Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘queries’

Persistence

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on June 26, 2011| 4 Comments »

I’ve always considered myself to be a fairly persistent–even downright stubborn–person. I just found out I’m a piker.

Friday night, I listened to this interview with Elana Johnson. She racked up 188 rejections for her (now published) novel. But you only need one agent to love it and find the editor who will love it, too. Elana Johnson sent 189 queries and sold her novel.

Of course, to be fair, she was also getting a better percentage of requests for full or partial manuscripts than I have. That’s at least partly due to writing a much better query letter. Something I still have to work on–and I plan to work on it with the help of her free e-book, FROM THE QUERY TO THE CALL (available on her website).

But it’s also clear to me that I just have not been sending out enough queries. So far, I’ve averaged around thirty to thirty-five queries on my novels. Not nearly enough.

Okay, so part of that is because I stop querying the previous book when the next is ready to go out. That’s something I may have to rethink, especially as I finish up revisions on BLOOD WILL TELL. I mean, with a few exceptions, BWT and MAGE STORM won’t even be going to the same agents. They’re not the same kind of books or aimed at similar audiences. BWT is an adult urban fantasy/paranormal romance (I think I’m going to query it as a paranormal romance, this go round.) and MS is a middle grade fantasy.

But that’s still only part of it. If I query a novel for an average of one year, I ought to be able to send out at least three queries a week. The problem is the periods in which I don’t send out queries, because I’m going to revise the query letter or the synopsis or, like now, because I’m contemplating a revision to the work itself. Then I don’t send out any queries for a month or more. Not good.

The biggest problem, though, is  researching agents. This is where the real procrastination creeps in.

New resolution (mid-year, if you like): Send out way more queries than I have been.

Read Full Post »

Other Things to Enter On-Line

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on April 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »

So here are a couple of other interesting things to enter in the blogosphere:

Workshop Wednesday at Bookends, LLC http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/2011/04/workshop-wednesday.html

And First Page Shooter at Confessions from Suite 500

http://confessionsofawanderingheart.blogspot.com/2011/04/first-page-shooter.html

Here’s another at YATopia:

http://yatopia.blogspot.com/2011/04/easter-egg-hunt-with-critique-prizes.html

Read Full Post »

Update to Elevator Pitches

Posted in writing, tagged , , , on April 11, 2011| 4 Comments »

Unscheduled extra post this week to update the elevator pitches.

  1. BLOOD WILL TELL : A half-werewolf and a dragon in disguise join forces to rescue an innocent woman from an unknown attacker. Without knowing who or why, each tries to solve the mystery in their own way. But a decades-old crime and the dragon’s true identity may destroy their collaboration just when their enemy has found their hide out.
  2. MAGE STORM : All Rell knows of magic is the damage it caused in the Great Mage War when all the magic users destroyed each other and parts of their world, like the Blighted Forest just beyond Rell’s home. People believe that the magic died with the mages until Rell develops an unexpected ability he can’t restrain. With every strong emotion sparking uncontrolled magic, Rell has to find someone who can help him learn to control this gift for his own safety and everyone else’s.
  3. SEVEN STARS : Because she bears the berserker curse, Casora has been raised to be a warrior from birth. After releasing the berserker in battle, Casora has two goals: to fight the enemy that overran her home and to find a cure for her curse. She might accomplish both with the help of Tiaran, a young prince whose gullibility and desire to prove himself strand him on the wrong side of the marauding army.
  4. THE BARD’S GIFT: Whether she wants it or not, Dorata has the Bard’s Gift. Along with the ability to tell a compelling story, sometimes the ancient gods give her the story she must tell. A believer in the new god, Dorata struggles against this gift until she realizes how it can help her people as they face the challenges of wresting a new home from the wilderness, dragons, and malevolent neighbors.

Hmm. It’s amazing what reducing a story to a couple of sentences will do. It’s been pointed out that several of my stories seem to revolve around unwanted magic.  Of course, it’s really a little early to be writing this kind of pitch for THE BARD’S GIFT. That one’s still in development and anything except the basic premise of her gift could–and likely will–change before I actually start writing it.

In other news, I’m making very good progress on the revision to BLOOD WILL TELL over the last couple of days. I officially passed the half-way point this morning.

Read Full Post »

Rejection

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on January 12, 2011| 5 Comments »

News:  This is my 100th post. There have been about the same number of comments.  And some time over the holidays while I wasn’t looking, the blog went over 2000 views.

