Enjoy your summer, writers!

Now, there is a happy ending — Community is coming back next year, at least for 13 episodes. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a season finale that neatly tied up so many plot lines, taking our favorite characters somewhere we wanted to see them go, even if there wasn’t a “happily ever after” moment.

And because it’s what I do, I couldn’t help but think about books. Specifically, about book series.

In advising writers how to frame their queries, we agents always tell you to pitch one book, not a series. But we KNOW you very often do see sequels and more when you’re framing out a story. So the thing to be aware of, if you want to do that, is that you do have to give your readers (or viewers) a sense of closure. You have to give them some sort of conclusion in book one that feels satisfying, even if you’re not tying everything up in a neat little bow.

So maybe that’s getting your two romantic leads happily together, while still leaving the big bad out there menacing places unknown, or giving the kid who never had any friends before a bunch of them to work with to destroy the evil corporation, and hope maybe love comes in book two. Your call.

What you DON’T want to do, though, is leave a giant cliffhanger ending dangling. Take a show like Alcatraz, with giant mysteries like time travel and weird blood and stuff. They asked so many questions in the first season, and answered so few, that they left even their interested fans (who dwindled in number each week) completely unsatisfied. Don’t do that.

(The only time you can sometimes get away with a cliffhanger is in an established series that you know has been picked up, or where the creator has one more big season planned before the ultimate finale. I’m thinking of shows like Lost, or in books like Catching Fire. But even then, haters will hate.)

Does that makes sense? And what are some of your favorite season finales?

Mwowr.

So just what WILL I be doing this summer? Spending some time reading partials and fulls I’ve already requested, or those that come in between now and the end of the month, as well as client material. I’d also love to get back to blogging more regularly, including reinstating my weekly About My Query posts. I’m also doing a lot of traveling, to BEA, Comic-Con, and Leaky Con, not to mention hoping to find some time with my family.

I’ll put up another reminder as we get closer to Memorial Day, but for those of you that are close to ready to query, consider this your two-week warning.

Rejection happens to agents, when we fall in love with a manuscript only to find the author already has multiple offers of representation, and chooses to go with someone else.

Rejection happens to editors, who jump through all the hoops of their internal acquisitions process to put together an offer, only to fall short in an auction, or see the author go with someone else for whatever reason.

Rejection happens to all of us. And it may be worth bearing in mind all along the road towards publication.

Susan Adrian is an author of young adult books of all shapes and sizes. In the past she worked in the fields of exotic pet-sitting, clothes-schlepping, and bookstore management, and has settled in, mostly, as a scientific editor. She currently lives in the wilds of Montana with her family, and keeps busy by learning Russian, eating chocolate, and writing more books. You can visit her website at http://susanadrian.blogspot.com or follow her on Twitter @susan_adrian. Check out her guest blog on Stacked, “So You Want To Read YA?”:

So you’re an adult—even a thirty- or forty-something credit card-carrying adult—and you’ve heard about this Hunger Games thing. Maybe you even tried those books, and you thought they were pretty (darn) impressive. More real, vivid, and intense than the books you’ve been reading. Different. You wander into the crowded young adult section, ready to sample something else.

And then you hide your face and walk quickly the other way, because (a) there are so many choices, and so many of them have vampires or headless teens or dead girls in dresses, and (b) there are actual teens there, and that’s just all kinds of scary. Yikes.

Alexandra Duncan, meanwhile, is a librarian by day and writer by night. Her debut novel, SALVAGE, is coming in 2013 from Greenwillow/HarperCollins. She’s also the newest member of the Friday the Thirteeners group blog, and will be tackling a Truth or Dare on their blog on May 1st!

Finally, judging from her web hits, you may know Krista Van Dolzer and her blog Mother. Write. (Repeat.) even better than you know me, but for you newcomers to the party, check out this great interview with her on Amy L. Sonnichsen’s site.

Enjoy!

