Today is the birthday of Charles Scribner, personal editor of author Ernest Hemingway, whose last name I heartlessly employ as a euphemism for booze sipped while writing.
Now, this might seem the perfect occasion to combine the literary agent links with the editor/publisher links like I threatened promised hinted I might do, last week.
But, no! You shall have your literary agent links, separate and per the usual schedule, and you shall like it!
I am considering combining the weekly lit agent round-up with the “miscellaneous” publishing pros.
Between the blogs that inexplicably dry up — or consist mainly of their own link lists, Happy Release Day posts, or “everyone can be a writer, don’t give up!” cheerleading — the lit agent offerings have been growing thin. Maybe it’s because of this god-awful heat! What’s the summer version of hibernation?
On to the lit agent links! Continue reading
Oh what a week! As critics and pundits debate the merits of non-literary fiction (whatever that might be), agents and writers are debating the merits of agents shifting from a representative model of payment to a pay-per-service model.
It’s getting hot up in here! But, let’s slip quietly out the back door of this tavern brawl and just read some literary agent links, okay?
First of all, let me do a favor for Jessica at BookEnds LLC, and literary agents everywhere, by reminding all of you prospective authors out there that a “novel” is a fictional narrative longer than 50,000 words. There is no need to say “fiction novel” and no reason to say “non-fiction novel.”
And now, let’s go on to the links! Continue reading
Yesterday, my home town paper The Washington Post published a neat list of the “Five Buzziest Summer Beach Reads,” including post-apocalyptic vampires, a post-vampire career apocalypse, a blast-from-the-past sequel, and an ape-girl. How can you pass that up?
And now, on to stuff recently blogged upon by literary agents: Continue reading
First link of the day comes from Jessica at BookEnds. Following up on a fantastic post by Nathan Bransford about the importance of keeping a “series bible” to keep track of the little details in your fictional world, Jessica explains the difference between a series bible and a style sheet, and why an author should seriously consider developing a style sheet before his or her work goes under the editor’s knife.
I am using that as my intro today because Jessica’s idea hadn’t even occurred to me, even though I do maintain a rough series bible for the Observer Tales. (The releasable stuff, I rework into Observer’s Gloss entries.) Now I have another project!
On to the rest of the links: Continue reading
As you might have noticed, I have added some sidebar graphics for the short stories Tyson’s Corner, The Chameleon Missive, and The Dun Cat of Mill Bridge, as well as a new graphic to add mood to the master page for all of the Observer Tales.
I will probably work something up for Reading Cats, too.
And, before we get to the main links, two contest announcements:
♦ First up, in honor of the release of Rock Paper Tiger, Nathan Bransford announces a contest to (in his words) “write the most compelling chase and/or action and/or suspenseful sequence. It may be something you have written for the purpose of the contest or from a work in progress.” The prizes? Hey, I didn’t put that link up there for nothing! Go, go!
♦ Rachelle Gardner also announces a combination contest and exercise, to write a one-sentence summary of your book.
Now, on to the (other) links! Continue reading
Here we are at the beginning of another week, on a day that happens to be the anniversary of several significant events in the history of written things.
Four hundred eighty years ago today in London, a list of heretic books was ordered burned. A short 13 years later on this date, Copernicus published the landmark work on the heliocentric model of the solar system, De Revolutionibus.
On this day in 1610, on the 3rd anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, Sir Thomas Gates establishes a draconian civil code for the colony. (Fourteen years later to the day, Virginia is declared a failure and its charter is revoked.)
This is also the birthday of magazine and newspaper publisher Samuel Irving Newhouse (1895-1979) and United Press International (1958).
Now, on to the book-oriented side of publishing, with this week’s literary agent links! Continue reading
Okay, so I haven’t dropped a chain of literary agent links since April. Throw something heavy and hard at me. (I can take it.)
But, seriously, moving across town without hiring a moving company takes a lot out of a guy, especially when most of what you own consists of boxes and boxes of books. Kindle is looking real nice right about now.
So let’s get to those links!
♦ Dystel & Goderich doesn’t disappoint! Look at what the folks there have served up lately:
♦ Jessica at BookEnds dives into the thorny issue of getting published after being self-published, and answers questions about resubmitting a reworked query letter, the purpose of query letter guidelines, and morality clauses in YA/MG contracts. She also warns us that confidence in a query can backfire.
♦ At her Pub Rants blog, Kristin compares different POVs, explains why enhanced ebooks will cause havoc, and tells writers why highlighting your age in a query is not a good idea.
♦ Nathan Bransford reminds us that every writer gets rejected.
♦ Rachelle Gardner at Rants & Ramblings reveals the secrets of a great pitch.
Enjoy!
Now that I’m returning to the link soup model (see my previous post about writer links for the whole sordid confession) I might as well go ahead and pump out some links to literary agent stuff I have found interesting recently.
In keeping with the new style — and until you tell me it makes you bat-crazy — these links will use the bullet method to avoid that ugly dotted underline hyperlink marker.
