When I was an aspiring author, I read every query letter success story I could get my hands on. There was a common theme to these essays, which tended to go something like this: the writer, having long since given up hope that she’d ever become published, is strolling through Target one day when her phone rings. She glances at it, realizes the phone is displaying the 212 area…
Ah. Query Letters. It is well known that most writers would rather churn out an entire book written in their own blood than write a one-page query letter. Penning this stupid letter might sound simple, but trust me, it’s hard. You are given a measly few paragraphs to sum up your book and yourself, and in these paragraphs you must sound compelling and unique and hooky enough for an agent…
If you’ve reached the querying stage of the publication process: Congratulations! You wrote and edited a book. (You did edit it, didn’t you? A lot? Good.) You’re ready to send your baby out into the world, and that can be thrilling and exciting. This stage can also be totally overwhelming. I dealt with some of the chaos by keeping a running spreadsheet of who I queried and when I queried…
A tale of a book, from pen to shelf: November 2011 — Project begins, called simply Aven, as Cass’s 2011 NaNoWriMo project, an attempt to get herself writing creatively again after several years devoted to academia. December 2011 — Cass sets to finishing the draft and polishing it up. July 2012 — Cass scrambles to finish editing her draft in the hopes that it’s fit to be seen and attends a…
Note: this week, we are discussing the process of landing a literary agent. For anyone unfamiliar with this torturous process, it involves writing a one-page letter, describing your book and yourself, in which you are supposed to entice, or at least not frighten, the agent. You wanna talk about the sting of rejection? Settle in, child. I am the patron saint of awful query letters. In the beginning, I tried…
