. I was patient. I waited. The four months went by with no word and I began to wonder if my partial disappeared into whatever black hole the USPS uses to lighten their bags. (Ever watch Seinfeld? Newman stowed mail in a storage garage so he wouldn't have to carry it.) After five months, I sent said agent a polite nudge via email and within a week, my SASE came back with a rejection in it.

My first thought was that somehow my submission materials got lost in a stack somewhere, and the nudge prompted her to dig out my SASE for the rejection that was waiting all along. My second thought was that my nudge pissed her off. That somehow she was sitting on the fence about my manuscript and my email pushed her over to the rejection side. (I mean, who wants to work with a pest?)

This morning I sent a polite nudge to the agent who requested a partial on RTL. We'll see what happens from this one.

The question in my mind, even as I was hitting the SEND button, is when does persistence cross the line into pestiness? If an agent has a stated lead time of 4 months, is it appropriate to send a nudge after 5 months? If an agent has no stated lead time, but other writers are saying she's gotten back to them in 4-6 weeks, is sending a note after 2 months being pesty?

Pardon me while I slip into the paranoia phase of my writing life. Yes, I know I should just chill out, but the thought of my stuff being lost somewhere in cyberspace makes it hard to relax.

PS. If you haven't seen it yet, Jessica Faust wrote a blog post about this very thing on Friday: The Art of Persistence. Scoot on over and check it out.

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Update and Other Stuff

First off, for those of you who've seen the news and know I live in Colorado, never fear. The tornadoes weren't here. Way west of here, actually. My heart goes out to everyone in Windsor. From the scuttlebutt I heard this morning (from someone who knows someone in Windsor), the city did away with their tornado sirens a couple years back, supposedly because they thought they didn't need them. While it's rare for those nasty suckers to hit more metropolitan areas, it does happen, and the sirens while not necessary 100% of the time, are absolutely necessary that small percentage. It only takes one tornado to wipe out a town. They're very lucky no one got killed. (I've haven't seen the news today, so if they found someone after last night, I'm very sorry to be wrong.) One person was killed west of Greeley, unfortunately. RVs are not the best place to hide from a tornado.

Now, with that out of the way, it occurs to me I don't really have anything else to update. If you've been reading along, you know I'm nearing the end of the first draft of Manhunter. I just have the climax and the denouement to write. I'm guessing the first draft will end up around 65-70K words, with the final product hitting 80-85K. I need to develop the characters better, and work on the romance between the MCs. I also need to address the two minor characters who could possibly end up with their own books and weave in a little more backstory to make the MCs more sympathetic. (Last night, I hit on the main thing driving the heroine, and now I need to lay a trail back through the rest of the book. I'm still working on what drives the hero, but I have a fair idea.)

Querying is going right along. Some partial requests, some rejections, some still hanging out there. It's all a waiting game. I played with the idea of reworking my query letter, but after re-reading it this morning, I still think it says what I want it to say, in the fewest words possible. Of course, the urge is always there to tweak things, but I've learned the more I give in to that urge, the more I obsess and end up changing things for the worse. So, I'll just leave it alone for now.

Like I said, if not this book, then the next one. I'll just keep writing them and submitting them until something breaks. (All the while hoping it's not me.) The other night my husband asked me: "So how many books is this now?" I said, "Six, if you count the one I never edited." He gave a good-natured little laugh. I don't remember the exact phrasing of his next question, but it was something along the lines of 'how many are you going to write?'

My answer is always: "As many as it takes."

So. What's going on in your world? Any good news to report?

Celebrate Life

Six years ago today the world lost a great man. Oh, he wasn't famous. In fact, he wasn't a man who would be considered great by the majority of the population. But that doesn't make him any less of a great man.

He was born a sickly baby in a little house in a poor suburb of Detroit, where his mother kept him in a box by the stove to keep him warm. But his beginnings aren't the most important parts of his life, they are just his beginning.

His story was never about overcoming adversity, although he did in so many ways. It was about living your life the way you choose to live it, and ending it the same way. It was about thumbing your nose at hardship, and at what other people think of you. Mostly though, it was about hard work. Lots of hard work. And some hard play.

I could tell you all about the hardships, and the glories. For instance, he was a veteran of two wars, though he never saw action in either. He was politically active, though he never ran for anything other than the school board of his city. He and his wife raised five fine children to adulthood, and then like all good parents, let them go to lead their own lives.

