A Peek at NBC's Revolution and week 2 of my blog tour

Today starts off the second and last week of my blog tour. I will be at Matthew's blog called the Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment or QQQE for short. It's a great place to hang out and meet fellow bloggers and work on query letters.

NBC has a series that is coming up in the fall that has piqued my interest. Called Revolution, it definitely has a creepy sci-fi, dystopian, apocalyptic aspect to it.

From J.J. Abrams and Supernatural creator Eric Kripke, Revolution is a high-concept drama that asks one harrowing question: What would happen if all forms of technology just stopped working? The show centers on Charlie (Tracy Spiridakos), a young woman who is on a mission to find her uncle (played by Twilight actor Billy Burke) after the local militia kills her father and kidnaps her brother.

Anyway, it's got me excited. Please follow me over to the QQQE if you have the time and have a great Monday.

Tuesday Diablo 3 is released. I ordered mine from Amazon. I can't wait to play it later this week with some friends from WoW. Squee.

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What If I Fail At Being Published?

In the event that any of us (god forbid) fails in the pursuit of a dream which consists mostly of money and very little of actually writing anything memorable, you may find yourself at a crossroads wherein you decide that kidnapping someone and holding them for ransom may provide a more sound financial future (if not for yourself then for your loved ones). This shouldn't be taken lightly because a properly constructed ransom note is as hard as a query letter.  You will need the following elements:

1. Don’t be lazy and use the internet. Look, I know you can go on the web and use different programs that turn your text into a ransom note. That’s kid stuff. If you’re doing the crime, do the extra work and make the note yourself. Handmade. Just think of it as a more grown-up arts and crafts project.
2. Spell check, spell check, spell check Do you want to come across as a criminal mastermind, or some barely literate immigrant? The choice is yours. You don’t want the five-oh laughing at your poor punctuation and the fact that you threatening people by threatening to "kil" them.
3. No codes, ciphers, rebuses, etc. You want your ransom note to have a clear and effective message; mainly, that you have a member of someone’s family hostage and want money immediately or else. If you’re trying to be cute and send someone a note covered in bizarre glyphs which take months to decode, you’re never gonna collect on your investment, and then you’ve got some problems on your hands.
4. Tailor your ransom note to the victim. If it’s a foreign diplomat, use pieces of their nation’s flag as the letters. Or, let’s hypothetically say that you happen to have in your possession one of a certain celebrity couple’s adopted babies. You could use the People Magazine covers they adorned to make the words as well.
5. Wear gloves Don’t be an idiot and put your fingerprints all over your work. If you get busted because your thumb print got matched on the letters you cut out, you deserve what you get in prison. Be careful; burn whatever you use to make the note, and pick a pretty common variety of paper upon which to glue your letters. Contrary to what popular television shows would like you to believe, it takes some pretty obvious mistakes in order to get caught.
6. No body parts on the first note It comes off as too desperate, or worse – like you’re bluffing. Nobody wants to deal with some crazy blood-hungry beast that’s into mailing people toes. Plus, it’s almost impossible to ship body parts through the mail. This means hand delivering the letter, which means a greater chance of being caught. It’s too stupid a risk. You’re better off with using second ransom letters as a chance to show off your photography skills by attaching Polaroid pictures of your kidnapee in various states of duress.

I hope this helps. Happy Tuesday. XOXO

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Error in your query? Don't sweat it. Agent and Big Six contract incoming

Recently, Suzie Townsend got very excited over a query sent to her by author Mindee Arnett.  You can read it here.  By very excited, I mean she took time away from a conference and from planning a trip to New Zealand to drop everything for it. That's pretty major, right?  I want you to notice this line in particular from that query:

"Dusty learns that together she and Eli posses the rare ability to predict..."

pos·sessVerb/pəˈzes/

1. Have as belonging to one; own: "I do not possess a television set".

2. Have possession of as distinct from ownership.

And in Suzie's pitch that she sent to editors at the Big Six that she sold in 16-days to Tor Teen, she also had an error.  You can read it here and I point out the error for you below:

"Now the Dusty has to follow the clues..."

