To the right of this screen is a lovely green poll I’m taking on whether or not to include sample pages with your query letters. As I said in my earlier post, I am really curious as to what the standing knowledge is on the issue.

Please participate! Tell your friends. Tell your agents.

You can pick more than one answer.

If you’d like to add to or argue with the choices listed, or give your reasoning for what you voted for, please comment here.

Because there seems to be a bit of confusion:

QUERY LETTER: A short, one-page letter sent to an edtior or agent, meant to interest them in your work. Should include:
1) mention of previous pertinent fiction publishing credits (if any, and do not lie about this). This means if you have published other novels or short stories to reasonably large markets.
2) title, approximate word count, truthful admission of whether or not it’s complete, and broad genre of book (no need to get into all the sub-sub-sub genres of your story here — plus it should be reasonably obvious from your description)
3) short, one-or two paragraph “blurb” style description of your story. Make it sound as snappy and intriguing as possiblem, like the descriptions you see on the back cover or inside flap of published books.
4) Other pertinent information:
(a) Platform: If you are uniquely suited to write this story, tell them. It’s a medical thriller and you’re a doctor. It’s a spy story and you’re retired from the CIA. It’s about secret societies at Yale and you went there. (Not platform: it’s about kids and you have kids, etc.) Other platforms include: you’re a syndicated columnist for a national newspaper, you have a website that receives thousands of unique hits a day, you have your own TV show, you’re a celebrity, you’re a politician, you’re the child of any of the above, etc.
(b) If the story in question has won awards, or if you have won really, really big awards for other stories.
(c) If a NYT bestselling author has offered to blurb the book (include quote).
(d) If you work in the publishing industry, or have an MFA, or are otherwise more into the fiction-writing scene.
Good rule of thumb for #4, if you think it’s something that would make YOU want to read a complete stranger’s book more than before, include it, If not, don’t.
Do not ever lie. Ever.
5) Thank them for their time, and don’t forget to include your contact information and an SASE.
6) The first five or so pages of your novel. (tell them to recycle). Some people don’t agree with me about this, but I say include a sample of your writing. I’ve never done this, but I’ve heard it a lot recently, and it makes really good sense to me.

COVER LETTER: a short one page letter sent with your requested submission materials. Should include:
1) Reminder to agent/editor what you are sending and why (e.g., “we met at the RWA national conference in Reno in July, where you requested my 80,000 word collegiate chick lit novel, SECRET SOCIETY GIRL,” “thank you so much for requesting my 80,000 word collegiate chick lit novel, SECRET SOCIETY GIRL, about an ordinary Ivy League Co-ed who just happens to be a member of one of the most powerful secret scoieties in the world,” or “Thank you so much for agreeing to read my novel, which my second cousin, your client Gertrude Weinerschnitzel, recently mentioned to you. TITLE is BLANK words long, and tells the story of BLANKET BLANK BLANK BLANK.”
2. Any “platformy” info from query.
3. “Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you.”
4. Some people like to enclose a copy of the original query and/or request. This can’t hurt. Also, if you have been introduced by your second cousin Gertrude, include the whole two paragraph blurb.
5. Enclosed requested material.

SYNOPSIS: a description of what happens in your novel, from beginning to end. These really aren’t as painful as everyone makes them out to be.
1. Introduce your main characters, their goals, motivations, and conflicts. Breeze through the backgrounds in a sentence.
2. Hit the high points. No need to slavishly describe every scene in the novel. Cover the big turning points in the plot (what some call the tent poles), concetrating on who, what and why, and make it sound as smooth and seamless as possible. Pretend that you are telling a friend what happened in a great movie you just watched. For instance, if you are writing a synopsis for STAR WARS, it’s enough to say, “After Luke’s family is killed by stormtroopers in search of the two missing droids, Luke and Ben realize they need to escape the planet. They sneak into a nearby spaceport and hire rogueish smuggler Han Solo to take them off-world in his souped up ship.” You don’t really need to get into what happens at the bar in Mos Eiseley, you know?
3. Tell the whole story. Do not say, “and if you want to know what happens…” This is amateurish, and pisses people off. They do want to know what happens, and they want to know it up front.
4. Keep it as short as possible. A good rule of thumb is no more than 1 page for every 10k in your novel. I’ve written books from 60k to 115k, and my synopses are usually 7-8 pages long, though can be as small as four. It depends on how complicated your plot is. If you’ve got some huge epic fantasy with a lot of worldbuilding, it will probably be longer.
5. Double spaced.

