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?

I have a question about the use of slang in middle grade fiction. Is it really as looked down upon as one of my writing peers suggests? She told me the publishing industry would rather give kids positive examples of how to speak than negative ones, which, I assume, is referring to the use of incorrect grammar.

But what if I have a character in my novel who doesn’t use proper English because it happens they have parents and friends who also speak improper grammar around them? It just seems really strange when I write this particular character’s words in grammatically correct format, like it’s not authentic. Any thoughts on this? Thanks!

Uh, not to disparage your writing peer, but I’m afraid she’s wrong. First of all, let’s put paid to the idea that the publishing industry is in business to give kids positive examples of anything. Publishing is in the business of selling books. And books? Books are stories! Books aren’t about lessons and themes, they’re about adventures and romance, thrilling tales, laugh-out-loud humor, and anything that will get people turning pages and buying books. Can you do all that AND teach kids stuff? Sure! But that’s not the first goal, at least not for anyone I know on the trade side of things.

I firmly believe you should write your characters in their authentic voices, and let them speak naturally. Now, that doesn’t mean poor grammar in your novel. But it does allow you a certain leeway in the dialogue.

A little story to hopefully help make my point: My husband has his first novel, Hidden Things, coming out this fall from HarperCollins. And if I haven’t enthused about this before, don’t worry, I will. But anyway, he’s gone through a number of edits with this book — with his agent, a couple of rounds with his editor, and now with a copy-editor. And the copy editor has marked all sorts of little thing, most of which Doyce accepted as reasonable changes — except where it came to dialogue. Because people don’t always speak with perfect grammar. So, no, he’s not going to correct “ain’t” to “isn’t”, because an Iowa farmer would say “ain’t” — or at least he would in this book.

Now, if you’re writing an entire novel in the voice of one of characters, then I think you might want to stay a little truer to the rules of grammar, but there is some leeway. So long as it’s a choice you’ve made, and not a lack of knowledge about proper usage, you should be fine.

But it all comes down to one page.

I’m reminding you all of this (though my readers are the least likely folks to actually need this reminder) because of a trend I came across in some recent queries: letters with a very rough, almost generic description of the book being queried, possibly a paragraph on the theme, and a couple more sentence or paragraphs on the writer, and why they had to tell this story, or why their experience makes them the “best possible” author for this book. You know what’s missing? Anything that would intrigue me about the story.

In all seriousness, I read a query for a novel with an intriguing premise, but the letter itself told me absolutely nothing about the characters — no names, no descriptions, nothing. Manuscripts that sell aren’t just about settings — The Hunger Games isn’t an international bestseller and soon-to-be-bluckbuster movie because people are intrigued by Panem. No, they love Katniss, and have divided themselves up into Team Peeta or Team Gale. Without them, it’s just a country. It’s just an arena — empty and void of any reason to tune in, to turn the page.

You may introduce the next Jay Gatsby on page one of your manuscript, but if you don’t give me a reason to scan down, I’ll never meet him. And while that may be my loss, it’s also yours, because I know I’m not the only agent who feels like this.

Hook ‘em (us) with a filler one-page query, and we’ll beg to read more.

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 and reading a partial, but also because it was worthy of a more than 140-character answer.)

To my mind, having a weird, unusual, or “clunky” name are the wrong reasons to use a pseudonym. In fact, having an unusual or weird name can totally work in your favor! The more your name stands out, the more unique it is, the less likely a reader or fan is going to confuse you with another author. If it’s clunky, you may have to spend some time teaching readers and fans how to pronounce your name, but you may have to do that with a pen name, too!

In seeking out an image for this post, I came across this article from USA Today, with some authors’ reasons for going with pen names over their own names. For the Brontes, it was about hiding the fact that they were women. For Mark Twain, it was just another joke.

Nowadays, most female authors don’t feel the need to hide their sex behind a masculine mask, but maybe, like Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), you don’t want your fiction impinging on your real life, or your career.

And maybe you’ve already developed a following in one career, or one genre, and don’t wish to confuse matters by using the same name in a vastly different one. E. Lockhart, who writes amazing, award-winning YA novels such as The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, is also the author of a number of picture books, books for young readers, and adult books as Emily Jenkins. I know other authors who use pen names to protect their private life or family, or because they didn’t want their young readers to seek out their bodice rippers. For instance.

