Ernestly Seeking . . .

*takes a deep breath*

Okay. I put the last touches on the manuscript. It's time to send in that full.

My goal was to begin querying by February 1st. Looks like I'm a little ahead of schedule. I'm a member of Querytracker, and I've read tons of blog posts with suggestions about querying.

Everyone talks about researching agents to make sure you're aware of their individual submission requirements and getting to know their personalities--if something wonderful happens, you want to know you want work with this person. I've heard rumors of agent stalking on Twitter and Facebook to help glean some of that insight.

What do you look for in an agent?

Or, if you already have your dream agent, what is it about him/her that you think is the most important in your working relationship?

Oh, My Freakin' Heck!

Check this out--my hands are still shaking!

I just barely got the manuscript back from Laura Josephsen, and haven't made the corrections/changes yet.

A Query Critque and the Deja Vu Blogfest

I suggest that you stop over at Matt's place at The Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment.
He's critiquing my query today.

Click here to check out the other participants.

 Today I'm participating in the Deja Vu Blogfest. It's where participants are supposed to look back over our previous posts and repost one of our favorites. It could be one that was particularly brilliant or that got missed because of others things going on. 

Or, in this case, it could be one that might make you smile. It's been a hard week for me, and I needed a laugh on this Friday.

So here is my Nonsense Post from August 8, 2011

I got tagged by the lovely Nancy S. Thompson for this meme. I debated whether or not to take it up, and decided there was some potential for humor here. You can decide if I succeeded or not.

1. What do you call your drawers?
Drawers
Do you have any commonly used nicknames for them?

I think that is the nickname.

source

2. Have you ever had that supposedly common dream of being in a crowded place in only your bloomers?

No, but as a child I would sometimes dream
I had absolutely nothing on. 
However, in the typical way of childhood, that didn't trouble me. 
Now? At my age it's best to cover up as much as possible.

source

3. What is the worst thing you can think of to make long johns out of?

Wool. Absolutely wool. It would itch like crazy.

source

4. If you were a pair of small clothes, what color would you be, and WHY?

Green. Definitely green. It's my favorite color. 
But I must admit these pirate long johns are quite stylish.

source

5. Have you ever thrown your bloomers at a rock star or other celebrity? If so, which one(s)? If not, which one(s) WOULD you throw your bloomers at, given the opportunity?

Please! Such a waste of fabric! It costs so much to sew anymore. 
To say nothing about being vulgar and unrefined.

source

6. You’re out of clean drawers. What do you do?

Um, wash them. Duh!

source

7. Are you old enough to remember Underoos? If so, did you have any? Which ones?

Ah, yes, Underoos. My older children wore them.

source

8. If you could have any message printed on your long johns, what would it be?

These days, the options are endless. Eve Gaal over at The Desert Rocks and I emailed about this since she got tagged, too, and I like what her brother suggested:

Save Your Soul

Source

9. How many bloggers does it take to put small clothes on a goat?

Zero, since we're in the cybersphere rather than real life.

source

I close with the lyrics that I used for Week 6 of Poetry Summer here
from a song we sang at Girl Scout Camp in the Philippines.

Long Johns

author unknown

sung to the tune of Bye Bye Blackbird (corrected from original post)

I have lost my underwear.

I don't care; I'll go bare.

Bye bye, long johns.

They were very close to me

Tickle me. He he he.

Bye bye, long johns

If you see them you'll know where to find me

With my bare bum stickin' out behind me.

I have lost my underwear.

I don't care; I'll go bare.

Long johns, bye bye.

  Like cyberchocolate that has no fat and no calories, it also has no taste. Just like this meme.

Now I'm supposed to share the wealth, so to speak, and have others give their thoughts about  their unmentionables. 

Hmmm ... who don't I like? 

Just kidding! I won't be the least bit offended if any of you don't take this up.

Donea Lee over at The Queen of Procrastination

Margo Lerwill over at Urban Psychopomp

Jess over at Falling Leaflets

Melanie over at Feather Pens, Tartan Dreams

Robin Weeks

So, did I make you smile? Or just roll your eyes and shake your head? 

Hey, I titled it Nonsense Post. You were warned.

Fine--You Win, Kings, and Hallelujah

 Don't forget you can sign up painlessly to participate in the Give Books Blog Hop and get a book for Christmas (or other applicable gift-giving celebration this time of year). The Hop runs through December 15th, but I'll be cutting it off at noon that day so I have time to contact the winner. I'm supposed to get the book in the mail on the 16th. Click here for details and check out the others books you could win by visiting the following blogs.


