The Swivet [Colleen Lindsay]

Video posted for the "We're No Angels" NYCC panel!

2011-10-17T12:45:00.007-04:00

For those of you who weren't able to join us at New York ComicCon yesterday to meet all the extraordinary women writers on the We're No Angels: Leading Ladies of SF/F panel that I moderated, you can now watch the whole thing on Ustream, courtesy of the folks at NAL/Berkley's Project Paranormal! It was posted in three pieces, so I'm linking them in the order that you should watch them. (Note that there is a short ad that plays before each piece.)

The group of writers assembled for this panel is really amazing: Patricia Briggs, Alison Goodman, Kim Harrison, Jeaniene Frost, Marjorie M. Liu, Sabrina Benulis and Kristen Painter. Enjoy!

Video streaming by Ustream

Video streaming by Ustream

Video streaming by Ustream

New York ComicCon: Etiquette for fans, pros AND exhibitors!

2011-10-13T08:18:00.008-04:00

~~Nerd prom~~ New York ComicCon starts this week at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. Tonight is Preview Night, which is basically a nice way of opening up the floor to exhibitors, pros, and the press for a less-crowded three hours of exploring the floor. Tomorrow morning the con opens its doors to the general public, setting loose about 100k rabid pop culture fans with disposable income.

But hidden among those 100k fans are a handful of folks who don't understand the rules of genre convention etiquette, and their behavior can make it difficult for exhibitors to do their jobs (because let's not forget: the people you see manning those booths are actually working, whether for a large company like DC Comics or for themselves, like the intrepid folks in Artists' Alley).

So here are a few general rules of thumb, for fans, pro guests AND exhibitors:

Don't assume that anything at an exhibitor's booth is for the taking and don't take anything without asking. Most exhibitors are selling product, which means you have to pay for it.
Say thank you! If an exhibitor offers you something for free (aka, SWAG!), whether it's a book, t-shirt, or drawing, take a moment to actively engage that exhibitor, listen to his or her product pitch and say thank you. You'd be surprised how far a thank you will go!
Don't hover around the booths on Sunday morning, asking if the exhibitors will be giving away leftover product at the end of the day. It's tacky and annoying. Most exhibitors actually DO give away a lot of product at the end of the con, particularly if the alternative is to ship it a great distance. However, they're more likely to offer something to you if you've been by the booth previously and engaged them in genuine conversation about a book, product, etc... (See above re saying thank you!) You may even want to hit up some of the smaller booths that are understaffed and offer to bring the booth workers coffee or soda; trust me when I say they'll appreciate it and remember you later. (Note: This in no way is a plea for y'all to drop by the Book Country booth and bring goodies...cough cough.)
If you are a writer or an artist, do not try to pitch your work to the booth staff. There's a time and a place for that, and an enormous pop culture convention is not that place. (Again, see Item #2 re engaging exhibitors in genuine conversation.) If in the course of a conversation with a booth worker you happen to mention that you are a manga creator or a novelist, and then the person to whom you are speaking asks to see your work, THIS IS TOTALLY OKAY!
Do not be a booth groupie. What's a booth groupie? A booth groupie is a fan who comes by an exhibitor's booth several times in the course of a day in the hopes of scoring additional swag. Don't be this person.
Don't hit on the booth staff, particularly if they are female! This may seem like common sense, but I've been to too many pop culture cons where some of my female colleagues were made to feel extremely uncomfortable by the persistent unwanted attentions of a fan. It's never cool to make someone feel uncomfortable.
If you are a writer or an artist who has been asked to do a signing in an exhibitor's booth, arrive on time, be gracious with the fans who come to meet you and then leave the booth when the signing is over. I know it's tempting to hang out with the exhibitors afterward or to treat their booth as your own private resting spot on the floor, but really, don't do this. The booths are small, the exhibitors have work to do and you'll just be in the way. Some of the exhibitors will be too polite to say this to you, so I'm saying it for them: Don't be a diva.
Be a good booth-neighbor! If you're an exhibitor holding an event with a popular personality, or you are giving away or selling a show special that is likely to draw a huge line, make sure you are not blocking access to your neighbor's booths. Also, if you're near a booth that seems really understaffed, offer to send one of your people over to spell them for a bathroom break. You'd be surprised how many small companies exhibit with just one employee!
Be nice to the show organizers (ReedPOP), the show managers (Freeman) and the Javits Center staff (electricians, carpenters, etc.). These guys are all there to help make the show run smoothly, they have your best interests at heart and I know from experience that they'll do everything they can to fix whatever might go wrong as long as you treat them with respect.

Okay, everyone clear on the rules? AWESOME! Now go out there and have some fun! (And please stop by the Book Country booth #2028 to say hello - I would love to meet you!)

Come say hello to me at New York ComicCon!

2011-10-08T00:22:00.003-04:00

If you're headed to New York ComicCon next weekend, swing by the Book Country booth (#2028) to say hi and grab some swag (like the awesome Nerd Alert button that Totoro is modeling up top there)! You can also meet my Book Country comrades Danielle and Molly, as well as a boatload of my NAL/Berkley editorial colleagues, who'll be working the booth with us. We've also hornswoggled urban fantasy writer Anton Strout into booth duty. (What can I say? I outweigh him by A LOT.)

Booth schedule and Awesome Swag details posted here.

I'm also moderating an amazing ComicCon panel on Sunday, October 16th; if you're an urban fantasy or paranormal romance fan, please do drop in to meet these amazing writers! Details of the panel below:

Date: Sunday, October 16th
Time: 2:30 pm to 3:30 PM
Room: 1A23
Panel: "We're No Angels: The Leading Ladies of SF/F"
Panelists: Patricia Briggs, Alison Goodman, Kim Harrison, Jeaniene Frost, Marjorie M. Liu, Sabrina Benulis and Kristen Painter. (Can you believe this line-up???)

Lastly, Anton Strout interviewed me recently for his FANTABULOUS new weekly podcast, The Once & Future Podcast. We talk about ComicCon, Book Country, growing up a genre reader, the publishing industry and my irrational fear of gelatinous foods. (DON'T JUDGE.) Click here to listen (or, ya know, MOCK ME).

Anyway, I hope to see a lot of you there. This last year has been kind of a whirlwind of crazy and awesome and temporary baldness and new frontiers for me, and I feel like I've been a little out of touch with all my nerdy peeps. Time to rectify that, yeah?

Guest blogger Joanna Stampfel-Volpe responds to a recent PW blog post on LGBTQ YA

2011-09-15T10:39:00.015-04:00

Joanna Stampfel-Volpe is an agent with Nancy Coffey Literary & Media Representation, where she primarily represents picture books, middle grade and young adult fiction.

On Being Used, the Lack of LGBTQ Characters in YA, and Why It’s Important to Work Together

by Joanna Stampfel-Volpe

It is imperative that Young Adult literature reflects the diversity of our world.

Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Which is why conversations like #YesGayYA (on Twitter), and posts like Malinda Lo’s “How Hard Is it to Sell an LGBTQ YA Novel?” are so important. This is a topic that should be discussed, and brought to everyone’s attention. We (as peoples of the publishing industry—authors, agents, editors, booksellers, etc) should be working together to promote diversity of all kinds to readers.

Two authors this week published the article “Say Yes to Gay YA” on Publisher’s Weekly’s blog Genreville.

It describes the experience an author-writing team had with an agent who told them that he or she would offer representation if the authors would either make a gay male character straight or cut him from the book all together. Though this may have happened with previous authors and agents, this time it is completely untrue.  

We had read the manuscript, and had spoken to the authors to learn more about the story. Later, when this article was posted, we discussed in-house how awful it was they'd had to go through this.  

Then we got a surprising call from an agent friend who had heard that this article was supposedly about us.  Initially we thought it was just an unfortunate rumor.   

Then the emails started pouring in

Did we know what people were saying about us?

Why were they saying this?

This can’t be true!

Well. It isn’t true.

Let me repeat this: there is nothing in that article concerning our response to their manuscript that is true.

We spoke with the authors on speakerphone in our office, and the conversation we had with them was very different than the experience they describe.

The first bit of editorial feedback we gave was that they change the book from YA to middle grade, which would mean cutting most of the romance entirely (for both the straight and gay characters). The book included five character points-of-view (POVs). Our second bit of editorial feedback was that at least two POVs, possibly three, needed to be cut. Did one of these POVs include the gay character in question? Yes. Is it because he was gay? No. It’s because we felt there were too many POVs that didn’t contribute to the actual plot. We did not ask that any of these characters be cut from the book entirely. Let us repeat that, we did not ask that any of the characters in the book –gay or straight—be cut from the book. Also, we never asked that the authors change any LGBTQ character to a straight character.

We suggested this editorial feedback, because it’s our job, the initial step of the ongoing author/agent dynamic.

The authors felt differently, and that’s okay. It’s a business, but it’s a creative one. And it’s vitally important that an author and agent be on the same creative page. We have these conversations precisely so we can see if our vision aligns with the author’s before we offer representation. Since it didn’t in this case, we did not offer representation, though the authors of this article say we conditionally did.

Unfortunately, this rumor has reached the point where our clients and colleagues have heard from their peers that this article is supposedly about us. Above all else, our concern and responsibility is to our clients, always. And it is also to our agents.

One of our agents is being used as a springboard for these authors to gain attention for their project. She is being exploited. But even worse, by basing their entire article on untruths, these authors have exploited the topic. By doing that, they’ve chipped away at the validity of the resulting conversation.
And it’s a conversation that should be had.
So let’s continue this conversation, and let’s base it on the truth, which is:
There are not enough mainstream books that depict characters of diverse race, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and physical and/or mental disabilities.
Changing this starts with the readers. Scott Tracy has a great post about this on his blog. If more people buy books with these elements, then publishers will want to publish more of them. Sounds simple…yet, it’s not so simple.

How do we reach the readers who are looking for these types of books? And more importantly, how do we reach the readers who aren’t specifically looking for them?

We would love to start this conversation. It is one that our agency believes in and feels strongly about. Let’s discuss.

- Joanna

Note from Colleen: When the PW blog post was first posted, I was asked by several people to retweet the piece help to spread the word. Because this piece was printed in PW, I felt safe in assuming that the facts of the story had been checked.

I made the mistake - as so many people have - of conflating PW with the blogs that are hosted on PW.

In the spirit of righteous indignation, I retweeted the story. Almost immediately I was contacted by several well-respected agents - a couple of whom had already read and rejected the manuscript in question, based on the same editorial concerns - who called into question the facts behind the blog post. I later discovered that not only did I know the agent in question, but that this person was actually a dear friend of mine, someone who most certainly wasn't homophobic. The more I learned about this incident, the angrier I became at myself for reposting it and inadvertently hurting someone whom I respect and admire as a colleague, and whom I care about personally as a friend. This story has now moved beyond the book community online into the mainstream press; every new media outlet that picks up the story is a further insult to this agent's reputation; for that, each and every one of us who helped spread this story should be ashamed.

As a queer woman and a former agent who has happily repped - and sold! - YA with LGBT themes, I think we need to step back, take a deep breath and look at an important fact, one that hasn't yet been discussed.

FACT: Both these writers already have their own agents. At least one of those agents reps YA books. So what does it say when the respective agents for both these well-established writers advise them to find a different agent for the book in question because neither of them wanted to rep it themselves?

It tells me that homophobia was most likely not the reason that this book has thus far not found representation.

Any agent looking at this manuscript - knowing full well that these two writers already had their own respective agents who did not want to rep the project - would see this as a giant red flag and approach the book with a very critical editorial eye.

Does there need to be a conversation about lack of diversity in YA? Yes. Is this the incident to hang it on? I don't think so.

My two cents.

Edit to add on 9/28/11: If you get a chance, you should read this amazingly curated post by Cleolinda Jones over at Livejournal. She has put together an exhaustingly-thorough compilation of pretty much everything related to the original PW post, Joanna's rebuttal, some great conversations on Twitter and links to more great blog reading. Also, YA Highway sums things up rather nicely here, with pointed commentary where relevant. I think it's probably the most balanced view of the whole situation.

Edit to add 10/10/11: Comments for this post have been closed. I don't have time to keep checking to see if there are comments floating around somewhere in the moderation queue. (Actual day job here, folks.)

When we remember that Tuesday... Here is New York: A Democracy of Photographs

2011-09-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now; in the sounds of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest editions.

All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm.
-- E.B. White, Here is New York (1948)

Shortly after the awful events of what some of us now simply call "that Tuesday," a small gallery on Prince Street in SoHo opened up its doors and began to invite ordinary New Yorkers to contribute their photographic memories of that day. What first began as a small community art project soon blossomed into an amazing historical document of one of the worst days in American history, a physical - and virtual - library of images captured by ordinary people on an extraordinary day.

The gallery space soon began to draw crowds and groups of people queued up for hours to get inside to look at the photos. It was almost as though it became a necessary pilgrimage; to see what others had seen, to be able to compare the experiences of these strangers with the events that had shaken your own world, to compare, to confirm that yes - this thing really had happened.

And the mixture of the people who stood on line was just as amazing. German tourists standing next to dust-covered firefighters who were using their precious free time to witness this unusual grassroots outreach, before turning around and climbing back atop the pile of rubble twelve blocks to the south. Weary Red Cross workers on their way to pick up supplies. Groups of young children with their teachers. A band of Buddhist nuns who stood and prayed outside the gallery for hours. Actors. Stock-brokers. Janitors. Chefs. Homeless men and women. All standing together to witness one another's memories.

The exhibit ran through the beginning of 2002. The gallery began printing and selling the photos, donating all proceeds to the Children's Aid Society. By Christmas Eve, the gallery had sold more than 30,000 prints. A book was produced. Eventually a comprehensive website was created, where every photograph was archived and made available to the public. A video archive of oral histories joined the photographic archive online. The original exhibit toured the United States for nearly a year.

And it grew and grew and grew.

This project - called Here is New York: A Democracy of Photographs - is still available online in its entirety.

As we prepare to mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I implore you:

Go.

Look.

Witness.

Remember.

It is raw.

It is unforgiving.

And it is, frankly, one of the greatest visual arguments against ever making war on other human beings that I have ever seen.

Still not blogging.

2011-07-30T14:41:00.002-04:00

And you still don't really miss me. So it's kind of a win-win!

Can YOU survive the zombie apocalypse? Now's your chance to find out!

2011-02-10T23:25:00.009-05:00

Miss me, kids? Well, I'm back! Because I just couldn't resist this:

I'm helping my pal Jason Ashlock celebrate the launch of his client Max Brallier's awesome new pick-yer-own-poison novel CAN YOU SURVIVE THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE?

You're invited to participate in a whacked-out online choose-your-own-adventure story, based on Max's book. Leaping from Twitter to Facebook to Tumblr to Blogger to Posterous and beyond, you'll determine your own destiny, and see if you have what it takes to survive. If you want to start at the beginning and see how the apocalypse starts, click here.

If you're already playing, read on...

EXCERPT:

You can’t believe it. You don’t believe it. You goddamn won’t believe it.

But you saw it. Right there on the TV.

Have to get up. Have to move.

You don’t trust your legs to hold your body if you stand. For a long moment you just sit there, still. Sweat gathers on your brow. A drop crawls down your forehead and along your cheek. Finally, you force yourself to stand. You’re relieved when you don’t fall to the floor. You head for your cubicle.

You get to your computer and start typing. Hands are shaking. You’re hitting all the wrong keys. You feel weak. Realize you’re not breathing. You remind yourself, breathe. You sit down. Breathe in and out. Calm yourself. You bring up DrudgeReport.com. You see the red siren…never a good sign. Above, in giant letters, is the headline:

ZOMBIES TAKE MANHATTAN?

A number of smaller links sit below:

Walking dead…
Running dead?...
Avian bird flu in NYC? Developing…
911 reporting claims of the dead returning to life…
Huge horror hoax?
Manhattan under siege? Developing…

Jesus Christ. You have to get the hell out of Manhattan ASAP.

You jog to the elevators. The hallway is packed. After the fourth or fifth time the doors open to a full car, you say fuck it, you’ll hoof it. You’re on the 16th floor. The stairs aren’t much better. Dozens of people, running down. Someone trips, catches himself and smacks face-first into the wall. He’s knocked out cold. You and the others gingerly step over him as you continue your descent. The fire alarm screams, impossibly loud, along with flashing white lights – someone opened the emergency doors.

You take the stairs two at a time, going over it all in your head, trying to figure out where to go when you hit the street. Million-dollar question.

You finally get to the ground floor. Coworkers flood past you out the revolving doors. Didn’t know they could spin that fast. You nearly lose a hand, pull it back just in time. You and two other guys squeeze into one slot – you being the meat in that sandwich – and a split-second later you’re spit out on onto 84th Street on the West Side. A street you’ve been on hundreds of times over the course of your short career. But this time, it’s unrecognizable.

The streets are packed. Loud. Car horns blast. People yell - angry, violent screams.

And more, it’s hot. Stinking hot and humid. Air so thick you could cut it with a knife. A New York City August. You think while you sweat…

Try to find someplace cool and calm so you can collect yourself?

Get back to your apartment, ASAP?

--------> Go!

A wee blogging break but we'll be back!

2010-09-24T20:35:00.001-04:00

All new & revised: On word counts and novel length

2010-09-19T12:06:00.005-04:00

Although I'm no longer an agent, I still work with writers and I find that this post is one of the most highly-trafficked entries on my blog. Information on suggested word counts for fiction seems to be tough thing to find online so I decided to not only leave this post up here, but to revise and expand it as needed.

I sat down recently with several fiction editors and hammered out a more comprehensive list of suggested word counts by genre & sub-genre. As you read through this, keep in mind three important things: 1.) these are suggested word counts; rules get broken all the time; 2.) these suggested word counts will most often apply to debut writers; successfully published authors are the ones who end up breaking the rules, and 3.) if you are planning to e-publish only, and your book will never be printed out on actual paper, these guidelines aren't nearly as important.

Something I saw a lot in queries as an agent were word counts that exceeded 100k. Often, a manuscript exceeded this by a considerable amount: I've seen word counts of 140k, 160k and one writer actually told me about a YA manuscript he'd written that was 188k.

Somewhere out there a myth developed - especially amongst science fiction and fantasy writers - that a higher word count was better. Writers see big fat fantasies on the shelf and think that they have to write a book just as hefty to get published. And sometimes a writer just writes a long book because they aren't yet a very good writer. Good writers learn how to pare a manuscript down to its most essential elements, carving away the word count fat that marks so many beginning writers. And the fact of the matter is, most of those "big fat fantasy" books you see on the shelf actually only have a word count of about 100k to 120k.

The exceptions are usually authors who've already had an established track record of sales with previous - shorter - books, like George R.R. Martin. And, yes, once in a great while you will see an incredibly long debut novel. But the writing has to be absolutely stellar; knock-down, drag-out, kick-you-in-the-teeth amazing. (A good example is Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, which clocks in at just about 240,000 words.)

