The Elaine English Literary Agency Blog

New Release: Sex, Lies and Valentines by Tawny Weber

2012-02-15T10:25:00.003-05:00

The agency is excited to announce another new release: Tawny Weber is back with her latest for Harlequin Blaze, Sex, Lies and Valentines!

Con artist Gabriel Black just got busted. By a babe. Drool-worthy (and clearly sneaky) FBI agent Danita Cruz is forcing Gabriel to choose between hard time and scamming his own family for an undercover sting. Now he has to present Danita to his family as his girlfriend. And it's the perfect opportunity to get wickedly even with her...
But Danita has some tricks of her own, and Gabriel's control begins slipping away as raw sexual energy takes over. Their sham relationship starts feeling a lot like...well the real deal. The Big Question is, will overwhelming desire be enough to make a liar go legit?

Make sure to pick up a copy today! And while you're at it, be sure to check out Sex, Lies and Mistletoe and Sex, Lies and Midnight--two more in the Harlequin Blaze line by Tawny Weber!

New Books

2012-02-07T14:37:00.005-05:00

This month brings several new books from our authors. We'll highlight one today.

Last Chance Beauty Queen by Hope Ramsay continues the adventures of the townsfolk of Last Chance where the Cut n' Curl remains the place for the best gossip in town. This time British royalty has come to town, looking for an investment and perhaps a wife. Caroline's job depends upon making him feel welcome, but when he wants something she has no intention of giving him, sparks really are ignited. But this former Watermelon Queen will learn a lot about what's really important in life and community.

And if you happened to miss the first book in this series, Welcome to Last Chance, you can get it in digital form this week for a discounted price. Here's the link .

Beginnings

2012-02-01T13:47:00.002-05:00

A month into a new year seems as good a time as any to discuss something very important to a story: the beginning. It is difficult to get invested in reading something if it cannot capture you from the very start. This may be unfair—I am sure there are plenty of really great novels out there which do not pick up until a few chapters in. However, when your partial manuscript is being judged on those first few chapters that is not a risk you can really take. You need to capture your audience from the first page, and then work to keep them interested for the remaining pages.

Introduce great characters in the first few pages. Even if the plot doesn’t pick up right away, it is easier to give the author the benefit of the doubt and keep reading if there are characters you feel connected to. [See the post a little while back on characters for more on this.] You can also draw a reader in by creating a setting that they won’t want to leave. It is easier to stick with a slower story if you feel like you can imagine being there. Also, just the overall style of writing can instill some confidence that the plot will follow.

That being said, it is still really important to make sure something happens in the first 20-30 pages. That long without plot development—even if it occurs within the middle of the book after the story has picked up—is too long! It is nice to have some kind of idea where the story is going from the initial chapters, even if you also include a synopsis which explains the future development. I want to be really drawn in from the first page, first sentence even. You only get so much time to capture your audience, so use it well!

Good luck!

--Intern Emily

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-19T10:11:00.002-05:00

'Tis the marvelous season for gift giving, parties, joy, and wonder.

It's also the season, as we approach the end of the year, for rest and reflection. All of us in the publishing biz have been buffeted by what felt like gale-force winds of change this past year. But, hopefully, the holidays will give each of us a chance to catch our breath, process the changes in a moment of quiet reflection, and plan a course for next year that will steer us to our hearts' goals.

Be kind to yourself during the holidays and find that quiet moment to revisit and renew your hopes and plans for 2012.

Also, don't forget to visit a local independent bookstore, browse, and buy a book (preferably something that your Amazon algorithm would never pick out for you). And whatever you do, make sure you read at least one new book this holiday! (Or maybe one for each day of the holiday!)

Best wishes,

The Elaine P. English Literary Agency

Great Advice on Self-Publishing

2011-11-28T10:40:00.002-05:00

Whether an author should self-publish, how to do it, how to succeed if you try -- these are all the questions buzzing around the publishing biz these days. Some authors seem to feel that traditional, "dead-tree" publishers are dinosaurs with absolutely no relevance.

[I have to admit I love the phrase "dead-tree" publishers. The environmental impact of this business has always been something that's troubled me. It's one of the main reasons we switched to all electronic submissions. But I have to admit when folks use the phrase these days, it sounds so negative on so many levels!]

Hardly a day goes by without at least one author asking me about self-publishing. As with most issues and since I am also an attorney (and this is the attorneys' favorite response), the answer I give is always "it depends." I do believe each situation is unique and ALL factors should be considered, not just that everyone else is doing it and some are even making money at it. So today when I saw a blog post on this subject from Jane Friedman, former publisher of Writers' Digest and a professor of media and writing at the University of Cincinnati that I thought made an enormous amount of sense, I wanted to share the link. She suggests that while authors may have great power, they still need to use it responsibly. Take a look at her piece and let me know what you think.

Characters

2011-11-13T20:12:00.004-05:00

I am sure this topic has been discussed in previous blog posts, but it is so important it deserves being touched upon again. There may be nothing that can make or break a novel as much as the characters that are in it. Many times I've gotten excited about the premise of a story, and find myself completely disappointed by the people who that story revolves around. And in the opposite effect, I've read some stories where I am not exactly thrilled about where the plot is going but I am driven to continue by a need to know what happens to the people.

There are few other factors in a novel or manuscript that hold as much importance as the characters. Make them believable.If you want your read to get emotionally invested in a fictionalized character in a story, we have to be able to believe that they could be real and that their choices make sense for the kind of person they are painted as. Decide who you want them to be and how you want them to act and make sure they keep up some continuity, or if they act completely out of character make sure they have a reason. The believable factor also goes for dialogue--make sure what they say makes sense for them as well.

Develop them further than you even need to just to make sure you solidify who they are and what you want them to mean to you reader. Start with some basic things, like what is their favorite color and why? Add small things like that which maybe do not give a great deal of insight into the character but make them feel more like they could be a real person.

Give your reader someone to pull for, someone to hate, someone to wish that they could be or just be around. Make your reader wish for your character to be more than fiction, and you will have won them over.

Good luck!

Intern Emily

New Release: Love's Paradise by Celeste O. Norfleet

2011-11-09T10:36:00.003-05:00

The agency is excited to announce another new release for November: Celeste O. Norfleet's newest romance, Love's Paradise:

In a dazzling new novel in the Mamma Lou series, matchmaker Louise Gates helps two adversaries turn their simmering anger into fiery passion.

For historian Sheri Summers, Crescent Island is an unspoiled treasure, and she hopes to keep it that way. If that means shutting down a new beachfront project that could destroy the historic site, so be it. Sheri can deal with developer Jordan Hamilton's anger. But what she doesn't count on is their combustible chemistry.…

Jordan has powerful allies, and asks Mamma Lou to help arrange a truce. Sheri is as sexy as she is stubborn, but every kiss and heated caress is just one more complication in their ongoing dispute. With no compromise in sight, it's not just a battle of wills that's at risk, but something far more precious.

Get your copy today!

New Release: Tall, Dark and Cowboy by Joanne Kennedy

2011-11-01T21:26:00.007-04:00

November is flush with new books by Elaine English authors! Hot off the shelf, Joanne Kennedy's latest sexy Western is sure to put some sizzle in your chilly Fall evenings:

Stunned by the discovery that her lux lifestyle was funded by crime, runaway trophy wife Lacey Bradford is desperate to escape from her ex's criminal cronies and start a new life, so she heads west to find an old love.

But rugged rancher Chase Caldwell has changed, hardened by bitterness and loss. The last thing he's looking for is romance with the first woman who broke his heart...

Purchase your copy today.

New Release: The Rancher's Courtship by Laurie Kingery

2011-11-01T03:21:00.010-04:00

The agency is thrilled to announce that The Rancher's Courtship by Laurie Kingery is available on bookshelves today. Kingery's latest novel is the fourth installment in the popular Love Inspired Historicals series "Brides of Simpson Creek".

Though Caroline Wallace can't have a family, she can still have a purpose. Becoming Simpson Creek's new schoolmarm helps heal the heartache of losing Pete, her fiancé, to influenza.

Then Pete's brother arrives, trailing a herd of cattle and twin six-year-old girls.Jack Collier expected Pete and his bride to care for his daughters until he was settled in Montana. But bad weather and worse news strand Jack in Texas until spring. It's little wonder Caroline grows fond of Abby and Amelia. But could such a refined, warmhearted woman fall for a gruff rancher…before the time comes for him to leave again?

Make sure to pick up Laurie Kingery's seventeenth published novel!

So You Want To Write A Series

2011-11-01T03:03:00.006-04:00

Now that it's November, my fourth book in the "Brides of Simpson Creek" series for Love Inspired Historicals, The Rancher's Courtship, has hit the shelves. It's made me stop and reflect about how I started the series, and what I've learned along the way, series and a few things I wish I'd known.

Series are vastly popular with genre readers, especially in romance. Even if you aren't writing a series, some readers may assume you are, and will ask if certain secondary characters will be featured in the next book. This may lead to writing a series when you hadn't even planned to. My series, the Brides of Simpson Creek, however, came along at a time when I was tired of having to "build a new world" each time I started a new manuscript, complete with a locale, secondary characters, and businesses, such as a particular saloon, or mercantile. (Yup, I write western romance.) I developed what seemed like a unique concept, the mail-order groom instead of bride. (If you wrote this concept first, ten years ago or so, please don't burst my bubble).

I designed a town, Simpson Creek, Texas, set it in the hill country near San Saba, and gave it a reason to need mail-order grooms—the lack of eligible bachelors following the War Between the States (also known as the Civil War if you're a Yankee). I gave the plot a plucky young miss discontent to remain an old maid, had her set up a group of like-minded ladies and place a newspaper ad—the 1860's version of online dating!

I started writing before computers so I still do a lot of planning on paper—no elaborate spreadsheets for me. On a piece of paper I wrote out the physical characteristics of each main character in one column, important facts in another, the names of secondary characters in another. The names of the first group of ladies in "The Spinsters Club" got their own column, and as the series developed, I had to keep track of what spinsters had found their matches—for not each spinster would get her own book. Each contracted book got its own page, and I still refer back to previous books, because I started writing the series in 2009 and it's all too easy to forget details after writing four of the stories. No fact is too small to write down—a throwaway character in the first book might have a pivotal role five books later.

I was well into the first book, which became MAIL ORDER COWBOY, before I got to visit the actual site of my fictional Simpson Creek—and discovered there really had been a community called Simpson Creek on the site. Spooky, huh? While there, I found a historic tree, the Marriage Oak, to use in my third story, THE SHERIFF'S SWEETHEART.

The ladies of my Spinsters' Club have married, had babies, (and in one case, went crazy and lost her life because of loving the wrong man), and the one thing I wish I'd started from the beginning was a comprehensive timeline so I could remember what book happened in what months of what year. It's been useful to visit http://www.timeanddate/com to see when the full moons were, and what date coincided with what day of the week—not because I think most readers care, but because in the heat of writing I may accidentally mention two full moons in one month. I keep a running narrative—also on paper—of several sentences telling what happens in each chapter, including the dates it took place.

Your mileage may vary if you write a series, but these are the hints that work for me. You may work with elaborate spreadsheets, but I'm a seat-of-the-pants writer and just need a little structure to help me keep from completely flying off into the mist and getting lost.

I hope you'll take the time to have a look at my trailer for THE RANCHER'S COURTSHIP on my website at http://www.LaurieKingery.com because it's the coolest thing, I think, that I've ever done for promotion. My videographer, Barbara Hunt of Paperback Flyers, is a genius. She's found images and music that totally fit my story and melded them all into a pleasing minute and thirty seconds that makes you really want to read the book. At least I hope it does! If you're interested in having a trailer made, her prices are very reasonable.

THE RANCHER'S COURTSHIP is available in November wherever books are sold, at online sites such as amazon.com,cbd.com, bn.com, and harlequin.com. Please visit my website at http://www.LaurieKingery.com

Thanks, Elaine, for giving me the opportunity to talk about my books!

By Laurie Kingery

The Importance Of Being Critiqued

2011-10-23T13:17:00.003-04:00

Before you send your manuscript to an agent, it is important that you allow others to read and critique your story. And by others, I don’t mean your mother, your spouse or anyone else who loves you and wants to see you succeed. The person or person who read your novel should be objective, familiar with the genre and the essentials of good writing. They should also not be afraid to hurt your feelings and rip your manuscript apart if necessary.

There are many online critique websites at your disposal. You have only to complete an internet search and a little due diligence to find one that works for you. If formalized critique websites are not your style, try using social media formats like Twitter or Facebook to find readers of your genre interested in critiquing your story.

Just as the best meals can be ruined by too many proverbial cooks in the kitchen, a well-written novel will suffer from too many critiques. If you let ten people read your story, you will have ten sets of critiques to wade through. Of course, if all ten readers point out the same flaw, obviously you should address it. But it is better to find one to two dedicated readers, whose judgment you trust to offer suggestions.

Your critique partners do not have to be writers but they do have to be readers, able to recognize grammatical, character development and plotting errors at the minimum. It is always surprising to discover what flaws other readers can find in your work-in-progress. But once found, your writing will only improve, as well as your chances of having an agent represent your manuscript.

Intern N

Tips for Query Submissions

2011-10-11T22:08:00.001-04:00

Now that queries have reopened, it seems like a good time to discuss a few do’s and don’ts for query submissions. Keep these in mind as you consider sending in your query!

DO - Sell yourself and your work as best as you possibly can. You have about a page to really convince us that your manuscript is something we want to read, and if we aren’t captivated by the query chances are we won’t be by the manuscript either.

DON’T- Send your partial or full manuscript along with your query. If we want to read it- we’ll ask for it.

DO- Go over what genres we represent. Make sure you fit into that genre. If you think your query may be read to fit into a different genre, make sure you include something to convince us that you belong at this agency in particular.

DO- Proof read! If you cannot edit the one or two pages of your query for errors, it isn’t a good sign for the rest of your manuscript.

DO- Clearly explain what it is your manuscript is about. We want to know what it is you’re writing about, and the more clear your concept is the more confidence it appears you have in your ideas.

DON’T- Get discouraged if we don’t ask to see the partial. There are a variety of factors that go into evaluating queries, and just because it isn’t right for us doesn’t mean someone else down the road won’t like it.

Intern Emily

Technical Glitch

2011-10-05T11:37:00.001-04:00

We just discovered a technical glitch that was apparently deleting all emails coming into the queries account before we could read them. Don't know for sure when it started, but probably last week just as we were re-opening to submissions. So if you sent something to queries@elaineenglish.com last week, please Re-Send.

Thanks.

5 Questions...An aspiring writer should ask themselves before pursuing a career as a novelist.

2011-09-27T11:10:00.008-04:00

1. Do you have the talent to be a professional novelist? I don’t mean, does your mother or spouse think you are a good writer but is your writing on par with novels, short stories and magazine articles that you’ve read. Or could it be, after you’ve studied the craft of novel writing, written a novel or two and understand how to write a properly plotted story with realistic dialogue and well-developed characters. Have you let anyone read what you have written? Have you received positive, encouraging feedback from an English professor, magazine editor, agent or anyone who should know good writing?

2. Do you have a passion for writing? Like most creative undertakings, writing is a passion project, usually a lifelong endeavor. Real writers have been writing since they could hold a pencil properly--poems, childish stories, journal entries, novels and the like. It is a part of them, a natural expression of who they are. And they write for themselves. They write for free. They write because they love the idea of putting pen to paper (okay, that’s rather archaic) or fingertip to keypad and creating a story from nothing. Passionate writers write because they don’t feel normal if they don’t.

3. Do you have the diligence required to study and learn the craft of writing? Writing is not easy. Oh, writing can be easy but committing to edit, write and re-write until your literary piece is polished like a crown jewel is not. There is a structure or structures to learn, the right one has to be selected for your genre and story. Creating the correct novel structure is almost a geometric calculation, but once you’ve got it…you’ve got it. Themes must be subtly laced through your story. And there is a knack required to create natural dialogue and develop interesting characters. It cannot always be taught but certain aspects can be learned. You must read books on writing, take classes or both and then practice, practice, practice. You must let others critique your writing and then you have to turn an objective eye to your own writing and revise, write and then revise some more.

4. Are you disciplined enough to write novels? Writing is lonely work. Do you work well independently? Can you create and meet self-imposed writing deadlines? Do you have a writing schedule that you adhere to; measured in a daily or weekly amount of hours, pages or words you must meet? Are you committed to writing a novel that will knock the proverbial socks off an agent and compel a publisher to buy your work?

5. Can you persevere? Can you continue to write when it matters to no one but you? Can you continue to write in the face of constant rejection? Sometimes spouses and family members will not take your writing serious. Agents will like but not ‘love’ your writing. Book publishers will not be able to ‘garner the support’ they’d hope to for your novel. You will lose faith in your own abilities and commitment. But ultimately the writing race is not to the swift…but time and chance…

If you have answered all five questions in the affirmative, writing may be the career for you.

Intern N

Open for Submissions

2011-09-23T12:41:00.001-04:00

Get ready . . . get set . . . submit!

On October 1^st, we will re-open to submissions. So get ready to send in your queries for new projects. Remember, we want email queries only. But take a minute first to check out the revised submission guidelines on our website, www.elaineenglish.com.

