kt literary

Guys, you know how sometimes an editor or agent will post something online, like, “Wow, I just read the BEST manuscript! Too bad you have to wait six months to read it! Hahaha!” I totally hate that. And yet… guys, I have just reread the BEST manuscript. Isla and the Happily Ever After is everything you could possibly want in a romance, and a perfect follow up to Anna and the French Kiss and Lola and the Boy Next Door. If you’re not already madly in love with Stephanie Perkins as a writer (as a writer only — I know her husband well, and you don’t want to get in between those two lovebirds!), you will be after finishing Isla.

“But Daphne,” you sigh, “when can I get my hands on an Isla of my very own?”

How’s August 14th strike you?

We’ll have more news soon about a fantastically fun pre-order campaign Dutton is putting together, and we may have even more to whet your whistle with soon, but in the meantime, how about a giveaway?

Though most of Isla is set in Paris and New York, there’s another European city also featured. To enter to win this cool tote bag and a paperback copy of Lola, where would you go in Europe if you had a weekend, and money was no object? One commenter below will win!

UPDATE: You have until Monday to post a comment, and I’ll pick THREE lucky winners instead of just one, thanks to Steph! And yes, we will ship internationally!

FINAL UPDATE: We have our winners! Feel free to continue to add your comment below to join the conversation, but I’ve already picked the winners and have notified them.

Are you guys ready to get your critique on? It’s time for another About My Query!

Dear Daphne,

I’m submitting this query for review because [...] I admire both your blog and your dedication to awesome shoes. Days of Thunder, a YA fantasy complete at 90,000 words, is described below.

When Avery Imbyr ties her sister up and leaves her in the woods, she has two goals. First, avoid one of Adelaide’s legendary lectures. Second, travel to the capitol city and kill the Duke of West. The most dangerous man in the country has summoned the sisters to his home, supposedly to teach his heir about magic, but Avery knows better. For the last ten years, since the sisters died and were reborn as homunculi, his laws have treated them as criminals. To enter to Castle West is to face execution – and there’s no way that Avery is going to let her sister die. Not again.

Upon arriving in the capitol, Avery’s plan disintegrates. The Duke’s son, Kieran, is supposed to be her pupil, but he’s more interested in being her friend. He’s got bright eyes and stupidly well-defined arms, and even worse, he’s determined to show Avery that his people aren’t as prejudiced as she believes. When Kieran convinces Avery to explore the capitol, she finds dark power crawling through his streets. Soul-sucking curses are targeting children. Refugees from a foreign war hide in the sewers. The magic that the Duke despises is everywhere, and it isn’t just hunting his people – it’s hunting Avery’s.

Killing the Duke of West means the homunculi will be safe from his hatred, but if Avery can’t find the source of the darkness, then an entire city will perish. Avery must choose between the chance of saving her people and the increasing certainty of dooming Kieran’s to destruction. Either way, death looms closer with every day the curse-maker remains free, and this time, if it catches Avery, there will be no return from death.

I hope that Avery’s story would fit into the niche of character driven fantasy carved by Sarah J Maas, Rachel Hartman, and Leigh Bardugo. I am a graduate of the 2011 [Specific] Writing Workshop for Young Writers and last summer, I returned to the workshop to work aside the fabulous [BigName Author 1], [BigName Author 2], and [BigName Author 3]. I currently work as a writing tutor at the University of [State] and have a small following at [tumblr site].

Thank you for your time,
S.F.

That first ellipsis in the the opening paragraph was a reference to submitting the query her for critique, and since it wouldn’t be in an actual query to an agent for consideration, I took it out. Moving on, I love the specificity of the opening. The author gives me a good clear reason why she’s submitting to me (shoes!), and then gets the title, genre, and word count quickly out of the way. One note about the title – I have a hard time (as a child of the 80s) looking at the title and not immediately picturing Tom Cruise in the movie of the same name, driving a race car and kissing Nicole Kidman and her natural hair. I’m not saying you have to change the title, but definitely be aware that you may find some agents and editors with preconceptions of the book based on that alone.