Now on to today’s topic: rejection.  It’s something we’re all going to have to deal with. The only way to avoid it is to never send your work out and that just guarantees that no one will ever see it or publish it. So, you have to take the risk.

Earlier this week, I started sending out the very first queries on MAGE STORM.  Five queries have gone out and one rejection has already come back.  That’s not totally unexpected. There can be all kinds of reasons for it and agents don’t usually stop to tell you exactly why.

But that’s not what this post is about.  It’s about the freeing nature of that first rejection.  (Now, this isn’t my first rejection.  Just the first for MAGE STORM.) When you first send the queries out into the world, you’re a little bit on pins and needles, even though you know that realistically it could be weeks before you hear anything back, if you ever do.  Some agents only reply if they’re interested.

Then that first rejection comes back. It’s disappointing.  It stings.  But then you realize that you’re still standing, still writing. That you still believe in your story. And you compose another version of the query letter and send it right back out. 

The worst is over.  It may be an uphill battle, but at least from here it is all uphill.  Well, mostly, anyway.

Read Full Post »

Query Time Again

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on January 9, 2011| 3 Comments »

First, an update:  Last week I blogged about e-publishing.  SFWA’s Writer Beware has a very informative and realistic article about e-publishing on their blog. Plenty of food for thought.  I’ll be interested to see the next installment.

Over the last week, especially, I’ve been working on refining the query and synopsis for MAGE STORM.  I’m almost happy with the query:

The only traces of magic left in Rell’s world are the violent, semi-sentient mage storms made up of the ashes of the magic-wielders killed in the great war.

At least that’s what Rell believes until a mage storm infects him with magic he can’t control. The magic ebbs and flows with his emotions, protecting those he cares about one day and starting fires the next. His only hope of returning to a normal life is to find someone who can help him learn to either control the magic or get rid of it.

Rell follows rumors of a teacher but instead finds a cult leader, Trav. When Rell witnesses the death of another student, he realizes he’s next on Trav’s list. Forced to flee, Rell can’t forget the friends he left behind. Somehow, he has to learn enough to return and free the others.

That is, if Trav doesn’t catch him first, because Trav doesn’t let anyone with real magic live long enough to challenge him.

I’ve also started my research and developed an initial list of agents.  In the next few days, I’ll take a deep breath and start submitting MAGE STORM to agents.  Fingers crossed.

Read Full Post »

Harsh Critiques

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on December 19, 2010| 4 Comments »

They sting, there’s no getting around that. No matter how thick a skin you think you’ve developed. But sometimes a blunt critique is the very best gift you can recieve. Someone who’ll tell you flat out where your story fell down and couldn’t get back up. If nobody tells you, how can you fix it?

This may be particularly true with query letters and synopses. Hopefully, your actual story doesn’t have plot holes you can drive a truck through. If you’ve honed your craft, you should have found most of those yourself. But it’s not so easy when you’re trying to condense all or part of a story you’ve lived with for months into 250 or 1500 words. It can be much too hard to forget all the complexities that lay behind those few sentences that your reader can’t possibly know unless they’ve read the book. Even then, there are likely details you know that never made it onto the page.

That’s where someone who doesn’t know (and hopefully already like) the story is so helpful. They can tell you the impression the couple of paragraphs of your query really give, so you have a chance to go back and refine it before an agent sees it.

So, take a deep breath, rub a little balm on the sting, and sincerely thank the people who will tell you the truth about your writing.

Read Full Post »

Roller Coaster Ride

Posted in writing, tagged , , , on October 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Most of writing is just the discipline to keep on putting words on paper.  We make our own excitement with the torture and the rewards we devise for our characters.  The business of trying to actually sell what we’ve written is usually complicated–query letters and synopses are just a lot harder to write than novels for some reason. And scary.

Occasionally it’s a roller coaster ride.

Yesterday, I checked my inbox to find that there was an e-mail from an agent I’d queried with BLOOD WILL TELL.  I braced myself for the rejection; that’s by far the most common outcome and you have to get used to it.  Well, it wasn’t a rejection; it was a request for a partial.  The first step up that long staircase toward publication.

Woo hoo!  When I caught my breath, I celebrated a little, told my nearest and dearest, and then I settled down to prepare and send the requested materials. 

I thought at the least I’d have a few weeks to savor the idea, the possibility.  If I’d sent it by snail mail, I probably would have.  The downside of the internet age is that it doesn’t take any time for documents to reach their destination.  The reply was in my inbox this morning and it wasn’t a request for the full manuscript. 