In 1980, the sickly baby part of his past caught up with him. After all his years of life, and all the years in the military, they finally figured out the reason behind his childhood weaknesses. His heart was deformed.

Maybe the weakness of his physical heart was what made his mental heart that much stronger.

He survived that part of his life, too. Over the years, he survived too many other maladies to name. He shrugged and took each of them as they came. "Heaven won't have me, and hell is afraid I'll take over." - the phrase fit him to a tee, and tickled him when his spirits were low. He outlived all of his siblings, and many of his friends. And when the end came, he not only chose it, he welcomed it.

A well-deserved rest for a man who had endured so much, seen so much... lived so much.

So today, in honor of this man - my father - I encourage you all to celebrate life. One of the last things my father said to me was that he was looking forward to fishing with his own father. I can imagine him somewhere with the grandfather I never met, throwing back a few beers, swapping fish stories and drowning worms. Today, get out there... Have a drink. Catch a fish. Do whatever makes you happiest to celebrate being alive. Just like he always did.

Me? I write books, and sing songs, and enjoy the birds. I'm living my life in my own way. Just like my father would've wanted.

This one's for you, Dad. I wouldn't be here without you.

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To Snail or E-query

That is the question.

Personally, I prefer the equery method. It saves time, and as much as we've moved in the last four years, it saves my SASEs from getting lost. (And as much as the USPS has changed rates, it saves the darned envelopes from being returned for insufficient postage. Bastages.)

However, some agents don't allow for equeries. There are a bunch of those I'd like to submit to, but I'm leery for the aforementioned reasons. *sigh* What to do, what to do? For now, I'll just have to hold my breath and hope for the best. My poor little SASEs will have to fly out into the great beyond and find their ways home when the time is right.

Of course, the same can be said for equeries. Since my e-mail program seems to be having problems delivering my replies to the appropriate people, I'm freaking out about whether my requested partial made it and whether emailing her to make sure it's not floating lost in cyberspace is a breach of etiquette. (Don't worry. If I don't hear from her after her typical 4-6 week lead time, I'll send her a polite note to check if the partial is indeed in her capable hands.) I'm fine with new mail, but replies are shooting off into the ether, never to be heard from again. First it was my CP, and now my niece. Gah!

So each method has its pitfalls. That's also why I put both my email addresses in my signature. I figure if they can't get my private email to me, they can catch me at my gmail address. That seems to be working fine. (If it weren't such a pain to compose mail there, I'd have sent everything out through that addy to begin with, but cutting and pasting into gmail changes the layout, and what a PITA. I'm all about ease of use.)

I really do understand why some folks don't accept e-mail queries. For one thing, they're too easy. No printing, no line at the post office, no paying the every-increasing postage rates. And too easy means anyone can shoot off a query without having to think about it too hard. Which also means even those people who really shouldn't be querying are sending out queries, flooding the poor agents with loads of poorly worded, misspelled and just basically unprofessional queries. I might quit accepting them, too, if I were faced with the flood. (It also makes it so much easier for rejected writers to reply with more vitriol than is either proper or necessary - like this letter some moron sent to a friend of agent Colleen Lindsay. Sheesh.)

However, some of us poor wretches need email. Sure, I'd like to own a house, have a concrete foundation underneath me for years at a time, but my life doesn't work that way right now. (Personally, I'd like about 100 acres with a lake and trees and cute furry critters that will learn to eat out of my hand, but wish in one hand, if you know what I mean.) No matter where I live, though, my email follows me around. If not my private addy, then my gmail is forever.

On the other hand, some agents who accept e-mail as well as snail have different guidelines for each. Often you can shoot more pages with a snail query than with an equery. More pages is always good, right? Of course it is. I'd love to print off fifty pages and send them out today to an agent who just informed me they stopped taking equeries and invited me to resubmit via snail*. But it isn't always prudent to do so. (See above reasons, and feel the fear of orphaned envelopes.)

*heavy sigh* I guess I'll just keeping doing it both ways, and hoping for the best. Right now, though, the equeries go out first, and the hardcopies will follow at a later date. As much as I love my computer, sometimes there are things it just can't do.

What's your mode of preference? Do you snail or e-query?

*Don't worry, I'm getting the packet together to send out tomorrow.

Dis, Dat and De Udder Ting

My tenth days don't last nearly as long as they used to, thank goodness. At first, they lasted months. I got over this most recent one in 24 hours. Yay.