Extra "the" there in case you don't see it.

Scratches head in puzzlement.

I'm not trying to throw eggs on Mindee's accomplishment. On the contrary, I congratulate her for being successful. And the same goes for super agent Suzie Townsend...congrats on her being so successful too.

No, what I'm bitching about discussing today is the lack of actual standards for this industry. It's all subjective.  It depends on mood, lighting, whatever a person ate for breakfast, timing, what they had to drink, did they sleep well the night before, etc.

I think that for the unpublished, unknown author, the single greatest factor in publishing success is LUCK.  Maybe as high as 50%.  Think about that...your chance of publishing is at least 50% luck.

This should read "Avoid publishing unlucky authors. Throw half of the slush pile
in the automatic rejection bin without reading them. What's left are the lucky ones.
Thank God for the form rejection. Otherwise you might actually owe
some of those people an actual response."

I just think that the advice given to authors about writing query letters should be more...I dunno... truthful.  For one, spelling errors don't necessarily matter. If your query letter can get the point across and the agent reading it likes what you've written, then you'll be successful.  Anyone that's written a query knows what a pain they are to write.  A ton of work goes into them.  Maybe if agents said, "Hey...you can follow the guidelines but really...to get our attention...you need to be lucky. Sorry...but the truth hurts."

Here's what I would have on my agency website if I were a literary agent.  I'd have the usual stuff, query formats and whatnot withstanding, but right after the part that says, "Send us only your most polished query letter" would be the part that says, "And if you're LUCKY, you'll get my attention, and I'll get back to you."  That would be honesty.

Random but related thought ==> If Suzie did care about spelling...maybe she actually thinks that "possess" is spelled "posses" and never called into question the quality of the book. I mean, I hear all the time from agents that "an error in your query gives us an impression of how your book is. One error there makes me wonder how chock full of them your manuscript may be. It's an instant form rejection!" So just imagine if the person reading your query thinks a word is spelled one way when in fact it is spelled another and they reject it thinking you didn't spell check. Wouldn't THAT be interesting?

And just for the record...I don't see content-wise why this offering from Mindee caught Suzie's eye.  That's why I say she got lucky.  It seems like a cross between Harry Potter with a wizard "school" via Chamber of Secrets (kids being killed) with that of other tropes like Being Human's ghost main character that watched her former boyfriend sleep and Piers Anthony's "Nightmare" (part of the Xanth series). I mean...I've read lots of "these types of queries" on my journeys through the blogosphere from people getting ready to send to agents that want help on their query letters.

I'm not saying it doesn't deserve to get published. It absolutely does. And absolutely deserves representation. But so do a dozen others that I can name off the top of my head that have queries very similar to this only without any errors, and these authors got nothing but rejections.

And you know what advice people out there give to these writers that are getting rejected.  It's this: "Oh, your query must not be working. It must be bad. Revise and resend."  Basically, they are told to go back to the drawing board, to re-edit, and revise, and send to new agents when they are ready.  However, there is no scientific rock-solid proof that this is the case. I'm an atheist...I need proof to believe in things. There is no proof. It's simply conjecture...guessing.  You know what I say?  I say you got rejected because you just WEREN'T LUCKY.  You got that?  You have BAD frickin' luck? How do you like them apples?  I don't suggest you go and buy a lotto ticket anytime soon. You'll probably lose at that too.

With regard to the query example...I don't see what caused the "OMG...I MUST DROP EVERYTHING NOW BECAUSE THIS IS AMAZING" moment. Especially given the spelling error. "Posses" is plural for "posse" which means a group of individuals.  It's all...just...interesting.

That's my two cents for today.  Invest in some four leaf clovers and some giraffe earrings of amazing juju.  They shall serve you better than a spell check.

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