Oh well, to quote Dory, “Just keep swimming.  Just keep swimming.”

Or, Commander Taggert, “Never give up.  Never surrender.”

Read Full Post »

Queries and Synopses–Again

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on September 29, 2010| 3 Comments »

Well, since I’m working through a polishing edit on MAGE STORM, preparing it for readers in the very near future, it’s time to think about queries and synopses again.

I have a query, although I’m quite sure it can be improved:. 

Fifteen-year-old Rell lives in a world where magic is dead.  It died with the all the mages at the end of the Great Mage War.  All that’s left are the mage storms, composed of the ashes of the dead mages, wreaking havoc.

Or so everyone believes until a freak mage storm infects Rell with magic he can’t control.  When he fails to learn how to control his frightening new abilities on his own, Rell runs off to seek help.  It turns out magic isn’t as dead as people think and real help isn’t as easy to find as Rell hoped.

The only teacher anyone knows of is Trav, who turns out to be an overbearing cult leader who murders anyone with real talent.  After witnessing his latest murder, Rell is next on Trav’s list.  Rell is forced to flee, but he can’t forget the friends he left behind.  Somehow, he has to learn enough to return and free the others.

That is, if Trav doesn’t catch him first, because Trav doesn’t let anyone get away that easily.

Now I have to start working on the synopsis.  I had a basic one I used as an outline, but it’s not helping as much as I hoped it would in creating a really interesting version of the story.  It’s still got to hook.

Ah, well.  Back to work.

Read Full Post »

Queries, Again

Posted in writing, tagged , , , on June 23, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’ve been busy.  I recently finished the major revision to THE IGNORED PROPHECY.  I just finished the first draft of a new short story.  I’m starting a new young adult fantasy, MAGE STORM.  On top of all that, I’ve been working on a new version of the query for BLOOD WILL TELL. 

I’m feeling like I might, almost, maybe be getting close this time.  Writing a query is so different from writing the book in the first place.  It’s a lot harder.

One of the problems, especially with fantasy, is figuring out just how much detail to put in and what to leave for the synopsis or even the sample chapters.  It’s a fine line.  Without some detail, your query ends up sounding generic and not very exciting.  But too much will bog it down in a heartbeat. 

Names are another problem, more so with the often-unfamiliar names of a fantasy.  You feel like you want to name at least the major characters in the query.  But you only have about 250 words.  If you put half a dozen names in there, you can’t expect anybody reading it cold to figure out who’s who.  And you can’t give even a tiny description of more than one or two people and still give any sense of the setting or plot.

One or two more tweaks and then it’s time to send out a few more queries.

Read Full Post »

One-Sentence Pitches

Posted in writing, tagged , , , on May 23, 2010| 3 Comments »

Update:  I’m making good progress on the revisions to THE IGNORED PROPHECY.  I finished the first five chapters and I really like the beginning, now. 

In his blog last week, Nathan Bransford talked about writing one-sentence pitches.  Since I’m all for anything that promises to make writing queries or synopses easier, I tried my hand at writing one-sentence pitches for my current projects.

BLOOD WILL TELL: (This one is complete and currently seeking an agent.)

Even a suburb of Los Angeles may not be a big enough hiding place when a half-werewolf and a dragon unite to protect an innocent woman from a murderer.

THE SHAMAN’S CURSE: (This one is on the shelf for the moment.  It will need some rewriting before it’s ready to go back out.)

When a boy fails to save his friend from a flash flood and earns the hatred of the friend’s father, he can only put an end to the vendetta against him by learning to accept and use his own innate magic.

THE IGNORED PROPHECY: (This is the one I’m currently revising.)

A young man new to magic is terrified when his magic starts doing unexpected things no one can adequately explain and must pull together clues from completely different magic traditions and one very ancient source in order to understand what’s happening to him.

DREAMER’S ROSE: (I just finished the second draft and have a couple of readers taking a look at this one.)

When a demigod succeeds in becoming a god only to find that nothing has prepared him for the challenges he now faces and the results of his own failures, it takes an outcast girl with the ability to enter dreams–even his–to help him make things right.

SEVEN STARS: (On the shelf while I do more world-building.)

When a young man unintentionally unleashes the berserker curse in his blood, he exiles himself from his home and everything he loves forever, until he can find a way to control the berserker fury and, if possible, a cure for the curse.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »