Blog Archive

  • Report from the Front–Friday

    Aug 01, 2008

    Yesterday was by far my busiest day of the conference with back-to-back appointments from 8am-8pm. I tried to take notes as I was going along but honestly I hardly had time to think let alone pull out my notebook. And I apologize ahead of time if the blog is incoherent. Conference brain is settling in […]

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  • Report from the Front–Thursday

    Jul 31, 2008

    My Thursday morning report on Wednesday’s happenings at the RWA conference. The boring stuff out of the way first…I landed easily and safely yesterday and spent much of my five hours on the plane reading proposals from clients and submissions. Okay, maybe not much of my time. I also got in a movie and read […]

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  • I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane

    Jul 30, 2008

    Before I go though I must check my list twice to make sure I’m not missing a thing. Let’s see, I’ve got about 100 business cards, let’s hope that does it. I have my handy-dandy notebook for tracking all of my clients’ projects, I have my computer, my calendar (which is exhausting to say the […]

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  • Blog Today Compliments of Kimber An

    Jul 29, 2008

    I made the mistake of noting recently that I seem to be running out of things to say, so Kimber An kindly gave me a list of questions to answer and requested they be strictly my observations, so here we go . . . 1) Aside from Young Adult and Inspirational, must a Romance novel […]

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  • Changes at BookEnds

    Jul 28, 2008

    I’m gearing up to head out to RWA National on Wednesday, but before I go I wanted to tell you about all of the exciting changes that have been happening here at BookEnds. To really put it into perspective, though, I’m going to have to give you some backstory, so please bear with me. In […]

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  • To Series or Not to Series

    Jul 25, 2008

    I’m often asked by writers how to deal with the “series issue” in your query letter. If you know that your book is the first in a series, should you tell the agent up front or just tell her about the book in question and bring up the idea that it’s a series later. With […]

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  • To Each His Own . . .

    Jul 24, 2008

    Obviously the appreciation of any form of media is wildly subjective. Sometimes my opinion falls in line with the popular vote. Hey—I thought David Cook could sing circles around David Archuleta. Other times I’m in the minority. Frankly, Titanic and Leo couldn’t sink fast enough for my liking. But I think books are steeped in […]

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  • Resistant Reading

    Jul 23, 2008

    I am one of those people who has a hard time doing something if I’ve heard too many things about it. Instead of rushing out to read The Girl with the Pearl Earring, for example, because everyone was raving about it, I took five years from its publication to finally read it. And I did […]

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  • Agent Frustrations

    Jul 22, 2008

    I know I’ve vented about this before, but it’s happened again so I get to vent again. Lucky you! I realize I’m behind on proposals, but I’m not that behind. So I had a nonfiction proposal that was a few weeks old. I liked the idea a lot, but was unsure whether or not it […]

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  • Handling Personalized Rejections

    Jul 21, 2008

    I receive a lot of questions about what to do with a personalized rejection from an agent. Whether handwritten or nicely typed (by the way, you’ll never see handwritten from me since you’d never be able to read it) authors wonder what to do next. If you’ve read the multiple posts I’ve written on making […]

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  • Another Submission Count

    Jul 18, 2008

    I was out of the office recently and flagged those e-queries I received when I downloaded them on Saturday morning. Now keep in mind these are only queries received Wednesday through Friday. In those three days I had 70 e-queries. What a nice round number! Once I got to them, about a week or so […]

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  • How Much to Tell

    Jul 17, 2008

    I often get questions about how much information authors should reveal to an agent in their query or cover letters. A very valid question, and one, unfortunately, with no right or wrong answer. As I’m sure you all know by now from reading my posts and those from other agents, preferences are long and varied […]

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