At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. — Albert Schweitzer I’m so grateful to so many this past year, for lifting me up when I was feeling low. Writing is often a lonely venture, and this time last year, I was discouraged….
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…
“The query letter is…the single most important page an unpublished writer will ever write” — Nicholas Spark This week’s subject of discussion is supposed to be about querying tips, as in what tips can you give an aspiring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….
Those of you who read my post last week may remember that most of it was reminiscing about my childhood love for L. M. Montgomery’s heroine, Emily Starr, and how my obsession with her eventually inspired me to write the book that is now my debut. Since this week we’re all blogging about “the path to publication,” I titled my little piece with one last reference to Emily….
This week for The Debutante Ball, we’re sharing our journey to getting a literary agent, so I dug through the archives of my email outbox so you can experience truly and authentically the real realness of my querying process, before I landed the book deal for THEY COULD HAVE NAMED HER ANYTHING. WARNING: THERE ARE TWO PARTS OF THIS BLOG POST. THIS IS STORY #1. Read this story to be…
A Circuitous Route: The reflection of the world is blues, that’s where that part of the music is at – Jimi Hendrix I have no way to express how stunned I am, sitting here today, holding my newly hatched ARCs. It is surreal to see this book in galley form, it is surreal to see my family hold my debut novel in their hands. By all accounts I should…
Note: This week we’re talking about the long and arduous process of how we got our agents. I mean, maybe it’s not arduous for everyone, but damned if I didn’t learn a thing or two about patience along the way. I like statistics. When I was in the process of looking for representation, it felt like all the stories I heard were people who’d queried a handful of agents and…
Some people have agents. I am not one of them. It’s not that I don’t like agents, or appreciate their worth, it’s just that I got an offer for Girlish directly from Skyhorse Publishing. You see, I went with the “Wallpaper the Internet with Queries” technique when I was ready to place my book with a publisher. I started on Memorial Day weekend, 2016, and by September, I had an…
This week we’re passing along advice from the publishing industry, and my agent, Leigh Feldman, was nice enough to outline her top pointers for querying writers. I’ve had the honor of working with Leigh for the past two years, and one of the things I love about her is that she tells it like it is! **Make sure the agent you query represents books in the genre you have written. When…
I started the process of seeking an agent the way many of us do: a combination of earnest mailings to total strangers, desperate mailings to friends of friends, and offering my first born to the gods of literary representation. But strangers ignored me, friends of friends rejected me, and eventually my first born turned eighteen, making him a less appealing sacrifice. I had no takers. I had written a novel called…