And I should also point out here that the longer a successful writer has been with a publishing house and the more actual dollars that author brings to the house (and the bigger that author's advances get), the more clout that author may have regarding being able to keep his or her novel intact, without taking advantage of the editorial guidance being offered. And that is never a good thing for the book. Editors exist for a damned good reason, and no author is ever such a fabulous writer that a good editor can't find things to make better in his or her manuscript.

There was a time about ten or so years ago when bigger word counts were the norm and not the exception. Like everything, the book industry goes through trends. But these days, editors of adult fiction - even editors of epic fantasy - squirm a little when presented with a manuscript that runs over 110k words. Books with a higher page count cost more to physically produce, resulting in a higher per-book manufacturing cost, meaning even more copies will need to be sold to make the estimated P&L work.

Publishers want to make money; bookstores want to make money. Do the math.

When you search around the Internet for information on word counts, you get a lot of conflicting information, some of it just plain wrong, and often this information is coming from sources that would appear reputable to a writer who didn't know any better. One article I read last week that was posted online at a major writing magazine actually insists that the average novel (non-genre) is 150,000 words. I have no idea where the writer of the article got his or her information, but that's simply untrue. An average novel length is between 80k and 100k, again, depending upon the genre.

Word counts for different kinds of novels vary, but there is are general rules of thumb for fiction that a writer can use when trying to figure out just how long is too long. For the purposes of this post, I'm only talking about YA, middle-grade and adult fiction here. And bear in mind that there are always exceptions, but good general rules of thumb would be as follows:

middle grade fiction = Anywhere from 25k to 40k, with the average at 35k

YA fiction = For mainstream YA, anywhere from about 45k to 80k; paranormal YA or YA fantasy can occasionally run as high as 120k but editors would prefer to see them stay below 100k. The second or third in a particularly bestselling series can go even higher. But it shouldn't be word count for the sake of word count.

paranormal romance = 85k to 100k

romance = 85k to 100k

category romance = 55k to 75k

cozy mysteries = 65k to 90k

horror = 80k to 100k

western = 80k to 100k (Keep in mind that almost no editors are buying Westerns these days.)

mysteries, thrillers and crime fiction = A newer category of light paranormal mysteries and hobby mysteries clock in at about 75k to 90k. Historical mysteries and noir can be a bit shorter, at 80k to 100k. Most other mystery/thriller/crime fiction falls right around the 90k to 100k mark.

mainstream/commercial fiction/thrillers = Depending upon the kind of fiction, this can vary: chick lit runs anywhere from 80k word to 100k words; literary fiction can run as high as 120k but lately there's been a trend toward more spare and elegant literary novels as short as 65k. Anything under 50k is usually considered a novella, which isn't something agents or editors ever want to see unless the editor has commissioned a short story collection. (Agent Kristin Nelson has a good post about writers querying about manuscripts that are too short.)

science fiction & fantasy = Here's where most writers seem to have problems. Most editors I've spoken to recently at major SF/F houses want books that fall into the higher end of the adult fiction you see above; a few of them told me that 100k words is the ideal manuscript size for good space opera or fantasy. For a truly spectacular epic fantasy, some editors will consider manuscripts over 120k but it would have to be something extraordinary. I know at least one editor I know likes his fantasy big and fat and around 180k. But he doesn't buy a lot at that size; it has to be astounding. (Read: Doesn't need much editing.) And regardless of the size, an editor will expect the author to to be able to pare it down even further before publication. To make this all a little easier, I broke it down even further below:

---> hard sf = 90k to 110k
---> space opera = 90k to 120k
---> epic/high/traditional/historical fantasy = 90k to 120k
---> contemporary fantasy = 90k to 100k
---> romantic SF = 85k to 100k
---> urban fantasy = 90k to 100k
---> new weird = 85k to 110k
---> slipstream = 80k to 100k
---> comic fantasy = 80k to 100k
---> everything else = 90k to 100k

Editors will often make exceptions for sequels, by the way. Notice that the page count in both J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series gets progressively higher. But even authors who have been published for years and should know better will routinely turn in manuscripts that exceed the editor's requested length by 30k to 50k words, which inevitably means more work for that author because editors don't back down. If a contract calls for a book that is 100k words and you turn in one that is 130k, expect to go back and find a way to shave 30k words off that puppy before your manuscript is accepted.

Remember that part of the payout schedule of an author's advance often dangles on that one important word: acceptance.

I cannot stress highly enough that there are always exceptions to every rule, especially in SF/F. Jacqueline Carey and Peter F. Hamilton, among others, have proven this quite successfully. If an agent finds a truly outstanding book that runs in the 200k range (yes, it happens!), he or she may advise your cutting the manuscript into two books to make life easier for everyone. But for a debut novelist who is trying to catch the eye of an agent or editor for the first time? Err on the side of caution with your word count.

Wrapping up the agent side of things...

2010-08-06T12:29:00.008-04:00

Today is my last formal day at FinePrint and my last day as a literary agent. As I mentioned before, I'm leaving to take a position at Penguin Books.

I've been crazy busy the past two weeks trying to wrap up loose ends. And wow, is there ever a lot involved in leaving an agency. You can't just quit and walk out, hoping they'll hire another agent to come in and take over. (Well, I suppose you COULD, but that wouldn't be a very nice thing to do to your clients or your agency.) What I've been doing the past two weeks:

Telling my clients I'm leaving
Telling my clients' editors I'm leaving
Trying to reassign my clients to fellow FinePrint agents so they aren't orphaned
Sitting down with all of my colleagues who will be taking over clients for me and familiarizing them with their new clients' open projects and open contractual obligations
Chasing down outstanding contracts
Chasing down outstanding client checks
Organizing all my files and putting them onto a flash drive so that I can turn them all over to the agency
Cleaning out my half of the office (I've shared an office with our sub-rights director Jacqueline Murphy for the past eight months - she is a wonderful office mate!)
Making electronic introductions between clients and their new FinePrint agents
Making introductions between my clients' editors and their new point of contact at FinePrint for ongoing projects
Following up on outstanding submissions
Going through the last of my requested fulls (and reading them!) to decide which are worth turning over to another FinePrint agent for evaluation and which will simply be rejected
Cleaning out my email in-box (two and a half years' worth of agency emails archived!) and forwarding the important correspondence to my colleagues at FinePrint.

You'd think that two weeks would be enough time for all this, BUT YOU WOULD BE WRONG! I was at the office for 13 hours yesterday and I'll probably be here very late tonight as well. (Thank God there's a Starbucks every five feet on this block!) And yet I'll probably walk out of here tonight feeling like I left something undone.

So what does my leaving mean for my clients?

As of now, all but one of my clients has been reassigned to another FinePrint agent and the one client who wasn't reassigned decided to leave the agency instead. And sometimes that's the best option if a writer feels that none of the remaining agents is a good fit for his or her work. (In this case, the writer was probably right, although with a debut novel coming out next year and a contracted sequel as well, the writer should be in great shape to be able to find another agent in the near future, and I'll probably be providing some introductions as well.)

But let's not lose sight of the fact that losing an agent mid-contract or mid-project is still disruptive as hell; for that, I can only apologize and say that I did my best to try to make their transition to a new agent as smooth as possible.

I think that the agents to whom I reassigned my clients are a good match, but ultimately that will be up to both the agent and the client. And I didn't reassign clients willy-nilly. I tried to give careful consideration to the personalities involved, the kind of writing, the communication styles that both the agents and clients favor, and made the best decision I could based on that. And some of my former clients are already chatting back and forth with their new agents, so I'm feeling pretty good about my colleague choices for reassignment.

There have been a couple of personal disappointments for me with my decision to leave. For example, I have a book deal that I haven't been able to announce yet, and probably won't be able to announce until we get a fully executed contract in hand. (Some publishers really prefer that we don't announce until we get the final contract so we try to honor that request.) Since I'll be gone by the time that happens, the announcement won't go out under my name. The sale was to a very prestigious publishing house, however, and it was a sale that both the author and I were really proud of, so it's a little sad that I won't be able to attach my name to the project publicly. (Curse you, gods of propriety!)

I'm also in the middle of pitching several projects that I LOVE, all projects whose final sale (or not-sale!) I won't be around to experience.

Another disappointment: because I've been an agent for less than three years, most of the books I've sold on behalf of my clients haven't actually been published yet! Most of them won't hit bookstore shelves until 2011 and 2012. It feels odd to leave my job as an agent without seeing these books through to publication, being able to hold physical copies in my hands and sharing the excitement with my clients when they finally get to hold a physical copy as well. It feels, well, unfinished, ya know?

More immediately, there's the sadness at leaving behind a great group of colleagues, people who have become friends and family to me. I am especially grateful to FinePrint co-founders Peter Rubie and Stephany Evans for having taken a chance on a wet-behind-the-ears book publicist back in February of 2008. They have been exceptional mentors and good friends. I'm also extraordinarily grateful to have gotten to know Nancy Coffey, who runs her own agency and who shares a suite of offices with FinePrint. Nancy has been a source of invaluable wisdom about the publishing industry as well as the one person at 240 W. 35th Street guaranteed to be able to make me belly-laugh at least once a day, which is a very good thing when you're working at any job!

I'm sure some of you are wondering about all my requested manuscripts, too! No, I didn't forget about you, but client needs had to take priority this week. Therefore, I've got an estimated timeline for when you should be hearing back from me on your request fulls. Although I'm officially leaving FinePrint today, I'll be sorting through the rest of my fulls through the end of August, forwarding on to Suzie Townsend those that I think have merit, and form rejecting the rest. If I've decided to pass your manuscript along to Suzie, I'll let you know via email by August 29th at the very latest. (And if I do pass along your manuscript to Suzie, I would ask that you give her at least two months before following up with her directly. She'll get back to you; she always does.)

Lastly, a lot of you asked about whether I'd continue to blog and post on Twitter. Yep! Absolutely! And I'll probably be blogging more often. I was blogging long before I became an agent, and now that I don't feel constrained to just writing about being an agent, I'll probably blog more about the book industry in general.

I think that the Twitter #askagent chat will continue, but under another name. It has become clear that #askagent has evolved into more of an overall publishing industry chat anyway and many of the industry professionals who join in the #askagent chat to answer questions aren't even agents, so I think it's time for a new name.

I also know that a lot of you who visit this blog have happened upon it because someone referred you to a couple of my older posts on word counts and query letters. I'm so happy you find those posts helpful! In the near future, I'll be reformatting those posts and giving them their own page here on the blog so that you can continue to use them as a reference source. When I move them to a new spot, I'll give you warning so that you can change your links.

I think that's everything. If you have any other questions about my leaving FinePrint that I didn't cover here, please drop me a note in the comments field.

And now I'm off to do more wrapping up of loose ends! See ya later!

In which I leave agenting for life with a flightless, aquatic bird in formal wear.

2010-08-04T07:08:00.004-04:00

I can finally make this news public:

I'm leaving the great people at FinePrint Literary Management; my last official day as an agent will be this Friday, August 6th. I'll be moving back into a publishing position, and on Monday I'll be starting a new job at Penguin, working in an online capacity. (Details about the new position when I'm permitted to share.)

I'm sure that many of you will have questions. Please feel free to leave them in the comments field. I'm preparing a much longer post about this for later in the week, and I'll try to answer as many questions as I can in that post.

Cheers!

"Because I'm the BATMAN!"

2010-07-15T16:58:00.002-04:00

I laughed so hard at this that I actually choked myself: Batman sends my colleague Janet Reid an audio query.

Round-up: On agent pay, advances, slush pile madness and learning to face change

2010-06-27T14:46:00.022-04:00

Last week I started conversations on Twitter about two different topics related to the publishing industry. The first question I threw out was this: "How would the publishing industry change if agents switched from commission-based payment to billable hours?" I later threw in some alternatives as well: flat-fee payment, project-based payment, retainers, higher commissions or giving the agents a choice of how they wanted to be paid. The second question I threw out there was this: "How would the publishing industry change if ALL publishers went to a no-advance model?" (You can find most of both these chats by search these two hashtags on Twitter: #agentpay and #advchat.)

The idea wasn't to endorse either of these ideas. The idea was to try to get people to actively think outside their own comfort zone, to try to avoid the automatic negative "NIMBY" response ("not in my back yard!") that seems to prevail whenever the idea of change - any change at all! - comes up in the publishing and book industry.

Quite a few of the folks participating in the discussion - which included agents, editors, and writers - were able to rise to the challenge and actually think through what the far-reaching consequences of such a change might be, as well as ways to counteract the negatives. But a large group of those participating fell back on the tired point of view that "everyone in publishing is out to get the writer!" Which isn't actually true, by the way, but there's no teaching some old dogs new tricks.

One thing that did come out of these discussions were some fascinating - and controversial - blog posts. I've tried to find as many of them as I could (and if you wrote one and I missed it, please do email me and let me know so that I can add it to the list below). I encourage you to read through all of these. Do take the time to read the comments as well, and refrain from resorting to inflammatory or inappropriate commenting on their blogs, please!

Writer's Digest editor Jane Friedman
Writer Beware editor & genre writer Victoria Strauss
Writer Stacia Kane
Writer Jodi Meadows
Agent Robert Brown of Wylie-Merrick (Part One and Part Two)
Agent Mary Kole of Andrea Brown Agency
Agent Kate Schafer Testerman of KT Literary
Eric at Pimp My Novel
Writer Morgan Ives
Writer Nadia Lee
Writer and bookseller RJ Crowther, Jr.
Writer KD James
Writer Christopher Keelty

The next mini-meta topic of the week was the not-often-discussed-but-quite-real demoralizing effects of reading slush on the psychological health of agents and editors. It's a real problem. I've experienced it myself. When I read too many manuscripts, I find myself often falling into a kind of "reader's block", and am completely unable to focus or concentrate on the project at hand. My colleague, agent Joanna Stampfel-Volpe, wrote a great essay on this for me last year.

The two very smart online posts that started this discussion were these:

Salon.com's Laura Miller: "It seriously messes with your head to read slush. Being bombarded with inept prose, shoddy ideas, incoherent grammar, boring plots and insubstantial characters -- not to mention ton after metric ton of clichés -- for hours on end induces a state of existential despair that's almost impossible to communicate to anyone who hasn't been there themselves: Call it slush fatigue."
Anonymous Editor Moonrat: "When I read submission after submission after submission--which, let's face it, is everyday--my mind starts to dull. My eyes begin to glaze from all the white on black. My butt begins to hurt from sitting. I'm pretty hungry (because I'm always pretty hungry), and this is making me cranky. As the day wears on, I get irritable. The reading gets faster, and the disappointments stack up more quickly."

I think the upshot of all of this conversation is this: Changes are going to have to come to the way books are published. Already writers and publishers are experimenting with new and creative ways to find and publish content. Self-publishing is one tool. E-books are another tool. Collaborative online community-based projects like Authonomy and KickStarter are also great ideas worth exploring. (And while you're over at KickStarter, check out ReDeus, a very cool transmedia storytelling project that I would love to see happen!) And some publishers are actively embracing the idea of transmedia publishing, and looking at how to take storytelling into all available platforms and mediums.

Nobody is questioning that the system as it stands currently could use a creative overhaul. But simply complaining about it isn't the answer.

The culture of negativity that we've all allowed to pervade the book and publishing industry is our own worst enemy; sooner or later we will all need to learn to embrace change, even if some of those changes make us uncomfortable.

What ideas can you bring to the table to make the industry work better? Let's keep the conversation going! (And I'm not just talking about the whole agents/advances thing. I'm talking about the book industry as a whole.)

(PS: Have taken off comment moderation and have enabled anonymous posting for this particular blog post! Play nice!)

Query hiatus extended.

2010-06-17T16:07:00.000-04:00

I am extending my query hiatus through the end of the summer. Any queries received between June 1st and October 1st will be deleted unread.

How I spent my (five day) summer vacation:

2010-06-14T00:47:00.002-04:00

My five days in Washington State involved the following: cats, lumberjacks, cotton candy, snakes, swallows, bald eagles, aggressive ravens, double-buck saws, axes, log rolling, a friendly hog, ice cream, river wading, rock climbing, red wine, apple cider, meatloaf, halibut, wildflowers, strong coffee, giant black slugs, volunteer firemen, free-range mountain hounds, lunch with two writers, one lamentable attempt at using the Seattle public transportation system and - last but not least - one memorable lesson in teaching a 4-year old how to pee in the woods.

How was YOUR weekend?

Closed to queries for the month of June!

2010-05-31T18:39:00.004-04:00

Just a heads up that I am closed to queries for the entire month of June. As of midnight this tonight (EST), all queries received will be deleted unread.

Do the Write Thing for Nashville: A Flood Relief Auction

2010-05-10T10:50:00.004-04:00

In case you haven't noticed, Nashville (and much of Tennessee) was pretty much decimated by flooding last week. But in truth, you may not have noticed, because the media sure wasn't telling anyone about the disaster taking place down South. It was a good six days before anyone in the national media started really talking about the extent of the damage, and even longer before the news hit the local news here in New York City, local news which was preoccupied by a disaster that actually didn't happen: the non-bomb in Times Square. (Hey, I love my city, but even New Yorkers get tired of the media pretending that the East Coast is the center of the universe.)

Meanwhile, over on the Twitterverse, a lot of writers and book industry folk started talking about the lack of coverage for the floods. It was mind-boggling, really. Nashville is a major cultural center of the United States, the home to country music and the Grand Ole Opry. But did you know that Nashville is also a major hub for publishing in the United States? Nashville is the home to Ingram Books - the largest book distributor in the country, as well as home to the majority of the publishers that serve the CBA marketplace: Thomas Nelson, Center Street Press and dozens of other Christian publishers.

And somewhere in the midst of that hours-long conversation, three smart young Nashville-based writers - Victoria Schwab, Amanda Morgan and Myra McEntire - came up with the idea of a literary auction whose proceeds would go to support the Tennessee flood relief efforts. And Do the Write Thing for Nashville was born!

If you haven't had the chance, head over there now and check out all the amazing things you can bid on for this great cause! My colleague Janet Reid is offering up a 30-minute manuscript evaluation by telephone. (She'll read your whole manuscript, first!) Another FinePrint colleague, Suzie Townsend, is also giving away a 30-minute phone call and manuscript critique! (Bidding on Suzie's package closes today, so hurry!)

More people offering up prizes: Curtis Brown agent Ginger Clark, NYT bestselling author Lisa McMann (who will fly to your city to have lunch with you!), Egmont publisher Elizabeth Law, Greenwillow Books editor Martha Mihalick, among others. (My package doesn't go up until Day 8; I'll tell you more about it then!)

There are dozens of great prizes to bid on, and all the money goes to help the people of Tennessee rebuild their lives and their cities. Please help us spread the word and Do the Write Thing for Nashville!

Query update

2010-05-06T09:29:00.004-04:00

Good morning! Okay, just a quick heads up: I've now responded to all e-queries received as of 9:30 AM this morning. If you haven't received a response to your e-query, then I never received it. Feel free to try again. Before you resend, however, make sure you've followed my guidelines. I've been finding a lot of queries stuck in my spam folder and I confess that I don't always look in there before they get deleted. (Because I'm running on the assumption that y'all have already read my submission guidelines!)

