I mentioned some of these on Twitter over the weekend, but for those of you who may have missed it, I noticed a couple of recent trends in the query pile. First of all, a number of manuscripts featuring dual narrators, or two P.O.V. characters, telling in alternating chapters their […]
trends
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Maureen Johnson brought my attention to a great post this morning on In The Library With The Lead Pipe by Gretchen Kolderup, a YA librarian, about everything that’s great about the category, and why people should read it. It’s a long post, but well worth your time. I just wanted […]
Since I reopened to queries last week, I’ve been going through the flood of letters that arrived, trying to keep up. One of the things I’ve noticed, however, is how — even after a query break of almost six months — I’m seeing some of the same things over and […]
I think Intern Jenny and I have talked a lot about trends, and how it seems like we don’t ever get one query about a subject, but a deluge. And yet, if the comments on yesterday’s post have taught me anything (besides that you have excellent taste in Buffy episodes), […]
I got home from Europe late last night — well, around 7pm Mountain, but it felt way later to me! I’m mostly caught up on emails and such — not queries, though, so thanks for your patience on those. I did get through EVERY partial on my Kindle, though, and […]
Since Kate and I began working together last spring, she has generously included me in the query process by allowing me to help her go through the queries she receives. After reading hundreds, even thousands, of them I find it fascinating how many trends surface and how they seem to […]
Getting down to the end of my trip to the New York office (which has mostly been, at least this time, a Cosi on Broadway at 51st Street, just up from Times Square. Free wifi for the win!). Fellow Denver agent Kristin Nelson is also in town (no, we did not plan it that way), and is hearing many of the same things from editors that I am
I'm sort of co-opting an Ask An Editor question for this post, but in going through my electronic stack of queries, I'm finding certain trends or plot devices that keep repeating. So this isn't so much an answer to "what's the hot new trend?" but a cautionary tale against writing something that relies only a certain possibly overdone plot device.