Today’s winner of the Dirty Little Lies Week Giveaway is: PAM. Pam please email me your address and I’ll get you your prize. As for the rest of you, leave your comments here to be entered into tomorrow’s giveaway of this fabulous new release!
In other news. Today is also a doubly important date: it’s Sailor Boy’s Birthday, AND the day I turn in Secret Society Girl 2. Happy Birthday, Sailor Boy! I love his birthday, because it means the start to the part of the year where we are the same age. Yes, I’m petty like that.
So, yesterday, I went over to Panera to grab a sandwich. I was bundled up in my iPod, as usual, and so I didn’t notice at first that the man in front of me in line was screaming at the attendant that he was going to call the police. Apparently, he’d left his laptop on one of the tables in the restaurant, and it was stolen. Finally, the manager came over and took the man aside, where he continued his tirade. The manager was all, “Well, we take no responsibility for items left on tables. But sure, go ahead and call the police.” The weird part about it was that the shape of the man’s threats were such that he seemed to be saying that if the manager failed to produce the laptop like, right now, he’d be having HIM arrested for the theft.
So anyway, I’m standing there, with my scratched, year and a half old, clip-broken off iPod, and this other dude comes up to me and says, “Nice iPod. I just bought one like that.”
Me: “Cool.”
Him: “But it was stolen here yesterday.”
Me: (holding iPod closer to my body) “Wow, really?”
Him: “Yeah. I was downloading music and I left it plugged in and someone took it right off the table.”
Me: (thinking: his iPod was stolen off the table, but not the computer he plugged it into? And what is with people leaving their electronics lying around? I point to Mr. I’m-Calling-the-Police.) “You should talk to that guy. He just had his computer stolen off the table here too.”
Him: (looks at guy. dismisses him. turns back to me.) “Really?”
Me: “Yes, really. Maybe it was the same person. He’s calling the police right now. You should talk to him. Oh look, you’re up next.”
Seriously, though, was that guy insinuating that I’d stolen his iPod because I happened to be standing there with an iPod? Like they’re rare or something? Everyone in the place had one! You know, at the time, it didn’t occur to me that that was what he was getting at until he totally didn’t seem to care about a fellow victim and just wanted to talk about how his iPod had been stolen.
The reason why it didn’t occur to me that he was accusing me was because the state of my iPod is so totally not “brand new” and also, they don’t even MAKE my model of iPod anymore and haven’t for the last year (it’s an iPod photo, which was replaced by the iPod video). So I couldn’t take seriously the idea that he’d have a valid claim against a person who happened to be standing in line at the busy downtown Panera wearing an outdated iPod which features, among it’s thousands of tracks, the audio books of the entire Chronicles of Narnia series, not to mention Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Peter and the Shadow Thieves. I mean, that shit takes at least a day to upload. And everyone else in the store had an iPod too. And why did he think my iPod was “like his?” I totally can’t tell iPod model on sight, other than the obvious full size/mini/shuffle thing.
But I digress. The point is, don’t leave your electronics lying around in coffeeshops, and definitely don’t do it at my local Panera, because it’s apparently lift-a-laptop central over there.
PS: In passing, I’m going over some notes that my critique partners have left about SSG2. BOTH, in one particular scene, ask me “How long has passed? A few days? A few weeks?” I’m not exactly sure how to handle this. Usually, I’d add in something to the effect of “A few weeks later…” but that won’t really work here. Why? Because the scene STARTS as follows: “The next few weeks passed…” How much more explicit can I get? How is it that they both missed this? We writers spend so much time thinking about our first and last lines, and people skip right over them…
Hello, blog readers, and welcome to Dirty Little Lies Week here on Diana’s Diversions.
Why, Diana, what is Dirty Little Lies week? Are you going to start lying to us? Has your blog suddenly drifted into NC-17 rated territory? Are you, in fact, a hobbit?
Sultry Latina bounty hunter Marisela Morales is back, taking on the Boston elite — and her gorgeous ex — in a red-hot, roller-coaster adventure from USA Today bestselling author Julie Leto.
Three months into her training for Titan International Investigations, Marisela Morales needs some R & R, and the tuxedoed hombre de misterio sending her scorching glances across a crowded ballroom looks like he’d be happy to fulfill her needs. Closer inspection reveals that the masked man is danger with a capital F — as in Frankie Vega, her ex-lover and Titan colleague. But before their reunion reaches the boiling point, a senator is shot and Marisela must confront a female assassin with a wicked reputation — and a link to Marisela’s old life.