So, first of all, there’s this blog. Semi-regular posts, with the handy ability for threaded comments for our interaction.

You can also follow me on Twitter, which allows you a chance to see cute pictures of my kids and my thoughts on all sorts of things, not just publishing. I post there a lot.

If you’re a Facebook kind of person, please like my Daphne Unfeasible page. I often cross-post links to my blog entries there, as well as comments on industry and client news. (While I do also have a personal Facebook page that you might stumble upon, please note that I only accept friend requests from folks I have meet in person, work with regularly, and/or actively consider “friends”.)

Are you on GoodReads? Me too! But again, I only accept friend requests from clients and folks I know personally. And honestly I only use it to track what books I’ve read, not titles I’m looking forward to reading. And I don’t post reviews.

If you love pictures of shoes, check out my Tumblr. Not the most frequently updated thing, and probably the least to do with books.

I have a couple of other homes on the internet (like, 4 more), but those are my public, vaguely book-related ones. And I think that’s enough! What about you? How many homes do you have online?

1. Pass. Contemporary MG. Interesting concept, but weak writing, plus a number of grammatical mistakes.
2. Pass. YA paranormal (I think. It’s unclear.) Another interesting concept, and a great opening paragraph, but the author makes a common mistake and keeps things way too vague in the rest of the query. Of course you don’t want to give away the twists and turns of your narrative, but you need to be specific enough to intrigue me.
3. Pass. Short story collection for MG, which isn’t an automatic pass, though it is close. The real reason I’m declining is because the author doesn’t tell me anything about the plots, and instead focuses on the lessons to be learned in reading the stories.
4. Pass. Contemporary YA novel, with unfortunately weak writing, so much so that it was hard to even get a handle on the query.
5. Pass. A YA fantasy novel highly dependent on issues of destiny and prophecy, which I find a challenge to enjoy.
6. Pass. Adult mystery/suspense, which I don’t represent.
7. Pass. Another adult novel, this one a suspense/mystery. (I wonder what the difference is?)
8. Pass. Self-help. Although this is more practical minded than most self-help, it still isn’t something I rep.
9. Pass. Another YA about a prophecy and a chosen one. In addition, the author neglects to include the sample pages I request in my submission guidelines. While they might not have convinced me, you should always give yourself every change to win over an agent, and that includes sending what they ask to see.
10. Pass. A series of books for young children on dealing with difficult situations. Again, these are books pitched for the lessons they impart, not the stories they tell.
11. Pass. Adult fantasy, which is usually a pass anyway, but this one clocks in at over 200,000 words. Way too long for me! (And I don’t just mean length of time to read — I can’t believe that a book that long doesn’t need major pruning.)
12. Pass. YA with definite adult category romance stylings. That said, I don’t get much of a sense of the plot, only the set-up that puts the plot in motion.
13. Taking a closer look. YA sci fi (which seems to be of great interest to me right now!).  Quirky, poking fun at the usual overdone trends, and coming up with something interesting. Worth a closer look.
14. Pass. Women’s fiction based on the author’s own life.  Besides the fact that I don’t represent women’s fiction, I’d not sure opening with the fact that it’s autobiographical is your strongest selling point.
15. Pass. Another women’s fiction. While it’s true I used to look for this, after three years of being open to it, and not finding anything of interest, it’s no longer something I seek, which has been noted on my submissions page for several months, if not a year.
16. Pass. YA sci fi again, but with weak writing.
17. No response. This is a repeat of a query sent four days previously, to which I’d already passed. Even seeing hundreds of queries a month, if not more, I still have a pretty good memory, and if something sounds familiar, I will doublecheck my files to see if I already saw it.
18. No response again, for the same reason. Guys, I know I’ve been behind, but resending a query a week or so after you send it the first time, when my stated response time is within two weeks, just stinks of spamming.
19. Pass. YA ghost story that just feels like I’ve seen it before.
20. Pass. Women’s fiction. Ergo, not a genre I represent.

