The Debutante Ball, established in 2007, is a group blog for authors making their debut in the literary world. We are now in our twelfth season of celebrating up-and-coming authors. Former Debs include bestsellers in the genres of women’s fiction, mystery, literary fiction, nonfiction, young adult, and more. Click on any of the photos above to learn about The Debutante Ball Class of 2019 and their books. Read about the bestselling…
Simple Gratitude in Complex Times
I’ve had a lot to be thankful for in this past year, and a lot more I am grateful for in the year to come. Some of that has been expected – the realization of a long-held dream, the papery reality of ARCs, the positive reactions from early readers, the joy of my toddler, and the love of my family and friends – but some has been completely unexpected. The…
[News Flash] November 18, 2018
Thank you so much to yesterday’s guest, Vijaya Nagarajan! If you haven’t already, enter the #DebBallGiveaway to win a copy of Feeding a Thousand Souls: Women, Ritual and Ecology in India. You can enter by sharing our post on Facebook and/or retweeting the following tweet (make sure you follow @DebutanteBall on Twitter too!): https://t.co/TeS5gm7NyJ Delighted to have Vijaya Nagarajan as @DebutanteBall guest author! RT & follow for a chance to win…
Interview with Vijaya Nagarajan + FEEDING A THOUSAND SOULS giveaway
I’m delighted to welcome my friend Vijaya Nagarajan to the Debutante Ball this week! Vijaya Nagarajan is an Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Theology/Religious Studies and in the Program of Environmental Studies at the University of San Francisco. She writes about Hinduism, gender, ritual, ecology and the commons. Recently her work has centered around spiritual autobiographies of place, especially around immigration and motherhood. She has been active in…
Tips for Querying (or as I like to call them, Q-tips)
You know how they say you should never put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear? I know why. It’s because if you poke around in there with something that actually fits, like a q-tip, you might slip up and accidentally jab yourself in the eardrum. Which is really painful. Much like querying. You can see where I’m going with this. I’ve been racking my brain to come…
Want to Write a Query Letter? Here’s An Easy Template
Dear readers, Today we are talking about writing a query letter, which is the first step to getting a literary agent, who will then sell your book to an editor, beginning the wondrous path to your book’s publication! Writing a query letter is much like writing a great cover letter for a coveted job. There’s a formula, and if you don’t stray far from it, you are likely to succeed…
Selling Your Book Before You Sell Your Book
Querying is hard. Let’s get that out of the way up front. You can be a brilliant novelist who writes stunning sentences and gripping plot twists and still suck at queries. It’s a completely different skill set than fiction writing. Now, to be honest, I don’t think I suck at writing queries. For my first book, I’m fairly certain the query was better than the book itself. I got a…
Attacus Atlas & Other Inventions: Channeling Jean Kwok (and you can too!)
“The query letter is…the single most important page an unpublished writer will ever write” — Nicholas Spark This week’s subject of discussion is supposed to be about querying tips, as in what tips can you give an aspiring writer when querying potential publishers and agents? Unfortunately my querying stories and experiences are good only in the theoretical — as in it’s a good topic to discuss in the abstract….
Recipe for a Query Letter
Ingredients: 1 thoroughly revised manuscript 1 aspiring author 1 fragile dream 200-400 words Prep Time: 1-5 weeksCook Time: 1-3 months Step 1. Congratulations! You wrote a book! And you revised it! You did revise it, right? Oh phew, good. Wait – you had someone else read it, too? Yes? Even better. Okay now take those thousands upon thousands of exquisitely and painfully chosen words and condense them down to about…
[News Flash] November 11, 2018
Thank you so much to yesterday’s guest, Christine O’Brien! If you haven’t already, enter the #DebBallGiveaway to win a copy of Crave: A Memoir of Food and Longing. You can enter by sharing our post on Facebook and/or retweeting the following tweet (make sure you follow @DebutanteBall on Twitter too!): Interview with Christine O’Brien + CRAVE: A MEMOIR OF FOOD AND LONGING giveaway https://t.co/vxbFVTqVuC pic.twitter.com/CWwwqbH5pv — The Debutante Ball (@DebutanteBall) November 10,…
Interview with Christine O’Brien + CRAVE: A MEMOIR OF FOOD AND LONGING giveaway
I’m so thrilled to welcome Christine O’Brien to the Debutante Ball this week! Christine is a lecturer in the English Composition Department at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, CA. She earned a BA in English at the University of California, Berkeley, and holds a double MFA in non-fiction and fiction from St. Mary’s College, where she was awarded the college’s Agnes Butler Scholarship for Literary Excellence. Christine has previously worked…
