Ah, the elusive query letter. That one-page introduction of you and your book to your editor or agent of choice. What elements will knock the socks off the recipient and make them salivate to be the one to read your baby?
Check out Nathan Bransford's post Anatomy of a Really Bad Query Letter. Good stuff here.
Just a reminder that you still have until the 31st to enter the Deliciously Naughty Writers' holiday contest for a chance to win lots of neat prizes. Our website has the details.
Today's tip: If you can get a guy like this to be your Christmas tree, take him up on it!
WHO IS JACK SCHITT ?
For some time many of us have wondered just who is Jack Schitt? We find ourselves at a loss when someone says, "You don't know Jack Schitt!" Well, thanks to my genealogy efforts, you can now respond in an intellectual way.
Jack Schitt is the only son of Awe Schitt. Awe Schitt, the fertilizer magnate, married O. Schitt, the owner of Needeep N. Schitt, Inc. They had one son, Jack.
In turn, Jack Schitt married Noe Schitt. The deeply religious couple produced six children: Holie Schitt, Giva Schitt, Fulla Schitt, Bull Schitt, and the twins Deep Schitt and Dip Schitt.
Against her parents' objections, Deep Schitt married Dumb Schitt, a high school dropout. After being married 15 years, Jack and Noe Schitt divorced. Noe Schitt later married Ted Sherlock, and because her kids were living with them, she wanted to keep her previous name. She was then known as Noe Schitt Sherlock.
Meanwhile, Dip Schitt married Loda Schitt, and they produced a son with a rather nervous disposition named Chicken Schitt. Two of the other six children, Fulla Schitt and Giva Schitt, were inseparable throughout childhood and subsequently married the Happens brothers in a dual ceremony. The wedding announcement in the newspaper announced the Schitt-Happens nuptials. The Schitt-Happens children were Dawg, Byrd, and Horse.
Bull Schitt, the prodigal son, left home to tour the world. He recently returned from Italy with his new Italian bride, Pisa Schitt.
Now when someone says, "You don't know Jack Schitt," you can correct them.
Sincerely,
Crock O. Schitt
LOLLOL!!
(Remember: laughing lowers the blood pressure. My Friday Funnies are, therefore, a public health service...) :)
Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic recently performed the first ever nearly total face transplant on a patient with severe facial deformities. The patient received 80% of a donor's face. (Her injuries were so horrific that she lacked a nose and palate, and could not eat or breathe on her own without a special opening into her windpipe. So this was much more than just someone who wanted a little work done...)
A face transplant.
A face transplant.
It is the first facial transplant known to have included bones, along with muscle, skin, blood vessels and nerves. The woman received a nose, most of the sinuses around the nose, the upper jaw and even some teeth, said Dr. Frank Papay, the clinic's plastic surgery chief.
"This patient exhausted all conventional means of reconstruction, and is the right patient," lead surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow said at a news conference. So many disfigured patients are stuck "in their houses who are hiding from society," afraid to go out, she said. "Our patient was called names and was humiliated. You need a face to face the world."
So she got a face transplant. How cool is that? I just get chills every time I read a story that seems so sci-fi. The future is here, folks!
A face transplant. Huh.
One of the writing-related blogs I routinely visit is by Jossey-Bass Executive Editor Alan Rinzler. (Jossey-Bass Publishing (in San Fransisco) is an imprint of John Wiley & Sons of New York. Rinzler's long career also includes jobs at Bantam Books, Rolling Stone Magazine, and Simon and Schuster.) In Rinzler's words, his blog is his "take on the challenges and opportunities writers face in the world of digital and print book publishing, the mysterious process of acquisition, development, sales, and marketing, how agents and publishers conspire and compete behind the scenes to find the best new authors, and other special features." Posts range from how to write an attention-getting book proposal to developing a selling “hook” and building your author platform.
His most recent post speaks to book covers--what goes into selecting them, who gets to weigh in, and things an author can do to help. Check it out here.
Join me today from noon to 6 p.m. EST over at Love Romances Cafe--I'll be chatting with readers, sharing excerpts, and there might just be a chance for someone to win a signed copy of DARING THE MOON...
