During an Editor Unleashed forum on Wednesday, literary agent Jessica Faust critiqued my query (the same query I shared with you in a previous post). Her critique is very specific and quite helpful, which is why I’m sharing it here in full: Never start out with “hoping I’m the right agent” it gives the impression […]
I love deadlines: the thrill of them approaching, the accomplishment of meeting them and how they force me to get work done. I work well under pressure. I am a journalist, after all. But self-imposed deadlines are a bit trickier, mostly because I have to set them myself. Since I just started writing my book […]
If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, you know what I’ve been working on for the last four months: outlining my book, writing a book proposal and query letter, choosing agents to approach, applying to writers’ colonies, learning about blog book tours, and then some. I’ve also, believe it or not, written some of the […]
As if today wasn’t exciting enough with the news that journalist Roxana Saberi was released from prison in Iran, a literary agent contacted me, out of the blue. Unfortunately, she didn’t want my book. She wanted Roxana’s. (For those of you who don’t know already, I’ve been helping with the FreeRoxana campaign.) Roxana hasn’t even […]
A big part of selling my book will be convincing both an agent and a publisher that it’s unique, different than travel memoirs already on bookstore shelves. So from the beginning, I’ve asked myself: What makes my book unique? Travelogues written by women voyaging alone have become so popular, they’re practically their own genre (Think: […]
I love this query tip from Michael Larsen‘s How to Write a Book Proposal. For snail-mail queries, he suggests sending a self-addressed, stamped postcard that reads: Please send the proposal __ Sorry, we can’t help __ Plus the name of the agent, for the writer’s benefit. “No matter how busy they are, agents and editors […]
If I can’t get into a writers’ colony, I figured, I’ll join a critique group. I found one pretty quickly in my area, through the Hudson Valley Writers Guild. And they met at my local library! How convenient. But when I showed up at a meeting for the first time, I felt slightly out of […]
Writing at home can be lonely, especially for a reporter like me who’s used to the bustle of a newsroom. That’s why as soon as I returned home from Africa, before I even started writing my book, I applied to a handful of writers’ colonies. What’s a writers’ colony? It’s a place where writers retreat […]
Now that y’all have seen my query, as well as a description of how I picked literary agents to query, here’s a question to authors who have been through this already: Should I query all 12 agents at once? Or would it be smarter to query the first half and wait for feedback? Here’s the […]
A query is a pitch to a literary agent, asking him or her to look at your book proposal and hopefully represent your work. There are lots of resources on the Web that explain how to write the perfect query letter. The one-page letter should give a summary of the book’s plot and theme, as […]