If you have submitted a paper query, then it was recycled. I don't accept paper queries and never have. Those that arrive at the agency are recycled by the interns. Sorry! (Thus my emphasis on the whole "reading the submission guidelines" thing.)

Word count still seems to be a problem for some of you. Here's a refresher on word counts for fiction.

And lastly, I still have 27 full manuscripts in my "to-be-read" pile.

On that note, I'm outa here! Have a great weekend!

Guest blogger: Agent Roseanne Wells talks kitchen sink plots, or "Adding a dragon won't help."

2010-05-03T15:53:00.006-04:00

My pal Roseanne Wells is a new agent at the Marianne Strong Literary Agency. An avid reader since forever, she discovered her passion for book publishing during her internship at W.W. Norton and hasn't looked back. She is also an arts reviewer for PlayShakespeare.com and loves dance, food, and awesome people. I asked Roseanne to talk a little bit about the dreaded "kitchen sink plot", a device that every new writer uses at one time or another to try to write themselves out of a plot hole or a bad book. Here are her thoughts:

Writing Tip: "This story needs a dragon!"

My friend Jane* has a tendency to tell really boring stories. She inflicts you-had-to-be-there stories, I-find-this-to-be-funny-but-you-might-not stories, and this-is-interesting-but-not-well-told stories on us all the time.

In college Jane started noticing that when she was telling a story, people started picking their nails, looking past her for the nearest exit, or falling asleep on the spot. Even when she could feel that the story was dying a soporific, painful death, Jane couldn't stop herself -- she felt she had to finish it to the end. She so desperately wanted her stories to work that she grasped for something that could save them, any lifesaver that could bring them home. Jane peaked when she was telling a story and, just as my eyelids began to flutter, she blurted out: "And then there was a dragon!"

Don't do this in your manuscript.

As appealing as this may sound -- and as hilarious it is to picture a dragon in line with your character at the grocery store -- don't do it. Adding a dragon or a long-lost brother or slutty secretary or a conveniently placed key under the doormat to the castle is not the fix for a broken story.

Just like a band aid will not patch a broken arm, a drop-in device can't mend a disjointed plot, polish a character, or create strong conflict. And sometimes, even a tourniquet can't save it: the whole arm has to go.

The key is to see what wasn't working before the dragon was needed. Are there two characters that need to meet, but there's no real bridge between them? Is there a romantic subplot that isn't taking off? Are the stakes not high enough for the reader to care?

The grain of salt? I can't say avoid any or all of these things: the memoir of a dragon whose long-lost brother is engaged to his slutty secretary (and that dragon's luck at finding the key under the doormat to the castle!) could be the best story written this year. But these components can't be a crutch, designed to support waning tension or flagging reader interest. (This also applies to nonfiction, especially memoirs, where the characters, plot, and themes are [supposed to be] sifted from everyday life.)

I find that dragons and the like often appear when writers feel they're out of options, that too many parts that are fixed in stone, and they have to come up with a magic fix-it-all to glue the pieces together.

But nothing is as static as it may seem, even when you feel that your manuscript is ready to give to a peer, agent, or editor. Don't be afraid to change or cut for the benefit of the whole story, even if it's only temporary. (I often remove what may be a dragon in disguise and put it in a separate document; if I do end up needing it later, it's sitting there, ready to come back to work.)

Dragons are awesome, but they can't make Aunt Millie more interesting than you've written her.

*Name changed to protect the boring.

If you're looking to submit to Roseanne, she's looking for strong literary fiction, YA, sci-fi (most subgenres included), fantasy, and mysteries (more Sherlock Holmes than cozy mysteries). Her nonfiction interests include narrative nonfiction, science (popular or trade, not academic), humor, history, true crime, religion, travel, food/cooking, and similar subjects. Query letters can be sent by email (with no attachments!) to queries(at)stronglit(dot)com.

Publishing Triangle Award Winners Announced:

2010-04-30T10:45:00.002-04:00

The winners of the 22nd annual Publishing Triangle Awards were announced yesterday:

Winner of the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction:
Rebecca Brown for American Romances (City Lights Books)

Winner of the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction:
James Davidson for The Greeks and Greek Love (Random House)

Winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry:
Stacie Cassarino for Zero at the Bone (New Issues Poetry & Prose)

Winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry:
Ronaldo V. Wilson for Poems of the Black Object (Futurepoem Books)

Winner of the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction:
Lori Ostlund for The Bigness of the World (University of Georgia Press)

Winner of The Ferro-Grumley Awards for LGBT Fiction:
Sebastian Stuart for The Hour Between (Alyson Books)
(The Ferro-Grumley Award is presented by the Ferro-Grumley Literary Awards, a co-sponsor of the Triangle Awards ceremony.)

Additionally, two other awards were given out:

The Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement:
Blanche Wiesen Cook received the Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. The award is named in honor of the legendary editor of the 1970s and 1980s.

Cook, a historian, activist, and scholar, has received near universal acclaim for her multibook biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. Volume 1, 1884-1933, published in 1992, won the Lambda Literary Award and Los Angeles Times Book Award. The second volume, The Defining Years, 1933-1938, appeared in 1999 and the final book is forthcoming. She is Distinguished Professor of History and Women’s Studies at the John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

The editor of Crystal Eastman on Women & Revolution, Cook has also edited and contributed to many anthologies and written on LGBT issues throughout her career. For more than twenty years, she produced and hosted her own program for Radio Pacifica, “Women and the World in the 1980s” (originally called “Activists and Agitators”). She was a founder and co-chair of the Freedom of Information and Access Committee of the Organization of American Historians, which was actively committed to maintaining the integrity of the Freedom of Information Act.

Publishing Triangle's Leadership Award:
Veteran book publicist Michele Karlsberg is the winner of the Publishing Triangle’s Leadership Award. Created in 2002, this award recognizes contributions to lesbian and gay literature by those who are not primarily writers—editors, agents, librarians, and others.

As a book publicist, Karlsberg, has been an enthusiastic advocate of LGBT literature for two decades. Among the authors she has worked for are Kate Clinton, Bob Morris, Jewelle Gomez, Felice Picano, Ellen Hart, and Shawn Stewart Ruff, as well as the two most recent winners of the Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, Katherine V. Forrest and Martin Duberman.

As curator of Outspoken, a nationwide gay and lesbian literary series, she helps new and established voices reach a wider audience. Karlsberg also has produced the first Olivia Book Expo on the Holland Americas line, and is the co-editor of the anthologies To Be Continued and To Be Continued Take Two.

For more information about Publishing Triangle, please visit their website.

Please welcome my colleague Marissa Walsh, FinePrint's newest agent!

2010-04-28T17:02:00.004-04:00

I'm thrilled to announce that FinePrint has added a new children's book specialist to the team! (Marissa will be looking only for mainstream children's & YA titles, but you should feel free to keep sending your paranormal/weird/dystopian/omg-is-that-a-mermaid stuff to Suzie and me.)

Head over to our agency blog to welcome Marissa and read more about what she's looking for!

Query update

2010-04-25T17:45:00.003-04:00

I've responded to all e-queries received as of 5:45 PM EDT today. If you haven't received a response to your e-query, then I never received it. Feel free to try again.

Also, I still have 34 full manuscripts in my to-be-read pile. I'll get to them when I can. I've got client projects that are a priority, so any non-client stuff will have to wait.

Lastly? Stinkyboy and Buddy Cat say hi.

You want to get angry about something that really matters?

2010-04-18T12:48:00.007-04:00

Then get angry about this:

From the National Center for Lesbian Rights website:

Greene v. County of Sonoma et al.

Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place—wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes.

Ignoring Clay’s significant role in Harold’s life, the county continued to treat Harold like he had no family and went to court seeking the power to make financial decisions on his behalf. Outrageously, the county represented to the judge that Clay was merely Harold’s “roommate.” The court denied their efforts, but did grant the county limited access to one of Harold’s bank accounts to pay for his care.

What happened next is even more chilling: without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold’s possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold's lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.

Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold died in the nursing home. Because of the county’s actions, Clay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years. Compounding this tragedy, Clay has literally nothing left of the home he had shared with Harold or the life he was living up until the day that Harold fell, because he has been unable to recover any of his property. The only memento Clay has is a photo album that Harold painstakingly put together for Clay during the last three months of his life.

With the help of a dedicated and persistent court-appointed attorney, Anne Dennis of Santa Rosa, Clay was finally released from the nursing home. Ms. Dennis, along with Stephen O'Neill and Margaret Flynn of Tarkington, O'Neill, Barrack & Chong, now represent Clay in a lawsuit against the county, the auction company, and the nursing home, with technical assistance from NCLR. A trial date has been set for July 16, 2010 in the Superior Court for the County of Sonoma.

It's stories like this one, and the story of Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond's recent abuse at the hands of Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital that make what President Obama signed into law this week so damned important.

Are you as outraged as I am by this story? Then please blog about it, pass it along over Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter and do whatever you can to help raise the visibility of Clay Green's case. And please do send a letter to the local Sonoma County paper, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat (which is owned by the New York Times) at letters@pressdemocrat.com. Include this link to NCLR's page. And to learn more about NCLR's Elder Law Project, click here.

Via The Bilerico Project and Livejournal's ONTD Political Community.
============

EDIT TO ADD: There is now an online petition to have the Santa Rosa Press Democrat run this story. Click here to add your name to the petition.

What NOT to do when you get a rejection: Example #873

2010-04-12T16:51:00.013-04:00

I received a query from a gentleman in Canada who compared himself to Alan Hollinghurst and Edmund White (two authors whom I love, incidentally). Unfortunately, the query was vague about anything else to do with the book and did not attach any pages for me to read, so it was clear he hadn't followed submission guidelines. Thus, he received my standard form rejection:

Thank you for your query. I'm afraid that your book isn't right for me at this time and I'm going to pass. Please keep in mind, however, that the publishing business is a subjective one and this is only one agent's opinion. There may very well be another agent out there for whom your work would be a better fit.

Due to the sheer volume of queries I receive on a daily basis, I regret that I am unable to give you a personalized reply or offer any additional feedback on your query.

All the best,

Colleen

In response to my polite form rejection letter - and you have to admit, this is a polite form rejection, right? - I received the following diatribe. I haven't redacted the author's name, because I think that other agents might want to know just what they'd be dealing with if they chose to represent this writer:

Colleen Lindsay:

Thank you for making it clear, through your response to my query, that you are unquipped (sic) to represent fiction writers who are working at the very highest level today.

Best of luck with your list of minor writers, third-rate writers, irrelevant writers, non-writers.

You lose, silly woman.

Patrick Roscoe

No, Mr. Roscoe.

You lose.

You lose because you've proven that you are incapable of behaving as a professional writer. So congratulations, Mr. Roscoe. You just got the fifteen minutes of fame you've been so desperately seeking. I do hope that you're happy with it. I know I am.
============

UPDATE! Another note from Mr. Roscoe!

Colleen Lindsay:

Your most recent message to me was deleted without being read.

(Note: I am unclear as to what he is referring, other than possibly the auto-responder he probably got for not following submission guidelines.)

Your initial absurd email made it clear that you could have nothing intelligent or perceptive to say to me.

You've missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, babe.

Perhaps you should consider a career change: selling used cars might be a more appropriate profession for someone of your lack of acuity.

Patrick Roscoe

Awwwww! He called me babe! *blush*

Taking names and kicking ass in YA book deals this month.

2010-04-10T12:18:00.010-04:00

My FinePrint colleague Suzie Townsend and I are celebrating No Whining Week by sharing some good news: We've been very busy during the first half of of April selling a lot of fabulous young adult manuscripts for our most excellent clients. And the important thing to remember about all three of these authors is that this is the FIRST YA novel for all of them. Who says there's no room for debut authors anymore???

Debut author Sarah Wylie’s ALL THESE LIVES, pitched as a literary YA My Sister's Keeper, about a girl who believes she has nine lives and copes with her fraternal twin sister's leukemia by setting out to rid herself of all her extra lives, only to discover that she might have only the one life after all, to Margaret Ferguson at Margaret Ferguson Books (FSG), in a two-book deal, at auction, by Suzie Townsend at FinePrint Literary Management (NA). jacqueline@fineprintlit.com

Conqueror's Shadow author Ari Marmell’s first YA novel, HOUSEHOLD GODS, a Renaissance-style fantasy adventure about a brilliant but reckless teenage thief who happens to have an invisible god living inside her head, to Lou Anders at Pyr Books, by Colleen Lindsay at FinePrint Literary Management. (World English) jacqueline@fineprintlit.com

Irish writer Ruth F. Long’s contemporary YA fantasy MAY QUEEN, a darkly engaging mix of romance, adventure, fairytale, and folklore, about a teenage girl thrust into a faerie world where nothing is what it seems, no one is who they say, trust is a variable commodity, love can be used against her, and where the veil slowly lifts until she finds herself faced with a choice between salvation or sacrifice—and not just her own, to Jessica Garrison at Dial Books for Young Readers, in a preempt, by Colleen Lindsay at FinePrint Literary Management (World). donne.forrest@us.penguingroup.com

And now you're all busy writing down these names so you can pre-order all of these wonderful books, aren't you??? I THOUGHT SO!

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir sings Lux Aurumque

2010-03-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

My Friday morning gift to you. Just listen and enjoy. And have a great weekend!

Guest Blogger Ari Marmell on writing media tie-ins

2010-03-24T21:17:00.015-04:00

My client Ari Marmell is the author of the recently published fantasy novel The Conqueror's Shadow (Bantam Spectra) and the forthcoming fantasy Goblin Corps (Pyr Books). He's also a veteran media tie-in writer and a writer for RPG player's guides. We recently had an interesting discussion about media tie-ins and the belief that many writers have that tie-ins aren't "real writing". But the truth is, writing media tie-ins may actually be able to help you become a better writer. But I'll let Ari tell you more about that...

The Tie-Ins that Bind
by Ari Marmell

It's a common belief amongst readers--so much so that, at least in my experience, it's pretty much accepted as a given--that authors would rather be writing their own “original” novels than working on tie-in materials. Tie-in fiction, so this belief maintains, is something that we do to pay our dues, or to pay our bills, while we're working toward what we'd rather be doing.

I won't pretend that there isn't some truth to that, for me at least. I've been writing (and trying to publish) my own fiction for over a decade, and the publication of The Conqueror's Shadow is one of the high points of my career, and even my life. If forced to choose one over the other, yes, I would pick original fiction over tie-in.

But only if forced. See, to me, the tie-in fiction I've done wasn't just a stepping stone, it wasn't just something I had to do in order to “make it.” It was something I wanted to do. It's something I still want to do, and I'd love to have tie-in novels intermixed with my original stuff for decades to come. But perhaps more importantly (and what I want to talk about here), doing tie-in fiction has made me a better writer in general, to the point that I would actually recommend that most sci-fi/fantasy writers dip their toes into the waters of tie-in fiction at least a couple of times in the early years of their careers.

Let's leave aside the more subjective benefits, such as being able to play with your favorite characters or settings, and focus on why tie-in writing is good for the career.

1.] Audience
Unless you're dealing with a relatively new property, any tie-in novel already has at least something of a built-in audience. You know there's already a market (even if only a niche market) that's going to look at your book, and--unless it's absolutely awful--probably a set portion of that niche market that's almost guaranteed to buy it. It certainly never hurts to get your name, and your work, in front of people who, if they like you, might just follow your to other properties, including your own.

Now, I need to clarify that this isn't as big an advantage as you might think. A surprisingly large portion of the tie-in audience doesn't pay much attention to who's writing the next in their favorite line; they're buying for the property, not the author. You have to really grab their attention to make them care enough to follow you outside that property. But it's still an opportunity to hook some of them, and it's more than you'd otherwise have had.

2.] Creative Stretching
The reason writers need to try different things, and that some of us take courses, is to stretch our creative muscles. If you keep doing the same thing over and over, you stagnate. The more you try, the better your writing is going to be--even if you then return to the familiar.

Working on tie-in fiction is a creative endeavor with requirements you won't find in original fiction. It's not just about creating a story, but creating a story that works with these specific characters--or perhaps creating your own characters, but characters that work in this specific setting. You might have to include a plot element or a character mandated from the property owner that you otherwise wouldn't have used, and you've got make that element fit smoothly. It can be limiting, yes, but that's the point. Learning to work within these limitations makes you a better writer even when those guidelines and borders are removed. It makes you a sharper plotter, a more flexible and adaptable writer; you're more able to view plot or character issues from different angles.

3.] Taking Feedback
Learning how to absorb feedback--positive and negative--is a skill that every writer must have, but few of us ever entirely master. (Nobody's skin is tough enough to completely ignore it when someone hates part of our work. Well, maybe Steven King, but he can just write a brand new novel over breakfast the next day. I swear, there's got to be at least three of him…) From editors to online reviewers to the husband or wife, we need to learn to take whatever's meaningful from any given response to our book, and to give it real consideration, even when our first inclination might be to dismiss it. Feedback is the only way we know how to improve.

You know what's a really good way of learning to accept feedback? Being in a position where you have no choice. When you're dealing with tie-in fiction, the property owner is final arbiter. If they come back and tell you “We're not crazy about the talking rabbit in chapters four through seven,” you don't get to ignore them. You might argue your case, explaining how the rabbit is essential to the plot and serves as a metaphor by which the reader understands the soul of the world, but ultimately, if they can't be budged, the rabbit goes. And if that means rewriting the entirety of chapters four through seven, well, guess who's rewriting chapters four through seven? (Hint: Look in the mirror.)

Yeah, it can suck. It can be remarkably unpleasant; I've done mandated rewrites on that level (though not for a talking rabbit), and it's rather like pulling your own wisdom teeth with pliers--rectally. But it's also educational. Because once you've been forced to adapt, and to rewrite around someone else's preferences, then you're in a much better place to do so on your own, to a much lesser extent, when your editor or your beta-readers object to something in your original manuscript. You already know how to do it, after all.

4.] Voice
It's not hard, for most writers, to stay in the voice of their main character throughout a book. It's your creation, and odds are it's got a lot of you in it, so of course the voice remains more or less consistent.

But what about for more than one book? What if you--as I did, with The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy--come back to a character you created years ago, in order to write a sequel? No matter how easily the voice came to you the first time, it can be something of an effort to pick it back up after so long.

It's easier, though, if you've already spent several books writing voices for characters that you didn't create. Both of my prior tie-in novels, Agents of Artifice and Gehenna: the Final Night, required me to put words in the mouths of characters that had existed before I ever touched the property in question. And both were written for fans who were going to know pretty quick if a voice was wrong, and wouldn't be shy about letting me know. If I hadn't written those books, and learned how to capture a character's voice, then neither The Warlord's Legacy, nor even the rewrites/late additions to The Conqueror's Shadow, would have come out nearly as well as they did.

In fact, I'd posit that even if you're not worried about coming back to a character after some time apart, learning how to write other people's characters will still make your own better, because it makes you more aware of nuances of dialogue and behavior. Since you must study such things for some tie-in characters, you begin to examine them automatically when it comes to your own. And any sense a writer has on how to make Character X distinct from Character Y, any instinct to recognize when Character Z wouldn't say/do that, can only lead to a better book.

