4 Sites to Aid in Query Letter Writing

The dreaded query letter.  It's merely a ticket for the bus taking you to a mountain made of publishing monsters, but without that ticket, you're pretty much stuck in Unpublished Land watching the tumbleweeds blow by.

It seems the hardest thing for authors to do, especially with complicated plots involving a parade of characters, is to focus on one aspect of the story.  And sometimes that alone can indicate the author needs to cut fat out of their novel. 

But back to query writing.  One of the best suggestions I have to offer is perfecting the elevator pitch.

If you haven't heard of the elevator pitch, it's when you're standing next to an agent, grab him/her by the shoulders and then proceed to throw them down an elevator shaft because you know they're probably going to reject you anyway.  Next you assume the agent's identity, take yourself on as a client and pray to God that you become a bestselling author before murder charges are brought up against you.

But really, the elevator pitch is meant to be a verbal 25-word-or-less sentence summarizing your novel.  And the only reason I mention this is because before I begin a query, I write an elevator pitch.  Doing this really forces an author to focus on one aspect of the story.  There's no explanation of the thirteen characters who play an integral part in each of the four interweaving plots.  There's no excessive description.  There're no gimmicks.  Just a skeleton of what you're trying to sell.

After I yank my hair out over summarizing a 70K+ novel into 20-25 words, I expand upon what I've come up with into the actual query summary.  I try to keep this under 300 words (not counting an introduction and short bio).  250 is even better.  You see, going from 70K+ to 300 simply gives the author too much to work with.  20-25 makes you find one interesting point which you can later build upon.

I also recommend several sites to aid you in your query journey.

SlushPile Hell:

This secret agent posts comical snippets of actual queries received followed by their wise-cracking replies.  Just like the Bulwer-Lytton contest, it's always a good idea to read the lowest of the low.

The Public Query Slushpile:

This is a site you can submit your query to where it will actually post.  The followers there will give you their honest opinions.

Query Shark:

This is the site where everyone wants their query critiqued.  I've yet to land one on there, but the Shark (Janet Reid) is a literary agent who will tear your query down and then hand you the tools to bring it up to industry standards.  I highly recommend submitting your queries here.

QueryTracker:

I'm a huge fan of organization, especially when it comes to the road of publication.  The simple fact is, if you're not organized, it will show.  You'll lose information.  You'll lose contacts.  You'll even lose track of which agents you've queried, so save yourself the hassle by letting QueryTracker do exactly that—keep track of all of your submissions.

These sites are just some of the tools you should keep in your arsenal once you're ready to go to war with the query letter.

I'd like to end with an example of the elevator pitch for an award-winning film:

When a Roman general is betrayed and his family murdered by a corrupt prince, he comes to Rome as a gladiator to seek his revenge.

Follow The Memory Eater on Facebook and Twitter

Get your friends and family to follow the progress of this anthology all the way up until the release party on Facebook.

Twitter is where I'll periodically post memories people wish to have deleted.  If you have any funny ones to add, feel free to email them to anthologies2011@gmail.com.

One Change to The Memory Eater Guidelines

To open up different possibilities, I have lifted the stipulation that a character in the story must have a memory erased.  I have changed this to the following:


While the backdrop of the story must relate somehow to the Memory Eater, a character does not necessarily have to have a memory erased.  A character may think they had a memory erased, when in fact they didn't.  Or perhaps you can take this idea in a different direction.


I have applied this change to the blog.

So You Want to Write a Novel?

This is one of my favorite parodies about writing a novel.  Some of you might have already seen this, but for those who haven’t, or those who want to laugh again, here’s the video:

9 Helpful Sites for Writers

I’d like to dip into my bag of resources today and share some of the sites I often use/visit.  These sites have helped me learn more about the industry and made the whole process of getting published, not necessarily easier, but a lot more organized.  And let me tell you, being organized is very important when it comes to publishing. 

1.       SFWA (Manuscript Preparation): 

Before I even think about sending out my manuscripts, I prepare them to meet the standard industry guidelines.  To help, SFWA has an easy-to-follow example manuscript.

2.       Doutrope:

This is a site I use to search for fiction publishers.  It’s especially helpful for finding places to ship off your short stories.  They claim to have “3300 current Fiction and Poetry publications” on file, and the dozen or more search options makes narrowing the field a breeze.

3.       Ralan’s Webstravaganza:

Another site I use to search for homes for my work.

4.       AgentQuery:

The best place to find an agent for your novel.

5.       Preditors & Editors:

This is the place I go to see if publishers/agents are legit.  The list will show any agent warnings/recommendations and if they have sales.

6.       The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest:

It always helps your writing when you know what to avoid.  Not only does this contest give you the opportunity to showcase your worst sentences, but it also invites you to take a break from being “serious” for a few moments and laugh-out-loud at the winners.

7.       Nathan Bransford’s Blog:

Nathan is an agent/author who is constantly blogging about trends and helpful tips for writers.  His posts promote the 5000+ people who follow the blog to delve into many deep and insightful conversations about the publishing world.

8.       Miss Snark’s First Victim Blog: 

Authoress is always holding great contests open to the public.  The biggest one being a monthly Secret Agent Contest where 50 authors submit their novel’s first 250 words.  The winner gets to send the secret agent a part of their manuscript.

Now a lot of advice in the publishing world is contradicting, and to be successful, most people have to personalize a hybrid of dos and don’ts to figure out what works best for them.  But one man’s rules always stick with me no matter how I approach writing. 

9.       Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules of writing:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

In closing, none of these compare to the power of one product.  A product that has an endless amount of great taste and absolutely Zero calories.  But not only does this product replenish your taste buds, but it picks you up and bounces you off the walls so you can write that novel you've been meaning to write.