If you are going to use a pseudonym, it’s something I recommend you develop early, and be prepared to use far and widely to help build name recognition. If you’ve been blogging for years under one name — or tweeting, or tumblring, or whatever — you already know the amount of work you have to put into building another persona. And trust me, I know what I’m talking about — did you come here to read the blog of Kate Testerman, or Daphne Unfeasible? I’ve actually been Daphne LONGER than I’ve been Kate Testerman, and I regularly get queries addressed to Daphne, not Kate.

When you’re ready to build a second audience, or are just developing your first online persona, make sure you research your possible pen name before you settle on it. Google it, and make sure you’re not already the author of Amazon’s top five erotic romances, or an expert on dog grooming, or a war criminal. (Do you want to spend the rest of your writing career explaining how you’ve never been indicted by the Hague?)

Either way, good luck!

“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 teenage little sister who used to be a mystical key.”

Yes, it’s accurate, but it also feels like you’re throwing everything at the reader in one fell swoop. In this case, wouldn’t it be simpler and just as correct to say “She is helped in her efforts by her own personal Scooby Gang”? Ok, maybe not that exact phrase, but look at how many words you save!

In queries, you don’t have a lot of room to detail the entire plot of a book, and you shouldn’t — you should concentrate on the important plot points that would compel a reader to pick up the whole thing. So you wouldn’t go into the full details of Buffy’s seven seasons of efforts to combat the forces of the Hellmouth, you’d sum it up as “One girl in all the world, with the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness.” That gives you more time to spell out her sense of humor, her quips, her keen fashion sense — to tell the reader more about what makes that character unique.

If you’re feeling like you need to use a list like the example above to get everything in you need to say, consider just leaving it all out. After all, the last thing you want is for an agent to get so turned around by a long series of clauses, they just say no.

Alas, I didn’t get quite as much done as I’d hoped — it turns out an 11-month-old is not the most conducive partner for quiet reading time. But today everyone headed back to school/daycare, and I could get back to work.

Maybe you took some time off from work this break as well — time off from writing, or creating, or querying — whatever. And so maybe you need this kick in the pants from author Chuck Wendig, that’s making the rounds on Twitter today. A taste:

Stop Hurrying. The rise of self-publishing has seen a comparative surge forward in quantity. As if we’re all rushing forward to squat out as huge a litter of squalling word-babies as our fragile penmonkey uteruses (uteri?) can handle. Stories are like wine; they need time. So take the time. This isn’t a hot dog eating contest. You’re not being judged on how much you write but rather, how well you do it. Sure, there’s a balance — you have to be generative, have to be swimming forward lest you sink like a stone and find remora fish mating inside your rectum. But generation and creativity should not come at the cost of quality. Give your stories and your career the time and patience it needs. Put differently: don’t have a freak out, man.

Stop Waiting. I said “stop hurrying,” not “stand still and fall asleep.” Life rewards action, not inertia. What the fuck are you waiting for? To reap the rewards of the future, you must take action in the present. Do so now.

Stop Thinking It Should Be Easier. It’s not going to get any easier, and why should it? Anything truly worth doing requires hella hard work. If climbing to the top of Kilimanjaro meant packing a light lunch and hopping in a climate-controlled elevator, it wouldn’t really be that big a fucking deal, would it? You want to do This Writing Thing, then don’t just expect hard work — be happy that it’s a hard row to hoe and that you’re just the, er, hoer to hoe it? I dunno. Don’t look at me like that. AVERT YOUR GAZE, SCRUTINIZER. And get back to work.

It goes on for 25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing, and I can’t think of any better way to get the year going.

Happy New Year!

Dear Ms. Unfeasible,

Finding her best friend dead in the river is bad enough. Becoming the killer’s next target is worse. Dealing with the emotions of every other person around her is unbearable.

Sixteen-year-old Emma Hawthorne picks up emotions like a radio signal and with a touch she can draw them into herself, burdening her soul with a stranger’s troubles. Devastated by her friend’s death – a death she suspects wasn’t an accident – her grief leaves her unable to resist the constant bombardment of extrinsic emotions. Unexpectedly reunited with her childhood playmate, Gabriel, she sifts through the shattered pieces of her life, desperate to find truth behind her friend’s drowning.

