Congrats to Ryann Jansen, who won a query critique on my new client Krista Van Dolzer’s Mother. Write. Repeat blog. Without further ado, here’s Ryann’s query: 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 [...]
I was beginning to think you guys didn’t have any more questions for me about the great big world of publishing — that I’d answered your every concern in the past four years of blogging! I’m so glad to hear there’s still things I can post about! Like this question from Donn: I have a [...]
Let me be perfectly clear: in a query, you have ONE PAGE to hook my attention. One page to tell me enough about your book that I want to scan down to the end of your letter to read the three pages from your novel that I’ve requested you attach. Three pages that I will [...]
I got pinged on Twitter this morning by @ErraticArtist who asked: Is there any time you would recommend an author using a pseudonym? I ask because my own name is quite clunky. And I thought — what a great subject for a blog post! (Mostly because I was in the middle of an early lunch [...]
As I’m looking at queries, I’m coming across a lot of details in book descriptions that seem rushed, like so: “She is helped in her efforts by a brooding vampire with a soul, a lesbian witch, a former vengeance demon, a British librarian, a platinum blonde vampire with a chip in his head, and a [...]