So there you have it! That’s actually a pretty good sampling of my query inbox — out of 20 emails, I’m taking a closer look at just one. Seven of the queries were for genres I don’t rep, so figure about 35% of my queries are misdirected — but still take time to answer.

With these kind of numbers, why do I still accept queries? Because there are some AMAZING manuscripts in there, and I LOVE finding them. The last three clients I signed — Elizabeth Briggs, Krista Van Dolzer, and Susan Adrian — all came to me via my query inbox. You might be next!

Dear Ms. Unfeasible:

Seventeen-year-old Audrey thinks having a hooker for a mom means her life can’t get any worse. At least, until her mom is murdered and she and her sisters are sent to separate foster homes. Because being torn from her sisters and starting a new school will make her life better. Yeah. Right. To top it all off, she can’t go out with Zach now. Actually, that’s about her only break. She was only going out with the creep to piss her mother off anyway.

The bright side? Audrey’s foster brother, Caleb, isn’t too bad on the eyes and man, can he kiss good. Not that she should be kissing a boy who is supposed to be her brother, but she just can’t resist him. His lips are like crack to a junkie.

Just as Audrey falls in sync with her new life, Zach shows up, ticked that she’s ignoring him. When he starts to act a little psycho, she avoids him. Seriously. Like she has time to deal with a jerk. With the murder investigation and her little sister walking around like a glammed up version of their mom, there’s more than enough drama in her life. No need to add crazy Zach to the mix. It’s bad enough she’s creeped out at night, like someone is watching. And Audrey has no idea that she’s about to do what she’s feared all her life. Follow in her mother’s footsteps.

My Contemporary Young Adult novel, HEARTS DON’T BREAK QUIETLY, is complete at 48,000 words. Thank you for your time and attention.

RJ

First of all, GREAT opening line. Notice the word choice: not prostitute or call girl or escort, but “hooker.” That is the word choice of a 17-year-old girl incredibly pissed at her mom. And already, I know so much about her. Then we twist the knife even further – her mom is murdered and she and her sisters are sent to separate foster homes. However, I don’t know that you need the repetition in the next line of “being torn from her sisters”, or the casual “Yeah. Right.” The words don’t add much to the impression I have already formed of Audrey. And I think the next couple of sentences, starting with “To top it all off,” really reduce the tension.

I’ll be frank — I kinda hate the next paragraph. I have no problem with your introducing a new love interest to move the story along, but I sort of cringe at “man, can he kiss good.” I also wonder about your assertion that Caleb is “supposed to be her brother.” To me, that seems like accepting her new circumstances very quickly and very comfortably, which isn’t the impression I got of Audrey from the opening paragraph. If I’m wrong, I want to know why — are her new foster parents super welcoming, like the Huxtables, or some other idyllic tv sitcom family? What’s the story with that?

With the next paragraph, I’m completely thrown for a curve. Zach is back, but Audrey avoids him, and that seems to be the end of it (although it very well may not be, to judge from the drama coming, but he is dropped from the query letter). She’s worried about her little sister, but you’d previously told me they were at separate foster homes — but they are still in contact? How’s that? What about her other sister(s)? I also didn’t get the impression that her mom being a hooker was something that Audrey “feared” becoming, and I’d have loved to see that before you bring it up here, though it seems to be there’s a lot more to the story than just the fear that she’d become a hooker like her mom — I don’t know, I just don’t buy it.

Ultimately, I think there’s a strong opening here, but you lose a potential reader with either possible red herrings or misdirects instead of staying with the core of the story. Readers, what do you think? How would you fix this?

Looks, guys, I get it: you’re certain you’re going to make it big one day. You’re gonna be a star, baby, a STAR! And maybe that’s true.

But calling yourself fancy names as if to hide the fact that you haven’t made it yet just feels disingenuous.

If we must permit the phrase “pre-published” to be used, save it for the author whose debut novel has been acquired, but is yet to be released.

Thoughts? Comments? Counter-arguments?