Moving on to the summary, I’m struck once again, as with the last query we reviewed, that we have an opening that deals with two sisters, and then we leave one behind (literally tied up in the woods) to go on with our main character. Given the length of a query, is it important that we even know Avery has a sister? I’m not advocating leaving her out of the story entirely, but if she’s important enough to serve as the impetus to begin the story, I feel like she should come back into the story later. And if not, if all we need to care about are Avery and Kieran, than why mentioned Adelaide at all?

In general, actually, I think there’s too much information here. I’ve read it through multiple times, and I’m still not certain what this book is about. Avery, Adelaide, The Duke of West, Kieran, the Curse-Maker — there’s just too many people. While there’s nothing wrong with a complicated, plot-driven story, within the confines of a brief query, you want to really only talk about the big story, and save the details of the additional plot lines to reveal in the novel.

Finally, I think your bio is perfect, as are your comparables. You’ve hit on a great way to allude to a similarity with other authors without slamming the reader over the head with it.

Readers, what do you think?

Photo above by Flickr user Jeff Krause, used under a Creative Commons license.

Yesterday, I took a look in my query pile, and liveblogged my reactions to 10 queries. If you follow me on Twitter, you already saw this, but if not, here’s a recap.

Here’s to another Friday About My Query post! As always, these queries are submitted to me specifically for critique — I’m not reaching into my regular query inbox and picking on anyone. With that said, let’s go!

Dear Daphne,

When Ila and Lilly O’More’s grandfather is murdered by a dragon in Ireland, they realize that nowhere is safe for leprechauns – even three thousand miles away in America. Dragons are hunting the family to collect their luck, a physical particle in leprechaun blood. Luck is the only way for dragons to disguise themselves as humans and avoid being slain in the modern world. Ila and Lilly have one defense against the dragons; they can produce magic, a rare and valuable talent. If only the girls could control it. They need to learn to master their ability or be added to the body count.

Ila meets Chris Ardon shortly after her grandfather’s murder. He’s sweet, funny, and his Irish accent is enough to make her forget that she should be more concerned about being murdered than being kissed. Unfortunately, Chris isn’t just any Irish lad – he’s a dragon. Without the magic Ila and Lilly can produce, Chris will die.

Ila will have to decide what matters to her most – her survival or his.

LUCK is a young adult fantasy complete at 75,000 words.

I am currently a student at the University of Illinois. I spend my weekdays studying and every other moment writing.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
KD

You’ve got a strong beginning here. A little setup, with some intriguing details about a world with leprechauns and dragons in it. The subtle mention of “the modern world” helps me understand this isn’t a story of Irish immigrants in late 19th or early 20th century American (though that would be totally cool, too!). I think you might want to separate a bit the fact that Ila and Lilly have “luck”, as a physical, special thing, from the mention of their one defensive ability, to produce magic. Is there a connection between luck and magic? Can they only do one because they have the other?

My main concern comes in the second paragraph, when we focus on Ila and Chris. Here I worry that we’ve got this charming accented stranger who shows up just after her grandfather is murdered, and like YA protagonists everywhere, she doesn’t worry about the coincidence and falls in love. What happens to Lilly? Where is she in this part of the story? I’m given to understand in the first paragraph that this is a manuscript about sisters — what does Lilly think about Chris? Is she warning Ila about him? Is she the voice of reason, or a romantic urging her sister to go for it when Ila is showing caution? I’d love to know more about their relationship, which is I think what could make this manuscript special, and stand out from all the other YA paranormals in which a girl who’s different falls for a boy who could hurt her.

Especially when we come down to the hook paragraph — “Ila will have to decide what matters to her most – her survival or his.” What about Lilly? Self-sacrifice is one tale, often told, but if Ila has to decide to save her sister or her boyfriend, there’s some fun opportunity for real drama there!