We’re limiting the kinds of works we’re going to represent going forward, so don’t assume that everything you’ve written we’re interested in seeing. We’re going to concentrate on romance, women’s fiction, and cozy mysteries only. For romance, we’re open to all the various subgenres from historical to contemporary, sweet to erotic, romantic suspense, paranormal, steam punk, and urban fantasy, just to name a few. The only exceptions are: we handle very little inspirational romance and if you write time- travel, your burden will be a bit harder, because we’re real skeptics. Cozy mysteries are those entertaining, relatively low-violence, who- done-it stories, typically featuring an amateur sleuth.

Women’s fiction is a bit harder to define, but I know it when I see it. It’s fiction about women and intended primarily for women readers of all ages. It’s often about relationships – mothers and children, families, even generations. It shows women discovering and taking up their place in the world. It can be set in historical, contemporary or futurist times, but the focus, and generally, the point of view of the story, is that of a woman.

Taking time off from submissions has given me a clearer perspective and helped me to focus on what’s really important. It also gave the agency a chance to completely catch up on submissions (can you imagine!) and to overcome the burn-out which seems to be an occupational hazard in this business. So reinvigorated, here we go. Send us your pitch and together let’s find the next great bestseller!

Guest Blog - Perseverance by Hope Ramsay

2011-09-21T10:39:00.003-04:00

Today, we're delighted to have Hope Ramsay as our guest. Sharing her story should bring both wisdom and encouragement to all authors. (We also thank her for the nice things she says about our agency!) Here's Hope . . .

This September, a dream came true for me with the publication of Home at Last Chance.

No, this book was not my first published work. And the book didn't win the Golden Heart in 2010, when it finaled in that contest. Nor was it the full manuscript that sold the Last Chance series.

But it was the book I believed in. Even when no one else did.

See, the original first chapter for this book was finished on April 4, 2001. I can pinpoint the date because that first draft still sits on my hard drive.

The first version of this book, originally entitled Rules of the Road was finished in 2004, and garnered me an agent, who worked diligently throughout 2005 and part of 2006 to sell this book. While she pitched editors I wrote another story featuring Tulane's older brother, Clay, that came to be known as Welcome to Last Chance.

Alas, Rules of the Road was rejected by just about every editor under the sun. The lack of enthusiasm for this book even carried over to the sequel. My agent explained, gently, that in 2006 editors weren't looking for romantic comedy, NASCAR set stories, or any kind of contemporary romance set in a small Southern town. Urban fantasy was in. If you didn't have a vampire you were not cool.

So, for three years, Rules of the Road, Welcome to Last Chance, and a third, earlier book entitled For Love or Money, languished on my hard drive while I wrote a couple of very long classic fantasies. Then, in 2009, in an act of utter desperation, I did two things: 1) I entered Rules of the Road in the Amazon Breakthrough Contest, and 2) I entered For Love or Money in the Golden Heart. To my utter astonishment Tulane's story made it into the final 100 entries of the Amazon contest. And then For Love or Money finaled in the Golden Heart.

Those contest results didn't directly lead to immediate success, but they convinced me to dust off those Rhodes Family manuscripts and seriously pitch them. So one day in April 2009 I sat down across a table from Elaine English and pitched Last Chance for the first time in years.

I was pretty sure that no agent would want this series, which had been so soundly rejected over the years. But Elaine surprised and reassured me. She asked to see them all.

And to my utter astonishment, she agreed to represent me. Then she turned her crew of readers lose on my manuscripts, and she and her readers gave me a road map for some serious edits that turned two of these books into part of the four book proposal that she shopped around in late 2009.

And then, in early 2010, nine years after I wrote the first draft of the first chapter of Tulane' s story, Forever Romance bought the book. And just a few weeks ago, I walked into Barnes and Noble and saw the book sitting right out front.

That was, without question, the most gratifying moment of my very short writing career.

Thank you Elaine. Thank you Forever Romance. This story of a good ol' boy in a pink car has always been near and dear to my heart. It took a long, long time to write and to sell. I had to rewrite it at least a dozen times. And yet, the first chapter, featuring Sarah and Tulane on an airplane, has changed almost not at all since it was first written down ten years ago.

This, I think, is a classic example of perseverance. If you have story that you believe in, never, never, never give up on it. One day you might sit down across a small table from someone and talk about that book, and suddenly, you'll find an ally who believes in it as much as you do.

And the rest will be history.

New Release: Home at Last Chance by Hope Ramsay

2011-08-23T11:09:00.002-04:00

The agency is excited to announce that Home at Last Chance, the sequel to the bestselling romance novel Welcome to Last Chance, is now available. Author Hope Ramsay brings the small southern town of Last Chance to life with her wonderful cast of characters once again:

Dear Reader,

You won't believe what's happened. My son Tulane has come back home! You remember Tulane? He'd set out to find fame and fortune in the big, wide world outside of Last Chance, and I'm mighty proud. But that's not the half of it-Tulane isn't only back, he's brought a young lady with him.

Now Sarah-she does PR for Tulane's stock-car team-she's from Boston, but she's just about the sweetest girl you could meet. I think she's meant to keep Tulane out of trouble after that story in the papers, but he doesn't want to talk about it. Anyhow, the Ladies Auxiliary can't wait to start matchmaking and introduce Sarah to our Reverend Ellis. But mark my words, Sarah is tired of being a good girl. And no one is better at breaking the rules and raising Cain than my son . . .

Listen to me going on and keeping customeres waiting. I best get back to work, but you come round again. The Cut 'n' Curl's got hot rollers, free coffee, and the best gossip in town.

See you real soon,

Ruby Rhodes

Be sure to pick up your copy today!

I see, you see, we all see...

2011-08-10T16:27:00.005-04:00

Okay, that title wasn't particularly clever, as it doesn't include third person and it's not even the right words, but hey. I though using "scream" might imply something slightly different than the actual topic, which is:

Point of View!

Let’s talk about this. This is one of those things that, when you think about it, is generally pretty common sense. The problem is, I think people get so caught up in telling their stories and trying to get all the information out there, they don’t always think about it.

Some people have only a little trouble with this- a couple slips here and there, just something to keep an eye on. Some people have no trouble. Some people have lots of trouble.

The easiest place, in my experience, to have no trouble, is when you’re telling something from a first person POV. Because in first person, it’s pretty easy to tell what belongs and what doesn’t. Even when you’re not thinking about it, when you’re writing you generally know you can’t switch to someone else’s thoughts if your narrator doesn’t know them, unless your narrator is psychic. I think even if you weren’t paying terribly close attention, you wouldn’t make a mistake like:

“I was sitting at a booth and watching the bar door when my dad strolled in. He saw me and grinned.

‘Hey, Elsie!’

‘Hey dad!” I gestured for him to sit down.

Behind Elsie, Frank watched jealously, sipping his coke and thinking of the best way to get her alone.”

First person is probably (certainly?) the easiest way to get close to your main character. It gives them a very distinct voice that builds their character, instead of just basing it on their actions. But of course, it can be very limiting, because you know your narrator so much better than anyone else (unless you play around with how you use the first person. See: Sherlock Holmes, for example (but really, see them. The real, Conan Doyle stories, I mean. They’re amazing). Watson is the first person narrator, but the stories are, of course, actually about Holmes).

Third person is where it gets tricky, because there are so many ways to do it, and people try to combine them. Pick one.

Some people opt for omniscient third person, where the narrator sees and knows everything about everyone. This is easy because it lets you tell anything you want about what anyone is doing. It’s difficult because it distances you from your characters a bit more, so you’ll have to work on revealing their inner thoughts and desires without doing too much telling. And if your narrator is really going to be omniscient, you can’t get too close to one person for too long, because that’s more…

Close third person. Close third person is a favorite, and probably where I see the most mistakes. In close third person, you pick one character- your main character, almost always- and the third person narrator doesn't leave their side. Or their head, since you can usually see what they’re thinking, as well. The narrator is not an actor in the story any more than the omniscient narrator is, but they only know what the character they are close to knows. Thus, the narrator (and the reader) can’t know what other people are thinking or doing unless the main character knows, too.

An example: The Harry Potter series, with a couple of exceptions (generally one chapter in the beginning of the book that shows what Voldemort’s up to) is told in close third person, close to Harry. We don’t know anything until Harry does (well, we might figure stuff out faster than he does, but only based on the information he knows). The story does not, all of a sudden, follow Hermione for a day or an hour, even if what happened to her was important. We have to wait until she tells Harry about this. This is a drawback of close third-person (it would be really convenient if the narrator could just show/tell us what Hermione did), but it’s necessary. By not leaving the one character’s side (and mind), we know them intimately fairly quickly. It’s similar to first-person in this way; it’s an excellent way to really develop your main character. Of course, it’s also more of an effort to develop the characters you’re not close to. But (clearly) every POV is a give and take.

I've seen more problems with this than one might expect. A close third person narration will suddenly switch to a different character, which is horribly disorienting.

Don’t get me wrong: you’re allowed to switch viewpoints. Quite a lot of books do it. But it has to be at regular, set intervals- chapters, for instance. This is Jeff’s chapter, now Christine’s. It has to be obvious. The POV can’t switch in the middle of, say, a phone call. If the character on the phone is not the character we’re close to, we do not know what the person on the other end of the line is saying. We just don’t. Maybe they’ll tell us in a minute; but until then, we don’t know. A couple of other interns have written about changing POV, however (one about a year ago, and one in March), so I won’t go into too much detail about that. I do recommend those posts if you need help on that though.

To sum up, don’t stray. Switch, coherently, if you’d like, but don’t stray. Pick a point of view and be true to it, even when you’d like to let us know a bit of information that’s going to be hard to work in. It can be frustrating, but it’s worth it for a polished, coherent, smooth read.

This is more a call to double check your work than anything. I know that most writers know the differences between POVs. But like I said, sometimes it’s one sentence of slip-up, or just a switch that’s a bit disorienting. Make sure you know exactly where you’re going with your narrator’s voice, and make sure everything fits.

Hope this can help, live long and prosper and all that,

-Katie

New Release: Just One Touch by Celeste O. Norfleet

2011-08-01T09:46:00.001-04:00

Happy Monday! If this summer isn't hot enough for you already, our authors are ready to help you turn up the heat. Today's release is another steamy romance from the prolific Celeste O. Norfleet:

Her bottom line:

Journalist Tatiana Coles is famous for doing anything for a story--including putting herself in harm's way. Now, on vacation in Martha's Vineyard, she faces her greatest challenge: getting an exclusive on reclusive media mogul Spencer Cage. Putting his words to her paper will fast-track her career. But it also means facing the man she loved and lost.

Their work stays on the page...

Spencer plays by nobody's rules but his own. Three years ago, he and Tatiana were inseparable. Which made her betrayal all the more unforgivable. Now the self-made entrepreneur intends to have his sweet revenge: a summer the traitorous news correspondent will never forget.

...not in the bed

All it takes is one kiss to reignite desire. But how can he avoid putting his own heart on the line? Because now Spencer and Tatiana are playing for the highest stakes of all--a second chance at love...

Be sure to pick up or download your copy today!

New Release: "Talbot's Ace" by Diane Whiteside in Improper Gentlemen

2011-07-26T10:17:00.000-04:00

Good news, Diane Whiteside fans: Improper Gentlemen, a collection of three historical romance short stories, is now available! The anthology includesTalbot's Ace, a new, steamy, old-west story by Diane Whiteside.

He rules Colorado's most glittering, anything-goes gambling palace. And Just Talbot never does something for nothing. But if daring Boston aristocrat Charlotte Morland needs his protection from a dangerous enemy, he'll have no choice but to make her business his pleasure...

Pick up or download a copy today!

Finding Themselves

2011-07-20T12:52:00.001-04:00

I want to talk about characters today. Another intern wrote a post on characters a few months ago, and I agree with everything she said, but I want to talk a little bit more specifically about developing characters. For me, the characters are the most important part of the story (of course, different people have different opinions, but this is mine). A plot can be mediocre (I’d rather it not be, of course, but it can be forgiven) if the characters are excellent. When I write, I almost always start a story because I have a new character I want to write about, and then the plot develops around them (plotting is generally my least favorite part of writing). This is largely why dialogue is something I harp on so much, because the way someone talks is so integral to who they are.

For example, in my recent blog post on dialogue, I wrote up a couple of short example conversations between the characters David, Jane and Jared. These conversations were completely random and on-the-spot, and the names were just the first that popped into my head. But since then, I’ve found myself thinking about them more than I expected to. Just based on those conversations, I already know that the three of them are deep into something, probably trying to scam someone (for some reason what I’m picturing is something about an inheritance, but I also don’t think the three are siblings). It’s also clear that David and Jane are doing something behind Jared’s back. Part of me keeps wondering what the story is, because I’ve inadvertently created characters that interest me.

You should know your characters intimately, in and out of the situations of the story. You should know all sorts of random details that may never actually come into play in your actual story, because the more you know (even random, apparently pointless things) the better you will be able to predict what your character would do in a certain situation. As the other intern mentioned, you should know what you characters were like as children, what they think about before going to sleep, etc.

A good number of you probably already do stuff like this, but for those of you who have trouble breaking away from the plot, here’s my advice. I like to do character development exercises—my favorites are the ones that are lists of questions. You can find any number of these online. They ask things like “What does your character wish for when they blow out their birthday candles?” “What are three bad habits your character has?” and “What is your character’s worst fear?” (I had no idea one of my characters was deathly afraid of fire until I came across that question. Once I realized it (and realized that, being who he was, he would never admit it to anyone), my storyline opened up considerably). Sometimes you have to modify the questions to make them fit your character (if you have a character that’s an orphan living in the woods in a fantasy world (like me), clearly she never blew out birthday candles. But if she could wish for something, what would it be?). But that’s okay, that’s just more information to work with. Also, sometimes the questions just make you go “of course!” even if you already know your character really well. For instance, the bad habits question: “he smokes- it’s the twenties!” It was so obvious, but it’s not necessarily something I would have thought about enough to include, and it can make all the difference. It’s the little details that make a scene. And a character.

My favorite question is “What is your character’s worst nightmare?” Whenever I answer this question, I answer it literally. I write out the actual nightmare, from the first-person point of view of that character (even if the manuscript itself isn’t from that character’s point of view—it’s helpful to get into each character’s head a bit). Of course, everyone has their own methods, but I’ve had quite a lot of fun with that question, and learned quite a bit about my own characters at the same time.

Sometimes helping a character find themselves is more important than you realize. Maybe a minor character isn’t so minor after all (I would recommend doing these types of exercises for lots of characters, not just the main ones). Maybe a piece of your main character’s past is going to change the whole story. When it comes down to it, I think the main message is don’t be so glued to your plot that you suffocate your characters. If you let them be themselves, chances are your story will improve.

All for now!

-Katie

See?

2011-07-12T11:21:00.007-04:00

So today I read an article (well, a mini-article) in the Washington Post Express that bothered me a lot, and it tied into a post I wrote on here before, so I thought I'd share.

It wasn't the article itself that bothered me--it was about a man in Qatar that is trying to breed Spix's macaws (the world's rarest species of parrot, I believe) in order to release some back into the wild, because there are no known specimens still living in the wild (and only 76 in captivity, according to the Express)(have you guys seen the recent cartoon movie Rio? The "Blue Macaw" is modeled after the Spix's macaw). This, in itself, is fantastic. As a parrot lover, I'm gung-ho for saving and reintroducing species.

The article had a picture underneath it. It was the back view of a macaw with its wings spread. Now, I'm sure there are only a few Express readers who would have noticed this, but working in a pet store (a privately owned pet store where the employees actually know what they're talking about, thank you) and knowing a fair amount about parrots in particular, I noticed something.

The bird pictured is not a Spix's Macaw. It is a Blue and Gold macaw.

Since I'd just recently written up a whole post about authors doing their research, and how they can't expect the readers to not know more than them, this bothered me even more than it normally would.

I talked to my co-worker from the pet store, and she said she had read the original, long-version article in the Washington Post proper (in fact, our boss had brought it in for the employees to read), and it had a correct picture. Which, to me, makes this even worse. Now it's not even an issue of not knowing, it's just being lazy. What this says to me is that the Express just didn't want to go through the trouble of getting the rights to an actual picture, so took a photo stock picture of a somewhat nondescript macaw (like I said, it's the back view; I only noticed because it's the wrong color blue for a Spix's, and last time I checked Spix's don't have yellow legs) and assumed it would suffice. It's an article about parrots, it's a picture of a parrot; close enough. (I have to make a disclaimer here and say that, not being a Post or an Express employee, I don't actually know what happened and clearly can't make any official statements about it.) But my personal opinion is that they should get their facts straight. To me, a picture of the wrong bird is misleading and not close enough, especially when the article is so specific to one species. I expect more from a reputable source like the Post.

You can't assume your readers don't know more than you.

I like the Washington Post, and the Express. But issues like this lower my opinion of them.

SO the point of all this was to say "See?" and underline my point about doing your research. It is definitely worth the effort, even if only a few people are going to notice. The person that notices might just be someone that's going to write a blog post about it.

Your neighborhood nit-picker,

Katie

Dialogue: Let's be real. Part II

2011-07-05T11:44:00.007-04:00

I don't mean to harp, but I have more to say about dialogue, and a few of you seemed to like my post on the subject before, so by George I'm gonna say it.

Remember when I said that readers are smart? Readers can figure it out? It's true, I promise. I read way too many things where the author is trying desperately to make absolutely sure the reader knows what's going on. While I'm sure the reader appreciates the thought, it's often not necessary. Specifically, I mean overuse of dialogue tags and names.