The big debate about tie-in, of course, is whether the material is, as many people seem to think, innately inferior to original fiction. Obviously, I think that's absolutely not the case, as I imagine everything I've said so far implies. But even if you think it is, if you're an author--and especially relatively near the start of your career--you could definitely do worse than to give it a shot. Even if you find that it's not your thing, you'll be a better writer for the lessons you take away from it.

#Askagent: The unvarnished truth.

2010-03-21T14:56:00.009-04:00

As some of you who follow my Twitter feed know, I host a very impromptu, sort-of-monthly, sort-of-regular and always-unscheduled Twitter chat called #Askagent.

What is #Askagent? #Askagent is agent/editor/writer free-for-all, where a group of agents, editors and other book industry pros open themselves up to questions from writers for a couple of hours or until they drop from sheer exhaustion. It's a lot of fun, and always draws hundreds - sometimes thousands - of participants. And we can have as many as twenty agents and editors answering questions all at one time. Some of the regulars who join me in co-hosting #Askagent are agents Jennifer Laughran from the Andrea Brown Agency, Elana Roth from the Caren Johnson Agency, Jason Ashlock from Moveable Type and former Bantam editor Juliet Ulman. It's a great group!

When is #Askagent and why isn't it scheduled? Quite honestly, it isn't scheduled because those of us who co-host it never know when we are going to have a big enough chunk of uninterrupted free time every month. Also? The spontaneity of #Askagent is one of the things that makes it so much fun. When I have the time, I'll shoot an email off to my group of regulars (the agents, editors and other book industry pros who may be available to answer questions) and let them know when it will start (usually after 10:00 PM EST) and ask them to let me know if they be able to join us. And then I'll start throwing some tweets out into the wild to let the rest of the Twitter-verse know. I can always count on a handful of folks who read my Twitter feed to pass the message along at the speed of light, because most writers who have participated in #Askagent want to come back for more!

#Askagent moves fast, and sometimes questions need repeating because they move through the Twitter feed so quickly that we miss them, but we try to get to everyone as best we can. And not all of us have the same answers; one of the great things about #Askagent is that you get the feedback from more than one agent at a time, so that you can really start to understand just how subjective a business this is, and just how differently we operate. (By the way, we recommend using Tweetchat to follow #Askagent; much easier!)

There's only one rule at #Askagent: NO QUESTIONS ABOUT QUERY LETTERS!

Because, let's face it: one can only be asked "How can I write a better query letter?" so many times before one's head explodes in a Scanners-like organic veil of blood, brains and gore.

I admire agents who can repeatedly answer this question with grace and good humor. I, however, am not that agent.

There.

I said it.

I don't want to talk about your query letters. I don't want to hear you to talk about your query letters. I don't care if anyone ever talks about query letters ever again in my lifetime. THAT'S how sick of the subject of query letters I am. My chat, my rules!

So... if you're going to join us in an #Askagent session - and I encourage you to do so! - please use that time to ask more productive questions of the book industry pros who are offering up their time for free. Ask about how coop works. Ask about marketing and publicity. Ask about non-fiction book proposals. Ask about platform building. Ask about how to build a relationship with your editor. Ask about the language in your contracts. Ask about anything other than query letters.

Because there's more to your writing career than your query letter.

Dogs dressed like Lady Gaga. Yes, really.

2010-03-19T22:27:00.005-04:00

This may be the greatest use of Teh Intarwebs ever: Photographer Jesse Freidin's Doggie Gaga Project. Just go click the damned thing, will ya?

Winners of the 2010 Backspace Scholarship Contest!

2010-03-19T17:19:00.005-04:00

And the four winners of the 2010 Backspace Scholarship Contest are:

Michelle Hodkin
Charleston, SC
YA Paranormal | 85k words | Title: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

John Ochwat
Beaverton, OR
Fiction/Humor | 92k words | Title: The Knock-Offs

Marc Graham
Castle Rock, CO
Historical Fantasy | No word count given | Title: Prince of the West

Pamela D. Toler
Chicago, IL
Women's Fiction | 84k words | Title: Winning the War at Home

Congratulations, everyone!

The four of you will be receiving scholarships to attend the 2010 Backspace Agent-Author Seminar and Writers Conference, taking place this coming May 27th-29th at the Radisson-Martinique Hotel in New York City.**

We look forward to meeting all of you in person in May!

**The scholarship does not cover transportation cost to NYC or hotel stay. If you are unable to use your scholarship, please let me know as soon as possible.

Guest Blogger Alan DeNiro hits the road for a good cause: Mercy Corps!

2010-03-18T12:16:00.002-04:00

My client Alan DeNiro is hitting the road down South for his book Total Oblivion, More or Less. He'll be appearing at the prestigious Virginia Festival of the Book through March 21st, and then moving on to Richmond, Chapel Hill, Charlotte and Asheville. (Check out the full list of appearances here.) Alan asked me if he could talk to Swivet readers a little bit about how his tour ties into fundraising for a cause that he is extremely passionate about, the amazing organization Mercy Corps. But I'll let Alan tell you all about it...

Thanks, first of all, to my super-agent for allowing me to post here for a little bit. I'm really excited to be hitting the road for an extended period of time in Virginia and North Carolina. So if you are in Charlottesville, Richmond, Chapel Hill, Charlotte or Asheville (or thereabouts), check out my appearances page for dates and drop by my reading!

One of the great things about giving readings, among many, is meeting people where they live, in their communities. I know personally that I can lodge myself in front of a computer for ungodly amounts of time--both in my day job and my "nights and weekend job" (i.e., writing). But to get out there in the literal and figurative sunshine can be huge recharge and recentering experience. It sounds pretty basic but can have huge dividends for one of the key benefits of writing and publishing: making connections between different human beings.

One other thing that I wanted to do is a real-life extension of what I've been doing online and that is fundraising for Mercy Corps. This blog post talks a little bit about the online efforts, but essentially: Mercy Corps is a fantastic organization that works all around the world to better the lives of ordinary people. (In particular, you can read about what Mercy Corps is doing in Haiti.)

And since Total Oblivion (albeit in a fabulist manner) has a great deal to do with displaced people and refugees in crisis, I wanted to use the tiny platform of the book to perhaps make a real-life impact.

So anyone that happens to come by one of my readings and makes a donation of at least $5 will receive an impromptu micro-story written for them--then and there!--set in the world of Total Oblivion, More or Less.

I'll also take requests--if you want a few sentences about your uncle, your dog, whatever... I can do that. And you don't even need to buy a copy of the book (although if you DO, I'd be more than happy to inscribe it in the pages therein).

Of course I'm still fundraising online as well, so if you can't make it you can still participate and I will send you a little story either by email or postcard!

Thanks all and have a wonderful spring!

-- Alan DeNiro

Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer. With Endless Cliches!

2010-03-08T17:38:00.006-05:00

The best movie trailer of all time for a movie that doesn't exist! Seriously, if this doesn't make you laugh, you have NO SENSE OF HUMOR! Either that, or you have never watched an American movie trailer...enjoy!

Two more Backspace scholarships added!

2010-03-06T21:34:00.002-05:00

Due to the crazy high number of responses to the recent Backspace Scholarship Contest, the good people at Backspace have offered up an additional two scholarships to use as prizes, which means we'll be awarding FOUR scholarships to the Backspace Writers Conference.

(I just made a whole lot of you crazy, didn't I?)

Stay tuned for the announcement of the winners on March 19th!

Backspace Contest update!

2010-03-04T09:33:00.004-05:00

Just a quick update:

Thank you to everyone who participated this year! We have had a RECORD BREAKING number of submissions, and they're still coming in. (In New York City, the mail takes forever to arrive so we'll be getting things postmarked before March 1st for at least another week.) Because of the record number of entries, it's going to take us longer to go through them. But I've enlisted HELP! Suzie Townsend and I will now be joined by agent Joanna Stampfel-Volpe and agent Diana Fox in sorting through and reading your queries and pages. (There may be cupcakes and caffeine involved during the process.)

In any case, we will now be announcing the winners on Friday, March 19th. Stay tuned!

Random House forms new IP Creation and Development Group with Keith Clayton to head.

2010-03-02T19:34:00.006-05:00

Don't know how we missed this news yesterday but...

Random House - which has always been smart and forward-thinking in the way they handle licensed media - has formed a brand-new transmedia intellectual property group. Transmedia is a catch-all term for story content that can be accessed through multiple media sources including video games, social networks on the web, mobile platforms, in print and on film, etc.

The new IP Creation and Development Group will be headed up by my good friend Keith Clayton, currently Random House's Director of Creative Development.

From the press release:

The group will also offer editorial services to media companies that will enhance the world-building and storylines of their already existing IP.

Utilizing its vast experience in bestselling storytelling and, in particular, the Del Rey imprint's extensive expertise in game-related genres such as science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and horror, the new Random House IP group is in a unique position to create complex storylines set in original worlds with fully imagined characters, world histories and geographies.

I'm thrilled for Keith and excited to see how this new way of looking at content will open up unexplored frontiers in storytelling.

Alan DeNiro and Paul Jessup hijinks at Erie Bookstore!

2010-02-26T11:53:00.002-05:00

Rumor has it that two of my juvenile delinquent clients, Alan DeNiro and Paul Jessup, will be doing a reading and signing together tomorrow at Erie Bookstore from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM. You can grab a copy of Alan's critically-acclaimed new novel Total Oblivion, More or Less AND a copy of Paul's limited-release novel Open Your Eyes AT THE VERY SAME TIME!

Win a scholarship to the Backspace Writers Conference & Agent-Author Seminar in NYC!

2010-02-22T19:28:00.000-05:00

I am thrilled to announce that the good folks at Backspace (an incredible online writers community THAT YOU SHOULD JOIN IMMEDIATELY! GO! NOW!) have once again graciously agreed to donate two scholarships to their upcoming Backspace Writers Conference & Agent-Author Seminar, which will be held in New York City from May 27th through the 29th.

The Backspace Writers Conference (May 28th & 29th) is two days of panel discussions with literary agents, authors, and acquisitions editors, agent workshops, master classes taught by New York Times bestselling authors, and opening pages workshop critiques, PLUS a Friday evening booksigning and cocktail reception. The Backspace Agent-Author Seminar (May 27th) is an extra full day of small-group breakouts with sixteen of my agent colleagues (including Kristin Nelson, Elana Roth, Jason Ashlock, Paul Cirone, Brandi Bowles, Elizabeth Evans, Joanna Stampfel-Volpe and Diana Fox, to name just a few). It's a chance to have your query read and critiqued and to have agents see the first two pages of your novel. The conference itself is held at the Radisson-Martinique in Midtown Manhattan, walking distance from Penn Station and virtually every subway line in NYC. (If you were to pay for the conference & seminar yourself, by the way, it would be $750!)

A special note from Backspace's Chris Graham & Karen Dionne to those wanting to enter the contest:

"As an added bonus, this year we're giving each of the winners a 1-year subscription to the Backspace Discussion Forums ($40/year), where they'll not only have access to all of the terrific information available, but they can also watch videos from our 2009 Writers Conference and Nov 2009 Agent-Author Seminar!"

So how do you enter? Pay attention:

First, three caveats:

You MUST have a finished novel that is ready to query. No exceptions.
The scholarship covers admission to the conference only, not travel or hotel expenses. If you're coming from outside the New York-area, bear this in mind.
The contest is open only to fiction (any genre, adult, YA or middle grade) and narrative non-fiction manuscripts.

The Rules:

One entry per person, please.
Print out your query letter plus the first two pages of your finished novel, the same two pages that you want to have critiqued at Backspace. The query letter should be single spaced; the two pages of your manuscript should be standard manuscript format: 12-point type and double-spaced. (Remember, only the first two pages, even if it ends mid-sentence.)
Mail your entries (yes, on paper, with a stamp - no email entries for this contest!) to my attention at FinePrint Literary Management, 240 W. 35th Street, Suite 500, New York, NY, 10001.
Your envelope MUST have the word BACKSPACE written prominently on the front so that I know it's a contest submission. Otherwise it will be recycled by the ever-efficient interns!
Although you are welcome to submit projects that you'd like us to consider for representation, do understand that your contest entries won't get a response. Only the two winners will be hearing back from us.
Don't include an SASE; it'll be a waste of a stamp. (See above.)
Don't call or email to follow up on your entry. Trust in the U.S. Post Office. They've been doing right by your mail for 150 years.
If you do call or email to follow up, your entry will be disqualified and a voudou priestess somewhere in the wilds of the Louisiana bayou will ensure that you get a nasty rash in an unspeakable place for at least a year.
Entries must be postmarked by Monday, March 1st. Entries received with a postmark later than March 1st will be disqualified.
The two winners will be announced the week of March 15th.
Your judges? That would be my fabulous colleague Suzie Townsend and myself. (And anyone at the office who decides to stay late and help us read the entries. Last year, we received more than 600 entries!)

Thanks so much to the wonderful and supportive faculty at Backspace for making these scholarships possible. I'm sure the winners will put them to good use!

(And as if you needed any further incentive to enter the contest, consider this: last year, we had four winners for the Backspace Scholarship Contest; all four found representation through the Agent-Author Seminar!)

Good luck, everyone! And please feel free to repost!

Closed to queries again!

2010-02-16T19:18:00.005-05:00

I have more work than I know what to do with, so as of Thursday, February 18th, I am officially closed to queries. Any queries received after that time will be deleted unread. There will be no auto-responder telling people this because that's my everyday work email, and auto-responders are annoying. I'm trusting that you folks follow submission guidelines and pay attention when I tell you things like "Hey, kids! I'm closed to queries!" (Cos y'all are awesome like that!)

When will I reopen again? Beats me. Frankly, I have plenty of clients to take care of right now, and lots of agency work on my plate as it is, so I'm really in no hurry to take on new clients. I'll open when I feel like opening again. That's the most honest answer I can give you.

(And yes, If I have a manuscript of yours, I'll still be getting back to you about it sometime soon.)

Building Your Author Brand: A Course for Writers

2010-02-14T16:07:00.005-05:00

A frequent question I hear at writers conferences is how authors can effectively build their platform and their own personal brand.

One great way is to take a class like the one my colleague June Rifkin Clark is teaching at the end of February. June, who was a literary agent for many years, got her start as a marketing and branding expert. Now she works with authors and businesses on how to build brands. Lucky for you, June also teaches an inexpensive workshop in brand-building for authors. And if you're in the New York City area, you can sign up for this class now:

BUILDING YOUR AUTHOR "BRAND"
A Course for Writers

Six Wednesdays, starting February 24 and running through March 31
6:00-8:00 PM

Cost: $240

Whether seeking a publisher, self-publishing, or simply wanting to attract an audience for your work, it's all about your "brand." Over the course of 6-weeks, you'll hone your brand and master platform-building tactics and social media tools that'll cultivate readers and fans, create buzz, and get you noticed!

Location: Pearl Studios, 500 Eighth Ave., New York, NY

For more information and to register, email June at june (at) juneclark.com or call her at (917) 677-9600.

(Oh, and I'll be a guest-speaker on one of these nights, too!)

Guest blogger Richard Bowes: Thoughts on The Catcher in the Rye

2010-02-01T18:06:00.015-05:00

Critically-acclaimed writer Richard (Rick) Bowes has published five novels, the most recent of which is From the Files of the Time Rangers (Golden Gryphon). His most recent short fiction collection is Streetcar Dreams and Other Midnight Fancies (PS Publications). He has won the World Fantasy, Lambda, International Horror Guild and Million Writers Awards. Recent stories are in F&SF, Subterranean Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Sybil's Garage and The Coyote Road, Beastly Bride, Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy and So Fey anthologies. Rick and I recently got into an online discussion about the merits of the late J.D. Salinger's most famous work, The Catcher in the Rye; I asked him to share his thoughts with readers of The Swivet.

No Writer Can Survive Being Assigned in High School
by Richard Bowes

Salinger's death a few days ago brought some mourning and some jeers. The death in a way was overshadowed by his famous book. Lots of people - especially kids who have been forced to read it in school - don't like Catcher in the Rye; they consider Holden Caulfield a whining loser.

But back when Catcher not only wasn't taught and in many communities was not readily allowed into the hands of the young, it had all the magic of the subversive.

Age 15 in 1959, I'd first heard of the book from older kids, but when I went to the Codman Square branch of the Boston Public Library, I found you had to be 18 or older to read Catcher. The excellent children's librarian let me check it out for a week.

I read it two or three times before bringing it back. I'd already read Huckleberry Finn and Evelyn Waugh's comic novel Decline and Fall about a REALLY bad English Public School and loved them. But the narrator of Catcher was almost contemporary and spoke pretty much the way I did. He was Prep School and Manhattan; I was middle/working class Boston. Even then I doubted that we would have liked each other if we'd met. But we were disturbed and pissed off in a lot of the same ways.

Does this make Catcher in the Rye great literature? No. But when it came out it was unique, a novel read mainly by young people, some of them very young at a time when YA as a category didn't exist. There were only adult novels and a substratum of novels for children and very young teens.

By the time Salinger finally produced Franny and Zooey and got on the cover of Time Magazine, two other novels that also appealed to the young - Lord of the Flies (1954) and A Separate Peace (1959) - had started to get mentioned along with Catcher.

Like The Catcher in the Rye, these novels weren't written for adolescents; they were discovered by them.

By 1961, in fact, On the Road (written in 1951 - the same year that Catcher was published - but not published until 1957) had captured the attention of alienated young men. In 1967, S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders was published and the YA category rich in compelling first person narrative was underway.

On a guess, I'd say that by 1976 - twenty-five years after its first publication - The Catcher in the Rye had stopped speaking to kids. It has a cultural significance. Anyone wanting to understand the USA in the 1950's will have to read it. Anyone interested in YA as a phenomenon needs to know this book.

But I think it's pretty much axiomatic that anything that can be assigned in school has already lost its edge.

(The above is a photo of Richard Bowes at the very age he first read The Catcher in the Rye. He doesn't look like a trouble-maker, does he?)

Being an agent is EXACTLY like this! Or not...

2010-01-28T12:53:00.001-05:00

Query Update

2010-01-18T23:34:00.006-05:00

I'm caught up on all queries submitted before 11:00 PM on January 16th. I responded to all queries that I actually received, and retrieved the few that got caught in my spam filter. Additionally, I've responded to all queries received through Webook's Agent Inbox. This means that if you submitted a query to me and did not receive a response, then I never actually got the query. If I didn't get your query, it was probably for one of these two reasons:

You didn't follow submission guidelines...
OR
You included an unsolicited attachment.

(Of course, if you're reading this, you probably also read my submission guidelines, in which case, it's possible that your email program is simply possessed by Satan.)

Feel free to re-query if you didn't get a response.

Keith Olbermann speaks for me and many people in this response to Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh.

2010-01-15T11:40:00.000-05:00

Alan DeNiro's big idea!

2010-01-14T09:38:00.000-05:00

Today over at John Scalzi's blog, The Big Idea is featuring my client Alan DeNiro and his book Total Oblivion More or Less. Head over there to check it out! See if you're ready for the inevitable Scythian invasion!