Finally, I think the last five sentences have a pretty staccato rhythm. You might want to consider changing it up a bit.

Those are my two cents. Readers? What do you think?

Photo above by Flickr user Nathan Meijer, used under a Creative Commons license.

I’m delighted to post another in my continuing series of blogs about my amazing clients, this time about YA contemporary author Josie Bloss. From her website:

Josie Bloss grew up in East Lansing, Michigan. She attended the University of Michigan, where she was a member of the best college marching band in the country and a staff reporter for the Michigan Daily.

After obtaining a degree in Political Science, she tried to decide if she wanted to be a lawyer while wrangling paper in several large Chicago law firms that are attempting to take over the world. Finding herself uninspired by global domination, she decided to relocate to somewhere more quiet and write instead.

When not mining her high school journals for material and wishing there were marching band options for adults, Josie enjoys obsessing over various TV shows, karaoke and all things theater.

She lives in Bloomington, IN.

Josie is the author of Band Geek Love, Band Geeked Out, Albatross, and Faking Faith, and kindly stopped by to answer my “Get To Know” questionaire!

What are you working on now?
I’m working on several very different things. One is a sort of murder-plot psychological thriller, the second has the evocative working title of ALIENS!, and the third is a paranormal girl-with-super-powers story. I love them all equally and can’t fully commit to just one! I’ve recently started a low-residency MFA program as well, so I’m working on a lot of critical craft essays that analyze other people’s books, which has been very interesting and helpful for my own writing.

What was your favorite book as a child/teen?
Beauty by Robin McKinley, hands down. It’s still my Comfort Book, and I reread it at least once a year.

What are you reading now?
I just finished up Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn, which was extremely compelling and disturbing. And I’m on the last book of N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance trilogy, which I am literally unable to put down. Like there might as well be super-glue on the cover.

Do you work with a critique group/partner?
I have a fantastic group of fellow YA authors that I work with online (all of us are kt literary clients!) and I also now have a fabulous mentor through my MFA program.

Are you a pantser or a plotter?
Half and half, I guess. I know the important points I want to hit (plot) but I rarely know exactly how I’ll get to those points (pants). Every writer’s process is different, and my experience has been that it can take a lot of time and a lot of experimentation until you really figure out how you work best.

What’s your memory of how we started working together? How did our first submission go, etc.?
I finished Band Geek Love back in 2007 and started the whole traumatizing query process. You were so excited about the story and seemed like such a lovely, positive person that I knew I’d found the right agent. I believe I did some revising based on your suggestions, and then you sent it out. Within a couple of months, Flux wanted to buy it. And just last week Band Geek Love came out in France! Publishing is kind of a surreal experience sometimes.

What other hobbies to you have?
I’ve recently become completely obsessed with yoga. It’s turned out to be a wonderful thing to counteract all my hours of sitting like a lump while I read or write. And if you can call Netflixing an entire season of a show in one day a “hobby”, I’m pretty into that as well.

What’s a random weird fact about you?
Prince William held the door open for me once. I studied abroad in Scotland and we attended the same university! He was very polite.

And, of course: favorite pair of shoes?
Sort of out of necessity in this time of polar vortices, my awesome purple snow boots.

Plus, bonus lightning round!
Dog or cat? Dog!
Coffee or tea? Tea!
Coke or Pepsi? Neither! (I’m weird.)
Wheat or White? Is there a way to say “voluntarily gluten-free” without being completely annoying? Probably not.
MG or YA? YA!
Morning or night? Morning!
Star Wars or Star Trek? Star Wars!
Hogwarts or Narnia? Hogwarts. Like most of the rest of the world, I’m still waiting for my letter. Any day now. I can feel it.