Dialogue tags: some authors want to have a "he said," "she said" after every single thing a character says. Obviously, these tags are necessary sometimes (even lots of times). But if you've started a conversation with your characters, and the words are between quotation marks, we know they've said it. I promise.

"I want to get lunch," Jane said.

"Okay. Where do you want to eat?" David asked.

"Anywhere," she responded.

"How about that new Italian place?" he suggested.

"Sounds good," she agreed.

After we've established that Jane and David are talking (which may have happened before this snippet of conversation--hey, we have no idea what they were doing before I started typing) we really don't need that many tags. The last three lines could easily lose their tags entirely, and the conversation loses nothing.

An instance where frequent dialogue tags are helpful is when there are more than two people talking. Obviously, then we need to know how the conversation is progressing. But even then, you can be creative. Instead of an actual dialogue tag, just move the focus to the character who's speaking.

"I've made some changes," David began, "and I think it should work. But--"

"Can you get it to him tomorrow?" Jared interrupted.

"Yes."

"Then do it."

Jane paced the room, her hands twitching slightly. "But what if he won't sign?"

Thrusting the papers away from him, David sighed and pressed his hands against his eyes. "Then we start from the beginning."

Jared groaned. "Not again!"

There are seven separate instances of people speaking in that conversation, but I only used two actual dialogue tags. And I think it's pretty obvious who's talking throughout.

Names: this one's pretty obvious, I think. But I still see people get hung up on it. Direct conversation by content and context, not by telling us exactly whom the character is addressing. What I mean is, above, David didn't have to say "then we start from the beginning, Jane" for us to know he was answering her. Generally, people only use each other's names when they're trying to get their attention or for emphasis. So if David is really fed up with Jane and Jared's harping by now, and thinks the answer should be obvious, he could say "then we start from the beginning, Jane." But he doesn't need to. I've seen more conversations than I expected to that go something like this:

"What should we do about Jared, Jane?"

"I don't know, David, what do you think?"

"It's up to you, Jane."

Tiring is really the only way to describe it.

I'm not saying you should be Hemingway or anything, here. Dialogue tags and names are good (as it turns out). But like any writing tool, just be careful about how and how often you use them. Yes, we need to know who's talking to whom. But not in every sentence.

Hope this helps and good luck!

-Katie

New Release: Reconcilable Differences by Elizabeth Ashtree

2011-07-05T09:56:00.001-04:00

Prosecutor Gwendolyn Haverty puts bad guys in jail…and keeps them there. That isn't easy when defense lawyers like Aaron Zimmerman try to spring them out again. Zimmerman is a rumpled do-gooder on a mission to free the innocent—which, of course, includes every single one of his clients behind bars!

His latest mission's success depends on convincing Gwen to listen to his witness. Fine. That ten minutes she gives Aaron to plead his case results in a ridiculous cell phone mix-up…and a playdate for their two boys? She's not sure how the line between professional and personal gets blurred so quickly. But it can't happen again. She can't let this man, no matter how compassionate, into her heart.

Elizabeth Ashtree's newest romance is now available from Harlequin. Be sure to pick up a copy!

New Release: What a Goddess Wants by Stephanie Julian

2011-06-30T10:08:00.000-04:00

Tessa, Etruscan Goddess of the Dawn, is desperately fighting off a malicious god, but her powers are weakening. She needs a hero and fast, because only sexual energy can give her strength. So she seeks out Caligo, whose sexual prowess is legendary...

Caligo is a fabled Cimmerian warrior determined to stay away from spoiled goddesses who trample hearts after they've had their fun. But there's something irresistibly hot and inviting about Tessa, and he knows he's her only chance to escape the encroaching darkness...

Stephanie Julian is back with another steamy romance. You can pick up your copy today!

Research Makes Perfect

2011-06-15T15:11:00.003-04:00

Tip of the day from your friendly neighborhood intern: do your research. I know, it isn’t the most fun part of writing a novel—it’s tedious and time-consuming, and you want to get to writing your story and bringing the scenes in your head to life (although in theory you’re writing about something that interests you, so hopefully the research isn’t too boring). But trust me, it’s worth it.

One thing I cannot caution you enough on is the use of foreign languages in your books. I love the use of other languages in things I’m reading, I really do. I get excited. But I hate when they’re used incorrectly. And since I speak a couple of other languages conversationally, I often notice.

An example completely unrelated to my work here, so as not to offend anyone: at the pet store I work at, I once saw a bird toy that was made of coconuts and other things latin-american-y. The company, trying to be cutesy, decided to put some Spanish slogans on it. One of them was “Mucho grande!” Mucho grande means much big. Not even in English is that okay. I was not inclined to buy that toy for my bird (yes, I do actually have a bird), and when a novel makes this mistake, I’m not inclined to sing its praises.

Don’t use an online translator. I love Google translate; it’s my best friend when I need to know a word for a class. But if you don’t know the language and can’t use discretion, don’t try. “Mucho grande” could have been fixed by a literal translation (which is part of why it annoys me SO much), but often those don’t work for the everyday slang in dialogue (which is usually when you’re using the other language).

If you really want to use another language that you don’t speak, find someone who speaks it. It’s really not that hard in this day and age; we can find anyone we want on the internet.

In general, you can’t assume your readers won’t know this or that detail, or won’t care. Some readers are going to know more than you. Some, just because they’re curious, will look things up to see if you’re right. And you want to be right. If a character in your story has a disease, make sure you know the symptoms and progression of that disease really well. If you’re writing about a different time period, make sure all of your historical facts mesh (on this note, I also want to mention that it’s really okay for characters to have beliefs that mesh with their time period, not ours. Sure, we don’t want them to be bigots, but realistically, women’s rights (for example) didn’t come along until fairly recently. Not every guy from history has to be gung-ho for equality to make them a good guy. They just have to be good. And, you know. Not a complete bigot.).

Sometimes, readers even like to learn (gasp!). If you’ve done enough research on your topic (or even have enough background knowledge), you don’t have to stop at the simple, basic information. You don’t want a list of facts, of course, but if you can slip some interesting tidbits into dialogue or narration, it can add to the story. Be careful about it (remember what I said before about dialogue that’s obviously just there to tell the reader something? “Did you know that the leaning tower of Pisa took almost two centuries to build, and it started leaning after only a couple years of construction? But they stopped building it for almost a century so that the earth could settle underneath and it wouldn’t fall. It’s the campanile, or free-standing tower, for the cathedral in Pisa.”), but if it fits naturally into the story, go for it. This is why I love historical fiction; I love learning new things.

I thought this was going to be a fairly short post, but I don’t seem to be able to stop when I start rambling. I’ll cut myself off. Good luck and keep writing!

-Katie

Dialogue: Let's be real.

2011-05-31T14:28:00.002-04:00

Nothing turns me off a story more than poor dialogue. It has to sound real. When reading a story (be it a partial submitted here or a published novel) I can forgive the author for a lot of things. If the dialogue is unconvincing, it is very hard to win me back.

Let’s be clear. Things that make me cringe:

-dialogue that is obviously only used to explain something to the reader. Authors often don’t give the reader enough credit. The reader is smart. The reader can figure it out. The reader also knows when dialogue is contrived, not to portray a conversation between characters, but to spell something out. That’s not to say you should never use dialogue to explain something—used correctly, this can be a great tool. But you have to do it subtly.

For example, the WRONG way to set up a situation:

“Josh and Mary are together again. I don’t think that’s going to work. He cheated on her before and people don’t really change.”

“I think you’re right. Mary is too dependent on him, too. She’s only going to end up in trouble again.”

A better way to say this could go something like:

“Mary’s back with Josh.”

“Seriously? God, I thought she was rid of him.”

“I know, me too. I swear, he smiles and she goes running back.”

People’s thoughts on a subject can be just as (or more) informative than straight information. In the second example, we already know the speakers don’t like Josh, and that Mary is infatuated. We don’t need all the information at once; it can come out later that they were separated because he cheated.

-being too formal. Specifically, the absence of contractions. This one really gets to me. Use contractions! When people talk, they use contractions (unless there is a specific reason for them not to—if they learned English as a second language, for example). If it’s a really formal setting, that’s fine. But in day to day speech, people do not say things like “We would love it if you would come. We will wait for you so that you do not get lost.” Instead, say something like “We’d love for you to come. We’ll wait for you so you don’t get lost.” It’s a simple thing, but it makes a huge difference.

There are more, of course, but those are two big ones and this post is getting long. So before you send your baby out for other people to judge, go back to the dialogue. I know it’s hard to be objective, but try to imagine the conversation outside of the story. Could you hear two of your friends having the conversation? Two random people on the street? If not, the reader probably can’t hear the characters having it, and it’s going to disrupt your story. The story you've slaved over deserves better than to be dismissed because of awkward dialogue.

Good luck!

-Katie

New Release: Just for the Night by Tawny Weber

2011-05-03T14:33:00.002-04:00

Power outages happen, and you have to be somewhere—like in an empty store—with your ex. Who is still irresistible. And hot. And who knows how to make the most out of a dark situation….

Checklist for: Larissa Zahn

☑ Food

☑ Water

☑ First aid kit (With condoms. Be prepared. Very, very prepared.)

☑ Someone you're still overwhelmingly into (Jason Cantrell, I'm looking at you.)

☑ Plenty of time in the dark (Read: hot nookie. Lots of it.)

❑ The ability to walk away without regrets in the morning…. (Uh-oh!)

Intrigued? Then check out Tawny Weber's latest steamy romance in the Harlequin Blaze line, Just for the Night. You can pick up a copy today at your favorite bookstore.

And In the End...

2011-04-25T16:00:00.002-04:00

Writing a novel is hard. There’s no getting around it. Trying to create words and sentences that flow into each other nicely, develop characters and plots, and maybe even create an entire new world? These are all really difficult, and it’s easy to forget about some things while writing.

Forgetting, however, is exactly what I want to talk about. I’ve been noticing lately that many authors will introduce a plot element or subplot at the beginning of the story, but they won’t come back to it again at the end. Other times, a character arc will start, but the character will end up right back where she started at the end of the novel. It’s frustrating for us to get caught up in a plot element in a partial, only to read the synopsis and find that it’s not mentioned after the first three chapters.

Here’s an extreme example. Let’s pretend that J.K. Rowling never wrote another Harry Potter book after Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. The sixth Harry Potter book ended the way it was written, with Harry getting ready to search for Horcruxes and fight Voldemort, but Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows never happened. It would have been monumentally frustrating (especially for someone who loves the Harry Potter books as much as I do) to have had over ten years of exposition leading to the final book and battle, only to have no battle at all.

What I’m trying to say is, as you’re proofreading your manuscripts, make sure that the plot and character elements introduced at the beginning don’t disappear from the rest of your stories. If a character is unemployed and looking for a job at the beginning of the story, don’t put her in the same position at the end – it makes the story itself feel pointless. We want to finish learning about your characters, find out whodunit or whether the guy will end up with the girl of his dreams. And we will – provided those endings are written.

Hope this helps! Good luck with your writing!

-Becca

What’s In A Name?

2011-04-15T11:25:00.002-04:00

This past weekend, I attended a writer’s conference. It was a lot of fun and I had a great time, but I noticed something about everyone I talked to. Most of them couldn’t give me a definitive answer on what they wrote.

I know today, the lines between genres are blurring and there are new genres coming out, but it is important to know where your book belongs. Not only will it help readers know what they are reading, but it will also help you write better. You will know what to focus on in your plot. Is your book a mix of action and romance? Well, which is the strongest voice or plot strand?

Not to mention, if you can’t classify your book, how is anyone else going to? An agent won’t and a publisher won’t. It’s on you.

So to that end, I’ve compiled a short list of genres (and subgenres) with equally short definitions to get you started.

Main Genres:

Romance: a love story

Mystery: a whodunit

Fantasy: a mythical world that bends the laws of nature

Sci-Fi: a made up place with advanced technology

Thriller: a suspense filled story

Horror: some grotesque elements and fear for the main characters

Literary Fiction: “serious fiction”-highbrow writing and concepts

Sub-genres:

Historical: set in the past

Contemporary: present time

Paranormal: include characters or elements of make-believe

Western: set in mid-west

Gothic: dark elements

Profession: a certain type of profession (legal, medicine, politics) prevalent in the story

Inspirational: relying on faith (usually Christian based)

Erotica: focus on sexual relationships instead of emotional ones

Chick-lit: humorous tales of the main female character

Steampunk: a new sub-genre involving steam technology

The list could go on and on. Spend time researching genres and really thinking about what your story is. Also, don’t be afraid to let go of what you want the book to be and what it actually is. One author I met said he always wanted to be Stephen King and tried to write books like him, but when he sat down and finished his book, he found out he was a YA Paranormal Romance writer instead.

Remember find a home for your book!

-Ellen

New Release: The Sheriff's Sweetheart by Laurie Kingery

2011-04-05T09:28:00.000-04:00

Laurie Kingery is back today with the latest inspirational romance in her Brides of Simpson Cree k series, The Sheriff's Sweetheart:

He needs to turn his life around... and Simpson Creek, Texas, is the perfect place to do it. On the run from his dangerous past, Sam Bishop is happy to find a town seeking "marriage-minded bachelors." A wealthy wife is just what he needs to make his gambling problems disappear. But when Prissy Gilmore catches Sam's eye, she proves to be much more than a rich match. Sam wants to deserve her, wants to become sheriff and protect her hometown—wants to be the man she believes him to be. Yet the true test is waiting, when his past returns to challenge his future.

To read more, pick up a copy today.

Keep it Real: Crafting a Good Narrative Tone

2011-04-04T16:02:00.002-04:00

Yo homeslice, what’s the 411 on the blogosphere and the intertubes today?

Okay, so that’s kind of exaggerated, but it’s perfect for what I want to talk about today: narrative tone and style. It can be tough to keep your narration from being too casual or too formal, so I wanted to discuss some tips for crafting that perfect voice.

Unlike the first sentence of this post, you should try to keep your narration—regardless of whether it is first person or third person—from being overly casual. Try to avoid using lots of slang terms and idiomatic phrases if you can. Even though it may seem like it fits in with your story and the featured protagonist, it can be very difficult for us interns to sift through colloquialisms to learn about the characters and the plots while reading manuscripts. If you’re unsure about how casual to go, I would recommend making your writing slightly more formal than a well-written blog post (see those of my fellow interns for inspiration!)

But you should also be careful about being too formal as well. We’re interested in commercial fiction, not nouveau nineteenth century literature. While I love the Bronte sisters and Charles Dickens’ novels as much as the next girl (Mr. Rochester, anyone?), modern day fiction can’t be quite that formalized. But it is possible to find that happy medium. One book that I love that’s written in a relatively formal narrative style is Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It keeps the reader interested in what is going on without seeming overly formal or overly casual. I’m not advising you to copy Chabon’s writing style, but reading well written fiction often helps me with my own writing – if only as a way to set a high bar for myself.

It can be difficult to find that line between too casual and too formal, and sometimes you might just want to use a character voice, which is fine too. Character voices can add a lot to a story and can keep your readers engaged from the very first sentence. One piece of advice, though: make sure that your character voice fits in with the overall tone of your story. A harrowing murder mystery won’t read as well if the heroine’s narration is that of a Carrie Bradshaw-type, and vice versa. But feel free to develop your character voices any way you want.

Hope this helps a bit on your quest for the perfect narrative tone. Good luck and happy writing!

-Becca

Stuck in the Middle

2011-04-01T15:49:00.002-04:00

Is there anything worse than staring at a blank sheet of paper (or a blank Word document if that’s more your thing) for seemingly hours on end? I don’t think so. Now, I’m far from a professional writer, but I have had my share of writer’s block. Whether it’s finding a way to continue a story or even finding a way to begin one, we’ve all been there. Here are some of my tried and true ways to keep the words flowing.

-Music. Hope Ramsay recently wrote a guest post about the soundtrack for her latest novel, which you can check out here. I’m a huge fan of using my iPod when I write as well. Whenever I’m stuck I turn to a particular genre or artist for inspiration. Right now I’m working on a story about the breakdown of a relationship, and whenever I hit a wall I turn on a soulful ballad to help things along.

-Research. I recently had trouble completing a story about an alcoholic (uplifting!). So, I turned to my trusty friend Wikipedia. The in-depth articles gave me more insight into the disease, and really helped me bring my character—and story—to life.

-Change of scenery. There’s nothing like a quick walk around the block or trip to the grocery store to get my creative juices flowing. People-watching, or just observing different surroundings, really helps to get my mind off what I’m writing. Easing some of the stress I feel working under a deadline allows me to come back to the piece with fresh eyes.

-Get a second opinion. I’m lucky to have a friend who is always willing to take a look at my writing when I’m struggling. If I send my story off to her, she’ll give me great notes on my characters or plot and what I could change or think about. Most of the time I completely disregard her advice, but railing against her comments always helps me find my own vision.

-Just write. If all else fails, I write down anything and everything that comes to mind. I don’t set limits, and I allow myself to completely overwrite and go wild. When I go back to trim everything down I usually find that most of it is actually usable! It’s almost as good as discovering a 20 in your pocket.

These are just a few of the techniques that work for me, but I’m sure there are plenty of other great ideas out there. What are some of your methods of beating writer’s block?

-Beverly

New Release: Cowboy Fever by Joanne Kennedy

2011-03-31T10:15:00.000-04:00

The agency is thrilled to announce that author Joanne Kennedy has been named a 2011 RITA Finalist for Contemporary Single Title Romance for her last book, One Fine Cowboy. Congratulations, Joanne!