Emma’s search for answers draws unwanted attention from Patrick, a stranger who promises to free her from her abilities. But Patrick’s offer isn’t without a price – he wants her soul. When Emma resists, Patrick attacks, forcing Gabriel to reveal a secret of his own: he’s spent the last four years training to hunt and kill creatures like Patrick, a powerful, ruthless Soul Eater.

When Emma discovers Patrick is also responsible for her friend’s death, she realizes she can’t hide behind Gabriel forever. With her soul on the line, she must learn to control the gift she thought was a curse and destroy Patrick to find the peace she so desperately craves.

THE ALTERED is a YA urban fantasy, complete at 63,000 words.

– J.K.

I’m afraid this query falls victim to one of the most common problems: not enough character detail. You have some nice detail about what happens to Emma, but nothing about how she moves beyond devastation to find the answers she seeks. I’d love more information about Gabriel and Patrick, as well. In particular Patrick — how old is he, for instance?

Otherwise, I do like the opening hook, and its pacing. Beyond that, however, it’s a little less than specific.

But maybe I’m just not feeling on top of my game today. What do you guys think?

Dear Ms. Unfeasible,

A near-death experience grants Drazoral a glimpse of her future, but after hearing that her life is the key to cleansing her home planet, she runs away to Earth, takes on a new identity, and, through trial and error, learns to blend in. As thirteen year old Drew Vardaman, she has the chance to start over. It’s her hope that, on Earth, she’ll be able to control her own destiny.

Although she has a rough start, Drew soon discovers what it means to be human through the guidance of her cryptic guardians, and her handler, Mr. Bleu. And just when she comes to peace with who she is and what life could mean on a planet like ours, a parasitic shadow starts possessing her classmates, forcing Drew to tap into the powers she’s been promised but hasn’t yet learned to master.

As the shadow grows stronger, Drew’s confidence becomes weaker. And though she realizes that playing it safe isn’t always the right thing to do, she sees that putting herself in harm’s way is giving into the destiny she was pre-ordained. When the sacrificing of one life is necessary to save the lives of an entire species, the choice to surrender seems clear. But when that one life is yours, there’s no wrong or right in the decision to fly or fight.

PLANET WEIRD is middle grade, supernatural fiction complete at 47,000 words. Thank you, Ms. Unfeasible, for your time and consideration; I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,
D.M.

I’ve gone on record in the past about my lack of interest in “destiny” books — they’re only interesting to me at this point if they truly subvert the expected and do something original with the theme. So I’m leery of this, with phrases like “her life is the key to cleansing her home planet”, “It’s her hope that, on Earth, she’ll be able to control her own destiny” and “putting herself in harm’s way is giving into the destiny she was pre-ordained”. To me, there’s actually more of interest in her assumption that “When the sacrificing of one life is necessary to save the lives of an entire species, the choice to surrender seems clear”. Is she saying she would kill someone to save the world? Now THAT’S interesting!

Going back to more basic stuff, I don’t have any real sense of who Drazoral/Drew is beyond her destiny. What does she look like? Is her species close enough to human that she could just blend in on Earth without changing her appearance, or is she in disguise somehow? And if she can just blend in, why? What does that say about her species that we’re so similar? Are we linked?

My next question is about Mr. Bleu. How does Drew earn a handler? If she’s run away, it doesn’t seem as if she’d have the resources someone who might be on a mission would. So who is this guy?

I’m afraid I just can’t really follow what’s going on here. There’s some interesting bits, but too much is glossed over or left unexplained, and it’s not enough to entice.

Readers, what do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Want a cookie?

Dear Ms. Testerman:

Thank you for hosting an “About My Query” session. I am a huge fan of your blog and Tumblr. I would appreciate your consideration of BLOOD PACT, my young adult fantasy novel complete at 67,000 words.

Best friends Faylinn and Luke were born to die.