Last night I got out 1800 words again. It seems to be a pattern with me and this book. 1800 words and I'm spent. Of course, it might have to do with the fact that I start writing at 8pm and by the time I get those 1800 out, I'm ready for bed. (Yes, folks, if that means 90 minutes of writing, I'm in bed by 9:30ish. I'm a night writer, not a night owl.)

In other news, I got some lovely link-love from my blog-buddy JenWriter when she listed the best places to find agent info and listed my post Agent Sites, Blogs, Etc. (ETA 3:44pm: I just finished updating it) as one of them. I'm glad someone is finding that post useful besides me. I really did put it up so other writers could have one page of links to traipse through. Plus, when I want to visit a site, I no longer have to wade through my favorites folder. I just go there, find the alphabetical listing and I'm looking at the site.

On my own query front, I thought about putting my stats on the blog somewhere, but decided against it. Why advertise a rejection rate? It just puts up a big sign that says: My work failed with x-number of agents. Any agent researching me is just going to be turned off, no matter what those rejections ultimately meant. (And in this case, it says more about the subject matter of the book than the quality of the writing itself. I knew going in that this was going to be a touchy subject, and I'll take my chances with it.) So, while I have been submitting, I won't be sharing the results of those submissions. Let's just say, I've had two requests for partials, and leave it at that.

A vulture just flew over my house. I wonder if that has any hidden meaning. Which reminds me, for a fun look at superstitions, read Deborah LeBlanc's post over at Murder She Writes. Stop by and contribute some superstitions you've heard about.

Now for the question of the day... Notice the subject of this post is written in dialect. As a reader, how do you feel about reading dialects in novels? Do they irritate you, or do they help you get a sense of the character? Or if the author gets the dialect wrong, do you just want to throw the book against the wall?

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The Plan is Coming Together

In the words of "Hannibal" - I love it when a plan comes together. (For those of you who didn't live through the 80's, Hannibal was the leader of The A-Team. He was a cigar chomping, balls to the wall, kick ass kind of guy.)

Last night I managed to get the scene written, and it's the key to a major plot point. I had a general idea how it was going to work in my head, but it came together so much better than I planned. It also flowed like water from a burst dam, and I wrote almost 2K words in 90 minutes.

The villian is deliciously demented with a side of sympathetic (a very small side of sympathetic). Readers should be able to see where she's coming from, understand what's driving her, and still have their skin crawl.

Anyway, this is a good one. It should sell well, and it's fun to write. Looks like I got over my previous thing about writing on it every day. I'll admit, it's still draining to write - something about the action it the book sucks the energy right out of me - but I'm forging ahead regardless. I'll just have to make sure I recharge my batteries at some point during the day, so I can keep this up.

And... I need to send a batch of queries out today. I've got it so I send out a few at a time with about a week between. It takes longer than sending them all out at once, but it gives me a chance to tweak my materials in between, if need be. *shrug* Try new things and see what happens. Or to use the old standby quote "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten."

What's new in your world?

Mistakes Are OK

Agent Janet Reid has an awesome post I think my fellow writers should check out:

Make More Mistakes Not Fewer

Which is good considering how badly I screwed up in my query to her. Learn from my mistakes, folks. I know I did.

Biting the Bullet

After yesterday's grousing, I sat down to write the little bio paragraph. (Everybody deserves a little PAM* session every once in a while.) It's not award-winning prose, but I think it gives a good impression of who I am, while not sounding like I'm handing out buffalo bagels or sleeping pills.

I also think I have a fairly good synopsis - finally. So, ready or not... Here I come. ;o)

Wheeeeeeee!

How are things in your world today?


*Pissing And Moaning

Some Info About Yourself

Or, in other words, a bio. :shudder:

The only thing I hate worse than a synopsis is when agents ask me to put some info about myself in my query letter. Not that I don't like to talk about myself. I'm great. My life just isn't all that pertinent to my books, and aren't we supposed to be putting only pertinent info in our query letters?

Part of it is that I haven't sold a damn thing yet. (Mostly from lack of trying, I like to think.) I have a half dozen shorts that I think are publishable, but other than a handful of lit journals, they aren't really out there. I have four completed (as in through all the editing levels) novels and one novel I've written all the way to THE END that I haven't finished editing yet (because newer, zippier ideas keep pushing it aside). Of the four finished books, I've only really queried for the first two, and frankly, I didn't know what the hell I was doing at the time. I sent out five queries for the third book, and then stopped because the fourth book was demanding my time and effort. Now I'm beginning the query process for #4. (Hence, the four years, five books and nothing published thing - but let's leave all that for another post, eh?) Can you tell I'd rather write than query?