Give Books for Christmas Giveaway Hop

1.	Inksplasher (US)	7.	Maria Hoagland (US)	13.	Jennifer K. Clark (US)
2.	Jennifer Hurst (INT)	8.	The Last Word (US)	14.	Publish Novels or Bust (US)
3.	FALL (INT)	9.	Tristi Pinkston	15.	Heidi Murphy (US)
4.	Geek Girl (INT)	10.	LDS Publisher (INT)	16.	Nichole Giles
5.	Heart on a Chain (INT)	11.	Carolyn Frank (INT)
6.	Immortal Mine (INT)	12.	K.C. Grant Writer's Corner (US)

Since many of us are recovering from NaNo, and now we're in the throes of one of the busiest times of the year, here's a little something to lighten your mood. These kids just make me smile.



Have you got your shopping done?

Should I or Shouldn't I?

Don't forget you can sign up painlessly to participate in the Give Books Blog Hop and get a book for Christmas (or other applicable gift-giving celebration this time of year). The Hop runs through December 15th, and I'll be getting the book out on the 16th. Click here for details and check out the others books you could win by visiting the following blogs.

Give Books for Christmas Giveaway Hop

1.	Inksplasher (US)	7.	Maria Hoagland (US)	13.	K.C. Grant Writer's Corner (US)
2.	Jennifer Hurst (INT)	8.	The Last Word (US)	14.	Jennifer K. Clark (US)
3.	FALL (INT)	9.	Weaving a Tale or Two (US)	15.	Publish Novels or Bust (US)
4.	Geek Girl (INT)	10.	Tristi Pinkston	16.	Heidi Murphy (US)
5.	Heart on a Chain (INT)	11.	LDS Publisher (INT)
6.	Immortal Mine (INT)	12.	Carolyn Frank (INT)

 
*sigh*

Yes, that's a really big sigh.

My goal this month is to finish the edit for WIP #1 and send the first fifty pages off to an editor. AND I need to finish my query. Well, it's finished. The dang thing's just not right yet. ETA for clarification: This query has been critiqued by both my online and in-person critique groups. It's been critiqued by some other writerly friends and in its essential form given a thumbs up from the author I won the query critique from. But everyone--and I mean every who hasn't read the book--thinks a critical thing referenced in the query (and which is the hook) is a major plot-line. But it's really just a catalyst and sets into motion what happens in the rest of the book.

I've thought of submitting to Matt over at The Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment, and he said he'd be willing to look at it. Alex and Nancy have both said I should.

I just have this little problem about bearing myself in public, so to speak, and subjecting myself to ridicule. I'm good at my day job, and I work very hard to make sure I'm knowledgeable and up to date with my skills. I have to be because if I screw up I can get sued. Don't even mess with someone's bid to public office, believe me.

But I think the thing that really turns me into a quivering mess is the genre bias I talked about in this post. I'm not worried about Matt's comments. He a consummate professional and tactful besides. When I had one of my sons who's got a bright, creative mind (I love to bounce ideas off him) read an earlier version, his tone dripped with sarcastic cheese.

So, my adventure romance book's query could be said to have a melodramatic tone. If you read it the way my son did. Writing is so subjective I'm sure people will pick up on the cheese factor. And I'm so not into this:

Please note that my son made fun of the version approved by the author I won a query critique from.

It could just be him. Or it could be that the tone is there but fits the genre. The bottom line is that I'm at my wit's end over this thing. So I'm going to let you folks help me decide. On the right sidebar is a poll. Please comment here and tell me why you voted the way you did.

In the meantime, I'm going to be doing this:

Query Woes

I'm not supposed to be blogging today, but I really don't know how to proceed. I've gotten some very insightful input on my query from my online critique group, friends, and then my in person critique group. A fair amount of the input is contradictory.

UVU Book Academy Report ... And Queries

My very first writing conference was the UVU Book Academy in 2010. It's a one-day conference held at the local university. I thought it was an amazing event then because I had nothing to compare it to. I was also extremely new and raw to this writing thing. I'd completed one book (and was editing it) and had written 50,000 words of a new project (something I'm dying to get back to).

It was a very different experience this year because I knew people, and I actually understood some of what they were talking about. I even knew more about some stuff than other people there.

Scary. I mean, really. Me? Knowing more than someone else? But it showed me how much I've learned in the last last year. Sometimes those little advancements we make are slow enough we don't notice them.

I got some pictures with people whose blogs I follow.

David Powers King (click here for his blog)

Brenda Sills (click here for her blog)

Michelle Teacress (click here for her blog)

I got to touch base with a wonderful lady I met last year, who's toying with the idea of writing a nonfiction book but hasn't taken the plunge yet. And I connected with two awesome ladies who are members of my League of Utah Writers chapter and my ANWA group--Canda Mortensen and Deanna Henderson. They are a mother/daughter writing team (how fun is that?), and with another author, Cindy Hogan, they've started a writing network called iWriteNetwork. You can check it out here.

Dan Wells, one of my favorite authors, was the Keynote Speaker. You might recognize him from his I Am Not a Serial Killer series (which I reviewed here). Dan also cohosts Writing Excuses (with Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, and Mary Robinette Kowal). Dan's funny and addressed a question he gets a lot from people. "Where do you get your ideas from?"