(By the way, this is the second FinePrint client that The Big Idea has featured this week! When you're finished reading Alan's piece, scroll down and check out Patrick Lee writing about his new book The Breach!)

Soho Press publisher and co-founder Laura Hruska has passed away.

2010-01-12T10:57:00.001-05:00

Yesterday brought the sad news that longtime Soho Press publisher (and beloved editor!) Laura Hruska passed away over the weekend. Sarah Weinman talks about it here, GalleyCat has a brief write-up about it as well today and Publishers Weekly has details about the memorial service this Friday.

Some of the extraordinary authors whose writing careers Laura launched at Soho include Edwidge Danticat (with whom Hruska began a correspondence when Danticat was still a student at Barnard, before publishing Danticat's award-winning debut novel Breath, Eyes, Memory), Robert Hellenga, Garth Stein, Sophie Hannah, Jacqueline Winspear, Sue Townsend, Cara Black, Henry Chang, and Qui Xiaolong. Hruska also published critically acclaimed fiction by British actors Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.

Our deepest condolences go out to Laura's family, her daughter Bronwen, and to our friends and colleagues at Soho Press.

(cross-posted at the FinePrint blog)

Rest in peace, Miep Gies.

2010-01-11T19:09:00.002-05:00

Miep Gies, the last surviving member of the group who helped protect Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis - and the person responsible for collecting and saving all of Anne Frank's personal papers - has died in the Netherlands at the age of 100.

Rest in peace, Miep, and thank you for sharing Anne's life with the world.

Why agents and editors say no.

2010-01-07T20:28:00.000-05:00

You all may have read an enlightening post by my colleague Janet Reid tallying up the number of manuscripts she rejected in 2009 and why. (If not, go read it now.)

But what about those manuscripts that DID get an agent and get shopped?

Del Rey editorial director Betsy Mitchell has tallied up her manuscript rejections for 2009, and the reasons why she rejected each one.

It is a most edifying read. Go learn something!

(Crossposted to the FinePrint blog.)

Open to queries again, and new revised submission guidelines.

2010-01-01T18:10:00.003-05:00

As of today, I've reopened to all queries again and I've substantially revised my submission guidelines. Click here to read. (And remember that I still don't accept paper queries.)

2010-01-01T12:19:00.005-05:00

About the Swivet

The Swivet is maintained - for good or for ill - by Colleen Lindsay.

Colleen Lindsay is an unrepentant nerd and digital native who spent most of her formative years hiding beneath the blankets with a flashlight and a book. Her obsession with reading was a hard habit to break; as a result, she’s worked in the book industry since 1984. Her first job in publishing was in Northern California as a mass merchandise sales assistant for Ballantine Books. For five years she served as Director of Publicity for Del Rey Books, a division of the Random House Publishing Group, specializing in the creative publicity and marketing of science fiction, fantasy, pop culture, YA fantasy, graphic novels, manga and third-party licensed media. Some of the authors whose publicity campaigns Colleen had the privilege to manage at Del Rey include Terry Brooks, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Moon, China Mieville, Richard K. Morgan, Minister Faust, Matthew Stover, R.A. Salvatore, and Harvey Pekar.

Colleen has also worked freelance as a book marketing/publicity/online/social media publishing consultant for several major trade publishers, as well as working on major non-fiction projects such as Mother Teresa: Come be My Light and A Complaint Free World.

She spent twelve years working as floor manager, backlist buyer and events manager at several San Francisco Bay Area independent bookstores and was a book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle under the inimitable Pat Holt. Most recently, Colleen worked as a literary agent at FinePrint Literary Management, where she discovered great genre and YA writers like Kelly Gay, Allison Pang, Ruth Long, Karen Rivers, and Scott Tracey.

Currently Colleen works in the business development department at Penguin Group (USA), and is the community manager for Book Country, an online writing and reading community for genre-fiction writers. You can usually find her on Twitter giving advice to writers, discussing the future of the publishing industry and waxing poetic about her cat Stinkyboy's addiction to Greenies.

More things to bear in mind about Colleen: She does not believe in clothes that need dry cleaning. She owns seven pairs of Converse All-Stars in varying colors. She has an irrational fear of gelatinous foods. She can probably be bribed with Scharffenberger Extra Dark Chocolate, a pound of Kaladi Brothers coffee, a fine cognac or a choice single malt. Colleen once got locked inside the Sistine Chapel quite by mistake (which Vatican security did not think was nearly as funny as she did). Her reading tastes tend to run toward the skiffy and criminal and the literary and the queer, with the occasional baffling foray into history. (Go figure.)

The Swivet is sometimes about (but not limited to) the following things (in no particular order): books, the book biz, words, reading, writing, genre fiction, cats (her own), babies (not her own), food, drink, queer stuff, ridiculousness, travel and New York City. Occasionally Colleen interviews authors (but only because she finds it difficult to interview cats).

She lives in New York City with her cat, Stinkyboy, and Stinkyboy’s cat, Buddy.

Colleen in available for speaking engagements at writers conferences and genre conventions. You can reach her by email here.

Losing sight of what's important: Looking back, looking ahead and making changes in the New Year.

2009-12-27T14:09:00.011-05:00

As we approach the end of 2009, it's helpful to take stock of the previous year - the good and the bad - and to try to make some changes for the better for the coming year, to hopefully keep from making some of the same mistakes again, both in our professional and personal lives.

Some of you may have noticed that I have almost stopped posting on this blog. It's not because I dislike keeping a blog or writing. But I've discovered I really do intensely dislike writing about work, about agenting, about query stats and helpful hints for people who - let's face it - should already know better. For me, writing about being an agent is tedious and dull and - as far as I can tell - lends nothing new to the great hive mind of agent blogs out there that are already doing the very same thing.

If you really want to read a blog only about agenting and getting published, this is not the place for you. Go visit Nathan Bransford and Rachelle Gardner and Jessica Faust; in my opinion, these are the three best agent blogs out there. (And unlike me, they genuinely enjoy writing about what they do!) In fact, I think you'd do well to bookmark those three blogs and skip most of the rest. Spend that extra time writing. Or reading. Or better yet, spend that time playing with your kids or dogs or cats. Or spending time with friends. In other words, spend more time in the real world and stop worrying about which agent has the better advice on how many words a query letter should be or whether your salutation is perfect or whether angels are hot in YA right now or whether you should use MS Word's wordcount or go with an antiquated (and ridiculous) 250-words per page calculation that someone made up 100 years ago. (For the love of all that is holy, just get over this obsession and use the frakkin' word count tool in Word!)

Because the truth is that NONE of these things is going to make you a better writer, or will better your odds of getting published.

What will make you a better writer? Living a full life. Having friends. Having lovers. Having a real community of people around you. Living outside your own head. Putting down the pen and paper, turning off the computer and walking away from it now and again and just allowing yourself to experience a real life.

And that goes for me as well.

I try to keep a log of all the books I've read; over the past twelve months I was appalled to discover that I'd read only twelve books that were not client manuscripts or manuscripts that I'd requested from queries. Twelve books. And this from someone who used to be able to read a book a day.

I became a bookseller and moved into publishing for one reason and one reason only: because I love books. I love the art of storytelling. I love the words on the page, in whatever format or medium they are delivered. But since I've become an agent, I've mostly stopped reading for pleasure. I no longer have the time. I requested too many partials and too many manuscripts and found it impossible to stay on top of the reading.

And let's face it: much of what we agents read every day is simply mediocre - not bad, but not good and certainly not memorable - so after a time I began to dread approaching my own slush pile. I simply didn't enjoy reading anymore.

But the worst thing was the realization that over the past year, I'd spent less time with friends and family, less time with my community, my cats and the people that I love; the trade-off simply wasn't worth it.

And I had nobody but myself to blame.

So in 2010, some things will be changing for me, too:

I'll be attending fewer writing conferences, and more conferences on digital publishing, which is rapidly becoming a passion of mine.
I'll be taking on fewer clients this year.
I will be much more discriminating in what I request to read, and there will be far fewer requests overall.
I will no longer be writing about agenting on this blog. (Whether I keep the blog as a book blog - the way it used to be - is still up in the air.) I may pop up with the occasional post to let you know if I've closed to queries or if my submission guidelines get tweaked. But I will continue to host impromptu #askagent sessions over on my Twitter account; you're always welcome to come ask me questions there when a session is scheduled.
I'll no longer be taking the time to provide detailed reasons as to why I'm rejecting a partial or full manuscript. The simple fact is that it's not my job to make a writer's work better. It's my job to sell my clients' works to publishers and help guide their careers. If you want someone to help you fix your manuscript, hire an editor. Here are some of the best freelance editors on the planet: Papertyger, Sterling Editing, Third Draft. It'll cost you a couple thousand dollars, but that's what the services of a good editor are worth.
I'm going to make time to read at least two published books a week.
I'm going to take better care of myself physically and emotionally (the first step of which is putting this post out there and setting some work boundaries).
I will personally smack anyone I hear whining and kvetching about how publishing is dying. Publishing isn't dying; it's evolving, like it always has, and evolution is a painful process. I love this business but I accept that it is flawed. So what? Name an industry that isn't. If you want publishing to work better, than be a part of the solution. Or I will absolutely smack you in the mouth.
I'm going to have more fun. Period.

Life is too damned short, people. Just live it! Before you forget how.

And to all of you, a joyful and peaceful New Year.

Guest Blogger Max Leone: Winter Reading Recommendations for Teens

2009-12-20T10:22:00.020-05:00

Fifteen-year-old Max Leone is a frequent guest-blogger here at The Swivet. He also has a lot of opinions about books. Some of those opinions have appeared on this blog and some of them have appeared at Publishers Weekly. He is currently assistant stage manager of his high school's production of Tommy and also writes for the school newspaper. He lives in New Jersey. Max sent me a list of some suggestions for last-minute stocking stuffers for teens. Enjoy!

Winter Reading Recommendations for Teens
by Max Leone

Ah, winter. The season in which bells ring, snow falls, children’s faces light up with joy, and the consumer world is plunged into a deep, dark pit of delirium by the insatiable maw of Christmas.

If you wish to spend the next few weeks in a labyrinth of malls, catalogues, and parking lots, do not read this article. This article is for those who would rather get their shopping done quickly and easily by following a list of my book recommendations. (Well, shopping for a teenager. I regret to inform you that I cannot help in choosing gifts for significant others, adult siblings, mistresses, pets, and/or clones. Unless they are teenage clones. Note that if they are teenage assassin clones, they will most likely prefer laser weaponry to books.)

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
The sequel to the fantastic book The Hunger Games, Catching Fire proves not only that Suzanne Collins can defy the clichés and conventions of YA literature, she can also do something few in any art form can: make a sequel even better that its predecessor. With a more complex plot, a larger, more fleshed-out cast, and more mature themes, Catching Fire is one of the few YA books that move beyond “Hey, teenage girls have a lot of money these days, and I need a new hot tub full of mermaids. Let’s slap together some book about high school or vampires so I can bathe surrounded by fish-people”.

Twentieth Century Boys by Naoki Urasawa
This sadly under-appreciated manga series is still one of my favorites, mainly because the story balances dozens of subplots and hundreds of characters, and the author still manages to make it work. Every element, no matter how minor, is eventually revisited and explained, the mysteries are cleared up (though it does get incredibly complicated), and every character’s individual story is resolved. TCB’s premise, that an adult loser finds out that a sinister cult is using the symbol and rituals he and his friends came up with as kids, is brilliant. Since manga series rarely get the recognition they deserve, and this series is neglected even for a manga series, its like Romeo and Juliet were on the Titanic when the Hindenburg crashed into it and killed Bambi’s mother (i.e. a tragedy.). So yeah, buy it.

Sandman by Neil Gaiman and various artists
This (now-complete) graphic novel series is: amazing, pure genius, inventive, well-written, astounding, wonderful, fantastic, _________, and ________. In case you are wondering, those spaces are for you to put any other adjectives you can think of. Sandman defies adjectives. This tale of the anthropomorphic personification of dreams is beyond the ability of mere adjectives to describe. Since the world already has more than enough rants about how graphic novels aren’t recognized as art, I will not add another. Sandman is one of Neil Gaiman’s best works. Actually, ignore that. Sandman is one of humanity’s best works.

The Automatic Detective by A. Lee Martinez
I had always thought of this book as another under-appreciated classic, but then my numerous sources and in-depth academic research (ok, I Googled the author a few times) have revealed that it seems to be getting more recognition. A. Lee Martinez is a hilarious, inventive author, and The Automatic Detective is reminiscent of Discworld, except set in a retro-futuristic Fifties pulp aesthetic metropolis (Please note that I have no idea what retro-futuristic Fifties pulp influenced art actually is. I just heard the phrase and felt like it applied. I do know what a metropolis is, though). My ignorance of Fifties pulp aesthetically influenced retro-futurism (I must consciously will myself to stop using that phrase) aside, this book - written in the first person - does have an interesting interpretation of how a robot would actually think about things. Oh, and fight scenes. And retro futurism. And a Fifties pulp influence.

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu
Now, just as there are different breeds of cats, there are many types of geek. To assume that all geeks are intimately familiar with comic books is a fallacy, as proven by my continued existence (for the record, I dabble in different types of geekery, but I like to think of myself as a bootleg Engrish translation geek). This book was immensely interesting to me, but I think it would be fascinating even to someone who knows enough about comics to describe someone who knows a lot about comics. Anyway, The Ten-Cent Plague is an amazing record of the history of comics, and the insane censorship they endured.

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Watchmen is considered by many to be the best comic of all time. Now, it has gotten plenty of rave reviews over the years, so I feel no need to praise it here. So while I could be using the space to talk about its wonderful characters, beautiful art, and how it uses its setting (an alternate history where superheroes emerged in the 1940s) to deconstruct the superhero genre, as well as the memorable scenes and plot twists, and of course the profound impact it had on comics, but I will not. No, I will not do the things I just did. Instead, I will continue with the list.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams is another author who passes the “sequel test” described above. TRATEOTU (best book title acronym ever) is the hilarious sequel to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and like that book, it features incredibly inventive humor mixed with even more insightful observations about the world. The highlight, of course, is the scene at the titular restaurant.

"You can go on a bender at the Temple of Dendur, but you're not allowed to film at the Met Museum."

2009-12-17T19:49:00.002-05:00

This is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Especially if you're a fan of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Enjoy!

And the winner of the Kelly Gay/Alan DeNiro book set is:

2009-11-28T09:26:00.002-05:00

Chris Kammerud!

Congratulations, Chris! You've won a copy of Kelly Gay's THE BETTER PART OF DARKNESS and Alan DeNiro's TOTAL OBLIVION, MORE OR LESS! Email me your mailing address, please, so I can get those out to you!

Happy Release Day to Alan DeNiro & Kelly Gay! (And win a set of both books!)

2009-11-24T08:36:00.014-05:00

Today is the official release day for Kelly Gay's THE BETTER PART OF DARKNESS and Alan DeNiro's TOTAL OBLIVION, MORE OR LESS. Congratulations, Alan and Kelly!

To celebrate, I'm giving away a set of both books to one lucky Swivet reader in the United States!

To enter, just leave a comment below and I'll pick a winner via a random number generator on Friday, November 27th!

This is how excellent comic books are made! (And how you can help!)

2009-11-23T23:26:00.003-05:00

Some of you may be familiar with DC Comics' online venture Zuda Comics, where new comic artists and writers can create web comics and post them online in a monthly competition for a chance to win a contract to complete a full comic online. Think of it as the American Idol of comic book creators (only without Simon Cowell's snark or chest hair). Readers get to vote on the comic they like best.

So why am I telling you this? Because my client Niki Smith, illustrator extraordinaire, has teamed up with the equally amazing storyteller Mike Jasper to create a kick-ass 8-page comic called IN MAPS AND LEGENDS that is being featured in Zuda's current contest for November. And right now? They're ranked at NUMBER ONE!

I'd like to keep them there, and help them win a contract for a full run of their comic. So I'm asking for your help! Go read IN MAPS AND LEGENDS and then vote!

Here's a painless guide for voting on Zuda!

Register on Zuda.com
Verify the account via your email.
Sign into your account at Zuda and select IN MAPS AND LEGENDS
Read the comic! (Because it is made of AWESOME!)
To the right of the comic, just press the VOTE button, rate the comic five stars and ‘add as favorite.’ The vote is by far the most important of these three things. And leave a comment to let Niki and Mike know what you think.
Spread the word before the end of November!

Niki and Mike have also been posting extras on their both of their website sitesincluding promotional art and a step-by-step process of the first page of the comic, from script to finished art. They've also also got a Facebook Fan Page set up!

So what're ya waiting for? GO VOTE!

Hilarious SNL parody of Twilight starring Taylor Swift - enjoy!

2009-11-08T11:33:00.001-05:00

Starred Booklist review for Alan DeNiro's TOTAL OBLIVION, MORE OR LESS

2009-11-06T22:38:00.004-05:00

This is an amazing - and thoughtful - review:

TOTAL OBLIVION, MORE OR LESS by Alan DeNiro:

For 16-year-old Macy, the whole world has gone crazy, quite literally. Barbarians from antiquity have invaded America, while bizarre plagues and impossibly shifting landscapes ravage her Minnesota homeland. Together with her parents, sister, brother, and a possibly evil dog, Macy sets out down the Mississippi on an adventure that takes her into the smoldering ruins of St. Louis, aboard a wooden submarine that’s bigger on the inside than outside, and finally into the stone-skyscraper capital of Nueva Roma. All the while she dodges oil-men turned slavers, plague-instigating wasps, an albino bounty hunter, and, perhaps most dangerous of all, her scheming younger brother. DeNiro (who flaunted a knack for offhand SF oddness in Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead, 2006) makes sure never to do anything as dull as explaining what the heck is going on—we simply accept that the world has become a surreal, historical landscape come to life and move on. He drops in so many tantalizingly inspired touches—the new (old?) empire considers Post-it notes a precious natural resource—that leaving his inside-out America at the end is almost painful. There aren’t many writers who take weirdness as seriously as DeNiro does, and fewer still who can extract so much grounded emotion, gut-dropping humor, and rousing adventure from it. A dizzying display of often brilliant, always strange, and definitely unique storytelling. — Ian Chipman

Seriously, if you haven't preordered this book yet, well...why the hell not?

We have a Bloom County winner!!!

2009-10-31T12:58:00.004-04:00

Okay, my bad! I kept forgetting to actually pick a winner for my Bloom County contest! But after reading and re-reading and laughing my head off a LOT, we finally do have a winner!

Paul Neuhardt, your FTC disclaimer was my favorite, and will live on in infamy on The Swivet and hopefully help keep the FTC off my ass. Therefore, YOU are the winner of a brand-new copy of Bloom County: The Complete Collection, Volume One: 1980-1982, courtesy of Diamond Book Distributors and IDW.

And here's Paul's disclaimer:

DISCLAIMER: Be it known by all here reading that the following may or may not be the case in any given book review I post:

1. If I talk about a book, I might have gotten it for free from someone with a vested interest in the success of that book. On the other hand, I might have found it abandoned in the seat pocket in front of me during my last plane trip. I’ll try to let you know on a case by case basis.