The point here is: What the hell do I put in a paragraph about myself that will make the agent in question think I'm the bee's knees?

Don't get me wrong. When I first jumped into the fray for Spectacle, I talked about myself. And then as I learned about the business, I learned I was saying all the wrong things. Read the net and you'll find instance after instance where the agent doesn't really care when you say you're committed to the process (everyone says it, and not everyone means it). They aren't really interested in the fact that you've spent your life teaching yourself everything you can about anything that interests you. And any writing you did for any corporation you worked for doesn't really count for selling a novel because that isn't fiction.

From what I understand, you can say you spend x-number of hours writing every day, and studying the industry, and perfecting your craft, but so does everyone else, and we come back to the point that not everyone means it. If you say it, are you going to sound like you're peddling another cartload of buffalo bagels - even when it's the truth?

Of course, it helps if you have a platform. But how many homeschooling, ex-salesmen, former boozehound books are gracing the shelves these days? I don't write about my life. I write about other people's lives, and for the same reason I wouldn't read a book about my life (except for the whole brain-damage memoir thing, which is still floating in the back of my head with a dozen other ideas).

Let's face it, folks. Right now, I live in the middle of nowhere, and my life is rather bland. I like it this way because it minimizes distractions and helps me focus better on my work. But it doesn't help sell my books. On paper, I look like a hermit or a hayseed. Looking at me now, you wouldn't see the high-powered sales meetings held in the suites at the top of the Las Vegas Hilton. (Some day, remind me to tell you the story of the green semi-formal suit and how it got me more attention than any sales executive wants.) Listening to me talk about my life here in BFE couldn't possibly show how I inherited my gift of gab from my father or my ability to blend into any situation from my mother. Nothing I could tell in a query letter would show you who I am, and what having me in your stable of talent would do for your agency.

Put me in a book signing, and I'll show you who I am. Get me a gig on CSPAN's BookTV, and you'll see what I can do. (Which reminds me, I've also been on TV before, so it's no biggie. True, it was public television, and I was 17, so if the cameras didn't freak me out then, they won't freak me out now.)

But please don't ask me for a paragraph about myself in a query letter. I'll come off flat, and you'll walk away bored - and then we'll both miss out on a wonderful opportunity. For now, let's forget about the chick behind the writing and concentrate on the writing itself. Trust me, if you like the manuscript, you'll love her.

So the question today is: If you don't have publishing credits or an MFA or a platform, just what do you put in your 'some info' paragraph?

(And before anyone says it, I've thought about using the whole 'brain damaged author' thing, and dismissed it. I'd rather not be defined by what I've overcome, and it's not pertinent to anything but the memoirs I may or may not ever write.)

Progress Report

I don't have too much to report on at the moment. It's been one of those weeks. You know how sometimes you don't feel good, but you don't really feel sick either - just... I don't know... off? That's been this week.

Nonetheless, I did get started on my new book, and it is making progress. (Not quite the progress RTL made, but not every book can be written in 6 weeks.) This new book will be a suspense novel. I haven't decided if I'm going to throw a romance in with the suspense, but right now, it's not looking like there'll be a love interest for my MC. She's not striking me as a woman who will tolerate a distraction in her life right now. We'll see if that shifts as I get to know her better.

The villian is coming together nicely. I'm striking out into a less populated area in the realm of serial killers and focusing on a female murderer (they do happen every now and then), because as Kipling put it so well "The female of the species is deadlier than the male." She's kind of a trophy wife gone mad. So far, it's fun to write. Also, I sent the first pages off to my CP and she proclaimed it 'fierce'.

Other than that, I've restarted the query process with a newer, tighter blurb. (If you want to see it, let me know.) Just a few queries at a time, to test the waters. I know RTL is highly publishable and should make some nice sales, so if I don't get some interest right off the bat, I'll revise my query letter - as many times as it takes until I get it right and get an agent.

On the home front, my blanket is also coming along nicely (even though I ditched the blanket-meter). I finished the first seven strips, sewed them together and started on the next set of the pattern. So far, so good. And so warm. As I was sewing the strips together, my lap started to overheat. LOL The blanket is all in cream and rose with a strip of light sage for pizzazz. (I'd offer them for sale, but at the amount of time I put into one of these things, I don't know if I could recoup that financially.)

So, what's up in your world?