Working under Frankie provides Marisela with plenty of aggravation, along with some sinfully sexy after-hours benefits, but she’ll need to keep her mind on the job if she wants to beat the demons from her past…including an irresistible man who betrayed her…and a killer chica who’s her biggest challenge yet.
Now, I have not yet read Dirty Little Lies, but I know it’s going to be awesome. And how do I know this? Because I read Dirty Little Secrets, the first book in the series, and I absolutely loved it. This is what I wrote about it on Amazon:
Marisela Morales is a Cuban-American bounty hunter with a checkered past. When she’s hired to keep her old lover, ex-con Fransisco Vega, from skipping bail, Marisela decides its the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one bullet: she’ll make a little cash and deliver a bit of payback to Frankie for breaking her teenaged heart.
But Frankie has other plans. Now an undercover agent for a private investigation company, he’s been sent to recruit Marisela for their latest assignment, one that will propel the tough-talking chica into a world of glamour, intrigue, and international terrorism.
The first book in Leto’s exciting new adventure series features relentless pace, dazzling settings, breathtaking action sequences and her trademark sensuality. Her portrayal of Tampa’s Cuban community is spot-on, and her descriptions of my home state left this Florida girl more than a little homesick. Frankie and Marisela burn up the pages, and Marisela’s new boss Ian provides some heat of his own.
In Marisela, Leto has created a strong, passionate, no-nonsense heroine with a heart of gold. The author portrays her Latina heroine with authenticity and expertise. Despite Marisela’s rough edges (and gang member past), she is sexy, smart, and extremely moral. Unlike many of the action heroines in books today, she never comes across as cartoonish or invincible, but as a real woman who just happens to be very good at her dangerous job. Marisela may be kickass, but if you cut her, she bleeds scarlet.
I highly rcommend this series to anyone looking for thrilling, sexy read. I can’t wait to read Marisela’s next adventure!
And it remains the truth. In fact, Dirty Little Lies will be the first book I read when I quit my Deadline Book Diet. Yes, even before Scott Westerfeld’s The Last Days. Sorry, Scott.
If you want to learn more about Dirty Little Lies, check out here, here, and especially here, where, if you click on the Dirty Little Lies cover under where it says “Featured Books for August 2007″ there is a very cool interactive game about the book. (If it doesn’t work, click back and then forward on your browser.)
Now, about Dirty Little Lies Week: Every day this week, I will be giving away a signed copy of the book, Dirty Little Lies, to someone who comments on the daily blog post.
ANNOUNCEMENT: I have received a few emails from people saying they never got my Secret Society Girl countdown giveaway prizes. If you haven’t received your prize, please email me with the prize you won and give me your address again so I can try again. I don’t know how that happened, unless it was because Sailor Boy and I were out of town right after the giveaways, and perhaps prizes that were returned in the mail somehow got lost because they were holding our mail.
ALSO: At the end of the week, I’ll be doing the grand prize drawings from the countdown that I promised like, a month and a half ago and then totally flaked on because, well, book release, travel, party, life-changing events I’m not talking about yet, and deadline. Oops.
FINALLY: Julie doesn’t know I’m doing this. I’m sure this state will continue to exist for about five minutes, and then my phone will ring. Because, Julie? She Knows All.
Others include his kickass cameo on Veronica Mars and, oh, that little show he thunk up about the blonde teenager who sticks wooden things in the hearts of people who are allergic to the sunlight.
Joss Whedon talking about Equality, like, right now:
Thank you, Joss. You know, as a woman, and as a woman who writes what is called “women’s fiction” (Maureen, you’re okay with that but not chick lit? Don’t you think that once you’re ghettoized, it doesn’t matter what term they use to do it?), I love that you make the whole debate sound as ridiculous as it is. Some have said that my protagonist’s struggle is unrealistic in this day and age. Others have said that’s bullshit and that there are plenty of times when people, including, say, presidents of Ivy League Universities, forget that we don’t hold truck with the notion that women are a “weaker sex.” Institutionalized sexism may be going the way of the dodo, but that doesn’t mean we have equality now.
Recently, I was asked (not by him!) not to refer to Sailor Boy as a feminist, because it made him sound unmasculine. Um, the hell?