Today we are also announcing the release of Joanne's latest novel, another sexy, contemporary cowboy romance, Cowboy Fever:

Miss Rodeo Wyoming Jodie Bryce is back from the big city to find that her childhood friend Teague Treadwell’s rugged cowboy charm never looked better. But Teague thinks Jodie’s success lifted her out of his reach, and now he’s got to shed his bad boy image to be worthy of the girl next door.

Read more by picking up a copy of Cowboy Fever today!

New Release: The Shadow Guard by Diane Whiteside

2011-03-29T10:03:00.000-04:00

The agency is happy to announce today's release of the latest novel by author Diane Whiteside, paranormal romance The Shadow Guard:

THE SHADOW GUARD. They are the darkest of Black Ops. A force operating outside the sphere of the CIA or FBI. Taking their mandate not from the U.S. government, but from magic. And sex.

SAHIR. Astrid Carlson is one of them, a mage on a mission. With her wispy blond hair and those long, long legs, she can make a man forget himself. Until it’s way too late.

KUBRI. Jake Hammond is the only thing she needs, the human conductor who can focus all her strength, bringing her to a peak of power, or shattering her completely.Yeah, she’s got a hundred or so years on him, but who’s counting when there’s an unstoppable assassin to take down – and unstoppable chemistry about to combust…

View the trailer for this book at dianewhiteside.com and pick up a copy of The Shadow Guard today!

New Release: Getting Played by Celeste Norfleet

2011-03-25T15:34:00.002-04:00

If there's one thing Kenisha Lewis has learned, it's that the people you think you know best often surprise you the most. And not always in a good way. It seems the revelations just keep coming. First, her grandmother and her dad are having money troubles, which means she'll probably have to stay in public school and get a part-time job. And then there's her boyfriend, Terrence, who has more secrets than she could have imagined. Kenisha can't believe Terrence is dumb enough to get mixed up in a string of robberies. Or that he'd cheat on her with his old girlfriend. Or could it be that she just doesn't want to admit the truth? Where Kenisha goes, drama follows, but she's getting stronger and smarter every day. And she doesn't plan on getting played again....

Getting Played is Celeste O. Norfleet's latest YA novel from Kimani Romance's Tru line. Pick up a copy today and check it out!

Proforaednig Maeks A Difernece

2011-03-25T13:18:00.003-04:00

Can you read the title of this post? If you stare at the words for a few minutes, you can probably figure it out. For those of you who have given up, it says: Proofreading Makes a Difference. Now imagine having to sit through an entire 50 page partial trying to read something like that? Not easy.

No doubt some of you are thinking, “That’s what spell check is for.” Well, spell check only looks for misspelled words. So many manuscripts I read have awkward passages that don’t make sense. They have repeated words and poor grammar. I know it’s thrilling to type the last period of your novel, but please do not simply Google a few literary agencies and send it off. You’re not even giving your book a fighting chance. After so much time spent planning the book, doing painstaking research, and writing, don’t you owe your master piece the respect of another look over? You’d be amazed at how much needs to be rework. You might re-write an entire chapter because you had an off day.

Here’s a little secret when it comes to proofreading: Your book needs to be virtually perfect. It needs to be so polished that it can go from the agent’s hands to the book shelves. Is their wiggle room? Absolutely—an ending may need to be changed or a beginning starts too slow, but the characters and plot need to be there. However, we won’t even get to that point if the novel is riddled with mistakes.

Now that you’re a big ball of stress, let me untangle you. There is hope and there is help! I would suggest joining an online critique group. They are much less hassle than the ones that you drive to weekly or bi weekly. The online ones are on your own time. One of the biggest groups lately is Wattpad. It’s a giant forum of posted books. People vote on their favorites, comment on their stories and offer advice to each other. Also, there is that added bonus of exposure to other people’s works. Critiquing others helps you to understand what’s wrong with your own stuff. If you’re looking for genre specific there are many options out there like RWC and Romance Critters, just search engine it.

Godo Lcuk!

-Ellen

Look Who's Also Talking: Changing Point of View

2011-03-14T12:21:00.001-04:00

Switching between different character’s points of view seems easy, right? All it involves is a first paragraph in one character’s voice, and a second paragraph in a different character’s voice...but it’s not quite that simple. Changing point of view can be very difficult to do in an easily understandable way, and often ends up hurting a manuscript. But there are ways to make it easy to read and understand, and when done well it can add a lot to certain kinds of stories.

I would recommend taking a look at your manuscript and playing devil’s advocate for a few minutes. Ask yourself whether your story really does need the narration to change point of view, or whether it would be fine without it. Think about your plots, subplots and characters – will changing the point of view be helpful to them? And don’t worry about it making your manuscript less interesting – there are plenty of great books that do not change point of view at all, like To Kill a Mockingbird and the Harry Potter series. If your protagonist is a strong enough character, his or her narration will be more than enough to sustain our interest in your story.

But if you decide that you do want to change point of view, make sure it’s easily understandable to readers who don’t know your characters as well as you do. A simple underscored line is often enough to tell us that something is changing between paragraphs, but does not necessarily denote a point of view change. Something simple like using third person would easily indicate a change – if we’re reading Marie’s thoughts for the first two chapters and Jason’s thoughts for the second, using their names is incredibly helpful. Another way to easily indicate switches is to use names as chapter headings to quickly indicate changes. Check out The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers for examples of third person point of view changes, and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury for examples of using names as chapter headings.

This is tough to do, but I’m sure you’re up to the challenge!

Good luck and happy writing!

-Becca

What a Character!

2011-03-11T16:19:00.000-05:00

We all know how important characters are to a story. However, I find that some writers are so intent on telling a story and weaving a complex plot that they tend to ignore their main characters. Although a twisting plot can be exciting and absorbing, without strong characters to ground the story, such a plot tends to fall flat. It’s incredibly important to have a good, strong main character to draw the reader into the story. The protagonist should create a connection between the reader and the novel, helping to make them feel connected and invested in the work. Think of the main character as a guide who takes the reader through the plot, helping them to understand exactly what is going on around them.

Of course, crafting a strong character is easier said than done. So how exactly do we go about writing character? First of all, make sure the character is realistic. Really get into their heads: know what they were like as children, their favorite food, even what they think about when they fall asleep at night. Of course, you don’t need to write about all of this, but have it in the back of your mind when you’re writing. If the character feels alive for you, it’s much easier to bring them to life for the reader.

Once you have a deep sense of who the main character is, it’s time to get them onto the page. But don’t just tell us what the character is like—involve the reader by using indirect characterization. For example, if your main character is angry, she could be clenching her fists or grinding her teeth. This gives the reader more of a sense of who the character is than simply stating “she was angry.” How the main character expresses her emotions or thoughts is what makes her unique.

Keep writing!

--Beverly

New Release: Come Away with Me by Celeste O. Norfleet

2011-03-04T15:16:00.001-05:00

We are happy to announce that Celeste Norfleet is back with another steamy romance, Come Away with Me.

After being dumped by her longtime boyfriend, Shay Daniels isn't looking to get burned again. But that's before she meets legendary love expert Quinn Anderson at a relationship therapy retreat. The jaded travel show host vows to get an exclusive story on the gorgeous, enigmatic Dr. Love.

Shay may not be buying into Quinn's whole relationship philosophy, but boy is he hot. Then the widowed entrepreneur throws Shay a challenge: he'll teach her the art of seducing a man by becoming her partner in an erotic test run. But he never expects his passionate student to surpass the teacher. Now the only exclusive he'll give is the one on Shay's heart.

To find out more and buy a copy, click here.

Facebook Me!

2011-02-25T15:56:00.002-05:00

As a child of the technology generation, I can’t tell you how important it is to learn everything you need to know about sites like Facebook and MySpace. I know, I know, some people don’t see the importance. I myself can’t get around to using Twitter. It’s like texting was ten years ago. No one really used it when it first came out. Now all we do is text and experts are afraid people are losing their ability to interact with one another.

Most beginning writers do not realize that there is another side of being an author. The commonly held belief is once the book is written and handed over to someone to publish, the writer’s job is done. However, this isn’t true. In today’s publishing world, it is not enough for an author to be talented. They must also be business savvy. One way to enhance the business side of your writing is to gain connections in the industry.

So why do I think Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are important? They are a great way to market yourself. (Remember it is you and your potential you’re selling to someone!) These are high-high tech networking. The traditional methods in the publishing world was to attend conferences and do certain met and greets with those who hold the clout to get your book published or with readers who will buy copies. Today, an author must combine both in order to get their name out there. Many author’s like Stephanie Julian have their websites linked with Twitter updates and Facebook feeds/fan pages to provide information about their books and build readership. You can, also, make friends with other writers who are trying to publish and set up a critique group.

Another way to be noticed is to create a themed group with other writers. Themed groups help sell your books and also give you another source of promoting your book through word of mouth. An excellent example to check out is Hope Ramsay’s The Ruby Slippered Sisterhood. It’s a group of authors who have teamed up to help promote each others books on their web pages and give each other a hand when it’s needed. Often times, they become great friends.

So all in all, the web is becoming an extremely important tool in marketing and writing. I would caution, however, that you keep your business as a writer separate from your personal pages on Facebook or MySpace so you can maintain a level of privacy.

If you haven’t checked any of this out or aren’t currently considering it, you should. And remember, always act professional!

-Ellen

Guest Blog: Finding an Emotional Touchstone

2011-02-24T09:59:00.003-05:00

We welcome Hope Ramsay to the keyboard today as we continue to celebrate the release of Welcome to Last Chance, Hope's debut from Grand Central Publishing/Forever Romance. Without further ado:

I try to write emotional stories. It's something I work on diligently. Writing emotional stories doesn't come as easily as finding plot twists or complications for my characters. And I know that I can get pretty caught up in the plot of a story, and lose the emotional aspects of it that are so important when writing romance.

For this reason, I won't even start a story without an overarching emotional touchstone for the novel, as well as emotional touchstones for the hero and heroine.

What's a touchstone? It's something tangible that can put me right into the correct emotional frame of mind. It's a way of borrowing an emotion from something, because it's hard to write a sad scene when you're feeling happy, or to write about a character who needs to take chances, when you are naturally a risk taker.

I need short cuts, and that's what a touchstone is.

Because nothing moves me emotionally the way music does, my touchstones are always songs. And a group of them in a play list on my iPod are almost like a soundtrack for the novel I might be working on. I'll put that play list on while I'm writing and I'm never very far from where the story lives emotionally. When I get lost, or I need to rethink something, I dial up a particular song and listen to it repeatedly. It always works.

So, to celebrate the release day for WELCOME TO LAST CHANCE, I thought I would share a portion of the book's soundtrack.

God Bless the Broken Road by Rascal Flatts is the song that moved me to write this story. I first heard this song on my way to an RWA chapter meeting, and I knew, right then I had found the theme for the next book. WELCOME TO LAST CHANCE is all about how the hero and heroine have to overcome their broken pasts. In fact, the troubles my lovers have suffered in the past are precisely what makes them ready for each other.
Ask for More by David Wilcox is a song whose title I shamelessly use in a scene that takes place in the local beauty shop, where Miz Miriam, my town matchmaker, tells my heroine, Jane, that she should "ask for more." The song is about listening to the signs from on high that whisper in your ear and tell you that you are selling yourself short. Jane needs to learn how to love herself, and asking for more is the first step on that journey.
When the Sand Runs Out also by Rascal Flatts is a song about living one's life to the fullest. This song is the emotional touchstone for my hero, Clay. He's in the middle of a life crisis where he's spending way too much time worrying about what happened in the past and trying to be safe. The song is all about taking a chance -- something that Clay really needs to do.

I have a dozen other songs in this sound track. Some of them apply to minor characters, and some apply to specific scenes and turning points. I can't share them here without spoiling the story for you.

But don't know how I would write anything worth reading without finding inspiration and emotion in music.

New Release

2011-02-22T12:59:00.003-05:00

Today we're celebrating the release of Welcome to Last Chance, the first in a series by debut author Hope Ramsay set in Last Chance, South Carolina, where the Cut ‘n Curl is gossip central, the Kountry Kitchen serves up biscuits that melt in your mouth, and the local good ol boys are good looking and mostly single. When Wanda Jane Coblentz blows into Last Chance with five bucks to her name, she meets local fiddler Clay Rhodes at a bar and spends a hot first night at the local no-tell motel. She expects to move on soon, but it seems like she and Clay may be more of a match than she ever dreamed. Clay's mother, Ruby Rhodes, is going to do everything she can to make sure Clay and Jane figure out they're singing the same tune. Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, saying "Ramsay strikes an excellent balance between tension and humor as she spins a fine yarn." Hope is celebrating her release today over at the Ruby Slipped Sisterhood. Check it out and pick up a copy of Welcome to Last Chance today!

Sum it Up

2011-02-18T16:12:00.002-05:00

When I come to the end of a partial, I am always eager to read the synopsis to see how things will turn out for the characters. Because it’s the last thing I read, the summary really sticks with me. So, as difficult as it is to trim down an entire novel into a short summary, it truly is necessary. Summaries help to give a sense of your work as a whole. They should be concise and to the point, but don’t forget to make them interesting! It seems like a daunting task, but you can do it!

It’s natural to want to include everything you love about your novel in the synopsis, but try to detach yourself from the work and only include the storylines that are essential to the plot. Here’s a good way to figure out what’s most important for your synopsis—pick the major point of each of your chapters, and string these together to form the backbone of the summary. This way you don’t leave out anything too important, but you won’t have a lot of extraneous information either.

I find that some writers like to leave cliff-hangers at the end of their summaries. As hard as it is to ruin the ending, it must be done. We really have to see how the novel ends to see if we want to pursue the full.

Finally, be sure your synopsis makes sense. This can be difficult—after all, you know this story like the back of your hand, so of course the summary will make sense to you! It helps to get an outsider’s perspective, just to make sure everything’s as clear as it seems.

While the summary doesn’t hold as much clout as the partial itself, it still is important in helping us make a decision about a manuscript, so make sure it lives up to your standards and reflects your vision. I look forward to reading what you come up with!

-Beverly

Valentine's Day Party!

2011-02-09T10:31:00.002-05:00

On Valentine’s Day, Tawny Weber is having a party on her website: www.TawnyWeber.com! Easy to get to, and you can party in your pajamas even! It’s going to be tons of fun. It will wrap up Tawny’s Top Ten blog tour, and come complete with its very own Top Ten (Top Ten Tips for a Hot Valentine’s Night), a free downloadable short story as a door prize for everyone who attends, and all attendees will be entered in a drawing for a fun Valentine’s Basket.

All you have to do to enjoy the fun is RSVP so you receive your exclusive invitation.

Submissions Update

2011-02-08T12:57:00.002-05:00

Just a brief update from the agency on submissions. As of February 15th, 2011, the agency will be closed to new queries due to the large volume of submissions currently under consideration. Queries submitted to Elaine or Naomi after the 15th will be deleted unread. Stay tuned to the website and blog for updates. Thanks!

New Releases Round-Up

2011-02-08T10:00:00.004-05:00

In The Doctor Takes a Wife, the second book in the "Brides of Simpson Creek" series by author Laurie Kingery, Sarah Matthews knows that Dr. Nolan Walker is a good man, not to mention a handsome one. But she just can't return the Yankee's affection so soon after the War. When the town is struck by a deadly influenza epidemic and Nolan battles to save Sarah's life, Sarah will have to decide if she could love this man. To read more about The Doctor Takes a Wife, click here. Additionally, Mail Order Cowboy, the first book in the series, is currently available from Harlequin as a Books on a Budget special!

In Breaking the Rules, by Tawny Weber, Max is off duty, but he still has one last job to do--look in on his best friend’s kid sister. Only once he meets Sophia, all thought of keeping his hands to himself go out the window. A recent widow, the last thing Sophia needs is another man telling her what to do. Even if that gorgeous man leaves her drooling in a puddle of lust... To read more, click here, and stay tuned for a special Valentine's Day event from Tawny Weber tomorrow.

On Queries

2011-02-07T13:39:00.001-05:00

For my newest blog post, as well as my first post in 2011, I’d like to discuss something that we haven’t really been talking about thus far: queries. As our first impression of you and your writing, query letters are incredibly important for a new writer hoping to be published. A bad query letter could disguise a fantastic manuscript, so it is definitely a good idea to take the time to make sure that your query is intriguing enough to merit a second glance (or a request for a partial).

With that in mind, here are a few tips for writing a successful query letter:

Language: this is a kind of cover letter, so make sure you maintain a level of formality throughout the letter. Cover letters that begin with “Yo Elaine,” for example, do not make me optimistic about reading the rest.
Plot summary: remember my previous blog post about using details in manuscripts? The same thing applies to queries—we’re not looking for an incredibly detailed description of every major and minor event in your story. Just give us an overview of the major plot elements as well as an idea of who the characters will be.
DO include your contact information (name, address, etc.) as well as any accolades you have received as an author.
DON'T include the first few chapters of your manuscript in the body of your email—we will request that from you once your query is screened.

I know that writing query letters can be difficult and confusing, but it’s worth it to take the time to write a good one, since a good query letter is that much more likely to be requested as a partial.