2. If that aforementioned someone who gave me the book is deluded enough to think that my blog constitutes anything even remotely resembling “a force” in publishing, then there is the serious chance that my free book was worth every penny I paid for it and I’m unlikely to talk about it anyway. Just saying...

3. Publishers and authors, I will be happy to shill for you, but you better pony up cash. Lots of cash. All the free stuff I get is reviewed with what turns out to be my honest opinion, meaning if I think it’s crap, I’ll call it crap. Oh yeah, if you do pay me for the review, I’m going to mention that factoid by saying something like, “I read this fabulous book the other day, which I would never have known about if the publisher hadn’t sent me on an all-expenses paid holiday to a secluded tropical island, allowing me to read my complimentary copy on the beach in peace.”

4. Readers, until you see me tooling around in a BMW that is unexplainable by the income from my day job (and all BMW's meet this condition) you will know that I’m telling you what I think about the book, no matter how the damn thing ended up in my grubby mitts. (See Item 3 above for clarification on why this is so.)

5. FTC-type people, if this isn’t a good enough disclaimer for you, then you need to get a life. The IRS is happy with me, and they are notorious for being the grumpiest agency in our government that isn’t in the spy business. Who are you to think you know better than the IRS?

6. I could have said all this in far fewer words, but dealing with the federal government is like dealing with my seventh-grade English teacher: High word count rules, and bullshitting is allowed. There, I threw you FTC guys another bone and made this really long so it looks all official. Sorry about the IRS remark, fellas. That one was cold, I admit.

Congratulations, Paul, and thanks for playing!

Live-chat with author Eoin Colfer today at 3:30 PM EST!

2009-10-30T14:08:00.006-04:00

Head on over to Suvudu today at 3:30 EST to live-chat with Eoin Colfer, author of the bestselling Artemis Fowl series, Airman (soon to be a movie!) and the controversial And Another Thing.

(And while you're there, don't forget to enter Suvudu's And Another Thing Sweepstakes!)

Contest! Win a copy of BOOKLIFE: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer

2009-10-29T13:10:00.004-04:00

Last week I told you all about Jeff VanderMeer's extraordinary new book for writers, Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer

This week, you can enter a contest to win one of five copies that Tachyon Publications have graciously offered up as prizes.

What do you have to do to win? Easy! Leave a comment below and share ONE GREAT IDEA for self-promoting a book, something you've either done yourself or have seen another author do successfully.

Teh Rulez:
One entry per person
Leave your great book self-promotion idea in the comments field of this post
U.S. Residents only
Contest closes Tuesday, November 4th at 5:00 PM EST. Or EDT. Or whatever the hell time 5:00 is in NYC next Tuesday.

Good luck!

"What do you think I voted for at Omaha Beach?"

2009-10-23T13:25:00.003-04:00

Meet Philip Spooner, WWII vet, war hero, lifelong Republican, husband, father, straight white man and defender of gay marriage. I dare you not to cry.

Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer - A different kind of guide for writers

2009-10-22T20:52:00.010-04:00

There are a slew of writers' guides out there, every one of them chock full of well-meaning advice: How to write better, how to get published, how to self-promote. But not one of them talks about how to live a whole booklife, that is, a life that allows a writer to balance writing and the creative process with the very real modern necessities of self-promotion, personal branding and planning long-term career goals. (Oh, and somewhere in there? You're gonna want to eat, sleep, breathe and poop.)

Jeff VanderMeer's brand new book Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer addresses all of these things. (Well, okay, maybe not the pooping part.)

Some of what Booklife talks about:

• Using new media: blogs, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, podcasts, and IM
• Effectively networking in the modern era (why it’s not all about you)
• Understanding the lifecycle of a book and your role in the publication process
• Finding balance between your public and private lives and personas
• Creating a brand and identity tied to your strengths and your writing
• Working with your publisher: editors, publicists, marketing, and sales
• Taking the long view: establishing short- and long-term professional goals
• Getting through rejection and understanding the importance of persistence
• Enjoying and enhancing your creative process

Booklife comes with a great accompanying website, Booklife Now, that will provide fresh content every week from publishing professionals and published writers, as well as chats with some of the many contributors to Booklife. (Hey, I even have a couple of short chapters in the book, and will be answering questions online at Booklife Now on November 4th!)

If you're a writer and you're at all serious about it as a profession, I recommend that you go get yourself a copy of Booklife NOW!

Here's a brief excerpt from the book:

From Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer:

Many different factors determine your public brand in terms of a Booklife. Every publisher, every book cover, every online forum, every interview request you accept helps define you as a writer. Reviewers, critics, publicists, even your agent will define you as a writer too. However, you can have an important role in shaping your destiny by what labels you accept through your actions and what labels you reject through your actions. If you’re interested in being proactive in this area, a quick way to evaluate your current situation is to ask yourself a series of questions, the answers to which require research on the Internet. The content you produce plays a role in labeling, but not as large a role as you might think.

>>How do my readers perceive me and my work?

A simple Google search should answer this question, especially if you take the time to thoroughly read all entries across the web, categorize each mention as about you or about your work, make a determination as to the influence each forum, blog, LiveJournal, website, or other online entity exerts, and then build a composite picture of both yourself and your work from that research. Other questions you might ask in this context include:

--What do the covers or other design aspects of my creative projects convey to readers?

--How does the reputation or slant of my publisher (or other gatekeeper) affect how I am perceived?

--Which authors am I most often compared to — by reviewers, consumers, and my own publisher? (Do these authors correspond to my own desired parallels?)

>>What does my blog/website tell people about my work?

Usually, blog subject patterns are very revealing. No matter how you might want to be a different kind of writer, your blog eventually tells you who you really are by revealing what interests you and moves you to write. Many times I have seen bloggers try to re-imagine themselves by either archiving or deleting an old blog and starting a new one, with a fresh emphasis. Most of the time, the new blog starts looking like the old blog within five or six months, in terms of the type of content presented there. If this is the case, you are fighting against your core nature and should practice acceptance. You’ll be much happier.

>>What websites and blogs have I added to my favorites in my web browser, and does reading them support my efforts at branding?

You’re shaped in part by the content you digest. If you aspire to be a mystery writer but the geek/reader part of you has decided to visit mostly fantasy or pop culture sites, you are absorbing content that isn’t directly supporting your writing goals. While there’s nothing wrong with diversity or using part of your day to play, just be aware that in doing so you are making a choice. Indeed, you may be telling yourself you don’t want to write mysteries after all.

>>What does the online trail of my doppelgänger look like?

Never underestimate the power of mimicry. If you have a writer you admire who you feel a kinship with--their writing is similar to yours in some way and their career has the trajectory you want for your own--use the Advanced Search options at google.com to map out their online presence on both blogs and websites. You will find out where the writer you want to emulate has and hasn’t been reviewed and interviewed, where they’ve been welcomed and where shut out.

You can then determine at least two things by implication: a general outline of that writer’s tactical decisions (roughly, what they said yes to or had a chance to say yes to) and the perception of that writer and his or her work on the Internet. Comparing that perception to the perception of your own persona and work helps to define the gap between where you are and where you want to be. (It also performs the useful service of uncovering possible opportunities and contacts.)

Booklife launched this week; Jeff's new novel Finch pubs on November 3rd. Starting THE VERY NEXT DAY, Jeff embarks on what can only be called the Book Tour of Insanity: 27 events in 36 days. Check out the tour schedule and head on out to meet him at a bookstore near you!

Guest blogger agent Rachelle Gardner talks about Christian publishing and the CBA marketplace.

2009-10-21T23:27:00.007-04:00

I get a lot of queries from writers of Christian fiction and non-fiction, which is something I don't represent. Often, if I think the query has merit, I recommend that the writer try to query my colleague Rachelle Gardner, an agent pal of mine who specializes in Christian publishing and the CBA marketplace. I've been slammed a few times by writers whose Christian fiction I've rejected because of their mistaken assumption that I'm making a judgment about the writer's faith. I'm not, actually. But I am making a judgment about my own ability to intelligently represent a specialized category in a marketplace with which I have only a passing familiarity. The fact is that the CBA market is a vast one, with its own collection of publishers, editors, sales reps, jobbers and bookstore chains. And as such, it is a category that requires a special kind of expertise. Expertise that Rachelle Gardner has in spades, by the way, and that she graciously agreed to share here when I asked her if she'd write a little bit about Christian publishing for the readers of The Swivet.

The Scoop on Christian Publishing

by Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent

WordServe Literary

If you're a Christian and you're writing a book that overtly includes your faith, whether it's fiction or non-fiction, consider that you may need to be looking for a CBA agent and a CBA publisher.

What's CBA?

CBA means "Christian Booksellers Association" but refers to the entire Christian publishing industry including publishers, authors, agents, and bookstores. It's a niche within the larger realm of publishing, and it developed over the last forty years to serve those who are looking for books that deal openly with Christianity.

The Christian publishing industry began with companies who published Bibles; then came the need for books to help people understand the Bible. The rest grew out of Christians' desire to read and write books that deal openly with all aspects of their faith.

Now there are a whole group of publishers who specifically serve the Christian market. Some of the largest and oldest are Thomas Nelson, Tyndale House, Guideposts, and Baker Books.

Most of the major secular publishers have recognized the potential in serving this market, so most of them have a Christian imprint:

→ Zondervan is an imprint of HarperCollins

→ Howard Books is an imprint of Simon & Schuster

→ Waterbrook/Multnomah is an imprint of Random House

→ FaithWords is an imprint of Hatchette Book Group

Christian bookstores serve this market as well: Lifeway, Mardel, and Family Christian Stores among others. Over the last ten years, regular (secular) bookstores have recognized how lucrative this market can be, so Barnes & Noble and Borders now have nice-sized sections devoted to Christian books.

Christian publishing also has its own writers conferences, as well as an annual convention (ICRS) that's similar to BEA only devoted to this specific market. And since the market is so specialized, there is a whole group of agents who have expertise in this market and serve Christian authors. Here is a good list of agents who work with the CBA.

Now, this is not to say that there's no overlap. Occasionally a secular imprint of a major New York house will publish a Christian book. And several CBA agents also represent books to non-CBA houses.

But if you're trying to sell a book with overtly Christian themes, be aware that you're probably not going to have much success querying general market agents. If they don't have experience selling into the CBA houses, they're not going to do a good job with your book. If they say "no" to representing your book, it's not necessarily because they're not a Christian (many are, as a matter of fact), it's because that's not the business they're in.

Almost all agents specialize in a particular type of book they represent. Some represent mostly romance. Some specialize in mystery, thriller and suspense. Some agents specialize in healthcare and self-help titles. Specialization allows agents to become experts in their genre or category, staying on top of trends and requirements. So, CBA agents specialize in Christian books by Christian authors.

The agents in New York spend years developing relationships with the editors at the New York publishing houses. Similarly, Christian agents spend years developing relationships with the editors at the Christian houses. So if you're trying to sell a book that overtly includes your Christianity, you're going to want to learn about CBA and get with an agent who can sell into CBA houses.

Want to learn more?

Here are some CBA agents who blog:

MacGregor Literary

Books & Such Literary

Steve Laube Literary

and then there's me.

Here are some posts from my blog that deal specifically with Christian publishing.

If you have further questions, please leave them in the comments. Thanks!

Rachelle Gardner has been an agent for two years, and has been in Christian publishing for six years. Prior to that she worked in general market publishing. Visit her blog here.

When overcaffeinated book bloggers are granted unchaperoned access to a video camera, THIS happens:

2009-10-20T10:23:00.009-04:00

My bookish pals Russ Marshalek and Brett Sandusky, both book marketing veterans who normally behave themselves admirably in public (well, most of the time...Brett does have the whole bow-tie thing going on, something I've been meaning to speak to him about), have just launched a new publishing vlog (video blog). The name of their vlog is...er...um...ahem...Okay, the name of the vlog is Quit Being a Hooker, Hooker, which is billed as "The world's first publishing vlog (and the only publishing site with the word 'hooker' twice), brought to you by Russ Marshalek and Brett Sandusky. We're saving publishing one (ill conceived) vlog post at a time!"

This is how Russ and Brett ask for an author interview for their vlog. Try not to be drinking liquid when you watch this. (You've been warned.)

Publishers Weekly weighs in with nice review for Alan DeNiro's TOTAL OBLIVION, MORE OR LESS

2009-10-19T14:18:00.004-04:00

Which means y'all are gonna go out and preorder that bad boy right now, right? Let's make it easy for you, then: Amazon, Borders, IndieBound, B&N, and my personal favorite bookstore in the whole world, Mysterious Galaxy Books.

Total Oblivion, More or Less by Alan DeNiro.
Spectra, $15 paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-553-59254-2

As this peculiar but entertaining first novel begins, geography and cosmology have shifted. Natural laws work unpredictably. The U.S. government has disappeared and plundering bands of Goths and Scythians roam the Midwest. Sea serpents close the shipping lanes, and oil companies convert their tankers into slave ships that cruise the Mississippi. Clear-eyed, tough-minded teen Macy Palmer flees St. Paul with her family for the illusory safety of an island in the Gulf of Mexico. As they travel through a wavering postapocalyptic landscape, her relatives undergo upsetting personal metamorphoses. DeNiro has attracted attention for his short fiction (especially the Small Beer Press collection Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead), and this longer story's energy ebbs a bit as Macy gets some of the oddness under control. Nonetheless, it's an impressive debut from a promising writer. (Dec.)

When compassion dies, we're all lessened as human beings: why we need gay marriage now more than ever.

2009-10-18T22:13:00.011-04:00

Enough.

Enough.

Enough of your hate-based religious objections. Enough of your soap-boxes. Enough of your homophobic excuses. Enough of your deconstructionist nitpicking at country, state and federal laws. Enough of your obsession with making an entire class of people legally-lesser-beings.

Enough.

You want a HUMAN reason that we need a federal law recognizing same-sex marriage now? You want a reason that any compassionate God would agree with? READ THIS NOW. If you aren't completely furious by the end of this essay, you simply aren't human. And frankly, I don't want to know you.

And if you'd like to protest the way that Jackson Memorial Hospital treated these women and their family, here's the phone number for the hospital: (305) 585-1111.

Kirkus Reviews on Alan DeNiro's forthcoming TOTAL OBLIVION, MORE OR LESS

2009-10-13T15:32:00.004-04:00

Alan DeNiro's editor (who just stuffed me full of excellent Cuban food) passed along this great review of Alan's forthcoming debut novel TOTAL OBLIVION, MORE OR LESS. (You will, of course, ignore Kirkus's obligatory snarky final half-sentence, because it just wouldn't be Kirkus Reviews if they didn't say one mean thing about every book.)

TOTAL OBLIVION, MORE OR LESS
by Alan DeNiro (on sale November 24, 2009)

After Minnesota is overrun by ancient Scythians and a wasp-borne plague, 16-year-old Macy and her family embark on adventures of ever-escalating weirdness as they make their way down the Mississippi toward safety that no longer exists.

DeNiro (stories: Skinny-Dipping in the Lake of the Dead, 2006) opens his debut novel in semi-comic register, as the family struggles to adjust to a weird new order involving soldier-looters in Lakers jerseys, the shuttering of all non–fast-food businesses, SUV chassis towed by mules and a scar-faced guard at the family's riverside internment camp who sends Macy a looted necklace via her younger brother Ciaran. "I had a disfigured stalker with a sword," she wisecracks. "This made going stag to junior prom look like a joke." The mood grows steadily darker and grimmer. First Ciaran gets involved in intrigues among factions of the anachronistic warriors who have overrun the entire country and are battling for turf from coast to coast. The family manages to escape on a boat that limps south toward St. Louis, where Macy's father, an astronomer, keeps insisting that a university job awaits him. Along the way both Macy and her mother are stricken with the plague; Macy's sister runs off and is sold into indenture; they encounter elephants and giraffes, a wooden submarine and a talking dog. Eventually Ciaran is captured and sent south to Nueva Roma for trial and execution. Their father, now thriving in the former St. Louis as an astrologer, dispatches the recovered Macy to the grand delta capital to see if anything can be done to help her brother.

A fast-paced, suspenseful dystopian picaresque, part Huck Finn and part bizarro-world Swiss Family Robinson, with the latter winning out—to the benefit of those reading for plot and perhaps the disappointment of those looking for literary ambition.

The "Opus and Bill the Cat Thumb Their Noses at the FTC" Bloom County book giveaway contest!

2009-10-08T17:44:00.015-04:00

The fine folks at Diamond Book Distributors have offered up for a giveaway a brand-new copy of the book that many of you comic fans have been salivating over: Bloom County: The Complete Collection, Volume One: 1980-1982, published by IDW, is the first of a five-volume collection that brings together all of Berkeley Breathed classic Bloom County strips in one ginormous and friggin' gorgeous collection. It just hit bookstore this week, too! (Seriously, I could not stop looking at this when I saw it at a friend's house in Seattle last week.)

---> Obligatory Ridiculous FTC Disclaimer <---

Did I get the book for free? Well, yes. However, technically the book resides in the state of Washington, from whence it will be mailed directly to the winner. Does it still count as my being compensated to promote the book if it never actually followed me home to New York? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

---> End Disclaimer <---

What do you need to do to win? WRITE ME AN FTC BOOK BLOG DISCLAIMER! Leave it in the comments field. The funniest one wins and will appear as my official FTC blog disclaimer in perpetuity or until the FTC comes to its collective senses.

Teh Rulez:

One entry per person
Leave your entry in the comments field of this post
U.S. Residents only
Contest closes at Friday, October 16th at 5:00 PM EST
Winner will be announced on Monday, October 19th
Employees of IDW, Diamond Comics and Diamond Books are not eligible
Neither is Richard Cleland
Or Roman Polanski
Okay, I'm done now
Well, maybe I'll exclude Michael Vicks, too
Seriously, I am *really* done now

Okay, then. Get to it!

Client news: In case you missed it... A rave PW review for Kelly Gay's Better Part of Darkness!

2009-10-07T16:32:00.004-04:00

Which means you're all going to go out right now and preorder this, right???

The Better Part of Darkness
Kelly Gay | Pocket | $7.99 (384p) ISBN 978-1-4391-0965-6

Gay debuts with this captivating urban fantasy. Thirteen years ago, mankind officially recognized the existence of paradisiacal Elysia and hellish Charbydon, and the multitude of mythical beings inhabiting them. Now Atlanta is a crossroads for all sorts of creatures, and the Integration Task Force keeps tabs on them all. Recently resurrected single mom Charlie Madigan juggles her personal life with her career as an ITF officer, searching for the source of a deadly narcotic called ash. When her family and friends are caught in the middle of her investigation, Charlie discovers powers she never knew, and a destiny that could destroy the entire world. How far will she go to save her child and her city? Intricate world-building and richly complex characters mix with a fast-paced plot to create a standout start to a new series. (Dec.)

Oh, and if y'all work at the FTC? FYI: I did get this book for free. It came to me as wee free digital bits via email. And yes, I'm wholly guilty of having pimped it to anyone who sat still long enough to listen.