So, are we all clear on the differences? Good!

Sorry for the lack of posting. I’ve been on vacation on sunny Florida (note to self: next time mom tells me to “pack warm” for a trip to Florida, understand that her definition of “cold front” means it’s 73 degrees, rather than than the full on 80).

Thanksgiving was lovely — it was my parents, my one brother, my uncle, my great-aunt, and my cousin and his wife. We had a lovely dinner (SO MUCH FOOD, and I didn’t even partake of my mom’s pies) and of course, plenty of “house champagne” (Quoth Sailor Boy: only at your place would there be a house champagne). I showed everyone my book cover, and then of course, we all had a book gigle over my “other” book covers. My “career” as a cover model has now stretched to four book covers. Every time I look at them I’m amazed anew. Who is the sexy, wanton woman gracing those covers! It can’t be me! And yet, I’m so thankful for having such a lovely opportunity — doing those covers has always been a blast.

On Friday, my mom and I ran some errands, and I saw first hand how much my town has changed since I left. We have three new wine stores, and all the old buildings have been torn down to make room for “luxury” condos. On Friday night, my parents and I went to see the new Pride & Prejudice. We’re all (even though Dad won’t admit it) big fans of the BBC/A&E version. I think this verison was pretty good, if a little over-the-top. It also skimmed over some major plot developments. (ahem. Spoilers be ahead, if you’re totally clueless about this masterpiece of English literature.)

I don’t know if you’d understand the depth of Wickham’s depravity had you not read the book, since in this version of the movie Darcy’s letter seems to indicate that Wickham’s courting of Georgiana was above-board, rather than the clandestine affair and attempted elopment that should have tipped everyone off before anyone had a chance to run off with him again. Also, Lizzie spent far too much time giggling. What was up with all the giggling? Other than that, Knightley was great, and I even enjoyed McFayden, who played Darcy, as well as the rest of them. Much has been said of D. Sutherland’s performance, but again I was underwhelmed. Perhaps I am spoiled by the BBC version; I thought this new one was quite lovely, but doesn’t fulfill all my P&P needs.

I wonder if they made a quintessential six-hour S&S that I would abandon my all-encompassing love of the Ang Lee/Emma Thompson version. Because I do adore that one so, so much. The above individuals were at the top of their game, plus you have Hugh Grant with unsurpassed ditheringness, Kate Winslet channeling the soul of Marianne, and, natch, my darling, my beloved, my trulymadlydeeply Alan Rickman. Gosh, I love that guy. I’d watch him read a phone book. I think half the reason I liked McFayden’s Darcy is because I thought he did the Rickman voice a few times quite well. I heard a rumor that Thompson did a rewrite on the script for the new P&P. I hope it wasn’t during all of that “body and soul” and “Mrs. Darcy” nonsense, though. I expect more from Emma. The last scene reminded me very much of those “sequel” novels they come out with all the time, that seem to always concern themselves overmuch with the Darcys’ sex lives and Wickham’s continued attempts to seduce Elizabeth. Not really into P&P fanfic, I think.