Happy writing, and good luck!
Becca

Know Your Worth

2011-01-13T10:31:00.007-05:00

I grew up as the youngest child, and, as my older sisters will tell you (and probably any older siblings would confirm about their youngest siblings), this means I got away with the most. This "most" behavior was never anything horrible; I wasn't a miscreant by any stretch of the imagination. It just means that I stayed out later and took my parents' car out more. No one blinked an eye when I dyed my hair or shaved my head (a story for another time) or decided that camouflage mini-skirts were my new favorite thing. In fact, the only hard and fast rule from my parents that I can remember about my appearance had to do with my confidence. If I looked uncomfortable--rutching my skirt down or slumping my shoulders or crossing my arms over my chest--my parents would suggest that I change my clothes. After all, what we see when we look at a person is, at first glance, his or her clothes, but the next thing that we see and the impression that we carry with us is the person's confidence.

Now, you've probably read a lot of agents complain about the queries from authors we get boasting, "This book is the next Harry Potter. The next Da Vinci Code. The next Twilight. The bestseller that will make your career." Most certainly, do not be that author. But don't be obsequious either. "I know you have better things to do than read my query. I grovel at the feet of your greatness. I'm sure this isn't up to your standards, but here's my query anyways."

You've worked hard on your manuscript and, presumably, you believe that it's publishable. (If you don't believe that, you need to go back and revise, revise again.) Present your manuscript without any apologies--"I know you're probably up to your ears in queries. Another vampire story, I know."--and let the agent draw his or her own conclusion. After all, you need an agent who values your work, and no one's going to value your work if you don't.

So, chin up. Before you query next time or pitch an agent at a conference, hold your mother's voice in your head (or my mother's, for that matter): "Watch your posture, dear." Or, if that doesn't do it for you, how about Leonard Bernstein's Jets? "Walk tall! We always walk tall! We're Jets! The greatest!"

A Look Back and Forward

2010-12-23T13:40:00.001-05:00

As we come to the end of another year, it seems only natural to look both back and forward. 2010 has certainly been an interesting year in publishing. When publishers finally woke up to e-books, they did so in a big way. The variety of e-book readers has expanded. First there was Kindle, then Sony, now Nook, Kobo, iPads, and others galore. Even Google has launched its own cloud.

As the paradigm shifts, the tone of the conversation about these changes shifts as well. Whereas in past years these changes made some publishers, writers, agents, and readers portend doom and gloom, in 2010, these changes brought a renewed energy to these dynamic conversations. As publishers embrace e-books, so do readers, with sales of e-books beginning to exceed sales of print books in several important instances. For example, some statistics show that voracious readers, like those who love romance, are ones most likely to buy e-books. As agents and writers embrace new media and formats, there’s a renewed sense of collaboration in the partnership to find the best outlet for writers’ work. It’s all rather exciting to be here as the paradigm shifts.

What will 2011 have in store? Sadly our crystal ball needs polishing and our psychic abilities have taken their leave on this subject. But what we do know is that those of us who love books will continue to love them. We’ll read them, we’ll buy them, we’ll collect them. We’ll treasure them. Those who love storytelling will continue to spin their tales. They’ll push themselves to write better and better books that more imaginatively bring to life their stories for the rest of us to read. Competition does bring out the best.

Here at the agency we have a marvelous group of talented authors who write great books. For 2011 we renew our commitment to work hard on behalf of the authors we represent. We look forward to finding new authors who also have wonderful stories to tell. And as we enter the holidays, we urge everyone to take a moment to find a good book and enjoy.

Happy Holidays! Elaine & Naomi

Teenage Dream: Writing for Young Adults

2010-12-10T15:23:00.000-05:00

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of partial manuscripts for young adult novels. In my opinion, YA is one of the hardest genres to write. There are so many subsets of YA—historical, fantasy, and everything in between. It can be difficult to address teenagers, yet I think YA novels are so important. Adolescence is a turbulent time, and having something or someone (a fictional character, perhaps?) to relate to can be very reassuring. With that in mind, here are a few tips to help make your YA novel stand out.

In my eyes, character development is especially important in YA novels. But how exactly does one write a realistic teen? Tap into your high school self. Remember what it was like to be your character’s age—trying to find yourself, create meaningful friendships, and navigate the world on your own. Write these issues into your novel. Including a character who struggles with similar issues helps your reader to feel connected to the story. When creating your characters, be sure to think about age, because just a few years make a huge difference in maturity level. A thirteen year old and a seventeen year old will face massively different problems and situations.

Finally, don’t feel like you need to keep everything squeaky clean. The situations should certainly be age appropriate, but that don’t be afraid to provoke and challenge your reader. Also, avoid throwing in references to teenage heartthrobs and pop culture phenoms just because you want to appeal to your audience. Instead of speculating about what teens like to read about, just go with what you know; your novel will feel more real.

I hope this helps!

--Beverly

And the Rest is History...

2010-12-01T14:44:00.002-05:00

Historical fiction is a genre that has so much potential—you can take a true story and retell it differently, make up a story and frame it within a certain historical time period, or even change the facts of history to suit your narrative. There are so many possibilities, and yet many writers seem to get stuck in the “history” part and never quite make it over to the world of “fiction.” In other words, some of the manuscripts I read have me wondering if I’m reading an original work of fiction or a history book.

The main mistakes I see with this type of writing are stories with too many historical details inorganically inserted throughout the text, so concerned with sounding authentic that the overall tone is very distant and, frankly, rather boring to anyone who’s not a diehard history fan. My guess is that the problem stems from a desire for authenticity—which I get. When you’re writing about a family in 19^th century America, it would probably be best to leave cell phones out of the discussion, and certain aspects of 19^th century life would likely need to be explained to readers. However, sometimes authors get a bit carried away with the history and forget the story.

I sometimes read manuscripts of historical fiction that have passages similar to something like this: “Lady Anne took up her hat, which had been purchased from Madame Beauregard’s hat shop in town. This particular hat shop was famed for being the most fashionable hat shop in the whole country, and had been founded in 1858, introducing the French style to England. The first hat shops in England were actually founded many years prior to this, such as Henrietta’s Hat Shop, established in 1832.” (I’m completely making all of this up, but you get the point.) Does a history lesson on hat shops actually further the plot? No, and on top of that, it’s boring; it takes the reader out of the story if every time a character uses something period-appropriate, you take a moment to give a dry, awkward history of said object. Relevant things should be explained, but not at the expense of coherency—remember that you’re writing a story and not a collection of facts. Besides, even history textbooks have to be coherent—you can’t just leap from one fact to another like they do in those bing commercials. History can be a great tool for a writer, but it shouldn’t crowd out the story in a work of historical fiction.

Hope this helps!

—S.E.

When Spell-check Fails: Proofreading and Your Manuscript

2010-11-19T14:46:00.005-05:00

Everyone’s experienced it: you finish a paper or a story that you’ve spent hours and hours working on, read it through one last time on the computer, and print it out. You then reread the hard copy, only to find a spelling or grammatical error that spell-check didn’t catch. What went wrong?

The problem is in the proofreading—namely, the fact that most of us have become pretty lax about it. We depend too much on spell-checkers that don’t always fix everything. I can’t count the number of times I’ve read manuscripts that have grammar or usage errors – from something as simple as mistaking the word “reed” for “read” to something bad, like repeatedly conjugating the same verb incorrectly.

Basically what I’m saying is that before sending your manuscript to us, make sure it’s been proofread. Now, a badly proofread manuscript probably will not make or break our decisions on whether to accept something—after all, it is easier to correct a few typos than it is to develop a character or to change the pacing of a story. What it does do is give us the impression that the writer does not care as much about getting her manuscript published, which is something I’m sure none of the writers sending in materials intend.

It’s even more important to make sure that query letters are well proofread, because they are our first impression of you and your ability to write. We are less inclined to request materials from someone with a poorly written and proofread query letter, again because it gives us the impression of apathy on the writer's part.

However, do not fret because there is a very easy way to proofread your writing: read it out loud. When we read silently it is far easier to skip over parts of a piece, but reading aloud forces us to spend time with every word. You are much more likely to catch little mistakes by reading aloud – I promise. If proofreading is not your forte to begin with, just ask a friend who knows their grammar to help.

It's worth the time and effort, because we are sure to notice both good and bad proofreading. Keep up the good work, and happy writing!

Becca

New Release & Free Read!

2010-11-16T14:18:00.004-05:00

This month marks the release of Mail Order Cowboy, by Laurie Kingery. With beaux scarce in post-Civil War Texas, practical Milly Matthews and her “Spinster Society” friends have their hands full protecting their ranches. Their only hope: advertising for mail-order grooms. But aristocratic British cavalry officer Nicholas Brookfield isn’t exactly Milly’s idea of a cowboy—or a man she can trust. And the more Nick proves himself as a ranch hand, the more he must hide his past from the woman he longs to make his own. Learn more about the book by clicking here.

Also this month, Naughty or Nice by Tawny Weber is available exclusively as a free online read at eHarlequin.com. Mari Madison wants only two things for Christmas: to help her mother win the town's annual holiday decorating contest and to reinstate her good-girl reputation so that she can start her business on the right foot. Then across the street she spots the best-looking Christmas package she's ever seen…and realizes it's Declan Cole. The man who ruined her reputation in the first place. The man who's sure he's going to win the contest. To read the serialized story (with new chapters being released daily), click here.

Character Overload

2010-11-12T14:29:00.001-05:00

When I’m reading manuscripts, or anything for that matter, I like things to be clear. It seems that the biggest enemy of clarity is attempting to do too much. Lately, my number one critique when reading manuscripts is that there’s too much going on. As Becca mentioned in her last blog post, too many details can really take away from a great manuscript. The same is true of too many characters. A manuscript with excessive amounts of character is an immediate red flag for me; if I can’t keep track of them all, I’m likely going to become confused and overwhelmed.

We all know how important character development is to a great novel. The main character needs to be fully fleshed out and at least somewhat likeable or relatable. After all, your reader will be hanging out with her for 200 pages! Secondary characters, on the other hand, are a bit different. Although these characters can be a significant part of a finished product, it’s important to remember that they aren’t meant to be protagonists. These characters have to take a bit of a backseat to the star of the show.

Too much background about less important characters can take away from the focus of a manuscript. Though it’s nice to get to know minor characters, the reader doesn’t need to know about every aspect of their lives. Plus, too much detail in secondary characters can lead to excessive storylines. If there are numerous characters and they all have their own things going on, it’s easy to overwhelm the reader with information. Be sure any secondary plotlines don’t take precedence over the main plot.

The important thing to remember when working on a manuscript is to make sure everything you write is important and necessary to the plot. As hard as it can be to eliminate a character you’ve grown attached to, sometimes you just have to do it! Cutting out some excess can really help to turn a good partial into a great one. Plus, you can always save those extra characters for your next novel!

--Beverly

Let's Talk Dialogue

2010-10-27T15:47:00.004-04:00

Dialogue is a great tool for a writer. It lets you communicate what a character’s thinking—or at least, what the character wants others to know she’s thinking—in her own voice, and it contributes to character development by allowing you to show how characters interact with one another. Dialogue makes it possible to allow your character to speak directly, rather than having to filter the speech through a narrator. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to have your character explicitly state: “I like ice cream!” rather than having the narrator describe that “Sarah likes ice cream.”

Good dialogue is also fun for the reader, because the verbal interaction of characters helps the reader get engrossed in the story. People in real life talk (I’m fairly certain verbal communication in some form or other is one of the human race’s great pastimes), so it makes sense that dialogue can be a great way to pull your reader into the story. For this reason, a lot of authors use dialogue as a way to reveal exposition or setting.

For instance, rather than telling us that Johnny is wearing a red shirt that looks like it came from the 80s, one could simply have another character (let’s take Sarah from before) say: “Ugh, Johnny, where’d you get that ridiculous shirt? That red is so out of style and, um, in case you haven’t noticed, so are the 80s.” (Note: this does not necessarily reflect my opinion of the 80s.) Now, Johnny’s red shirt isn’t terribly important—actually it may be, depending on where this story’s going—but you see how the reader learns what it looks like through the dialogue? This is often a more interesting and, importantly, a more subtle way to convey factual information.

However, there is a fine line between using dialogue to subtly reveal facts about the plot or setting and simply piling tons of exposition into a piece of dialogue. Say Johnny and Sarah are mechanics; if I have to read line after line of them explaining some mechanical process that’s apparently crucial to the plot, it just won’t feel right. Dialogue like this is stiff and wooden, and frankly, unnecessary. If they’re both mechanics, why are they explaining this stuff to each other? Even if one of them were not a mechanic, it's still awkward. Obviously the writer is trying to explain the relevant elements of mechanics to the reader, but if the explanation is going to be a long one, dialogue is not really the best way to do this. Instead you can leave this kind of thing to the narrator, because at the end of the day, characters should sound like themselves, not as if they’re mouthpieces for the narrator. (Of course, this can get complicated when the narrator is a character as well.)

An information dump can work in narration, but in general, if the information is extremely technical and/or does not sound natural to the character or the situation, you want to keep that out of your dialogue. The reader wants to hear the characters talk, so give them something worth listening to. Best of luck!

—S.E.

Creating the Fantastical

2010-10-22T15:52:00.000-04:00

As an intern, I spend the majority of my time reading through manuscripts. And, admittedly, a lot of them tend to blend together. That’s why I get so excited when I come across a fantasy romance manuscript. Getting lost in another world for 50 pages? Yes, please. But, as fun as fantasy can be, it has the tendency to go awry.

One thing that seems to pose a problem for fantasy writers is defining their setting. Some writers seem to assume that the reader already knows the ins and outs of the fantasy world they’ve created. Don’t assume that! Writers need to define the setting and situation to help the reader better understand what’s happening. You don’t want your reader to feel lost or confused after just a few pages. If it seems like the characters all know something the reader doesn’t, they’ll feel disconnected and they won’t want to keep reading.

Fantasy is supposed to be fun, so don’t make your reader work to understand it. There really aren’t limits to what you can do in a fantasy world, but there needs to be something to allow the reader to relate to the characters. There has to be some grounding in reality. If the reader can’t identify with any of the characters or situations, they won’t be interested in the story. Don’t isolate your reader!

Of course, I can’t broach the topic of fantasy romance without covering Twilight. I can hear your groans now, so I’ll be brief—avoid the Twilight effect. Many of the manuscripts I read tend to fall into this category, where wolf packs and vampire covens abound. Yes, Meyer’s series is a smashing success, but that doesn’t mean that every fantasy romance must include someone named Edward.

The most important thing when writing fantasy is to have fun with it! Reading fantasy is an escape from reality. Be creative and let your reader in. I’m looking forward to reading what you have for us!

--Beverly, GWU ‘11

The Devil in the Details: What to Leave Out and What to Keep In

2010-10-15T14:54:00.004-04:00

I have a tendency to get incredibly concerned with life’s little details – you know, the ones that don’t matter in the slightest, like squeezing toothpaste from the end of the tube instead of from the middle. In doing so, I often miss seeing what my family likes to call “the forest through the trees,” or the big picture. Is squeezing from the middle of the toothpaste tube really more important than brushing one’s teeth? No, not really.

Being so caught up in detail is occasionally a problem for me, but it has been a big help to me here at Elaine’s where small details could make or break a partial for us interns. Over the past few weeks I have noticed that lots of writers add plenty of details and minutiae to the descriptions stories. Don’t get me wrong- this is a good thing- but it’s also something one should be wary of.

For example, many of the partials I read here contain passages similar to this one:

As Alice stepped into the foyer, he heard the click of her Prada stilettos echoing across the marble floor. Bertram tried not to pay her any attention, but her crisp white oxford shirt (with the top three buttons undone) and gray silk skirt caught his glasses-framed eye, and he turned his head towards her. She was a vision, with her seemingly endless legs moving closer and closer towards him.

For the record, the above passage is not something I read in a partial. But what’s wrong with it? If I were to read something like this (and trust me, I have), I would get annoyed at the level of unnecessary detail used to describe Alice. For example, it doesn’t make a difference to me whether the white oxford shirt Alice is wearing was ironed earlier today or a month ago. It’s not particularly important to the romantic A-couple plot, and definitely not something that needs to be in the partial. Her clicking stiletto heels are important because they signal her arrival to Bertram, but unless the story is about Bertram’s magical ability to pick out shoe brands by the sounds of their heels on marble floors, we don’t need to know that they are Prada.

As a general rule I am more interested in seeing how the characters react to seemingly insignificant details than we are in knowing the details themselves. Let’s say, for example, that a partial involving a banker spent at least half a page describing the rising mortgage rates at his bank (also not something I have actually read about). The mortgage rates themselves are not interesting to read about – what is interesting is whether the banker starts jumping up and down or smoking at the ears after seeing them. Likewise, the three buttons undone on Alice’s shirt are more interesting if they clearly do (or do not) affect Bertram in some way.

It’s a fine line to walk. If there isn’t enough detail it will bother us, but it will also bother us if there’s too much detail. But this problem is not unsolvable – there are ways to practice adding just enough detail. One way I learned involved verbally describing to a partner how to draw an object. You know what the object of choice is, but your partner does not. Your task is to describe to them exactly how to draw the object without naming the object itself. Sound’s easy, I know, but it’s actually a lot more difficult than it sounds. This exercise is something I learned in a writing class at Georgetown University, and it has been a tremendous help to me. I hope it’s a help to you too!

Until next time,

Becca

What do agents do on vacation?

2010-09-12T21:09:00.005-04:00

So what is it that agents do when they go away on vacation, you might wonder? Well, this agents reads.

So how do you tell it's vacation? Well, first, I get to read "real" books, the kind that are typeset, that have those lovely covers, feel so wonderful as you hold them in your hands, and have that divine aroma of glue and "new book." That alone kept me entranced for the first day. But then after that, it was just the pure enjoyment of the stories.