Quote of the day: 

"It is not about ideas; it's about turning ideas into stories.

~Dan Wells

 Dan then went on to demonstrate how ideas are all around us, from news stories to politics to science to casual observation of the people around us. He had people suggest a simple statement and then go on to see how that could be developed by asking questions. Some of the suggestions were funny, but Dan made them hilarious. There were some with real story potential.

Queries

I'm in the process of writing (and rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting) my very first query. I've done a ton of query writing research and have had several people look at it and will take it to my live critique group on Saturday. It's been quite the experience. It still needs work, but I've made progress, which I find encouraging. Because of this I was particularly interested the the following class today.

Kirk Shaw, a senior editor at Covenant Communications, and Lisa Mangum, author and editor for Deseret Book, presented a class on "Writing Killer Query Letters", which they renamed "Writing Nondreary Query Letters."

Prequery Research

• Read your genre
• Try and find a publisher or agent who already represents books you like to read
• Find out what the publisher's or agent's expections are
• Follow agents blogs who review queries
• Pay attention online to input on how agents/publishers treat their writers. No relationship is perfect, but be cautious about jumping in where the fit doesn't work
• Check page length / word count requirements

Placing Your Story

• Set the genre
• Compare to similar books either in style, voice, or theme where it applies. Don't make it up if there isn't a similarity.

Tone

• Be professional. You can decide to treat it as a business contract proposal (which it really is) or you can try and capture the tone from your book. 
• Get into a simple review of the story

Hook (Lisa took this from a class author Scott Savage taught)

• Who it is about
• What the goal is
• What the obstacle is
• What are the consequences / cost of failure

A great place to see how well hooks can be done is to read the dust jacket of books.

Summary

This should lead them to want to keep reading.

References / Credentials

• Why should they invest in you as a brand?
• Are you a serious writer? What have you done to prove that? Are you already published? Do you attend writers conferences or belong to writers groups to further your knowledge of the craft?
• Can they trust you to be a partner in the publishing process?
• You may share other projects you're working on, even if they aren't finished.
• If it's a series or has series potential, this is where you'd mention that.

They suggested writing your back copy and then writing the book. You can then go back and see if you met your goals and rewrite the back copy.

From the rest of the conference, I came away with lots to think about, especially as I begin the plotting process for my NaNo project.

Have you written a query letter yet?

If not, do you have any plans for when you do?

If you have, do you have any suggestions for us noobs?

Querying

I've been dreading the process of writing a query letter almost since I first heard of it. Some of it is because I've never done one. I've tried to get prepared and been following Query Shark and BookEnds, LLC, who post real queries and break them apart to discuss what works and what doesn't (thanks, you guys). I've even joined QueryTracker.net, assuming that I will at one point know who to send the query letter to.

But my worry also goes back to my ms. It took me a year to come up with a title, because it has three distinct parts, and what title would fit the whole story? So how the heck am I going to write a query (in 250 words) for the dang thing?

So, I'm not there yet, not ready to write a query letter. Or so I thought until I read this post by Robin Weeks, and it got me thinking. Perhaps, as Robin suggests, the exercise of writing the query will help improve my final work. *sigh* Be sure to check her post because she makes some excellent points and because she includes a link to Elana Johnson's ebook called From the Query to the Call. I took a wonderful class from Elana at LTUE. She must be a nerdfighter because they are made up of sheer awesome.

Seems querying is on the mind of lots of folks. Ian Bontems posted about it today, too. He has some great suggestions as well.

Now that I finished Edit 8 and am ready to begin proofing (using a process Ian suggested, btw), perhaps I should consider writing a query.

For the experience.

You know. Just in case.

Jenn's Query Craft / Critique Giveaway

Jenn Johansson is having a Giveaway! From her post today:

So, I thought perhaps I could have a giveaway and lend my meager assistance to those of you in the land of Query-hater-dom. The winner can send me their 1 page query (whenever they have one ready) and I will help them polish it up until it hooks, gleams, and all other good things.

Here is what I'm thinking. To enter, just comment. If you would like extra entries (entirely optional, of course) you can get an extra entry for any tweets, posts, links, or signs you wear around your neck to let people know about the giveaway--provided, of course, that you let me know you did it in the comments section of this post.

If, you are lucky enough to exist instead in Query-love-land or I-Have-An-Agent-So-Queries-Can-Bite-Me-Ville, then you can choose between a book from my magical, mystical bookshelf... or a beautiful orange silicon Kindle cover (because I'm all about the Kindle these days).

This giveaway will be open until Sunday at 2:41pm Mountain Time (because I want to, that's what) and I'll post the winner in my post next Monday, March 14.

So check it out -- unless, of course, you're one of those in the "I-Have-An-Agent-So-Queries-Can-Bite-Me-Ville".