Thanks for joining us, Josie! My careful readers may also notice that while I usually link my clients’ books to their IndieBound page, in this case, all the links to Josie’s titles and the books she mentioned go to Amazon. That’s because we’re working EXCLUSIVELY with Amazon to offer Kindle editions of Band Geek Love, Band Geeked Out, and Albatross for the low price of $4.99 each. One lucky commenter below will win all THREE titles for their Kindle (or Kindle app). Just leave a note below with your high school activity. Were you a band geek? Drama nerd? Football player? Cheerleader? Let’s geek out together! (For the record, I was a drama nerd, literary magazine geek, AND cheerleader. It was a VERY small school.)

And not to leave Faking Faith out, which is still available as a paperback as well, check out this great blog review from the Queen of Teen Fiction.

Apologies for not posting this Friday as promised, but I took a snow day/superhero birthday party prep day. Without further ado, I’m thrilled to share the first 2014 About My Query post.

Dear Ms.Testerman:

Thank you for the opportunity to submit my query for your critique. I am delighted to have you review HALF-TRUTHS, my 70,000-word YA historical fiction novel set in the 1950s South.

Lillie Harris wants more than anything in the world to be the next Marie Curie. Problem is, she’s black, and no matter how light-skinned she is, there’s no hiding the fact that her parents are only one step ahead of the bill collectors. To save money for college, she gets a maid’s job in the wealthy house in which her grandmother has served all her life. There, she meets Kate Dinsmore, a country teen who feels like a fish out of water in a world of debutantes and glamor.

At the Dinsmore mansion, Lillie encounters white privilege but also discovers an unlikely friend. The girls’ mutual interest in animals brings them to a local bird sanctuary where their friendship deepens. Despite the risks involved, Kate persuades Lillie to pass for white. Shortly afterwards, they uncover a china teacup in Lillie’s great-grandmother’s grave linking the two girls to a common ancestor and cracking their fragile friendship.

Today’s teen readers will identify with Lillie and Kate’s struggle to overcome their prejudices and search for belonging. This 70,000-word book written from two points of view can be pitched as The Help meets FLYGIRL.

My most recent book is [TITLE] (Publisher). I am a writing instructor in the adult education department of [College] and have presented at many educational conferences. I received “Author of the Month” award and “Art Feature of the Year” award from [Magazine] for my article, “[Title]” (pub date). My work has also appeared in [Magazine2], [Magazine3] and [Magazine4]. I have coordinated the [local] SCBWI critique group for more than twenty years.

Both [Editor1] at [MajorPublisher] and [Editor2] at [AnotherMajorPublisher] have expressed interest in my manuscript. I look forward to submitting HALF-TRUTHS for your consideration.

Sincerely,
C.B.

OK, jumping right in, the first paragraph is sort of a gimme. Disregarding the first sentence, which is just for this post, the second sentence tells me the name of the book, how long it is, what category it would fall into, and when it’s set. It’s a straightforward presentation of facts, and if it’s not flashy, at least it’s not off-putting. In emailing agents, you might consider opening with a bit about why you’re reaching out to them specifically — what about their list, clients, or social media personality led you to query them.

In the second paragraph, we meet our MC and her problem. She wants to be the next Marie Curie (Yay! Science!), but she’s black/light-skinned/poor. I don’t see the connection between “no matter how light-skinned she is” and “there’s no hiding the fact that her parents are only one step ahead of the bill collectors.” To me, that reads like separate issues, and by conflating them, it seems as though the query implies that, in this story, black, poor, and bad with finances are all the same thing, so maybe clarify that sentence a bit. It seems like Lillie’s biggest challenge at the start of this story is her lack of money for college, since the next sentence sets up the job she takes in order to save money to pay for her own education. You might consider moving the fact that Lillie is light-skinned to the next paragraph, where you inform the reader that she can pass for white. Otherwise, it feels like too much information in a paragraph that also introduces Kate, the out of place country girl. If Kate and Lillie are going to share the narrative, I want a little more information here about Kate — why is this country girl (which I kept initially trying to read as “country club girl”) in the Dinsmore mansion? Or rather, why doesn’t she belong there? Where is the mansion, that a country girl would feel out of place there? If it’s in a city, can you add that name to the “wealthy house” description above, so we have context for this statement?