Saturday, all the food I’ve been eating finally caught up with me, and I spent most of the afternoon napping. Then I worked on my copyedits. I’m doing copyedits this wekeend, and they are SO MUCH FUN. The copyeditor included a “style sheet” for my book which wound up looking like a sort of index of my novel. It’s fun to read down the list and wonder where in the book I reference Victoria’s Secret and the University of Virginia Athletic Endowment Organization. Saturday night, my parents and I went to one of our favorite local Italian restaurants, Dominic’s Capri. I’ve been going to this place for years, and it’s aboslutely divine. I’m telling you, a trip to Clearwater Beach is not complete without a visit to this restaurant. He makes this lobster ravioli in vodka blush sauce (”princess sauce”) and it’s… well, to quote Sailor Boy again, when I first brought him to this place (major test for all potential relationships): “Wow.”

Tomorrow we’re off to the Bucs game. So I need to get my beauty sleep. Here’s wishing you all a glorious weekend and holiday, and safe travel!

I saw this on Lydia Joyce’s blog and couldn’t resist.

It’s a word frequency program from Georgetown. You enter the text, and see how many unique words are in the block of text, as well as the frequency with which each word is used.

Secret Society Girl has 80,000 words, and over 10,000 unique words. Lydia reported that Pride and Prejudice has 6,800 unique words in 121,000 words and Wuthering Heights has 9,500 /116,000. Since I don’t write historical romances, I feel like I need a Devil Wear’s Prada or a Bridget Jones’s Diary to compare it to.

The top twenty most frequently used words are: THE, I, TO, A, AND, OF, IN, WAS, MY, YOU, THAT, IT, ME, HE, ON, WITH, AT, FOR, HIS, and AS.

The bottom twenty (i.e., least frequently used) are: Uberhot, wunderkind, Romantic, thingamajig, whoopee, yellow, rejections, girlfriend, yup, toodleoo, sidebar, rustication, yen, wizened, windbreaker, vestments, wannabe, wobbled, workaday, and zest.

Of course, I think they arrange it alphabetically after frequency, and they seem to have a problem with quotation marks in the program, so both the count and the list might be highly inaccurate (Which I think is definitely the point with “girlfriend” ’cause Amy — and others –uses that all the time.) But, it’s interesting anyway.

If you’re a writer, paste in your latest work and report the results here!

So Candy and Sarah over at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books are holding a “best breakup story” contest.

Man, I love me some break-up stories. I’m so tempted to enter. After all, I have a phenomenal breakup story. It’s really top notch. If you ply me with enough liquor next time you see me, I might even tell you. How many breakup stories involve five hundred people and gold lame hot pants? I thought so.

But I’m not entering. Gottta protect the innocent as well as the not-so.

No, really, it’s not.

That’s a hard thing for some people to grasp. I know I struggle with it. I think it’s left over from grade school, where you were so insecure that you were sure that any slight was a purposeful cut, that any time a group of girls twittered, their head held close together, the twitter was about you.

Random aside: Years later, one of the nicer (i.e., not cruel, just well-liked) “popular” girls from my middle school told me that the reason I never got invited to anyone’s party or over to their house after school when I was 13 was that I “lived too far away.” I wonder if it’s because I “lived too far away” that they put gum in my hair, stole my purse and threw it in the dumpster, and dropped my gym clothes in the toilet. Middle school sucks. I think I write about somewhat older kids because middle school and even a large portion of high school sucks so completely that I’m afraid to access it again.

But really, outside of middle school, it’s not about you. Those rejection slips you get in the mail? Not about you. They don’t hate you. They don’t even know you. They aren’t whatever clique you were trying to access in school that wouldn’t let you in because they were mean girls. On an email loop, the people who are talking aren’t being cliquey. They won’t shoot you down if you say something. If you post a question an no one answers it, it may be because they don’t know the answer. They aren’t ignoring you because they don’t like you. It’s not about you.

It’s not about you. If you happen to email a blogger a question, and around about the same time, this blogger, who NEVER, EVER includes the names of the questioners in her online responses, posts a completely unrelated email and responds to it, and in her response, happens to use a vocative to which you note a vague and unsupportable similarity to your screenname, even though the blogger was in fact referencing a series of commercials that related to the email she did post and her response, do not start a flamewar on her blog, insisting that she made up an email and signed your (fake) name to it. She didn’t. She didn’t assign any name to it. It’s not about you.