In rural Alabama, where the cruel Unseelie faerie court has become the ruling class, the annual human sacrifice is the only thing keeping the tenuous peace between humans and fey. But as they prepare for their upcoming execution, seventeen-year-olds Faylinn and Luke uncover some disturbing truths: they’re half-fey themselves, and this year, their deaths won’t be enough to satisfy those in power. The Queen is hungry for blood, and if her twisted plan succeeds, the entire human race will be brutally annihilated.

With only each other to trust, Faylinn and Luke flee the Queen’s deadly hunt and set off on a quest to seek intervention from their people—the Seelie Court. Alone and on the run, the two grow closer than they’ve ever been, but as their relationship deepens, so do the layers of deceptions. Luke knows more about the Queen’s maniacal plan than he’s letting on, and Faylinn’s been hiding a lifelong secret of her own: she sees spirits.

Luke and Faylinn were once inseparable, destined to live and die side by side. Now, with the fey courts at war and the lives of everyone they love at stake, the teens must overcome their growing mistrust and fight together for what they believe in. But as they come into their own otherworldly powers, Luke and Faylinn face an even bigger battle: what if they no longer believe in the same thing?

I am an active member of SCBWI, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, YALitChat, and the Lighthouse Writers Workshop, where I continue to study creative writing with Sarah Ockler, author of Twenty Boy Summer. I also manage a blog, Twitter, and Facebook page for YA book lovers.

I appreciate your consideration and look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
C.K.

And just to thank you all for commenting on these queries for the last two weeks, I’m thrilled to open up submissions once again for weekly About My Query posts. Not counting next week, since the (shopping) day after Thanksgiving counts as a holiday in my house, there are five more Fridays until the end of the year. I’ll post one a day, so the first five authors to send their queries to me at daphne.unfeasible@gmail.com with the subject line About My Query: [your title] will get a spot, and the rest of you will have to wait until January. Cool?

Dear Daphne,

Finding dead bodies is not what journalist-turned-real estate investor Amanda O’Flannigan had in mind when she changed careers. All she wanted was a distraction from the recent death of her fiancé. A former tenant dying in her arms doesn’t do much to help her grief. As she investigates the man’s death, Amanda stumbles into a web of lies and half-truths.

Two convicts, who Amanda helped put away as a journalist, have escaped. Intent on torturing and killing her, they’re on a warpath to her doorstep. Are they responsible for the growing number of murders among Amanda’s tenants?

Enter Rick Pierce. He has been in love with Amanda for a decade. A year and a half after the tragedy of her fiancé’s death, Rick has worked up the nerve to tell Amanda how he feels. With Amanda caught up in the past as she races to stop the men who want her dead, how will Rick make her see their future together?

Homebody is a 94,000-word mystery set in the Kansas City metro.

My story “Title” won a short-story contest hosted by the blog AuthorCulture (authorculture.blogspot.com). I recently accepted a position as reviewer at [Book Review Site] (web address) and have previously served as program coordinator for my local Sisters in Crime chapter. I also maintain a blog at [address] where I discuss a variety of topics including books and writing.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
L.S.

I like where you’re going with this! I couldn’t help but notice, though, that the first paragraph contains the words dead, dying, or death in some form, in every sentence. If the tone you’re going for is that Jennifer Crusie-style, one-thing-after-another snowball effect, then I think you can play it up EVEN more. Otherwise, it seems too silly for the “web of lies and half-truths” that follows.

Because the next paragraph gets REALLY dark — we’ve got convicts, torturing and killing, the warpath, and murders. Whoa.

And how exactly does Rick Pierce “enter”? Is he one of Amanda’s tenants? Do you we need to mention Amanda’s fiance’s death again here? It almost seems like more than enough to say Rick’s been in love with her for 10 years, and leave out that he waited 18 months after her fiance’s death. Although, I’ll admit I’m beginning to have my suspicions of Rick. Has his love for Amanda turned deadly?

I think I want to see more of the connection between the convicts and the current crimes, and what that has to do with Amanda’s past. I’d also love some indication of how Amanda feels about the whole thing — it’s all about other people, and we have very little sense of your MC.

Finally, I don’t know if it’s necessary to call attention to the setting of your mystery, and even if you want to “the Kansas City metro” seems a little awkward.

But maybe that’s just me. It would likely be a draw if you were submitting to local Kansas City agents or publishers, at least. Thoughts?