Oh yes, a writer's best friend...caffeine.

Addressing Questions / Tip of the Day

First, I'm happy to announce that the first submissions came in today.  Thank you to those who submitted.

Second, I'd like to answer a few questions asked of me.  Let me start off with a funny one. 


Q:  What rights are you asking for?
A:  I will ask authors for First Anthology Rights and 6 months exclusivity.  This means 6 months after I publish the anthology all rights revert back to the authors.

Q:  Is this something you're doing as a physical book, or ebook?
A:  I'm currently putting together a mock draft of the first few stories to submit as an example to publishers.

If that bridge crumbles, the plan will be as follows:

I'll aim to release this anthology as print-on-demand through CreateSpace and sell it on Amazon.  Next I'll plan to release the anthology as an ebook through Kindle and other formats.


Q:  How are you defining "equal amount" anyway?  With no wordcount, someone who submits a 500 word flash fiction piece gets the same percentage as someone with a 20,000 word story?
A:  The same argument can be made for someone who produces a better quality story in fewer words.  Bottom line is, I don’t want to promote the idea of padding, so authors will be paid according to their number of stories rather than word count.


Q:  Who is financially responsible for the editing, proofreading, etc?  Who will be listed as the publisher? (I assume you since you are the one running this?)  
A:  The profits will be split by the total number of published stories(less cover artist)/individual author's total number of published stories.  The editor will be counted as a published author, sharing in the profits as well.  I will be listed as the publisher.


Q:  Who decides the order of the stories?
A:  Once I select the stories that will be included in the anthology, I want everyone to have a fair say in what happens next. Fact is, I'm an author too, so this work will be a collective effort. As far as the order of the stories? Once I finish compiling the book, I will send it out to all of the authors for feedback/suggestions. After a week, I will most likely hold an online workshop to discuss it.


Q:  What is the timeframe from submission to selection and then selection to publication?
A:  It's currently TBA, but I'm already in the process of editing certain stories and getting the structure of the book in place.


With that being said, I will make sure this anthology is the best it can be.  That I promise.  And if there is ever a better plan of action, I'm always willing to listen.  The important thing to remember is that once the final authors are selected, this will be a group effort.

If anyone has any other questions, please feel free to email me.

Now, for anyone with kids who refuse to eat, I've discovered a little trick.  It may be a bit cruel, but for some reason, it works.  That is unless your child is immune to the penetrating stare of a personal injury lawyer.

So tonight for dinner, my family had salad and homemade pizza.  My son, however, tossed his fork away, slumped in his chair, folded his arms and said in a raised voice, "No!"  And this is normal come vegetable time.  The threats of "You'll be small forever" and "Batman will hire someone else as his sidekick" just don't work anymore.  But tonight I saw a sign.  This sign:

He's an ambulance chaser whose picture was pasted to our new phonebook.  And as a joke, I showed my son the picture and said, "Do I need to call this guy?"  My son immediately straightened up and reached for his fork while pleading, "No, don't call him!  He'll take me to jail."

Moral of the story is, if I ever have a problem again, I'll pull the personal injury lawyer card, literally.

(Don't worry, I told my son children don't go to jail.)

Call for "The Memory Eater" Anthology Submissions

“Have a cheating ex you can’t stop thinking about?  How about a past failure which now defines you?  Do you wish you could forget about the time you walked in on your parents making your brother or sister?

“Yes?  Well then today’s your lucky day.  Introducing the brand new Memory Eater—an orb-like device that fits neatly around your head like a diver’s helmet with the ability to locate and destroy any memory in the human mind.

“Victims of rape no longer need to fear dating.  Drunk drivers don’t have to regret getting back on the road.  And for those who have lost loved ones, you no longer need to mourn.

“Today is a new day.  Today is your day.  Start it off by deleting the past so you can save your future.”

And so reads the advertisement for the Memory Eater.  Performed by licensed technicians, the process is fairly simple.  Go to a Memory Eater store and let a licensed technician enter your mind for five minutes.  After a simple search and destroy command, followed by a mind defragmentation, the selected memory will be gone from the customer’s memory forever.

But be warned, for sometimes memories are strung together.  Like an ex-husband and children.  Or drugs and a $50,000 college education.  And if a licensed technician makes a mistake (only 3% error rate), you may forget how to walk, or how to talk, or how to go to the bathroom.

There have also been reports of “subject tampering”.  For instance, a man went in to have his nagging wife deleted, but it turns out his wife paid the technician more money to wipe video games, beer and sports from his mind.  Now the man apparently watches The Notebook every night while eating bonbons with his wife.

But such is the case with any new technology.  There are always pros and cons, glitches and total catastrophes.

Anthology Information:

·    Submissions will be open from March 15, 2011 to TBA.  They will close two weeks after I announce last call.

·    Writers will split an equal amount of the profits.

Guidelines for your story:

·    While the backdrop of the story must relate somehow to the Memory Eater, a character does not necessarily have to have a memory erased.  A character may think they had a memory erased, when in fact they didn't.  Or perhaps you can take this idea in a different direction.

·    Every genre is acceptable.

·    I'm looking for 25-30 stories total, ranging from humorous to thought-provoking to emotional.  I want to see how this technology goes wrong.  How it goes right.  What effect it has on our future.

·    Above all else, these stories should be entertaining.

·    There is no word count or limit on submissions.

Guidelines for sending your story:

·    Email your stories to: anthologies2011@gmail.com

·    Please paste your story in the body of the email.  I won't open attachments.

·    You do not need to include a cover letter or qualifications.

Feel free to email me with any questions.  I'm a pretty laid back guy, so don't be shy.

I want to thank you in advance for participating, and I look forward to reading your stories.

C. P.