Moving on, it seems to me that if Lillie feels the main stumbling block to becoming the next Marie Curie is that she’s black, she’s already discovered white privilege, and it’s not tied specifically to her time at the Dinsmore mansion. I’d prefer to hear more about the girls’ unlikely friendship, and how they discovered their mutual interest in animals. What is the context for Kate persuading Lillie to pass for white? Does it have to do with something that happens at the local bird sanctuary? Help the reader make the connections between the sentences. And what on earth are they doing digging in a grave together that leads to them finding a china teacup?!? I stumbled so much on that half of the sentence, that the revelation that they’re related was somewhat lost.

Coming up on your conclusion, I have a personal pet peeve against queries that tell me readers (of the book or the query) will do anything. Can you find another way to word this, if you want to include it? Then again, you may want to steer clear of anything in your query that offers a moral or a lesson to your manuscript — I, and many readers, care more about the stories than sermons. You also mention the word count again, which is unnecessary. And on second thought, I think you may want to move the fact that it’s a dual narrative up to your opening paragraph, instead of hiding it down here.

Your bio is very strong, and contains all the right pertinent information for an agent. You might want to say where you met Editor1 and Editor2 that they expressed interest in your manuscript already: conferences are great, personal contact on Twitter or via a blog contest are also good, knowing that you might have already gone out with this on submission is a bit of a downer.

Overall, my biggest regret about the query is that you don’t mention Lillie’s interest in science again. It makes me worry that her love for Marie Curie is a throwaway fact, and not actually developed.

Readers, what do you think? What would you fix? Or would you ask for material after reading this query? If it was on a book jacket, would you buy the book to read more?

Photo above by Flickr user machbel, “Mural en honor a Marie Curie en la facultad de ciencias“, used under a Creative Commons license.

Well, hopefully both! I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be restarting my regular About My Query posts, now every other Friday, starting next week. Which means the phone lines are open now to submit your current query for review and critique (all phone lines are metaphorical). Here’s how to do it: Send an email to daphne.unfeasible@gmail.com with the subject line “About My Query: TITLE”, with your manuscript’s title standing in for the word TITLE. In the body of the email, paste the query letter for your completed manuscript, addressed to “Daphne”, as if I were an agent you were submitting to. There’s no need to include sample pages, though if your query letter includes a phrase like “Following please find the first 5 pages” or whatever, please feel free to leave that in.

Why all the special bells and whistles? Mostly so I can distinguish queries submitted for these posts from queries that are being submitted to me for consideration. I have never and do not ever intend to pull random queries from the query pile for these posts. All of the 80-some-odd query in the About My Query archives were sent to me specifically for critique.

I’m also happy to critique queries for genres I don’t represent, so if you’re struggling over the wording of your query for your adult spy novel or detective story, feel free to send it along. Once I get your query for an AMQ post, I will email you with the date that it will be posted. At any point before that time, if you change or revise your query, I ask that you email me back with your edited query, so that I can post the most up-to-date letter.

I do things this way because, in the past, I just let people send me AMQ posts whenever they felt like it, and I often ran into the problem of posting queries only to get comments from the author that said, basically, “Oh, this old thing? Yeah, I completely changed it, and I got an agent, and I just sold my book for a bazillion dollars.”

When I do open my mailbox for AMQ posts, I’m hoping that I won’t have to set a specific number of how many posts I’m looking for. So far, I’ve been able to take what I get and schedule posts for a few weeks (somewhere between 5 and 8, maybe). If I get 25 next time, I think I may have to cap it at a lower number — in which case, yes, I will let those authors who are over the cap know to try again in a few weeks. Any other questions about the process, please feel free to throw them in the comments below, and I’ll answer them as soon as I can.

UPDATE: I’ve got enough queries for now. I’ll put up another post when I need more, likely in April. Stay tuned!