It’s not about you. It’s not about you when someone makes an offhand and utterly neutral observational comment about the various levels of success at different epublishing houses. It’s not about you, and it’s not about whatever genre you write in. It’s not about you when people comment about what they are tired of seeing in insert-genre-here style romance, It’s not about you when they say they are tired of that genre. It’s not about you when the internet screws up, and it’s not about you when Yahoo decides to make all of your groups disappear (and you’re wasting time emailing the moderator over that one, btw. It’s disappeared for her, too).

Why do we want to think it’s about us? Does it make us feel more important? If it isn’t a random accident, or a completely unintentional overlooking, if it’s a slight, does that make us feel more important? Being ignored or unanswered, being unobserved as they might say in Joan of Arcadia, is a far, far worse fate than being reviled. Getting no Amazon reviews is worse than getting a hundred that hate you. Having enemies is better than having no friends. Is that the idea? If it’s about us, does that make us relieved, even if it’s wretched?

And that’s why we Google ourselves. We want to see who is talking about us, and where they’re doing it. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that the people who hate us are doing it in private forums (or, natch, as anonymous blog posters). It’s a shame, really, because nothing provides more fascination/revulsion than secretly listening in on a healthy round of hatred. After all, it’s better to be disliked than not to be known at all.

But it’s not about you. It’s not about you because the people involved aren’t thinking about you at all, They’re only thinking about themselves. The other day, I was very offended. I’d gone to a writing industry event, my brand new cover clutched tightly in my hands, I was so excited to show it to the other writers. I sat down and the woman sitting next to me asked me what I wrote. I told her, and showed her my cover. She turned away from me and starting telling the people on her other side that she couldn’t sell what she was writing because editors were only buying the stuff I wrote, and maybe she wasn’t twenty-six, like some people, but she should be able to sell her books too.

I sat there with my mouth open. I wanted to scream, “I’m not keeping you from selling your books!” But I didn’t. I was a little shocked that the person took the very existence of my book and me as a personal affront to her and her career. Jeez, it’s not about her. I wasn’t even thinking of her when I wrote and sold my book.

But then I thought about it some more and realized that actually, no. It wasn’t about me. She wasn’t even thinking of me when she was reflecting on the various market value of certain literary proerties, when she was thinking about all the years she’d spent on her craft, and when she was worried about whether or not she’d sell her latest project. I was not involved in any of those thoughts. She wasn’t saying it to hurt my feelings. She was talking about herself.

We think about ourselves. That’s all we have energy for on a day to day basis. When we feel angry, or jealous, or frustrated, or worried, we’re not really thinking about other people, we’re thinking about ourselves. We spend so much time thinking about ourselves that we’re shocked that other people aren’t doing it, too.

But they aren’t. It’s hardly ever about us.

By the way, all the things I mentioned in this blog post? They aren’t about you. Really.

Yes, I saw Harry Potter 4 last weekend, in a giant theatre, with stadium seating, surrounded by fans who hissed at Draco and cheered when Hermione dressed up for the Yule Ball, who hid their faces from the scary-ass mermaids and cried along with Harry when…

Oh, screw it. You people who haven’t read the book, and so don’t know what has happened had better step off right now. Giant SPOILER WARNING. Begone, the lot of you. I’m talking to the rest of us, to those who have read all six of the released novels and who aren’t going to freak out when I say that Cedric Diggory was murdered in a small and offhand way that just proves the abject cruelty of the people involved here. And you won’t be freaking out, because you’ll have been waiting to see that moment on screen for about four years now.