First, I finished Judi McCoy's Death in Show, a fun story about a dog walker who solves mysteries and uncovers the inside scoop on dog shows. As you can see, Harry was less than thrilled, because as a rescue mix, dog shows are just not his thing.

Then I lost myself in Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games. Wow, what pacing and could you raise the stakes for those characters any higher? Yes, I know I'm a bit late starting the series, but now I can't wait to get to books 2 and 3. Hopefully, I can squeeze in time for those before the next vacation. (Because you'll soon see, that my entire reading list is made up of bestselling books from 2008 and 2009. Just a little behind . . ..)

After that, I plunged into Little Bee, by Chris Cleve, a heart-wrenching story of not only the immigration issue but also what it means to try to do good.

Then it was back in time with Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, by Kathleen Howe, a most thought-provoking, fresh look at the era of the Salem Witch trials. If you're a history buff, I'd definitely recommend this one. It really sheds new light on what seems like much more probable explanations for the witch frenzy than just those hysterical young girls.

And, then I topped things off with Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood. I'm a great fan of hers and have read, I believe, all of her novels and most of her short stories. Again, this was a book that really got me thinking -- not only about what was happening in the story but the larger, universal questions she raises. Organic rooftop gardens take on new significance in the kind of dystopian universe she portrays.

In fact, I was so into survival mode by this point, that when they announced Hurricane Earle was on it's way, I was ready to sharpen all the knives and stockpile food.

Ever find yourself so lost in the world of books that it's reality that seems to be unreal?

New Release

2010-09-07T12:40:00.004-04:00

One Fine Cowboy, by Joanne Kennedy, is released in stores today! PETA activist and graduate student Charlie Banks finds a whole lot more than she expected when she visits a horse whispering clinic for research purposes in Wyoming, including a gifted, but broken-hearted, cowboy named Nate Shawcross. Click here to read more!

New Release

2010-09-01T12:19:00.003-04:00

September marks the release of Riding the Waves, by Tawny Weber. When an uptight workaholic takes a vacation from her career aspirations, she finds a the perfect playmate for her fantasies in Mexico. She just never imagined her temporary boy toy coming back into her life after vacation. Read more about the book here!

Dreaming of a Better Dream Scene

2010-08-26T10:17:00.004-04:00

Last night I dreamt I was running, running through a forest of trees with number two pencils for their trunks. I was running toward the sea, except instead of waves there were the gentle, symmetrical humps of a book lying open on its spine, and where seagulls should have wheeled and swooped above the water, there drifted flocks of uncoiled paperclips…

No, I’m just kidding. But seriously: why are dream sequences in fiction so tricky and often so poorly executed? I ask because I’ve seen a lot of them, good and less good, come through the slush pile this summer and because, upon reflection, I couldn’t think of a single dream sequence I liked in any book, except, maybe, the opening pages of Rebecca (which just came to me, finally, as I was writing this sentence).

In movies and on television, it’s a different story, so to speak. I can think of lots of really haunting, effective, memorable dream sequences from the screen. (Tony Soprano’s ominous dreams about people he’s “whacked” are the first that come to mind.) But the advantages of the visual arts are easy enough to pinpoint. A producer and director and editing team can work together until a dream matches their collective vision exactly. Their toolbox of special effects and background music and quality acting seems somehow vaster than that of an author, her pen, and merely all the words she can think of.

Also, depending on how heavily laden with symbolism a dream sequence is, a character’s dream can seem too much like telling instead of showing. If the glamorous lead cheerleader in a YA novel keeps up a confident façade with her peers but then dreams about a mortifying situation, the author is taking a shortcut to tell us the character has self-esteem issues instead of showing us, perhaps through interaction with other characters, that there’s a problem. Also, a dream like this would be hard for readers to swallow because, come on—whose dreams are that clear?

On the other hand, if a dream is too full of abstract symbols and metaphors and the author is showing without any interpretation at all, readers either won’t be able to visualize the scene “correctly,” or they won’t understand the significance of the dream, just like the character probably won’t.

So I’d like to know your thoughts, readers. Are there fabulous dream scenes out there from which we should all draw inspiration and formulate strategy? What are some advantages to fitting a dream sequence into your novel? What are some disadvantages? How have you struggled with, or why have you avoided, scenes from the REM cycle?

--Lauren

The What Ifs

2010-08-24T10:40:00.000-04:00

Like many agents, the practice of using a rhetorical question to open a query letter rubs me the wrong way. I've never really been able to pinpoint why, but over the past month, I've heard ample pitches and read ample queries to allow me to figure this out a little better.

Many of the pitches I heard began with the rhetorical question that probably all authors ask themselves when they begin to write: "What if?" What if spaceships landed in the Himalayas and aliens infiltrated a Buddhist monk colony? What if a woman was charged with murder after the accidental death of her husband? What if Rachel Zoe was actually a zombie? What if The Breakfast Club took place on Antarctica? (In case you were wondering, these are not pitches that I heard.)

This question and the wonder that follows can be the root of inspiration for a story--the knot the author seeks to unravel; the beads the author worries into a plot. So the "What if?" can be a rhetorical question that the author asks herself. It doesn't bother me as part of a pitch. An in-person pitch has more room for conversation, after all, and rhetorical questions are often used in conversation. That being said...

The rhetorical question doesn't work as well in the query letter. I think it's because, in writing, it comes across as a lazy device. This book--an entire manuscript, thousands of words(!)--has been written by you, the author, and has been plumbed from the depths and heights of your imagination. One of the reasons I love reading query letters is because they offer glimpses into that imagination. But using a rhetorical question to start a query letter takes the onus of imagination off of the author and places it on the reader/agent's shoulders. This is a risky practice. It takes an agent out of the query letter and away from your story, when your query is your one chance to showcase the writing and imagination that you poured into your story. You'll be hard-pressed to keep a rapt audience with rhetorical questions, and you need a rapt audience to get the attention your query letter deserves.

Agency News

2010-08-18T12:53:00.005-04:00

We're pleased to announce that Laurie Kingery has been nominated as a finalist in the American Christian Fiction Writers' annual contest, the Carol, in the short historical category for The Outlaw's Lady.

The Outlaw's Lady was released in August of 2009 by Steeple Hill Love Inspired Historicals and is the story of a lady photographer in the Rio Grande valley in the 1880's who i's kidnapped by a handsome stranger who may or may not be allied with Mexican bandits.

Congratulations, Laurie!

Texting 101: It's Here 2 Stay

2010-08-17T14:16:00.001-04:00

We live in a world of convenience, and the technology in contemporary books obviously reflects that. Now characters have laptops instead of typewriters, and Prada suits instead of hoop skirts. We fly on planes instead of taking the stage, and we write about cell phones instead of rotary phones or telegrams.

Which leads me to today’s blog topic: how to use text speak/text messages in your manuscript.

With the emergence of texting over the last few years, it’s finally begun to weave its way into contemporary literature. And when done right, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! Even if you don’t text, you undoubtedly know what it is, and know your readers will, too. It’s almost expected, these days, that you include modern conveniences in your story. As a writer, what you have to be careful of is how you include those things in your work.

Though text messaging is far more prevalent in YA novels than it is in the varying adult genres, it’s still become a trend that I feel needs to be addressed. I’d say around 60-70% of our YA submissions include text messages in one form or another, be it an actual text message, or just a reference. That’s not to say you should take them out; I’ve seen a fair amount of text messages in recent published fiction. They’re woven in seamlessly, and there is, more or less, a purpose for it. They’re also done in such a way that the reader isn’t left guessing as to the text’s meaning.

However, in the submissions we receive, this is where I think things tend to get a little messy. There have been numerous times where I’ve spent a good 20 to 30 minutes trying to decipher all of the text messages an author has included in their manuscript. Words have been made up, or shortened to such an extent that they’re unrecognizable. In one instance, I thought the text messages were actually a code the reader was supposed to crack in order for things to be explained. I was disappointed to find out this wasn’t the case at all – it was just a failed attempt at including text speak in their manuscript.

That being said, I think there are plenty of books that pull off texting very well. Just keep the following in mind when adding texts to your own manuscript.

1. Things like “How r u?” and “I’ll c u 2morrow” are things easily understood by a reader. “W@ up d00d adsouyasdh” is not.
2. Is there a purpose behind using text messages? Could the information be incorprated in another (better) way? If so, it’s probably best to go that route.
3. If your characters are in the same room and could freely speak to one another, don’t resort to a conversation through text messages.
4. One of the main rules of writing is to show, not tell, how things are done. Texting is strictly telling, so you want to keep it to a minimum.
5. Keep it consistent. If you’re going to use text messaging throughout your novel, spell everything the same way.

I firmly believe text messaging in contemporary fiction is something that’s here to stay. So just be sure to include it in a way that makes sense, and doesn’t pull the reader further and further from your piece. After all, writing is about gaining a new audience, and once you have them, it’s up to you to keep them around.

Best of luck!

Sammy

A Little Goes a Long Way: Writing Laughs in Chick Lit

2010-08-11T14:24:00.004-04:00

Invariably—yep, I’ll stick to my guns on this one: invariably—chick lit features a funny heroine. There are as many versions of this heroine as there are types of humor, but Ms. Protagonist is funny, in her own way, no matter what curveballs life is chucking at her head. Definitions of chick lit readily acknowledge this basic element of the genre, but many how-to writing guides ignore it as a process to be broken down, unlike plot or character development.

I don’t know the magic humor ratio of a chick lit novel, but I know what seems to work (i.e. what makes me and reviewers laugh out loud) and, perhaps more important, what doesn’t. Take, for example, a passage from an upcoming project here at EPE. The narrator’s name is such that her old flame nicknamed her “Ju-ju,” and when they reunite after twenty-five years, he recoins the term of endearment immediately:

He gave a low laugh. “Sorry, Ju-ju. I didn’t mean to startle you. I was aiming for pleasant surprise.”

Ju-ju. Holy God, I hadn’t heard that name in twenty-five years. Charlie had coined it at the height of our heat. I was his Ju-ju, he’d murmured in bed, his fetish, his lucky charm. I hadn’t the heart to tell him Ju-ju meant “breast milk” in Korean.

Here, humor is introduced at the very end of the paragraph, which otherwise might have been fairly generic. The first three sentences of the second paragraph point toward the narrator feeling sentimental and nostalgic. But the fourth line, because of its placement and unexpectedness, comes off like a punch line, and readers smile in appreciation. The narrator isn’t feeling totally sappy after all. When the author can go on at length about the nickname’s history, she cuts herself short with a quick, clever joke, and when she can take the joke even further—e.g. “I didn’t think Charlie would have been too enthusiastic about calling me his ‘breast milk’ over and over, although my mother would have found it hilarious…”—she reins things in and moves along in the scene. The next line is the narrator’s reply to Charlie.

Herein lies something approaching a how-to for chick lit humor. It seems there are (at least) two major factors to keep track of when writing a funny chick: placement and unexpectedness. Placement deals with questions like whether a joke will ruin the tone of the scene, whether it will slow down a paragraph’s pace, or even whether it will distract a reader from the lines that come before and after it. If a narrator’s silly musings get so off track that they’re no longer related to the scene at hand, chances are the humor has gone too far.

Likewise with unexpectedness, if readers can see a joke coming from a mile away, its effect is diminished. Just as people will notice when someone is trying too hard to make a good impression at a party, so too will we sense when an author is focused on cracking jokes at the expense of plot progression or realistic character development.

These considerations are especially important in chick lit because of the aforementioned funny-chick narrator requirement, but as a diversely experienced slush reader, I know writers of all genres struggle with humor. Notable bedfellows are genres like YA (too-sassy teen narrators often make readers want to ground them) and thriller novels (you’re being shot at from a plane and you have the presence of mind to voice hilarious one-liners to your partner in crime—really?).

This post is certainly not a how-to for writing funny narrators. (If only I knew it so well!) It’s a call for caution, or at least for awareness. An author’s fabulous sense of humor will not necessarily transfer, intact, to her heroine, but it’s important that if a narrator is aiming to be funny, she does so pretty successfully. A narrator who is trying for laughs but failing is often not engaging enough to spend the length of a novel with. My time so far at EPE has taught me that, indeed, the reverse—a narrator who isn’t trying for laughs but gets them anyway—is the trickier but preferred route.

--Lauren

Lost and confused: Point of view changes

2010-08-04T14:09:00.004-04:00

Last time I wrote about captivating the wide, tricky YA audience. This time I have another tricky topic to cover: multiple narrating characters. There is nothing more confusing when reading a partial manuscript (a.k.a. the first three chapters or the first 50 pages) where the narrative point of view changes without any indication. I have been befuddled and completely lost within the first ten pages of several partials and left to decipher which character is narrating. Nothing is worse than having a confused reader because it leaves them feeling either unintelligent for not being able to follow the reading, or uninterested in the novel completely. Neither of these options are good for you as the author.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the writing mastermind behind narrative POV changes and I have read numerous published books and a few partials that nail this and allow the plot to completely open up through multiple characters. There are two main differences between those partials that nail this literary concept and those that flop: the lack of signaling and consistency.

Signaling is not difficult, but necessary. This can be done through each chapter being titled with the characters name (i.e. William Faulker’s As I Lay Dying), diary entries/time stamps, noticeable spacing, etc. It is important to have a clear indication that the reader can easily identify.

Also important is that you are consistent with how you indicate to the reader the change in POV. In addition, be consistent to the POV you allocate to each character. If Jane is introduced using third person narration, while Bob is introduced using first person, then Jane’s narration should consistently be in third person and Bob’s narration should always be in first.

Point of view changes are manageable, so don’t be discouraged. If you believe your novel should be told through multiple viewpoints, my greatest suggestion would be to proofread your manuscript yourself or have a proofreading buddy. If you become lost, or your buddy becomes lost because of the switches, then don’t send the partial in. The last thing you want is to send your partial to an agent and have the agent and interns lost before your partial submission is complete.

--Anna--

Revise First, Celebrate Later

2010-07-22T11:43:00.004-04:00

Last time I talked about the recent upsurge in prologues, and how I usually make a note to myself that the piece would be stronger without one. Flipping through my notepad while trying to come up with something to talk about today, I realized another common theme had emerged: proofreading and editing.

Imagine you’ve just finished writing your first manuscript. You get that rush of pride, pump your fist, maybe go out and celebrate. Then you’re hit with that rush of adrenaline and decide, instead, to immediately begin querying. Because you need to get your Awesome Incredible Manuscript out there for agents to see! And rightly you should!  Just not yet.

Finishing a novel is a major accomplishment, so definitely take the time to celebrate. Did you know that of the massive amount of people who attempt to write a novel, only 3% actually succeed? So you’ve already got one up on most of the population. That’s definitely something to be proud of! But trust me when I say that first draft is not what you want to send out to agents.

Proofreading, editing, and revisions are a major part of the writing process, and cannot be overlooked due to your overwhelming excitement. You’ve got a complete manuscript in front of you, and that’s an incredible feat. But now you need to refine it. Sometimes it helps to step away for a week, or even a month. You’ve been pounding away at your keyboard for months (or years) trying to finish your story, and a break after that kind of work is needed. Even if only for a few days, it will allow you to clear your head and reevaluate what you’ve written.

I can speak from experience. I spent seven months working on the piece I’m currently querying. I wrote it in three months, then rewrote half of it, then revised and edited for another four months. It was hard not to start sending out query letters as soon as I’d finished that first draft; I understand completely how hard it can be to reign yourself in at times. You wrote a novel! You want people to see it! But those months of editing and revising really helped to improve my manuscript to the point that, when I finally began sending it out, I knew I was sending out my best work.

The thing is, it took a lot of time and effort to get there. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve read through my work trying to find mistakes that needed to be fixed. So what did I do? I took the advice of some writer friends and got myself two critique partners. And let me tell you, it was the smartest decision I’ve ever made. There are lots of places online where you can find them, or even local writing groups. The key is to find a reader who is going to be honest with you and tell you what things in your story can be improved upon. Because it’s your work, you obviously have the right to veto any comments they make, but think long and hard about their suggestions. As much as you love that scene between Little Red Riding Hood and your Darth Vader-esque villain, is it really necessary? Or that argument between Mom and Dad about the ratty old couch – does it help to advance the story, or is it just filler?

Critique partners will also help with proofreading and line edits. They’ll hopefully catch the occasional tense change, or make note of a character who is suddenly coming across as a completely different person. Those kinds of changes are pretty easy to fix, and trust me when I say proofreading goes a long way. When I’m reading a manuscript and there are a bunch of typos on the first page, it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the piece. Usually those typos go all the way through the story and lets me know that the author didn’t take the extra time to look over their work. Massive amounts of typos really pull the reader out of the story, and that connection you were hoping to make can’t really happen.

Over the course of this summer I’ve read a pretty good amount of work that felt very much like a first draft. While the plot might have been great, the characterization fell flat, or jumped around a lot. Or maybe the characters were awesome, but the plot was so confusing it became impossible to follow. There are times when a story told in first person will suddenly jump into third, which results in me having to go back over what I’ve read to make sure I didn’t confuse myself. Wrong words take the place of what was obviously supposed to be there, and nonexistent words like “anyways” and “alot” show up. Those kinds of things are problems that might have been resolved by a careful read through, or a critique partner.

So, congratulations on finishing that novel! Now it’s time for the real work to begin. Take your time revising – you’re in no rush. In just a little while you’ll have a shiny manuscript that’s all ready to go, and then you can proudly send it out into the world, head held high, because you know it’s your very best work.