We are in trouble...
The population of this country is 300 million.
160 million are retired.
That leaves 140 million to do the work.
There are 85 million in school.
Which leaves 55 million to do the work.
Of this there are 35 million employed by the federal government.
Leaving 15 million to do the work.
2.8 million are in the armed forces preoccupied with killing Osama Bin-Laden.
Which leaves 12.2 million to do the work.
Take from that total the 10.8 million people who work for state and city governments. And that leaves 1.4 million to do the work.
At any given time there are 188,000 people in hospitals.
Leaving 1,212,000 to do the work.
Now, there are 1,211,998 people in prisons.
That leaves just two people to do the work.
You and me.
And there you are,
Sitting on your ass,
At your computer, reading jokes.
Nice. Real Freakin' nice.
LOL Happy Friday!
Those of you who live near enough to Tucson to make a trip here, mark your calendars:
March 14-15 on the University of Arizona campus, the city of Tucson is holding its first Festival of Books. Some of the featured authors include Vicki Lewis Thompson, Diana Gabaldon, Father Andrew Greeley, J.A. Jantz and Elmore Leonard just to name a few. Over 300 other authors are participating. Including yours truly.
On Saturday, March 14, I along with fellow ero-rom authors Jill Knowles and Anastasia Rabiyah will host a panel on "Turning Up the Heat: The Spicier Side of Romance". In a room that seats 100. (Yep, my knees are already shaking...)
Leading up to all of this, the Pima County Library is working with my local RWA chapter and has put together several free workshops in various libraries in town. As part of the Amore and More! sessions, three of us (Laurie Schnebly Campbell, Jill Knowles and me) will speak on January 31, 2009 from 1:00-3:00 at the Himmel Park Branch Library. Our topic: It's Not Your Mother's Romance Anymore. We'll discuss how romance novels have changed over the years, what the various sub-genres under the greater romance umbrella are, and how they differ from each other.
Stay tuned for more details the closer we get to the events.
Literary Agent Nathan Bransford's doing it again. (You'd have thought he'd learned his lesson the last time...)
He's running his First Paragraph Challenge. The prize up for grabs? A chance to have your work (either a partial or a query) critiqued by Nathan or a 15-minute phone conversation with him.
Head on over to his blog for details. And do it now--the deadline for entries is Thursday 4 p.m. Pacific time.
It's a cold, rainy morning here, the kind of morning where you should just stay in bed...
Yeah. Now that's what I'm talkin' about...
The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on. (Robert Bloch)
Never take life too seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway. (Anonymous)
Girls are like phones. We love to be held, talked too but if you press the wrong button you'll be disconnected! (Anonymous)
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. (Anonymous)
When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity. (Albert Einstein)
I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers. (Anonymous)
It is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off. (Anonymous)
So to speak.
DRAGONHEAT was Amber Heat's #2 best seller for the month of November.
DRAGONFIRE came back onto the Top 10 list at #8.
Wahoo!!
(Visit my page at Amber Heat for excerpts or to buy.)
I am generally a good cook, though I don't do anything fancy. Love to eat; hate the clean-up. But I do have a couple of tips for you:
1) If you leave the Parmesan out of Turkey Tetrazzini, it still tastes yummy.
2) If you leave the rice out of rice pudding, it still tastes yummy. And it's not always obvious what's missing. Case in point--several years ago my mom made rice pudding. She and my dad came over to my house for dinner (I lived with my sister at the time), and Mom brought the dessert (leftover rice pudding). As she's dishing it up, she says, "There's something different about this, but your dad and I can't figure out what it is. C (my sister) had some when she stopped by at lunchtime, and she can't figure it out, either." I took one bite and said, "There's no rice in it." The was dead silence, then uproarious laughter. Yep. Mom had left the rice out of the rice pudding. But it was still yummy.
3) If you leave baking soda out of your biscuits, they do not still taste yummy. They're as hard as hockey pucks that even the dog won't eat.
Those are my tips for the day. Have a good one!