Writers! Do you have Cart-Before-the-Horse-itis?

2009-10-06T11:05:00.003-04:00

Don't have time for anything more than a link to another agent's wonderful post today. Holly Root, a great agent over at the Waxman Agency, has written a MUST-READ post for writers, especially those of you who've just sold your first book and now have grandiose (if unrealistic) ideas about being able to pump out four to six books a year between two or more publishers. This, my friend, is Cart-Before-the-Horse-itis, and a recipe for disaster. Don't let Cart-Before-the-Horse-itis strike you!

An interview with Artemis Fowl creator Eoin Colfer, author of the forthcoming And Another Thing

2009-09-25T11:04:00.007-04:00

Here's a great video interview with Irish writer Eoin Colfer that we ("we" being myself and the fine folk at Hyperion Books) put together while we were all at San Diego Comic-Con in July. In this interview, Eoin talks about why he finally said yes to Douglas Adams' widow Jane Belsen when she asked him to write a new book in the Hitchhiker's Guide series. (You can also see the funky wallpaper of the hotel we all stayed at right behind Eoin's head!)

The four winners of the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar Scholarship Contest announced!

2009-09-23T21:50:00.008-04:00

Without further ado (because Joanna and I are literally wiped out from reading and re-reading so many great queries and page samples!), the four winners of the 2009 Backspace Agent-Author Seminar Scholarship Contest are:

Susan Moger
Edgewater, MD
YA | 75k words | Title: Grace at War

Lisa Iriarte
Celebration, FL
Sci-Fi | 100k words | Title: Assassin's Nightmare

Lori Walker
Santa Barbara, CA
YA | 69k words | Title: Sugar Beet Hearts

Nikki Loftin
Austin, TX
Middle Grade | 34k words | Title: Escape From Comportment Camp

The four of you will be receiving a scholarship to attend the 2009 Backspace Agent-Author Seminar, taking place on November 5th & 6th at the Radisson-Martinique Hotel in New York City.** Someone from Backspace will be in touch with you shortly to discuss the details.

Joanna and I both look forward to meeting all of you in person in November!

**The scholarship does not cover transportation cost to NYC or hotel stay. If you are unable to use your scholarship, please let me know as soon as possible.

Congratulations to all our winners, and a heartfelt thank you to everyone who had the courage to enter the contest!

I love selling books by debut authors!

2009-09-23T15:27:00.004-04:00

Some very good news for the week:

Scott Tracey's WITCH EYES, pitched as Smallville meets a gay Romeo and Juliet, in which a deadly supernatural feud between two powerful witch dynasties becomes dangerously complicated when the eldest sons of the two rival families unexpectedly fall in love, to Brian Farrey at Flux, in a two-book deal, by Colleen Lindsay at FinePrint Literary Management (World English).

Go congratulate Scott, why doncha?

(And yeah, this one really does just scream "Fanfic me, please!!!")

And you can read an interview with Scott here.

The world's worst pickup artist.

2009-09-23T14:09:00.002-04:00

A friend forwarded this to me and I've been laughing like an idiot for ten minutes now. Guys? This is NOT how to approach a woman for a date. (Trust me on this.)

Guest blog: Agent Marlene Stringer talks about author self-promotion.

2009-09-23T09:49:00.003-04:00

My colleague agent Marlene Stringer is the founder and managing agent of The Stringer Literary Agency LLC, and loves to see the creative ideas her clients come up with to promote their books. You can follow her Twitter feed here.

What’s the Deal with Book Promotion?

Every so often I’m asked my opinion of book promotion by authors, and a lot of the same ground is covered. Some are intrigued by the idea, and can’t wait to get out there. Others are the exact opposite, and have no desire to participate.

One writer on Twitter recently complained promotion isn’t his job. His job is to write wonderful novels, not go out and shill. He prefers to write, hand his manuscript over to an agent, and his work on that particular book is done. The rest all happens as if by magic – you know, those busy elves at night?

What a life!

If only.

As an agent I see hundreds of queries a month, and a minute percentage of those go on to make it all the way through the gauntlet of the publication process. With the odds of a chance at publishing so small, why wouldn’t a writer who has the opportunity do everything possible in order to assure his book’s success?

I have helped authors put together marketing plans, and coordinate with outside or publishing house publicists. Every author, book and promotion plan is different, and must be comfortable for the particular author in order to succeed. Every author can do something to help a book’s success.

What is promotion about? Promotion is the vehicle(s) you choose to help your book stand out from all the others published in a given month. When readers don’t know a book exists, they can’t buy it! If you choose to see promotion as an evil to be avoided at all costs, so be it. If you see it as a fun opportunity to meet potential readers and booksellers who will help sell your book, that’s great. It can be a positive and enjoyable experience if authors pick what’s right for them. However you see promotion, it is part of the contemporary publishing landscape, and it is here to stay until something better comes along.

There are all sorts of possibilities for book promotion, and if you’ve been around the publishing block for any length of time, you’ve seen them. Websites, book tours, blogs, social networking, television and radio interviews, contests, conventions, postcards, trailers, costumes, you name it, there’s something for every personality type, taste, and budget, and a new idea every day. If you’re not the type to dress up and attend a 19th century gala, you can attend a writers’ conference and sit on a panel. You can choose to do book signings, or speak at local libraries or schools. If you can afford it, you can hire a private publicist to help get the word out. If not, your house publicist is a tremendous resource, and can help you maximize the options you choose.

Publishing doesn’t happen in isolation. It is a group venture. Besides you and your book, your partners include your agent, your editor, your publicist, the sales force, etc. Everyone must do his share of the work to help make a book a success, and promotion is part of that work. However, as the author, this book has your name on it. If it is your goal to be a professional author, defined as one who earns a living from writing, then you’d better help sell the book. Every time a publisher takes on an author, they take a chance. Not just with the advance paid, but by using a slot that might be filled by any number of publication-worthy books. This is the opportunity you’ve waited for, and by assisting in the promotion process, you demonstrate your goal to succeed to the publisher. If your book doesn’t earn out, it will be difficult to prove to the publisher (or any publisher) why you deserve another shot if you haven’t helped sell the last book!

Promotion is not only about the book, it is about the author. It is about branding. Look at the most successful authors on bestseller lists. Some are publishing phenomena, true. Others, however, have built very successful careers over time by writing good books, reaching out to their readers, and employing successful promotion techniques. If you get the chance to be one of them, instead of rejecting it out of hand, decide how you can tailor your strengths into building a promotion plan that works for you.

I can't stop laughing at this...

2009-09-21T17:13:00.000-04:00

Dating Montage
by smithy00101

Why you need to put your contact info on your manuscript. (Aside from the obvious DUH factor!)

2009-09-21T11:36:00.006-04:00

Intern A read a query for us. Said query was received via snail mail. Intern A liked query and, upon asking one of the agents here at FinePrint for guidance, asked to see more. Intern A received partial. Liked partial. Asked to see full manuscript. Full manuscript did not arrive in a time manner (yet another strike against sending paper queries). Intern A's internship is up, She leaves, and moves onto job elsewhere. Intern B has replaced Intern A. Some weeks go by. Seasons pass. Colleen's hair begins to turn grey. THEN SUDDENLY!!!!! Previously requested manuscript shows up. Addressed to nobody in particular. But Intern B figures out that this is requested material, and takes it to Agent Z, who asks Intern B to read it and make notes. Intern B really likes manuscript; writes up a great deal of feedback, returns manuscript to Agent Z. Agent Z looks over manuscript and feedback, thinks Intern B is dead-on and sits down at her desk to email/phone author of mysterious manuscript...and discovers that there is no contact information on any part of the manuscript. Not a phone number. Not an email. Not a PO Box or street address. Just the author's name, which is of no help at all.

So, in the future, dear authors. take heed: Put your contact info on the front page. Then, for the love of all that is holy, put your contact info in the header or footer OF EVERY SINGLE PAGE OF YOUR MANUSCRIPT! Because pages get separated. Interns leave. Email sometimes gets deleted. Agents have brain farts. (Hey, it happens.) Prepare yourself for every eventuality by putting your name, phone and email on every single page of your manuscript.

Okay, then.

Now, if anyone out there in the blogosphere knows someone named Christy Humphrey who writes YA fantasy, would you please have him (or her) email Suzie at FinePrint? Thank you.

Some great news!!! (And why we love Backspace!)

2009-09-18T12:41:00.002-04:00

Due to the enormous volume of great entries in the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar Scholarship Contest, the awesome people at Backspace: The Writer's Place contacted me this morning to let me know that they have decided to very graciously donate TWO ADDITIONAL SCHOLARSHIPS for the contest! That means we'll be announcing four scholarship winners next week instead of two!

Woooooooooohoooooooooo!!!

People are talking about Alan DeNiro's forthcoming book TOTAL OBLIVION, MORE OR LESS

2009-09-17T13:53:00.004-04:00

More specifically, writerly-type people are talking about my client Alan DeNiro's forthcoming debut novel Total Oblivion, More or Less.

I'm thrilled to share with you three outstanding quotes for Alan's book:

“A wonderfully weird, fun, touching, heartfelt and memorable novel. Imagine if Huck Finn had been living in post-apocalypse America, and Terry Pratchett had been promoted to God, with George Saunders as his avenging angel. Alan DeNiro has created a hilarious and terrifying dream world, but his real genius is that he's peopled it with characters we come to love."
– Dan Chaon, author of Among the Missing and Await Your Reply

“In Total Oblivion, More or Less, Alan DeNiro lifts the modern family drama and sets it down in the middle of a wildly inventive post apocalyptic landscape. The insulated life of Middle America may be a thing of the past, but DeNiro finds a way to lead readers into a future full of humor, imagination, and hope.”
– Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief

"Total Oblivion, More or Less is filled with weird sightings and wild doings – chock-a-block with adventure, suspense, and surprise. Apocalyptic family values, too! Recommended to all."
– Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club

Our president is a nerd. It's official.

2009-09-17T12:15:00.002-04:00

Backspace Agent-Author Seminar Scholarship winners...

2009-09-17T11:40:00.002-04:00

...will have to wait until next week!

The fact is that we got SO MANY entries (more than 600) for this contest that it's taking us a lot longer to read through them all to pick the two winners. So, to make sure each entry gets a thorough read, we're pushing back the date of the announcement until next week, September 24th.

Sorry for the wait, folks, but nice to know that there are so many enthusiastic writers out there!

Live-chat with Campbell Award-winning author David Anthony Durham live today at 7:00 PM EST!

2009-09-15T16:27:00.004-04:00

Head on over to Suvudu to live-chat with my pal David Anthony Durham, Campbell Award-winning author of ACACIA and THE OTHER LANDS!

Today's necessary levity: The Swedish Fish Commercial

2009-09-11T15:46:00.000-04:00

swedish fish commercial 1
Uploaded by vikviki. - Watch feature films and entire TV shows.

Writers are also readers: A cautionary tale.

2009-09-10T19:38:00.004-04:00

The following statement was written about screenplays but is absolutely true of any kind of writing:

It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't.

(By the way, here's a simple way to find out if you're a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you're not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers.)

And this is also true:

I was dying to find something positive to say, and there was nothing. And the truth is, saying something positive about this thing would be the nastiest, meanest and most dishonest thing I could do. Because here's the thing: not only is it cruel to encourage the hopeless, but you cannot discourage a writer. If someone can talk you out of being a writer, you're not a writer. If I can talk you out of being a writer, I've done you a favor, because now you'll be free to pursue your real talent, whatever that may be. And, for the record, everybody has one. The lucky ones figure out what that is. The unlucky ones keep on writing shitty screenplays and asking me to read them.

Read the rest of this great Village Voice piece by writer/director Josh Olson.

And the winner of the urban fantasy bonanza 4-pack is...

2009-09-04T11:55:00.002-04:00

(drumroll please....)

Mary Brebner!

(Chosen completely randomly by my brother Tom, who looked at me funny when I asked him to scroll through the comments and pick a winner. "What's urban fantasy?" he said.)

Mary, I'm shooting you an email now. I need your snail mail address for shipping. And remember that the Skyler White ARC won't be coming for a couple of months as the manuscript isn't quite ready yet.

Congratulations and thanks for playing!

Close to submissions again.

2009-08-30T11:55:00.001-04:00

Heads up: As of September 1st, I'm once again temporarily closed to submission.

An urban fantasy book giveaway bonanza!

2009-08-28T11:49:00.005-04:00

I think it's time for a book giveaway here at The Swivet, and today I'm giving away a quardruple bundle of urban fantasy/paranormal romance goodness to one lucky winner!

1 ARC of Kelly Gay's forthcoming debut urban fantasy THE BETTER PART OF DARKNESS
1 ARC of Seanan McGuire's forthcoming urban fantasy ROSEMARY AND RUE
1 ARC of Molly Harper's forthcoming paranormal romance NICE GIRLS DON'T DATE DEAD MEN
1 ARC of Skyler White's forthcoming erotic urban fantasy AND FALLING, FLY (this ARC won't be ready for about eight weeks, but don't worry! You'll get it as soon as it arrives!)

All you have to do to win is leave a comment and recommend one great urban fantasy or paranormal romance book you've read this year. (YA UF or paranormal recommendations are also welcome!) Winner will be chosen randomly by alchemy and math. (U.S. only, please! Sorry!)

Contest closes on Thursday, September 3rd. Winner will be announced on Friday, September 4th. Good luck!

Thank you!

2009-08-24T15:19:00.004-04:00

To the mysterious unknown person(s) responsible for nominating The Swivet for Best Publishing/Industry Blog for Book Blogger Appreciation Week, thank you!

But I have my own list of favorite Publishing/Industry Blogs, so if these folks are nominated, I say go vote for one (or all!) of them, because they're invaluable resources to writers and readers, and frankly, they all talk about their cats a whole lot less than I do:

Best Agent Blog: A tie between Jessica Faust's Bookends Blog and Rachelle Gardner's Rants & Ramblings. Both are must-reads for me everyday.
Best Editor Blog: Hands down, the best insight into how an editor's thought process works and what his or her day is like is to be found in Moonrat's hilarious Editorial Ass blog. I never miss this one!
Best Book Review Blog: My favorite place to go for reviews and features on books that aren't your everyday fare is Colleen Mondor's wonderful Chasing Ray.
Best New General Publishing-Related Blog: Undoubtedly my favorite new industry blog is Follow the Reader, hosted by Charlotte Abbott and Kat Meyer. Here you'll find in-depth interviews and feature-length pieces about challenges the book and publishing are facing.

Those are just a few at the top of my list. What are some of your favorite book industry-related blogs?

Arbitrary backlist policies on the NYT bestseller list?

2009-08-24T12:08:00.007-04:00

Publishers Lunch noted today that Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking - a backlist title for nearly fifty years - has reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

Now, step with me into the Wayback Machine if you would. It's time for a lesson in publishing history:

When Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was in theaters several years ago, both the mass market AND trade paperback editions (published by Del Rey Books and Houghton-Mifflin, respectively) of The Hobbit and the various editions of the Lord of the Rings were selling more than enough copies to warrant being listed on the NYT bestseller list. However, the New York Times refused to list any of the books in the series, stating categorically that they do not list backlist titles on the bestseller list.

This is absolutely true: the NYT doesn't list backlist on their bestseller list.

Unless you're Robert Ludlum.

Or Jane Austen.

Or Julia Child.

When real life gets in the way of agenting...and why it should.

2009-08-23T12:26:00.008-04:00

The plan: spend all weekend finishing a copyedit for a client's book, and get caught up on queries from the open submission period in August.

The reality: spend all night Friday moving my belongings out of my room, which was in the process of being flooded. (For the fifth time since December, by the way. Because of the roof that our landlord refuses to fix. Much like he refused to turn on the heat in December until we threatened to withhold rent.) So, like yesterday, today will mostly be spent on documenting and throwing away the waterlogged books and papers, then multiple trips to the laundromat to rid my clothes and bedding of the disturbingly brown water that came through the roof. Then trying to clean the room. Which will most likely flood again next week, so really a Sisyphean endeavor at best.

(I did read and respond to more than 100 queries last night, by the way, so the night wasn't a total wash.)

Why am I telling you this? Because sometimes - a lot of the time, frankly - new writers seem to think that an agent's job is a 24/7 occupation. That we should be reading queries and partials to the exclusion of all else in our lives. That we should not have outside hobbies. That we should not blog or Twitter. That we should not write our OWN books. (Quite a few agents I know are successful authors.) That we should not see movies or read books for fun. That we should not have husbands or wives or kids or pets or personal lives. That we should not take sick days or personal days or vacation time. That we should not work other jobs in order to be able to pay the rent while we try to build up a client list for a career that does not include a salary or health benefits. That we should not take time off when we have a personal emergency like, say, your roof opening up and dumping gallons of rainwater on your head.

Well, guess what? An agent's job is just that: a job. One that s/he is really only obligated to spend 40 hours a week on. But the reality is that for most agents, 40 hours a week working on agenting is considered a part-time job. Most of us - myself included - spend about 70-80 hours a week doing our job. And unless we are lucky enough to have an employed spouse or partner, we also work other jobs to pay the rent. (My good friend and agent colleague Diana Fox has an excellent blog post about this, by the way. You should read it.)

Somewhere in there we need to find time to do things that the rest of you may take for granted: do the laundry, buying groceries, paying our bills, taking the pets to the vet, going to the doctor, seeing friends and family, and - yes - move books and furniture out of a flooded bedroom.

The fact is? Real life - friends, family, pets, one's own mental and physical well-being - always comes first. As it should for everyone, no matter what your occupation.

Just so we're clear.

Win a scholarship to the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar in NYC!

2009-08-21T08:30:00.001-04:00

Yeah, this is gonna be the best contest ever!

The good folks at Backspace (an incredible online writers community THAT YOU SHOULD JOIN IMMEDIATELY! GO! NOW!) have donated two (TWO! COUNT 'EM! TWO!) scholarships to their upcoming Backspace Agent-Author Seminar for a fabulous Swivet contest.

The Backspace Agent-Author Seminar - held on November 5th & 6th - is two full days of workshops, panels and small-group breakouts with more than twenty of my coolest agent colleagues (people like Holly Root, Michelle Brower, Janet Reid, Stephany Evans, Scott Hoffman, Jeff Kleinman, Jason Ashlock, Emmanuelle Alspaugh, Joanna Stampfel-Volpe and Diana Fox, to name just a few). It's a chance to have your query read and critiqued and to have agents see the first two pages of your novel. The conference itself is held at the Radisson-Martinique in Midtown Manhattan, walking distance from Penn Station and virtually every subway line in NYC. (If you were to pay for the seminar yourself, by the way, it would be $500! I told you this was the best contest ever!)

So how do you enter? Pay attention:

First, two caveats:

First: You MUST have a finished novel that is ready to query. No exceptions.
Second: The scholarship covers admission to the conference only, not travel or hotel expenses. If you're coming from outside the New York-area, bear this in mind.
Third. The contest is open only to fiction (any genre, adult, YA or middle grade) and narrative non-fiction manuscripts.
Fourth: Your humble judges? Myself and my inimitable and completely awesome colleague Joanna Stampfel-Volpe of the Nancy Coffey Agency.
Fifth: That was way more than two caveats.

The Rules:

One entry per person, please.
Print out your query letter plus the first two pages of your finished novel, the same two pages that you want to have critiqued at the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar. The query letter should be single spaced; the two pages of your manuscript should be standard manuscript format: 12-point type and double-spaced. (Remember, only the first two pages, even if it ends mid-sentence.)
Mail your entries (yes, on paper, with a stamp - no email entries for this contest!) to my attention at FinePrint Literary Management, 240 W. 35th Street, Suite 500, New York, NY, 10001.
Your envelope should have the word BACKSPACE marked prominently on the front so that I know it's a contest submission.
Although you are welcome to submit projects that you'd like us to consider for representation, do understand that your contest entries won't get a response. Only the two winners will be hearing back from us.
Don't include an SASE; it'll be a waste of a stamp. (See above.)
Don't call or email to follow up on your entry. Trust in the U.S. Post Office. They've been doing right by your mail for 150 years.
If you do call or email to follow up, your entry will be disqualified and a voudou priestess somewhere in the wilds of the Louisiana bayou will ensure that you get a nasty rash in an unspeakable place for at least a year.
Entries must be postmarked by Friday, September 4th. Entries received with a postmark later than September 4th will be disqualified.
The two winners will be announced on Thursday, September 17th.

Thanks so much to the wonderful and supportive faculty at Backspace for making these scholarships possible. I'm sure the winners will put them to good use!

To read more about the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar, click here. And to read a full list of the agents who will be attending, click here.

Good luck, everyone!

FinePrint Literary Management welcomes three new agents!

2009-08-11T11:24:00.002-04:00

FinePrint Literary Management is thrilled to announce the addition of two new literary agents, Laura Wood and Ward Calhoun, as well as a new in-house subsidiary rights director, Jacqueline Murphy!

Laura Wood comes to FinePrint with more than twenty years in the publishing industry, including stints at Crown’s Harmony Books, Duke University Press and Columbia University Press. Most recently, Wood was Associate Publisher of Council Oak Books. She holds a Master’s Degree in Publishing Studies from New York University. Wood will be specializing in serious nonfiction, in the areas of science and nature, business, history, religion, and other areas by academics, experienced professionals, and journalists as well as commercial fiction with a fantastical twist and high-concept science fiction.

Ward Calhoun got his start in publishing at John Boswell Associates, a literary agency/book packager. While there he helped develop several best-selling humor titles including French for Cats and O.J.’s Legal Pad, as well as the HarperCollins 365 Ways to Cook… series. His next stop was Bishop Books where he acted as both a writer and editor on several books for Sports Illustrated. Most recently, Ward has been working as a Senior Editor at Hylas Publishing in Irvington, New York. Calhoun will be specializing in nonfiction titles in the areas of sports, humor, and pop culture.

FinePrint’s third new hire, director of subsidiary rights Jacqueline Murphy, brings with her more than 19 years of experience in subsidiary rights, licensing and editorial. For the past four years she was the executive audio editor for HarperCollins’ Harper Media; prior to that she was longtime director of subsidiary rights at Harcourt, with past stints in sub rights at National Geographic, Walker & Company and Scholastic Book Clubs. Jacqueline’s experience in both adult and children’s sub rights is extraordinary, and she brings a depth of publishing experience and a willingness to share it that has enriched all of us at the agency.

These three new hires further the expansion begun by FinePrint at the start of March 2009 with the hiring of former Weinstein Company exec Brendan Deneen as a literary manager and in-house dramatic rights agent, and the formation earlier this summer of FinePrint Productions, a sister company that focuses on feature film/television production of book-to-film and graphic novel-to-film properties.

Please join us welcoming Laura, Jacqueline and Ward to FinePrint!

FinePrint Literary Management is looking for Fall 2009 interns!

2009-08-10T22:31:00.003-04:00

Yes, it's that time of year. Our beloved interns (or "godsends" as my colleague Janet Reid calls them) are off to the four corners of the Earth to finish their schooling or find full-time jobs and we agents find ourselves in need of a new group of interns for the Fall semester. (And this is an unpaid internship, just to clarify upfront. Most agency internships are.) So if you're located in the NYC-area (or will be here over the Fall semester), here's an opportunity for you!

What does an intern do? A little bit of everything. At FinePrint, we actually combine our intern program with that of Nancy Coffey Literary + Media Representation, the agency that shares our suite of offices with us. That means our interns reap the benefits of working with two sets of agents, learning the similarities and the differences in how we operate as well as working with three of the most experienced agents in the business: Peter Rubie, Stephany Evans and Nancy Coffey. In addition to basic agency administrative duties, our interns learn how to read queries with a discerning eye, what questions to ask themselves as they read a new manuscript and why, and how to translate those questions and answers into a thoughtful readers report. As an intern at FinePrint, you'll sometimes accompany agents to industry functions, where you'll meet writers as well as other industry professionals. (Our summer interns got to attend BEA, an RWA dinner and several AAR lunchtime talks!) And you'll sit on on weekly in-house guest-lectures, Q&As and development workshops led by some of the best minds in the publishing industry.

What kind of people are we looking for? Well, contrary to popular belief, it doesn't matter if you're in school currently, although if you are, you'll absolutely receive college credit. But we also welcome those of you who may be in transition between one career and another. (Hey, you're never too old to live your dream!) The main criteria is that you must have a enthusiasm for commercial fiction and non-fiction. Hey, we love you lit majors, but if you come in and tell us your favorite writers are Kafka, Sartre, and Henry James, you won't be very helpful to us. If you love crime fiction, romance, historical fiction, fantasy, young adult, pop culture, graphic novels, thrillers, gripping narrative non-fiction, we want you! If you obsess over the New York Times bestseller list, if you spend your afternoons popping from one book blog to another, catching up on publishing gossip, if you eat commercial fiction for breakfast...email us!

The internship generally runs anywhere from 4-6 months. You'll be working anywhere from 12-16 hours a week, over 3-4 days. The agency is conveniently located in Midtown Manhattan, two blocks from Penn Station and near the A, C, E, R, F, V, N, Q, W, 1, 2, and 3 lines.

How do you apply? Easy peasy! If you're interested, please email Joanna Stampfel-Volpe at LiteraryNancy2 (at) gmail.com; cc Suzie Townsend at Suzie (at) fineprintlit.com. Include a resume with your cover letter, both pasted within the body of the email. Please address the subject line as FP-NC Internship. No phone calls, please!!!

Internship interviews for the Fall 2009 Program will be held between August 17th and August 27th. Deadline for resumes is August 20th.

Good luck! =)

Opening to submissions but there's a catch:

2009-08-03T15:00:00.003-04:00

I'm reopening to submissions for a brief time: from now through the end of August. There's a catch: Unless you're coming to me as a referral from another agent, editor or writer whom I know, I'm only looking for the following things:

Adult urban fantasy/paranormal romance
YA urban fantasy/paranormal
Realistic YA

If you queried me between March 19th and yesterday with any of these kinds of projects, please query me again, as your query was automatically deleted. If you have an outstanding query with me from before March 19th (and at least 200 of you do!), you will receive a reply from me by the end of August.

Here's what I need:

Email only
Query letter
First 5-10 pages cut and pasted into body of letter
No attachments please

We now have several other agents in-house who also handle YA, so if your query isn't right for me but I think it has merit, I will forward to another agent. However, if you have already queried and been passed over by a FinePrint agent, do let me know. It doesn't mean I don't want to see your query, but it will keep me from forwarding it onto someone who has already seen it.

Do note that if your project falls outside the categories above, I'm not interested at the moment. Thanks!

Come say hello to me at San Diego Comic-Con!

2009-07-21T12:51:00.005-04:00

I'm heading out at the crack of dawn tomorrow to the Nerd Prom, aka San Diego Comic-Con International. I'll be working there on behalf of Hyperion Books, managing their booth and giving away their swag and keeping the Vogons from having a poetry-slam anywhere in the vicinity.

If you're coming to Comic-Con, please feel free to stop by Booth #1507 and say hello! (But do leave your pitches at home, I beg you. I'm there as a mere booth lackey; if you disrupt my swag-shilling by flaunting your manuscript at me, I'll have no choice but to toss you to the Klingons. Fair warning.)

Hope to see some of you there!

RIP, Pulitzer-prize winning author Frank McCourt

2009-07-19T19:49:00.002-04:00

Sad news: Frank McCourt passed away this afternoon at the age of 78.

Stunned: Locus Magazine's Charles Brown has died.

2009-07-13T13:21:00.002-04:00

I am still reeling from this news: my friend and colleague Charles Brown, founder and long-time publisher of Locus Magazine, passed away yesterday on his way home from Readercon.

I'll have more to say about this later... still wrapping my head around this.

Help Aaron Allston out with his medical bills, please!

2009-07-12T09:15:00.009-04:00

Aaron Allston is best known for the long string of New York Times-bestselling Star Wars novels that he's written for Del Rey Books. He's also a game designer and an independent filmmaker. I know him as an incredibly sweet guy who tells good jokes, has a penchant for bad Hawaiian shirts and likes to give great bear hugs.

A couple of months ago, while in the middle of a book tour, Aaron suffered a massive heart attack and had to have emergency quadruple-bypass surgery. Aaron's heart problems were compounded by the fact that he is a diabetic. You can read the details here. Although Aaron came through his surgery and rehab with flying colors, he's now faced with a new dilemma: Like many writers, Aaron has no health insurance. His medical bills are staggering and he needs our help.

The Fandom Association of Central Texas has set up The Aaron Allston Donation Fund and Auction, a 501(c)(3) organization that exists to collect donations for Aarons' medical bills. In addition, they are seeking items to auction off to raise money. If you can donate an item for the auction (which will take place on July 19th) or if you make even a small donation, please consider doing so. And please help his friends spread the word!

Looking for book bloggers/media/reviewers attending San Diego Comic-Con:

2009-07-08T12:22:00.005-04:00

If you belong to the group I mentioned above and you're attending San Diego Comic-Con this year, PLEASE email me and let me know. Looks like I'll be attending and I'll be working on a Sekrit Project; I'd like to involve as many of you as I can. Shoot me an email, please! (And if you're an author at Comic-Con and see me there, I'm happy to say hello but please don't pitch me. I'm serious.)

Guest Blogger Max Leone: Summer Reading Recommendations for Teens

2009-06-29T11:48:00.010-04:00

Fourteen-year-old Max Leone is a frequent guest-blogger here at The Swivet. He also has a lot of opinions about books. Some of those opinions have appeared on this blog and some of them have appeared at Publishers Weekly. He lives in New Jersey.

My Summer Reading List
by Max Leone

The majority of school-assigned summer reading lists would violate the Geneva convention if they were used to obtain information from prisoners. Reading the books on them is akin to treading through a swamp made of expired pudding without using your legs, except less exciting.

Since I seem to be making a career out of ranting about things, usually the state of YA literature, I was asked to put together a list of books that teenagers should read during the summer. Most summer reading books contain many of my Cardinal Sins of Young Adult Books, such as outdated language and morals with all the subtlety of a flaming anvil made of snakes. My recommendations contain none of the things that make up the expired, congealed pudding of a typical summer reading book.

WARNING: Books may contain swearing, sex, independent thought, Norse deities, and other things that may thwart your attempts to keep your children safe from the outside world and/or Vikings.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: It will be a struggle to get through this paragraph without making dozens of bad jokes about reality TV, since this book centers around a lethal televised competition. This book is quite dark, a welcome change from the sentimentality of most YA books. It also avoids the expired pudding dilemma, by being interesting and featuring characters the reader will actually care about, as opposed to the boring, flat protagonists who lurk in reading lists.

The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan: Because of my Publishers Weekly editorial last fall, I have become known in some circles as Mr. Scary Vampires, Hater of All Things Twilight and Emo. Therefore, I feel it was my duty to include this book on my list. The Strain features possibly the least romantic vampires ever. It is quite hard to imagine some teenage girl falling for a dirty, hideous, leechlike monster spawned from a Hot Zone-esque virus. Because of this, The Strain is one of the scariest and most entertaining books I have ever read.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman: A unique, often bizarre urban fantasy about deities in the modern world, this book shows that urban fantasy can be done without ridiculous teenage angst. It features a large, interesting cast of characters, and an amazing attention to detail. American Gods fits in historical elements without becoming another archaic cliché-fest. It has true depth and insight, unlike the faux-philosophic ramblings that infest lesser books (*cough* TheEleganceoftheHedgehog *cough*).

More Information Than You Require by John Hodgman: This book, simply put, is pure genius. It is no doubt one of the funniest things ever created by human hands. This encyclopedia (containing complete world knowledge) is another book that manages to have amazing depth. Hodgman manages to craft a world through anecdotes and lists, built in such a way that you can never be sure what is fact, what is fiction, and what is a Battlestar Galactica reference. Plus, how else are you going to learn about the mole-men and their hideous steeds, now that they have been driven from the surface by Benjamin Franklin?

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman: American Gods showed that Gaiman could do amazing things with existing mythologies. Neverwhere is another teenage angst-less urban fantasy, this time set in an amazing world of Gaiman’s creation. Unlike the cheesy, generic results of most attempts to create an original world, Neverwhere does not end up as a contrived blob of gibberish words and generic characters. Speaking of characters, Gaiman deserves some sort of prize for Excellence in Literary Villainy, for the characters of Croup and Vandemar, two of the greatest villains of all time.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: This book combines many of the elements that made previous titles in this list great. It is hilarious, like More Information Than You Require, it has a creative fictional universe that is much better than most genre attempts, like Neverwhere and it has incredible depth and insight, like American Gods. A hundred elbow-patched, goateed professors working for a hundred years could not produce something this insightful. It’s observations on humans, particularly how they state the obvious, are amazingly true. If there were a cult based on this book, I would join.

World War Z by Max Brooks: There is something tragic about this book. It is a masterpiece of literature, but it may forever be denied it’s rightful glory because it features zombies. World War Z is one of the deepest looks at zombies (or at any supernatural creature) to date. The zombie apocalypse described is thought-out, detailed, and strangely realistic. The scariest element of the book comes from the superb writing, which makes a zombie attack seem like it could happen at any time. Maybe, if we support this book, we can form a shambling mob that will consume the brains of the literary establishment and give this book the glory it deserves.

The Swivet [Colleen Lindsay]

Video posted for the "We're No Angels" NYCC panel!

New York ComicCon: Etiquette for fans, pros AND exhibitors!

Come say hello to me at New York ComicCon!

Guest blogger Joanna Stampfel-Volpe responds to a recent PW blog post on LGBTQ YA

When we remember that Tuesday... Here is New York: A Democracy of Photographs

Still not blogging.

Can YOU survive the zombie apocalypse? Now's your chance to find out!

A wee blogging break but we'll be back!

All new & revised: On word counts and novel length

Wrapping up the agent side of things...

In which I leave agenting for life with a flightless, aquatic bird in formal wear.

"Because I'm the BATMAN!"

Round-up: On agent pay, advances, slush pile madness and learning to face change

Query hiatus extended.

How I spent my (five day) summer vacation:

Closed to queries for the month of June!

Do the Write Thing for Nashville: A Flood Relief Auction

Query update

Guest blogger: Agent Roseanne Wells talks kitchen sink plots, or "Adding a dragon won't help."

Publishing Triangle Award Winners Announced:

Please welcome my colleague Marissa Walsh, FinePrint's newest agent!

Query update

You want to get angry about something that *really* matters?

What NOT to do when you get a rejection: Example #873

Taking names and kicking ass in YA book deals this month.

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir sings Lux Aurumque

Guest Blogger Ari Marmell on writing media tie-ins

#Askagent: The unvarnished truth.

Dogs dressed like Lady Gaga. Yes, really.

Winners of the 2010 Backspace Scholarship Contest!

Guest Blogger Alan DeNiro hits the road for a good cause: Mercy Corps!

Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer. With Endless Cliches!

Two more Backspace scholarships added!

Backspace Contest update!

Random House forms new IP Creation and Development Group with Keith Clayton to head.

Alan DeNiro and Paul Jessup hijinks at Erie Bookstore!

Win a scholarship to the Backspace Writers Conference & Agent-Author Seminar in NYC!

Closed to queries again!

Building Your Author Brand: A Course for Writers

Guest blogger Richard Bowes: Thoughts on The Catcher in the Rye

Being an agent is EXACTLY like this! Or not...

Query Update

Keith Olbermann speaks for me and many people in this response to Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh.

Alan DeNiro's big idea!

Soho Press publisher and co-founder Laura Hruska has passed away.

Rest in peace, Miep Gies.

Why agents and editors say no.

Open to queries again, and new revised submission guidelines.

Losing sight of what's important: Looking back, looking ahead and making changes in the New Year.

Guest Blogger Max Leone: Winter Reading Recommendations for Teens

"You can go on a bender at the Temple of Dendur, but you're not allowed to film at the Met Museum."

And the winner of the Kelly Gay/Alan DeNiro book set is:

Chris Kammerud!

Happy Release Day to Alan DeNiro & Kelly Gay! (And win a set of both books!)

This is how excellent comic books are made! (And how you can help!)

Hilarious SNL parody of Twilight starring Taylor Swift - enjoy!

*Starred* Booklist review for Alan DeNiro's TOTAL OBLIVION, MORE OR LESS

We have a Bloom County winner!!!

Live-chat with author Eoin Colfer today at 3:30 PM EST!

Contest! Win a copy of BOOKLIFE: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer

"What do you think I voted for at Omaha Beach?"

Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer - A different kind of guide for writers

Guest blogger agent Rachelle Gardner talks about Christian publishing and the CBA marketplace.

When overcaffeinated book bloggers are granted unchaperoned access to a video camera, THIS happens:

Publishers Weekly weighs in with nice review for Alan DeNiro's TOTAL OBLIVION, MORE OR LESS

When compassion dies, we're all lessened as human beings: why we need gay marriage now more than ever.

Kirkus Reviews on Alan DeNiro's forthcoming TOTAL OBLIVION, MORE OR LESS

The "Opus and Bill the Cat Thumb Their Noses at the FTC" Bloom County book giveaway contest!

Client news: In case you missed it... A rave PW review for Kelly Gay's Better Part of Darkness!

Writers! Do you have Cart-Before-the-Horse-itis?

An interview with Artemis Fowl creator Eoin Colfer, author of the forthcoming And Another Thing

The four winners of the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar Scholarship Contest announced!

I love selling books by debut authors!

The world's worst pickup artist.

Guest blog: Agent Marlene Stringer talks about author self-promotion.

I can't stop laughing at this...

Why you need to put your contact info on your manuscript. (Aside from the obvious DUH factor!)

Some great news!!! (And why we love Backspace!)

People are talking about Alan DeNiro's forthcoming book TOTAL OBLIVION, MORE OR LESS

You want to get angry about something that really matters?

Starred Booklist review for Alan DeNiro's TOTAL OBLIVION, MORE OR LESS