~Sammy

Additional submission information

2010-07-19T15:13:00.002-04:00

Congratulations to Laurie S! She's the 500th person to submit a query to me since I reopened to queries in mid-May.

Well, technically, she's not the 500th person to submit. I have been trying to keep up with my backlog. At first, it was only a week's backlog and then a couple of weeks, and then the back log slipped to a month. So, in fact, Laurie S. is just the person who happened to submit when my counter first made it to 500. A milestone that doesn't make me very happy. It means that despite my best efforts, I can't keep up to the tune of 500 backlogged queries.

But I do promise and commit to continuing to use my best efforts to try to stay on top of them. (Flash: I'm having visions of sinking in the oil-soaked Gulf, at this particular moment. Wonder why?)

But as I was going through some queries the other night (yes, that's when I do most of them, at home with Harry at my feet), I realized that maybe if I provided a bit more information, it would make things easier for me as well as for those authors who are submitting queries. I'm seeing some common patterns of submissions for books that just don't appeal to me. So I thought I might as well come clean.

I don't like stories about Al Qaida or terrorists in general. I'm really not into war stories, either. And, despite the fact that I live in DC, political or CIA thrillers rarely excite me. (Perhaps I see too many of them in real life on a daily basis.) I'm just not that into action adventure (what I call "guy stories"). This doesn't mean I would never be interested in a story set during war time, but my focus really is on fiction that appeals to women. When I say I'm interested in thrillers, I'm much more fascinated by psychological thrillers where the focus is on the characters and who and why they're doing what they're doing, rather than on the plot-driven, action adventure thrillers that I seem to be seeing in great profusion.

I am also not likely to be interested in stories about pedophiles or defrocked priests. And stories with too many illnesses (cancer, etc.) just make me sad.

While I never say never because I am constantly amazed by the creativity and ingenuity of authors and their ability to create something wonderful from an otherwise unappealing plot idea, I do find that I have lots of queries for things that don't appeal to me.

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with these kinds of projects. Best-selling authors, obviously, have made their careers on just these kinds of stories. But I do think agents gravitate towards things they like. I know it would be hard for me to effectively represent something that I didn't like or couldn't properly evaluate.

So, please, save us both some time and if you have one of the projects I've described above, you're probably better off going to another agent with it. In the meantime, I'll continue to hum only 500 queries to go, only 499 queries to go. . .

They're Just Not That Into Me: The Art of Rejection

2010-07-13T13:21:00.006-04:00

The first word of the rejection letter I received yesterday was “Though.”

And the first word of my reaction was “Ouch.”

I’ve submitted, and been rejected, often enough to know nothing promising can come of a letter that opens with “Though.” Granted, the thin envelope should have tipped me off—thin is never good in the world of literary submissions—but I was still taken aback by how quickly my brain was forced to conclude, Yeah, it’s all downhill from here.

And indeed, the remainder of the message on the little blue cardstock upheld its opening tone: “Though your work has been declined by our editors, we thank you for allowing us to consider it.”

My writerly half was a bit stung. According to my experience with rejection letters, this one was committing quite a few egregious fouls. There was no personalization, no signature (fake or otherwise)—and the length! My work has been declined so summarily that I can’t even get twenty words? I reiterate: ouch.

But my volunteer/intern half took things in stride and attempted to console my writerly half: Think about how many submissions you’re up against; think of those punk slush-readers who just don’t pay enough attention; think of how much money X Review apparently needed to save by way of this crappy rejection mini-letter; etc.

I know these arguments are more legitimate than “How dare they!” Any agent or editor who accepts material electronically will tell you e-mail opens up an agency or publication to hundreds more submissions than they received via snail mail, and in most cases this makes it logistically impossible to send each writer a detailed, personalized response. I also know literary reviews are struggling right now in an economy of readers who still can’t justify an extra $50 a year for subscriptions. The magazines cut their own spending in turn, and this often trickles down to smaller, plainer rejection letters, which reduce printing costs, and shorter messages, which might allow a staff member to help out with a project other than tailoring rejections with names, titles, and addresses.

A few of my graduate classmates used to tell urban legends about receiving helpful, detailed critiques from certain editors along with extensive line editing in their actual manuscripts, but I’ve had no such luck. I have become accustomed, instead, to polite and concise notes that let me know someone appreciates my submission but is sorry to say my story cannot be used at this time. These, I think, are successful enough in their missions. They let the author down easy, but they include a dash of hope, of encouragement for the author to submit more work in the future. And I find myself wondering whether I would really want the intensive feedback I mentioned above. Knowing how specific certain publications are, I’d fear an editor would mold my story to his exact standards but would render my work ill-fitting for anywhere else. And knowing that feedback from writing workshops can be extremely contradictory, I’d also worry that one review’s exhaustive revisions would alienate big groups of readers who might like my story as is, that maybe X Review truly wasn’t the right place for my work.

But still: “though?”

So as I lick my wounds today, I’m also contemplating what makes for a “good” rejection, and whether there even is such a thing. I know, from internships with different reviews and literary agencies, that if a rejection letter is too soft, some authors will re-query, unsuccessfully. I once opened an e-mail that simply asked our agency (not EPE) to “indulge [his] request that [we] take another look.” My supervisor was furious at this author’s demands on her time and at his presumption that our agency didn’t know what it was doing when we first turned him down. (Our second rejection letter was…um…clearer (but we still didn’t start with “though”).)

These, I think, are two ends of a definable spectrum: too nice and not nice enough. In between there are countless nuances of rejection letter etiquette. Too long, too brief, too personal, too generic, et al. Ultimately, however, it helps me to remember that even the nicest, most delicate, or even flattering, rejection letter is still a rejection letter at the end of the day. I’ve found, from a writer’s standpoint and from an agency's, that honesty is the common denominator in all valuable feedback. And if the price of X Review’s honesty is a message that starts with “Though,” then so be it (she grumbles).

--Lauren

Stop and Think

2010-07-08T10:58:00.001-04:00

Knowing your audience is extremely important for Young Adult authors. When I read young adult partial manuscripts I first think is it something I enjoy (since I could be considered at the highest tip of the young adult audience) and then I think is it something I would want my younger siblings to read (who are at the bottom and mid-range of the young adult audience) and if they would enjoy it.

Unfortunately, I find the content in the young adult partials inconsistent. Either I like it, but would cringe if I saw my younger siblings read it or overall the partial is too childish. For example a character may be described as thirteen but swears like a sailor, or a fifteen-year-old character is acting more like a two-year-old (who wants read a main character having a tantrum?). If your character is thirteen, have them be thirteen not a thirty-year-old with a mature cursing vocabulary. Curse words don’t have to be added randomly into a young adult novel to make it be current or relatable. A character using curse words randomly seems like the author is trying too hard to be hip. Curse words are tricky because they can work well. If they are consistently (but not overly) used with the character being drawn, then curse words work well in creating a YA novel for all ages.

So again I want to encourage young adult authors to stop and think about whether the actions of your characters are plausible and can reach the wide YA audience effectively.

--Anna--

New Release

2010-07-06T12:44:00.003-04:00

As the summer reading season begins, we're celebrating the release of Celeste O. Norfleet's latest book--Heart's Choice. Football legend Devon Hayes has always fantasized about Hollywood actress Jazelle Richardson. When Devon and Jazz finally meet, their chemistry is off the charts--but Jazz is determined to live her life away from the spotlight, and she's wary of the man who loves being a celebrity. Learn more about the book here, and happy reading!

The Ups and Downs of Prologues

2010-06-29T12:58:00.001-04:00

While reading through submissions the last few weeks, I’ve noticed an upsurge in the use of prologues. I’d say roughly 20-30% of the partials we get have that little extra something at the beginning, and more often than not, the first line on my notepad is: remove prologue, or something to that effect.

As a writer myself, I can understand the lure of including a prologue in your manuscript. It’s an easy way to offer the reader some backstory, to explain something that just doesn’t fit well within the novel itself, or to hint at what’s to come. An enticement, or sorts. And really, that’s what a prologue should be. It needs to grab your reader’s attention right off the bat, and make them want to continue on to chapter one.

That being said, prologues are usually completely unnecessary. You want your story to begin in medias res (“in the middle of affairs”), so pouring information into a prologue or the opening chapters ultimately does your novel a disservice. There is always a place within the story that you could place the same information, and it would allow for a slower progression of facts, which is much easier on the reader. Think of your favorite book. I can pretty much guarantee that the first chapter or two aren’t information dumps. A family’s sordid history is usually explained throughout the course of the book, not front-loaded. It’s easy to forget while you’re writing, but I think sometimes we all need a little reminder.

With prologues, you can’t give away too much. This is one of the biggest problems I’ve come across lately. I recently took a trip to Barnes & Noble to pick up some YA titles I was interested in. One book in particular really struck a chord with me, in that the prologue basically gave away the entire plot. The opening pages did what many prologues do in that it explained the history between two characters. And while that can sometimes work, this one didn’t. Within the first three pages, I knew exactly what was going to happen between the main characters, and how the story would end. Talk about feeling cheated. While the book itself was pretty good, I was still frustrated that nothing came as a surprise. I like having to work to figure things out, and the prologue for this story spelled everything out. You don’t want your prologue to be too obvious. Leave some room for guessing!

One book that I think has an excellent prologue is Becca Fitzpatrick’s Hush, Hush. It’s a great example of how these monsters should be tackled. It explains some of the history of the story, while leaving plenty to the imagination. The tension is palpable within those opening pages, and carries on throughout the entire novel. You get to meet certain characters, but you don’t find out who until later on. It’s vague, but at the same time, it’s not. By the end of the book, you can really appreciate the information given in those few opening pages. That is how a prologue should work.

Now, don’t take this post to mean that if you’ve written a prologue, you should immediately go and delete it. Don’t! But really consider its function in your story. Are you dumping too much information on your reader? Would you notice its absence if you deleted it? Is it an integral part of your novel, or just something you wanted to include for fun? If it really is important, by all means, keep it. But if you find that your book would be exactly the same, or better, if you took it out, do the right thing. You’ll be happier for it, your manuscript will appreciate it, and the first line on my notepad can instead be: I’m hooked.

~Sammy

Worthy cause

2010-05-24T11:32:00.002-04:00

If you haven't already heard, Brenda Novak is once again holding her on-line auction to raise money to support diabetes research. Since she started in 2005 she has already raised over $770,000 for this worthy cause. Diabetes among children continues to be on the rise. Research to understand the disease and unlock a cure is critical.

The auction has something for everyone -- but especially for readers and writers and those who love books. Yours truly has donated a critique of the first three chapters and synopsis, as have more than 60 other agents. Editors have donated critiques as well.

But the auction ends on May 31st, so you only have this week to check it out. I know economic times are tough, but reaching out and giving is always in season.

Themes in Queries

2010-05-20T10:58:00.000-04:00

I love a good, academic literature class. A class that dissects the thematic elements of a novel, its narrative and character arcs, or, better yet, a discussion that posits a novel's significance in a particular cultural or political landscape is more stimulating than a piece of dark chocolate. Seriously. (Ok, sometimes, at least.)

It's likely that many authors consider themes when writing their manuscripts, also. There are "issue" books in YA and middle grade--books that focus on divorce, drugs, peer pressure, etc., just like the infamous after-school special. But even outside of "issue" books, themes crop up when discussing and pitching all kinds of fiction: YA and adult; commercial and literary. I see the touchstones of these themes in query letters--words like "loss," "self-discovery," "grief," "journey into manhood," etc.

Now, if you were worried that I was going to add ONE MORE THING to your query checklist, have no fear. I don't think theme needs to be mentioned in a query at all. You can scratch it off your list. That being said, if you feel it's important to mention theme in your query, give your query letter a few extra double-checks before you send it out.

Does your mention of theme add a unique element that you can't add through plot or character description/summary/pitch?
Or does it rely on clichéd, broad tropes to do your dirty work instead of the fresh, specific language of your story, your plot and your characters?

If the latter, that is, if you're assuming that clichéd theme words will get your query letter in the door and close the sale while your good, special manuscript words are all hanging out together at home taking a nap on the recliner, make a new assumption. Herd those words you've got in manuscript form together, and send them out on the door-to-door sales calls. If you want to send them out in tandem with your theme words, they might make a good team--just don't send those poor theme words out all alone in their dusty grey suit hugging a battered briefcase filled with used tracts. It's a lonely sight to see at your doorstep, and it looks just as lonely in an agent's email box.

The best themes are subtle and incite conversation, maybe in class, over a post-dinner port, in book club, or with your critique partners/agent/editor while revising your manuscript. So be a little judicious in employing theme in the query letter. Otherwise, an agent might think that your manuscript has a didactic tone, not an engaging plot, and you might not get a chance to have the discussion about theme during revisions.

New Release

2010-05-06T10:32:00.003-04:00

As promised last week, this week marks the release of Celeste Norfleet's Cross My Heart--a story about a savvy, sexy single mother and the unexpected romance that comes her way. Read more about the title here, and pick up a copy today. Most importantly, happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers reading!

Have you seen those stamps?

2010-05-04T13:28:00.002-04:00

I don't usually make it to the computer keys. There's so much more to do around here, what with sleeping under the desk, sitting in the chairs, and monitoring those guys in the blue/brown uniforms who bring stuff to the office.

But today I'm really excited and I wanted to share. Our office now has the most wonderful U.S. postage stamps to put on our mail. There are handsome pictures of THE most wonderful dogs and even some of those intriguing creatures that I think they call cats. Sitting up there proudly on those envelopes, my friends look very nice. One of the stamps even shows a dog who could really be my cousin!

But as a rescue fellow myself, I clearly know the importance of these stamps. Of course, it's better if you can, adopt a pet, but in the meantime, support all of us adoptees by buying stamps.

Thanks, Harry

A Note on Synopses

2010-05-03T15:30:00.002-04:00

When reading partial manuscripts, the first thing that I always read, before even taking a peak at the partial itself, is the synopsis. As of late, I have found this to be a particularly troubling element for many writers who have submitted their work to us.

Some writers submit synopses with not enough information. I like brevity and conciseness, but when I see a synopsis that is only a few paragraphs long, I am always concerned. Usually these synopses give a hint of what the story is about, but they don’t outline the full plot, leaving me to guess what kind of climax and resolution the story might have. They almost always end with something like, “Will John Doe learn to let down his defenses and go after the woman he loves?” These teasers drive me crazy! How am I supposed to know whether or not your novel has a decent climax and resolution and is something that we can market if you don’t tell me how the story plays out?

And then there are the writers who submit incredibly long synopses (usually four pages or more), outlining every single detail of their story. When I see these, I feel like I’m back in high school, reading Cliff Notes or Spark Notes, in which every minute detail in every single chapter is spelled out. I don’t want to feel like I’m cramming for a test on a book that I didn’t read. I just want to know what the story is about, generally speaking. Who are the main characters, and what is the plot arc, including conflict, climax, and resolution? That’s all I need to know. I don’t need to know every single detail—that’s why I’m reading the manuscript.

A synopsis can make or break your chances. After your query has been accepted, it is your first chance to make a good (or bad) first impression. You have to find a good balance between saying enough and not saying too much. Generally speaking, if it is only a few paragraphs, you haven’t written enough, and if it’s more than ~~three~~ five pages (with 1.5 or double spacing), you’ve written too much. Think of the synopsis as a sales pitch in which you have only a few minutes—or pages, rather—to convince us that your story is worth publishing. Don’t tease us, don’t ramble on forever. Just tell us what we need to know.

~ Jenn

Let the submissions begin

2010-05-03T11:28:00.002-04:00

So, it's May . . . and I know I promised to reopen to queries. But no where did I commit that it would be done after the stroke of midnight on April 30th. Some of you have already taken me to task.

Patience, I say.

First, I had to recover from a wonderful but grueling week at RT in Columbus, Ohio. Then, well it was the weekend. But again, I hadn't seen Harry for a week, so someone had to make that up to him. And then there were those personal chores (like laundry) that wait for no man or woman. And, finally, I had left the passwords at my office. So, is that enough explanation for the delay?

But, now I can officially declare,

As of today (May 3rd), Elaine P. English Literary is open to all submissions via email.

Please consult our submission guidelines for how to query us and please make sure that your project is one of the types we represent. Also, there is no need to query everyone at everyone's email address. One query submission is enough. A query to the queries email address will suffice or if you are submitting a YA project, then you may direct it instead to Naomi's email address.

For those of you who submitted on May 1st or 2nd and got a standard response, you will need to resubmit.

Thanks.

Guest Blog: Celeste O. Norfleet

2010-04-29T11:32:00.005-04:00

May will bring a new release from author Celeste O. Norfleet, and we're happy to welcome her to the keyboard today talking about Cross My Heart, mothers and Mother's Day. Here she is:

Natalia Coles - A 21st Century Mom

I have been blessed to have had the influence of several incredible mothers in my life. Not only do I still have my mother with me, but my grandmother lived to see me married and happily settled. My aunts and older sisters are also major influences on me. Now, as a mother myself, I find that I have drawn on all my past experiences with these amazing women to raise my children. I have four astounding young people in my life, two already grown and out of the house and two impatiently waiting their turn to burst out into the world. So, the idea of Mother’s Day is pretty high up on my “cool beans” list.

