Submissions & Queries

No matter what Jim Hanas says about writers being caught up in the lottery of “rejection porn,” I love reading about successful writers who made it after a gazillion rejections. I’m a sucker for lists that tells me how many times authors like J.K. Rowling, Louis L’Amour, Dan Brown, and C.S. Lewis were rejected. Why? Because knowing others found success after rejections is what kept me submitting my manuscript even though I gained a total of forty-seven forty-nine rejections. (Update: after I sold, I received 2 more rejections from retracted queries.) Fifteen of those were on full requests. And, to make things worse, …

The Golden Heart deadline is coming up and, as usual, I’m scrambling to write my synopsis. The good news is that I have polished manuscript to an extra gleaming sheen while I procrastinated the summary part. As you can tell, I’m not a fan of summarizing my masterpiece in 5 pages or less.  I’m getting better at it though. This is largely because of some awesome tools that generous writers share on their websites. In the spirit of prolonging the inevitable a bit longer, I decided to share the most useful ones I’ve found here, with you, as an early …

The last few weeks I’ve been obsessed about e-pub vs. print and self publish vs. traditional houses. Over at Bark I blogged about how I learned that the term “self-published” is too filled with negativity, so the hip new term is “indie author.” I also wrote about how a writer friend emailed me Jim C. Hall’s very funny cartoon to get me to shut up about the whole thing. Well, I’m happy to report that I’m not longer obsessing. The Rose City Spring Intensive has renewed my enthusiasm for writing, given me new hope about getting published, and shown me—yet …

I’m at another conference this weekend. My second visit to the Emerald City Writers Conference (ECWC) is turning out to be even more fun than when I first visited it two years ago. Tomorrow I’m pitching to two editors and two agents and tonight I’ve fine tuned my pitch until the wee hours of the morning. Here’s my final version. Would you read this book? Twenty-six year old freelance forensic artist Molly Nyland doesn’t want anybody to know that the reason she draws such great composite sketches is because she can tell when what people say doesn’t match what they …

This amazing directory of book people who Twitter came through on one of my mailing list, so I have to share it. (Plus, by posting here I’ll always know where to find it.) Highspot Inc. posted A Directory of Book Trade People on Twitter back in 2008, but keeps the list current. The names are sorted into these categories: Book Publishers – Company Accounts | Book Publishers – Individual Accounts | Literary Agents | Bookstores & Booksellers – United States | Bookstores & Booksellers – Canada | Bookstores & Booksellers – Europe & Australia | Bookstores & Booksellers – Online …