Musings Of A New Southern Man

I started talking about the need for a powerful query letter when I started this blog. I said I could not tell you exactly what a perfect query letter is. What can I tell you several months later? Same thing. Writing query letters is an inexact science. It becomes exact science only when you hit the right agent with the right words at the right time. Do you want evidence to show just how important that query letter is? It is the method by which most writers get to enter the kingdom of the publishing houses. It is a very exclusive kingdom, by the way. Forget the scores of books you see on the shelves of a Barnes and Noble or any other bookstore you enter. Those scores of books hide millions of queries that authors fastidiously crafted but ended up being kicked to the curb. What main things have I learned? Let's try these: Know your material. Be so in tune with what you have written that you can detail it and give a glimpse at the reasons you wrote it. That in turn casts ligh...

I have not been bad about writing lately. I have been absolutely terrible about blogging. So, here goes a quick update. I have stepped back from sending out queries about my second novel, at least for a couple of weeks. I saw two agents post items on Twitter or their blogs that changed my thinking. One agent, Evan Gregory, said the number of agents who actually work in August is usually down. It's a big vacation period, and even agents need vacations. Fancy that!!! Agent Kristin Nelson in Denver gave a short note in a recent blog about loving to tackle that big workload in the winter. Summer brings thoughts of good things to do -- other than dive through queries, read manuscripts, etc. Heck, I understand that. Give me swimming pools and barbecue grills over streams of unedited copy every day of the week. So, take those two agents' comments together and I made a decision to wait. My writing has been going great. I am tweaking former works here and there. I am...