When my editor asked me to write a book highlighting May and Mother’s Day, I was thrilled. In nearly eight years of writing, this is my first Mother’s Day novel. I also saw this as my chance to make a statement about moms and romance. After all, just because we’re moms, doesn’t mean we’re not still sensuous and super sexy women. So, in researching this phenomenal book, I centered my ideas on writing about the modern mother, the mother of the 21st century.
I recently introduced a secondary character in my summer 2009 book, Sultry Storm. This character was instantly popular and I think typifies a mother of the 21st century. I received numerous emails and letters asking me to write her story. So I did. The novel is called, Cross My Heart, and the character’s name is Natalia Coles. Natalia is a working mother with two young sons and a lot of responsibility. When I created Natalia, I searched a wide range of motherly characteristics to include in her make-up. I gave her the controlled intelligence of a Clair Huxtable, the laid back cool of Vivian Banks, the instinctive charm of June Cleaver and the quick wit and inner strength of Debra Barone. I wrote her to be bold and audacious, with enough kick-in-the-butt attitude to challenge and defend any injustice. She speaks the truth and says what was right. I also made her talented, sexy and hot, and gave her an unending supply of inner fortitude.

In other words, I made her a real mom. And just like real mothers everywhere, she does what she has to, to get the job done. Tired of waiting around for Mr. Right, Natalia decides to have in vitro fertilization procedures and start her own family. It’s not that she feels she doesn’t need a man in her life or is giving up on love. It’s that she’s forever moving forward with her life, knowing love will come in time. Natalia continues to show her spunk and independence, but she also shows her vulnerable side. When her sons’ biological father shows up, she quickly learns to set aside her pride and be the best mom and woman she can be. She’s multifaceted and definitely a new kind of mom. She’s every woman and every mother. Cross My Heart is a wonderful story filled with heartwarming charm and loads of super hot romance. Enjoy!

Tell us about your mother of the 21st century.

New Release

2010-04-27T09:50:00.002-04:00

Trouble Down the Road, the new book from author Bettye Griffin and follow-up to The People Next Door, hits bookstores today. Trouble Down the Road is filled with the passions and drama of Suzanne Betancourt, married to her former boss Bradley Betancourt, whose life is made complicated by Lisa, her next-door neighbor and Bradley's ex-wife, and Micheline Trent, who Suzanne suspects has set her sights on Bradley, not to mention the neighbors down the street whose son jumps into a quickie marriage with Suzanne's newly pregnant sister. Publisher's Weekly calls "a tart and torrid tempest." Read more about the book here, and check it out.

The Business of Writing

2010-04-20T09:13:00.002-04:00

Writers, like other people in business for themselves, often struggle with how to implement the best business practices to support their operations. Sometimes it's finances that preclude setting things up in a way that provides full protection. But often, it's that we just don't think about certain things until it's too late. After one of your vulnerabilities catches you short, there's often nothing left to do, other than tear out your hair and lament "how in the world did I let that happen?"

Recently, I've been a witness to two, not altogether uncommon situations, that illustrate my point. These should be cautionary tales for writers everywhere.

A multi-published author who'd acquired her rights back to her earlier books wanted to find new homes for them. She wanted to take advantage of one of the many new electronic opportunities available for these kinds of reprints. It turned out not to be as easy as she thought. Her books were published in the days of old before there were electronic galleys so she had no e-copy of the final book. And then, when she went to look for the copy of her final manuscript that she had done on her computer, she realized it had been written on an earlier computer she no longer owns and was stored in a format no longer compatible with available software. Ooops!

The other author, still working on her debut, met an editor at a conference and pitched her latest book. The editor was enthusiastic and asked to see the material. But the author returned home to discover that her computer had crashed, corrupting all the files in an unrecoverable way, and she had no other complete copies of her manuscript, either in print or stored electronically. [Sadly, I think this is more common than any of us would like to think about. The more we become dependent upon our computers and no other equipment for composing, copying, sending, and storing, the more likely this is a problem.]

As you might imagine, both authors are typing away madly right now trying to recreate their lost work. [I admire greatly their dedication and determination.]

But these and other similar problems might have been avoided had a couple of simple business practices been in place. I'm no "techie" and I admit it took me a number of years to wake up to this, but having an off-site backup of all your work isn't that expensive and is really a good idea. Mozy.com is great, but there are others as well. Even having a separate, plug-in hard drive for backup purposes can do the trick. One of the nice things about a back-up service is that it happens automatically every day (or whatever schedule you set) and you don't have to worry. Everything gets backed-up. If it's a manual system, then I would strongly recommend implementing a practice by which all completed work, at a minimum, is immediately backed-up.

When you purchase a new computer or transition to new software, I realize that a business practice which requires opening and re-saving all past works could be time-consuming, but aren't you going to have to do that with all works in progress? A business plan that calls for such protection for at least all published works would seem like a good idea. Those novels are your "products." They are what you as an author have to offer for sale, and I would think you'd want to make sure you always have them in a format that accessible.

If you have other ideas about similar technical practices to put in place, I hope you'll share.

Guest Blog: Bettye Griffin

2010-04-13T14:12:00.002-04:00

It's always a fun change-of-pace to welcome guest bloggers to the keyboard, and today we welcome Bettye Griffin. Her new title, Trouble Down the Road, will be released from Kensington/Dafina on April 27th. Without further ado:

One of the most challenging aspects of writing for today’s audience is that readers don’t want “The End” to really mean, well, the end. Even with a story that ties up all loose ends (and in my opinion a good story should, unless another installment is going to follow in a month or two), the question is almost inevitable: When will the sequel be out?

I received many such requests following the publication of my debut work of women’s fiction, The People Next Door, in 2005. I resisted the idea at first—I wanted to move on to other storylines and characters—but then an idea began to form, and before I knew it I had an entire storyline to update readers on what those initial characters are doing now. That story is being published under the title Trouble Down the Road and will be available to consumers on April 27th.

Readers have been emailing me as they’ve learned that my new book features characters from The People Next Door as well as my sophomore women’s fiction effort, Nothing But Trouble. It’s really a compliment to a writer when readers ask for a sequel, for it shows that they’ve made a connection with the characters the writer created and want to know, and then what happened? But, just as Trouble Down The Road was written five years after the publication of The People Next Door, the action also takes place five years later. That’s the type of sequel that works best for me…one that allows both myself and the characters to grow. The long time lapse also means it’s not a requirement for readers to pick up copies of The People Next Door (although I wouldn’t mind it, of course). The actions of the past are touched on sufficiently to bring new readers up to speed about what they need to know about the characters’ pasts.

How do you like your sequels?

Story Elements and Story Design

2010-04-09T13:02:00.005-04:00

Story Elements

A novel is a coherent whole. Everything that gets put in there needs to serve a purpose. I think of a successful novel as a well-functioning body. We need the bare bone structure of solid information, which are the facts we need to understand the book. And then, all the muscles and tissues connect to each other in some way to enable mobility. But how the body looks and feels is up to the author, because it relates to aesthetics. A body can be muscular or curvaceous; hair can be long, cropped, dyed, teased, absent. What I’m saying is, a successful novel has a self-containment that no matter how frivolous a single element seems when taken out of context, it still serves to create the whole.

An ugly novel often has too much unnecessary information or too little necessary information. For example, in a story about a war of warlocks, does it really matter if we knew the eye color of every character? What does matter is the set of rules for using magic in warfare. Eye color and rules are both information, but only the latter help us to understand what is happening in the book. The latter is necessary, whereas the former does not advance the story and should be used sparingly.

Also, the story does not need to show everything that happens. There is no use in showing the protagonist opening her eyes, turning off the alarm, jumping in and out of the shower, and eating cereal, if all we needed was the protagonist seeing Mr. X on her morning walk to get flowers. Know when to summarize or to skip deadweight scenes.

Story Design

Let’s say that the author has a perfect sense of the information and the scenes needed in the story. Now, how to assemble them?

Many of the submissions I read are stories told in a linear fashion, which is definitely one way to write a successful novel, since many stories are event-driven. But I want to make aware the option of modular design.

Last week I read a submission in which we find out in the beginning that the protagonist’s mother has just passed away, and most of the rest of the book relates the events of their life together. This setup has great potential. The mother’s eventual death is a crucial piece of information that the writer can use to incite emotion out of readers: knowing the mother will die makes us put more importance on what otherwise might be mundane events, and perhaps infuse them with meaning.

Story structure is a decision the author has to make at some point. The default to linear design could work extremely well, but it is always useful to be aware of different writing tools.

If you’d like to read a much more detailed (and more elegant) discussion on linear and modular designs, Madison Smartt Bell’s Narrative Design will rock your socks off.

~~Julia, MFA

When to Say When: Querying New (& Old) Projects

2010-04-08T10:20:00.000-04:00

There will be times during The Process when you feel like you've hit the wall with your manuscript. You've taken it out to your top 5 (or 50 or 500) agents, they've requested your partial, but then every single one turned you down. What exactly--besides whistling in the dark, of course--are you supposed to do now? Can you revisit these agents again?

Like so many topics, the answers to these questions will vary from agency to agency. I can only answer for us.

First, please don't query us with same project, even if you've revised and/or re-written the manuscript. If we're interested in seeing it again, we'll specifically tell you that when we respond to your partial or full manuscript (I think most agents would say the same thing). This can feel killer, especially if you've had several agents respond with similar comments and you feel like now you're equipped to make your manuscript even better, more polished, totally marketable, etc. However, it's a great argument for not sending your manuscript to every agent in the universe (or multiverses--that's just a side tidbit; I'm fascinated by this concept right now) at the same time. If you send your query and manuscript out in smaller batches and five agents respond with similar comments, you have the opportunity to take those comments back to your manuscript, revise (if you agree with the comments) to a stronger manuscript, and query a new batch of agents.

"Ok, fine, so I won't re-query with the same (or revised) project," you say, "but what about querying new manuscripts?" Querying a new/different manuscript after receiving a rejection on a full or partial is fine for us. Ideally, you'd probably wait a bit (at least a few weeks) before querying again. If we've provided comments with a rejection on your full or partial, consider those in relation to your new manuscript. Do you see any themes, constructions, etc. that might crop up as similar problems in the new manuscript?

When you do query a new project, a brief, polite mention that we previously considered a different manuscript of yours is a good note to include. I always appreciate an acknowledgment that we've had previous correspondence, plus it gives me an opportunity to check back through notes or records on your earlier manuscript if I want.

One note to consider: If we've requested, reviewed and rejected a couple of your manuscripts, you would probably be best served to query other agencies. It's best to end up with an agent who loves your work, your style and your themes, and if we've rejected multiple manuscripts, it's likely that our tastes just don't mesh with yours.

Also, while we're on the topic, here's a reminder to only query one project at a time. Sending us paragraph summaries for 15 unrelated books and asking us to pick which one we want to read is likely to result in an almost InstaReject. We wouldn't pitch your books like that to editors; please don't pitch them that way to us.

Your Audience

2010-03-30T14:34:00.003-04:00

"Remember your audience" is a piece of advice authors hear often, but, in my opinion, it is advice that can never be given frequently enough. Why? The reason most of you are reading this blog is because you want to be published. Rather than just writing for yourself, you want other people to read your story. Those "other people," your potential readers, are incredibly, incredibly important.

I've seen a number of stories by authors who don't seem to know who their audience is. This problem can occur in any genre of fiction (or non-fiction, for that matter), but I've seen in most often in YA. The problem with YA is that we think of YA as having one homogeneous audience (generally called "teens"), but that's not actually true. Depending on who you ask, YA can include anyone between age 12 and 21 (and we know that many adults read YA too!). Even a more conservative range of 13-18 is actually quite wide when you think about it--an eighth grader may find books written for college freshmen completely inaccessible, and vice versa.

Today I read a partial in which the writing style and characters were more suited for younger YA readers, while certain aspects of the plot were definitely more adult. A 12-year-old would have enjoyed the story on the whole, but several key scenes would have been completely inappropriate for someone so young; on the other hand, an 18-year-old would have been fine with those scenes, but the rest of the story would have been too immature for them to want to read. It was as though the author was trying to target both audiences, but, in doing so, wasn't able to capture either of them. I had to recommend passing on the manuscript.

So what can the author do? Before you start writing your story, stop and think of who your ideal reader is. For YA, narrow down a particular age--not just "teens" but a more narrow age group. For adult authors, age is not as important as "stage of life"--are you writing for young, single women or widowed retirees? If your book is about a certain segment of the population--be it based on religion, education, gender, culture, profession, or anything else--consider how accessible this segment is to the general population. For example, you don't need to be a doctor to enjoy a medical drama, but if every other word is a highly technical term of art that only trained physicians would understand, you are severely limiting your audience to only doctors to enjoy reading about doctors rather than everyone who enjoys reading about doctors.

Once you know who your audience is, you'll be able to better focus your writing to target that particular group of readers. If you're afraid your audience is too narrow, you can either reconsider your target audience or you can take extra care as you write to make the story accessible to other readers as well--not necessarily changing your target, but just making it a bit larger. But make sure, no matter how wide or narrow your audience is, you know who those readers are and what they enjoy to read, because otherwise the only audience for your book is going to be yourself.

~Lindsey

Looking for fresh and new

2010-03-26T15:43:00.004-04:00

Agents and editors are always talking about how we're looking for something fresh and new. I know saying this frustrates authors, because rarely does anyone define what they mean. Recently I experienced a "eureka" moment (it helped that I was in Northern CA at the time) and here's hoping that my insights help to shed a bit of light on at least one aspect of what might be meant by the phrase "fresh and new."

So much of what I read in manuscripts these days is quite competently written. The characters are good, the story relatively strong, dialogue sharp, etc. But what the story lacks is freshness. What it has too much of is predictability. Once you understand the characters and their motivation and generally where the story is set, the rest of the plot falls sadly into a very predictable pattern. If A does this, then B, of course, is going to do that and as a result, C happens. Far too many stories (be they romances, mysteries, or general fiction) have the same A's, B',s and C's.

But recently I read two very different books where the ABC's were all mixed up and the results were delightful. One book was the much-acclaimed first novel by Gail Carriger, Soulless. There the author weaves both unpredictable characters and events throughout her story. Even her choice of words often sets one's head spinning. For example, instead of focusing on the usual powers of vampires and werewolves, the author has written a wonderful tale about a woman with no soul who actually touches those paranormal creatures and returns them to human form. Just imagine how that could twist a standard vampire plot! From the opening words of the first paragraph of the book, there's no question that the reader is about to embark on a most unpredictable tale.

The second book is D anar by Matthew MacNown. I came to know this book early in its life when the author's mother retained my legal services to help negotiate the publishing contract. Matthew (whom regrettably I have never met) must be a most remarkable young man; not only because at the age of twenty-two he can already say he's an author, but also because he has autism. I couldn't wait to read the book when it came out. It's a fantasy set in a far off land of dark and light where heroes do battle with wicked villains. But what delighted me most about the book was the fresh perspective Matthew brought to the story. There were inventive names and words throughout and a focus on what was happening in the story unlike any other I'd read in a long while. It was that unpredictable and fresh look at what could have otherwise been a very traditional story that resonated with me.

So the next time you sit down to write, think about how you can introduce the unpredictable and unexpected into your story -- think about your language and dialogue, your characters, your plot. See if you can't play off the predictable to come up with something new. Remember you still have to have believability. You don't want your unpredictable element to simply drop down from the sky. It has to emerge from your setting, plot and/or characters in a way that the reader can understand and accept, but try looking at the world you're writing in a different way and I'm confident you'll come up with something fresh and new.

Balancing Dialogue and Exposition

2010-03-25T12:34:00.001-04:00

Crafting a good story can be quite the balancing act. It’s never easy to include all the important elements, such as character development, plot, and setting, without accidentally focusing on one of these a little more than the others. And it can be difficult to balance what you convey through exposition with dialogue. Too much of one and not enough of the other can be disastrous.

Unfortunately, something that I have been coming across lately is excessive use of dialogue in place of exposition. I say unfortunately because this tends to give me no other option than to recommend passing on a manuscript.

There is a time and place for everything. Characters need to converse with each other in order to grow as characters. As readers, we need to hear their voices in order to know them better. But dialogue can’t accomplish everything. It is important to recognize when exposition should be used, like when creating a strong sense of place for a story, or even when building up your characters’ interiority.

This is certainly not to say that you should throw in lots of exposition and severely cut down on dialogue. When I was growing up, I remember hating Island of the Blue Dolphins because there was so much exposition. Every little detail of the island was described, and I simply didn’t care. There was hardly any dialogue, since the protagonist was alone on the island for most of the story, and that made the book bore me completely. All I wanted was a little dialogue!

There is a fine line between having too much dialogue or not enough, too much exposition or not enough. Never forget that writing is a balancing act. Of course, it isn’t easy, but that’s why the revisions process exists.

~Jenn

Writer Appreciation: a Brief Note

2010-03-24T12:09:00.004-04:00

I just looked at the blog and realized that I haven't blogged since January. January! It is a good thing, Authors, that my job is not to be a writer. The tenacity and stick-to-itiveness that it takes to sit your butt in a chair and write something every single day (or at least on the semi-regular basis [more often than every two months] that it takes to write a manuscript) is admirable, possibly miraculous (at least from my view) and deserves a standing ovation. (Pause while she stands at her desk with her arms shaped in an "O" above her head.) The good news is that we're busy with other things behind the scenes here, including reading those manuscripts that you're writing. So keep writing, keep submitting (YA manuscripts to me now and other manuscripts to Elaine soon [stay tuned to the blog and website for notice on when adult fiction queries should resume]), and I'll blog again sooner than two months from now. Deal? Deal.