I think the movies keep getting better and better. Sailor Boy is correct when he argues that they are companion peieces to the novels, rather than stand a lone films — if you haven’t read the book, you’d be really confused byt eh movie. In the last one, they never did get around to explaining who the hell Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs were, which ruined the punch of the Patronus charm, IMO. And in this one if you hadn’t been checking out your DVD of number one and hadn’t read hte book, you’d never catch that those wispy things talking to Harry inside the Cage of Phoenix Song (which they never do explain, but oh well) are Harry’s folks. And lord help you if you’ve forgotten what Polyjuice potion does, that’s all I have to say. But man, they’re still great.

Always rather thought Daniel Radcliffe was the weak link of the Hogwarts triumvirate, but he’s really come into his own here, I think. I was crying right along with him when they Portkeyed back into the arena. Whereas Hermione was acting mostly with her eyebrows. Maybe they should have left all that S.P.E.W. crap int here, if only to give the poor girl something to do. Though I must admit, Emma won me over at the Yule ball, for so perfectly demonstrating the look of joyous wonder on an unpopular girl’s face on the evening she’s finally, finally having a good date. I’ll forgive the eyebrows. And I’ll forgive Rupert Grint anything so long as he promises to cut his damn hair. Fleur didn’t have the look I’d been expecting, but Krum was PERFECT.

And how about Moody? He didn’t look at all the way I’d expected, but the actor embodied him with perfection. That ferret scene was… brill. The tongue! And another hell-yeah for Mr. Fiennes. They spend a lot of time talking about how handsome Voldemort *used* to be (and hello, that Tom Riddle kid from number two is a total teen poster boy!) but I believed it. Something about those eyes. But then again, he also looked like the English Patient again, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch. Same makeup. And he really sold the vanity and supreme cowardice of Voldemort, to ask to duel with a child, even after admitting that it was no great power of Harry’s that caused his destruction. What a wuss, really. Gambon took A.D. in a new direction, I think. Whereas in three he was still channeling Richard Harris, he’s gone of in his own direction now. Interesting. Is anyone else reminded of the different between Gandaulf the Grey and Gandaulf the White?

And then of course, there’s my honey, my baby, my sweetheart Alan Rickman. Never enough screentime for that guy, I swear, and one of his biggest scenes kept him silent the whole time. ::pout:: But that is the genius of Rickman. He makes even his silent scenes standouts. What a guy.

Speaking of, I think 6 will knock my socks off, or even 5 with the Occlumency lessons, because, as we all know, Diana’s one contribution to film theory: Alan Rickman Makes Everything Better.

I leave you with the following reflection:

“The whole episode — this business of killing off the headmaster — cannot look good on the Professor’s resume. Who’s he going to use for a reference now? Voldemort? And how might one reach a person who cannot be named? Does he also have a daytime phone number that cannot be named?” — Mary Beth Ellis

Translation: SECRET SOCIETY GIRL

That’s right, folks, it really is good news Friday! I am pleased to announce that I have sold my Russian translation rights for Secret Society Girl to AST Publishers (who also put out Meg Cabot) in a hard/soft deal!

WOO HOO!

Thank you to my lovely, lovely agent, Deidre Knight, and my lovely, lovely, foreign rights agent, Whitney Lee.

Have a great weekend, guys. I’ll see you when I hit the ground again. (Will probably be when my copy edits come on Monday!)

Well, since Gena is busy auctioning off her brother in law, and I’ve had a crappy week, I’m commandeering her blog theme for the day.

Give me some good news, people!
Good news Friday?

Actually, it’s kind of weird how crappy the week overall has been, considering the multitude of good things that have happened to me this week, and apparently I’m not alone in feeling this way. So perhaps this isn’t as much “Good News Friday” as it is “Count Your Blessings Friday”

Anyway, so I’ll start:

1. I received my second check, called a “delivery and acceptance payment” (I deliver, they accept) for Secret Society Girl. Pah-tay!
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie is out.
3. Right now, this very moment, the actual COVER cover of my book is sitting in my mailbox at home.

Okay, so what blessings are you counting today?