Blog Archive
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Christie Craig: Three Why Questions; Three Writing Tips
Aug 26, 2011
Christie Craig Don’t Mess With Texas Publisher: Forever Books Pub date: August 2011 Agent: Kim Lionetti (Click to Buy) I get a lot of questions tossed my way. For today’s guest blog, I decided to answer three of them, along with three connecting snippets of writing advice. Why do you set all your books in […]
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Only the Righteous
Aug 25, 2011
So here’s the story . . . I receive a message through my LinkedIn account. Honestly, I’m not sure why I have a LinkedIn account. Occasionally I’ve looked for clients for nonfiction projects through LinkedIn, but rarely has anything ever come of it. Truthfully, the most success I’ve had in social networking comes through Twitter. […]
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Workshop Wednesday
Aug 24, 2011
By repeated request we’ve started Workshop Wednesday. It will definitely play out through 2011, and beyond that we’ll just have to see. We’ve received well over 200 queries at this point, but we are choosing at random, so don’t be afraid to participate as per the guidelines in our original post. For anyone wanting to […]
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Life as Seen Through Queries
Aug 23, 2011
If life were like queries: All children would be orphans All husbands are keeping a marriage-destroying secret from their wives Small towns would have an impossibly high murder rate At the age of 16, 17, or 18 we would all learn the secret our parents have been keeping from us (and it’s always some super-cool […]
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How Many Clients Do You Have
Aug 22, 2011
Anytime I offer representation I’m asked how many clients I have. It’s a fair question and I get why authors ask. The problem is that there is no right answer. The other problem is that I refuse to count up my clients. I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know. The problem with […]
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Thought for the Day
Aug 19, 2011
I love it when people start their query with something along the lines of “I know a query should get to the point, but that’s not my style and I like to do things my own way,” or “I know you don’t accept unrequested manuscripts, but that’s not my style and I like to do […]
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Taking the Summer Off
Aug 18, 2011
In your opinion, is it better for an agent to wait till after the summer to send a novel out on submission? Is it a myth that the publishing industry basically shuts down in August? Are there any advantages in NOT waiting? I don’t think there’s a universally correct answer to this. I think it […]
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Workshop Wednesday
Aug 17, 2011
By repeated request we’ve started Workshop Wednesday. It will definitely play out through 2011, and beyond that we’ll just have to see. We’ve received well over 200 queries at this point, but we are choosing at random, so don’t be afraid to participate as per the guidelines in our original post. For anyone wanting to […]
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Does Social Networking Work?
Aug 16, 2011
Do sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking avenues do anything for you or your career? I guess that depends on how you use it. Three of my most recent clients came to me through just those avenues. In one case I contacted a client of mine to ask if she had any […]
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Feeling Powerless
Aug 15, 2011
Last year, I signed with an agent who is a great fit for me on paper: she has sold multiple book series in my genre to great editors for great deals. Very exciting. In the beginning, we spoke several times a week, and her rounds of feedback came quickly. It’s been nine months, though, and […]
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Thought for the Day
Aug 12, 2011
The problem with querying every book at once (either in the same query or three or four queries in a row) is that after reading and rejecting one I tend to feel I’m not the right agent for your work and automatically reject the others. If you query different books over time I will assume […]
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Real-Life Advice
Aug 11, 2011
I’m trying to figure out how to write this blog without offending a whole lot of people, which is ridiculous really because if I’ve leaned anything from this blog it’s that I have no idea what’s really going to offend a whole lot of people. We’ve talked a lot about how there’s bad advice everywhere, […]
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