After two weeks off for the holidays, it always takes a while to get back up to speed. Add on top of that almost five months of being closed to queries, and I’m finding it a fun challenge to remember how to do my job sometimes! Anyway, Renee and I are going through all the queries that have come in since I reopened, and we’re excited to find someone new and brilliant. I’m also thrilled to share some news you may have already seen on Twitter or Tumblr:

Sara Goodman at St. Martin’s Press has bought a YA anthology called My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories, edited by Stephanie Perkins, author of Anna and the French Kiss. The collection will feature 12 romantic tales of young love by celebrated YA authors, including Rainbow Rowell, David Levithan, Gayle Forman, Ally Carter, Holly Black, Kiersten White, Matt de la Peña, Laini Taylor, Jenny Han and Kelly Link. Publication is set for October 2014; Kate Schafer Testerman at KT Literary did the deal for North American rights.

Steph has more details in her post, but in brief — yay! With both Isla And The Happily Ever After and My True Love Gave To Me coming out this Fall, it’ll be a season of Stephanie!

In terms of catching up, I’m also finally sending out the winners’ copies of Texting the Underworld by Ellen Booraem, so if you entered, please check your email for something from me!

I’m also super exciting for my upcoming trip to ALA Midwinter this month, a retreat I’m attending with the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers in March, and later that month, for Bologna!

Let’s start this new year running!

I’m not officially back in the office until Monday, but I wanted to let you know that I am open again to queries for young adult and middle grade fiction. Submission guidelines are on my submissions page here. It’s been a long few months since I closed, and Renee and I are looking forward to finding some gems in the query pile! Good luck!

I’m a day late, but I didn’t want to miss the online celebrating for Amy Spalding‘s fabulous second novel, Ink Is Thicker Than Water. Just released by Entangled Teen, this contemporary YA novel was praised by the awesome Stacked blog as:

an excellent example of a true YA novel. It’s coming-of-age, but it’s coming-of-age through a perspective that’s quite minute and not world-shattering. What Kellie is going through and experiencing is entirely within the contours of her own life and her own experiences. She’s navigating a tricky situation in her family life, a change in what she thought were forever friendships, and an opportunity to pursue a romance with a boy who she thought would never again be a part of her life. Despite the fact none of the things that happen impact the greater world, they each play a huge part in impacting Kellie’s own world. And each of the things she encounters leads to her coming to better understand her role in her own life and in the lives of those around her — as well as her role in the greater world.

Fellow KT Lit client Susan Adrian recently interviewed Amy on her blog, where Amy shares great insight on her characters, like this gem:

I actually wrote Oliver kind of as a reaction to a lot of the YA I was reading back in 2008 when I wrote INK’s first draft. There were so many romances where very quickly a boy would fall for a girl, and it would be intense and world-shattering…and the girls would always be soooo into it. And all I kept thinking was, “Whoa. This would REALLY stress me out!”

So my goal was really to write about a consuming romance kind of in a “real world” setting, and how that would actually go, and maybe what that would stem from. But, also, absolutely to gender stereotypes! Girls are often written as the ones who go overboard with romance, but from my personal experience, I saw just as many if not MORE guys fall for someone in that all-encompassing way. I know guys and girls sometimes act pretty differently, but I think deep down they’re more alike than not.

YA Highway also has am interview with Amy, discussing tattoos, permanence, and covers, among other things. And YA Bookmark had Amy over to talk about style and fashion, and share some looks for her characters.

Amy’s own site has a few more links to her meanderings on the web, and I have one more to share. On Friday, Amy and I will be engaging in the first ever (planned) KT Lit Google Author Hangout(tm). I can’t wait to share it with you! If you have any specific questions for me or Amy, please leave them in the comments below. One random commenter will also win a special prize pack of a copy of Ink, a “Ink Is Thicker Than Water” temporary tattoo, and a The Reece Malcolm List bookmark.

So ask away, and enter to win! And congrats again to Amy!