Like Joss, I write strong women. But I don’t think about doing it.
Today, we shall be talking about Stephanie Lehmann’s latest release: You Could Do Better. Those of you who want to discuss the genre known as chick lit, keep reading after the GCC info. Those of you who recently indicated that they are uninterested in commentary and just want heads-up on blogs, keep reading anyway.
This is what it’s about:
The author of The Art of Undressing makes her highly anticipated return with an irresistible new novel about a woman trying to choose between the man of her dreams — and her fiance.
Daphne Wells is way too busy watching television to start planning her wedding. She tells herself that being glued to the boob tube counts as research for her job at the Museum of Television and Radio. But the truth is, as much as she’s looking forward to a future with her fiancé, Charlie, their sex life just isn’t ready for prime time.
Then Daphne meets sexy, successful writer/producer Jonathan Hill when he comes to the museum for inspiration. Daphne spends a weekend in the Hamptons at Jonathan’s beach house—on business, of course—but the picture comes in loud and clear: This man can turn her on as if he’s a remote control. She’s more confused than ever about marrying Charlie. What if she can do better?
This is Stephanie’s website: http://stephanielehmann.com This is Stephanie’s blog: http://historyoftelevision.blogspot.com
So, as a girl who can’t imagine being uninterested in planning my own wedding and who doesn’t even own a television set that gets network reception, let alone cable (look, if there is anything really good on, I’ll get it on DVD, as evinced by the recent arrival of Veronica Mars, season two in my Netflix shipment), I can’t say that I’m going to have a lot in common with Daphne. But that’s all right. I don’t smoke and am not overweight, a’la Bridget, I’ve never, thank goodness, been in the type of horrific debt so often enjoyed by Becky Bloomwood, and not once in my whole 27 years on earth have I ever been attacked by a rove of rampaging vampires and woken up in a coffin in a tacky Chanel suit and ill-fitting shoes, as Betsy Taylor has been wont to do.
Doesn’t matter. I doubt the people who ‘ve been feeling Cinderella’s pain for the last millenium ever got a chance to wear blown-glass shoes, either. These chicks speak to me. They have problems to overcome, lives to get on track, friends to keep or lose, sex to enjoy or regret (or, you know, both), and they want to laugh while they do it.
Lehmann writes books about women who are dealing with sexual dysfunction. You can’t tell me this isn’t an issue that speaks to a whole host of women who have been conditioned by Meg Ryan and romance novels and Herbal Essences. And maybe, just maybe, that instead of reading some dry as dust tome telling women to just relax or better yet, lie back and think of England, they want a girlfriend to sit beside them and tell them a funny story that says, “Sister, I’ve been there.” And you can go ahead and laugh, and relax, and think about it because it’s safe. It’s not real. It’s just something funny. It’s just fluff, right?
There’s a well-known theory in the science fiction community about how science fiction is free to break all these boundaries because people don’t think of it as “real” enough to get upset over. Star Trek has the first interracial kiss on American television, stuff like that. I hear that Battlestar Gallactica is having a full out exploration of the abortion debate (it hasn’t made it all the way up my Netflix queue) that is shocking everyone, becuase, heck, it’s science fiction, and they can do it, because it’s not real.
And meanwhile, chick lit, they say, is setting back feminism. It’s reaffirming all the worst stereotypes about women: that they are shallow fashion hounds who just want to find a rich Mr. Right before the cat fight starts. After all, the covers are pink. And they employ the term chick. Seriously, most of the arguments I’ve seen against chick lit use those as their main, if not only, complaints. “The covers are pastel and the word “chick” is demeaning.”
Let’s start making a list of words that were once considered demeaning until the people to whom those terms referred decided to claim it as their own. I’ll go first: Yankee.
I’m not saying that all chick lit is good. Some of it is bad. Some science fiction, in the midst of all that breaking of boundaries and interracial kissing, was little more than an excuse for oversexed, adolescent ship captains to go chasing after mylar miniskirt-clad spacebabes. But some chick lit is making statements. Real statements, that in years to come, will be remembered as turning points in modern feminism. We now have a huge body of fiction, popular fiction, genre fiction, about the range of choices women have now, and how complicated our lives are because of it.
Take for example Emily Giffin’s recent release, Baby Proof, which is about a woman whose husband wants a baby, and she doesn’t. Giffin herself says that she chose that premise becuase the alternative, that the woman’s clock is ticking and the husband is all hands off, seemed like the traditional, expected situation. Isn’t that the joke? It’s the woman whose clock ticks? Apparently, Giffin received nasty notes and Amazon reviews (the actual review is gone from the site now, though the responses remain) saying that a woman should have children, and that it’s selfish of her not to want them. Other Amazon reviewers title their reviews “real issues — not so much chick lit,” which is in keeping with my position that people call chick lit that transcends their prejudices something else, rather than calling it chick lit that transcends their prejudices. As I once heard an agent say, “if it’s got aliens and ray guns, don’t tell me it’s not science fiction.”
Meanwhile, Booklist says of Baby Proof: “By avoiding easy answers, Giffin once again proves she’s one of the best chick-lit writers in this thoughtful, layered, and wholly original story of a woman facing a major choice in her life.”
Chick lit does not, as some have claimed, present “one very narrow representation of women’s lives.” It allows for the full spectrum of options available to the modern women. Education, career, Mr. Wrong, Mr. Right, marriage, baby… or not any of those things at all. There are chick lit novels about young widows, about grieving mothers, about sisters whose paths in life are so wildly divergent that you wonder how they splashed out of the same genetic pool. There are some that you’ll read and never think about again, some that bash you over the head with their issues, and some that have you falling out of your seat laughing until you begin to cry because you realize that’s you the author is talking about. She nailed you. What scares you, what worries you, what angers you, what frustrates you, and most of all, what entertains you.
Chick lit: it’s funny because it’s true.
Have you read a chick lit book that touched you? Tell me about it. Post a comment.
I wrote this whole blog post, and then my browser crashed. Blah. So now, you guys get blog quiz for today.
You Are Noon
You are upbeat, ambitious, and never at loss for energy. You have a lot that drives you in life. The desire to be the best, and a secret hope of fame and power. And while you definitely have a Type A personality, you are still fun to be around. You have a ton of charisma and a genuine interest in others. You are adored by many.
Perhaps you have seen the current blog posts about Nalini Singh, who is an amazing author and a Great Blog Voice Experiment participant. It seems that a reader’s blog called Dearauthor.com is interested in seeing how 100 bloggers blogging about a book can change its fate.
I’m all for this, naturally. I’m also all for the prizes being given away. But I’m also mildly skeptical.
This is what Dear Author would like you to post: ______________________________
I am participating in a blogging experiment hosted at dearauthor.com.
To enter the contest, put up this blurb, image, and trackback and you are entered to win the following prize package.
$200 Amazon gift certificate Signed copy of Slave to Sensation New Zealand goodies chosen by Singh ARC of Christine Feehan’s October 31 release: Conspiracy Game
You can read about the experiment here and you can download the code that you need to participate here.
SLAVE TO SENSATION Nalini Singh Berkley / September 2006
Welcome to a future where emotion is a crime and powers of the mind clash brutally against those of the heart. Sascha Duncan is one of the Psy, a psychic race that has cut off its emotions in an effort to prevent murderous insanity. Those who feel are punished by having their brains wiped clean, their personalities and memories destroyed.
Lucas Hunter is a Changeling, a shapeshifter who craves sensation, lives for touch. When their separate worlds collide in the serial murders of Changeling women, Lucas and Sascha must remain bound to their identities…or sacrifice everything for a taste of darkest temptation.
Let me say first that I am dying to read Singh’s first single title. I loved her GBVE post, which was set in a similar, futuristic world ruled by psi powers, and I’ve always enjoyed her category romance novels.
However, being a member of a regular blog touring group, a blogger who regularly blogs about books, a writer who has seen the effects of being blogged about both as part of a group and also spontaneously, and a blog reader, I am skeptical of any canned blog content. In my experience, if it walks like a press release and talks like a press release, then bloggers are going to skim over it to get to original content.
There are several blog touring groups that do this: just spew out a bookshot and a blurb whenever they do the tour, and I never read them. Just skim past the post. I’ve heard this over and over again from readers, as well. Some of these “bloggers” only ever post this stock content, in exchange for having their books toured on real blogs.
People want original content on blogs. They don’t mind if you are taking excerpts from other blog posts and riffing about them yourself, or pointing out blogs to them that they should read and providing your own commentary, or what. Just make it NOT be the exact same wording they see on a dozen other blogs. It’s the blogging equivalent of the AP wire, and it gets old pretty quickly.
Many of the members of the group I tour with, The Girlfriend’s Cyber Circuit, work hard to provide original content for their readers. When I had my tour, I spent a whole day answering the different interview questions that the authors had for me. If you followed the tour, you could learn a lot of info that wasn’t available on my website or my blog or Amazon.
So I don’t know. I do know that I get annoyed when I do my regular blog surfing and visit 10 or 20 blogs with identical content. I’m not getting my fix in. I want to read 20 blogs, not one blog 20 times. I also know that when I started doing the GCC tours, I got complaints, both in the comments section of my blog, and in email. I was told point blank by several visitors that they wanted me to stop talking about reading and start talking about writing.
(I kind of giggled at that, because as far as I’m concerned, all good book writers are book lovers. The first piece of advice I have for anyone who wants to be a writer is read. Read read read read read and then, when your bookshelves are in danger of collapsing in on their own mass and going black hole, or your local librarian cowers in fear when you walk in the door because you’ve read everything in there half a dozen times and their budget can’t meet your demand — or both — then you can be a writer.
Yes, I know that most of the people who read this blog are writers, but everyone who reads this blog is a reader. )
And often, it’s hard to provide original content for a book I haven’t read. If I don’t know anything about the author or the novel, it’s not always an easy proposition. I’ve been touring a couple of books in the past month that I’m dying dying dying to read, but I can’t because I’m not allowed to read any books until I finish mine.
I love what Dear Author is doing, and I love that they’ve chosen such a worthy novel. I hope it sells like hotcakes, and I hope that the blog tour has something to do with it. But I’m worried that after the first half dozen times a visitor sees the same post, they’ll skip over to the next blog, maybe even get annoyed by the novel because it’s getting in the way of their regular blog reading.
But maybe this isn’t the purpose here. Maybe the point is to heighten visibility of the novel, even subconsciously. You may not read the post, but Nalini Singh will get stuck in your head (it’s such a gorgeous name, after all… like music!) and then you’ll see it someplace else — maybe in Romantic Times, or on a bookshelf, or a post that DOES provide original content that you read — and you’ll think to yourself, “I heard of that book somewhere else. I’m going to pick it up.”
Which you should. Because it’s going to be awesome. Don’t believe me? Read her GBVE entry. She’s an amazing writer, and that’s what she did with a few hundred words. Can you imagine what she can do with a few hundred pages? I’ve had my Amazon order in forever, and I’m going out and buying it the day it’s on sale, because I have a friend that lives for futuristics, and I just know she would love it.
And I’m not just saying that because she’s on my blogroll, or with my agency, or because she once provided my blog with free creative content. I’m saying it because, long before I knew Nalini, or had a blog, or even visited her country of New Zealand, I was a fan who read her debut Desire, and loved it.
(Full disclosure: Nalini offered to send me an ARC, but I declined because of my deadline. Stupid, stupid stupid! Ah, well. Fourteen more days and that baby is mine!)
Not to detract from the kickass analysis of my query letter going on in the previous post, but does anyone watch The Office (UK version)? Help me, please
Last night I watched the series 2 (otherwise known as season 2 for us Yanks) finale of The Office. Somebody please please please explain to me why Tim turned down the job and actually suggested making Gareth his boss? What am I missing here? Was this all so he’d continue to be free to possibly date Dawn? Because, as her boss, he wouldn’t be able to? Or is he just a lunatic?
I’ve been trying to write this morning, but my brain keeps coming back to this conundrum.
A lot of writers struggle with query letters. They’re not easy to write, but they are very valuable. They are the first chance a prospective agent has to see your writing, and your only chance to describe the story correctly. Agent Kristin Nelson has been dissecting some of her clients’ queries on her blog. I thought I’d show you mine.
Below is my query letter for Secret Society Girl to my agent. I sent it in April of 2005. It’s almost identical (except for the personal parts about our past connections and her agency’s current needs) to the queries I sent to other agents and/or cover letters to agents/editors who requested the book as a result of Marley’s excellent networking. (As regular blog readers know, my critique partner Marley Gibson first pitched this book to a variety of agents and editors at a conference that I was not attending. The only thing she knew about it at the time was that it was “a story about a girl who joins a secret society at Yale.”)
I thought it would be fun to dissect the query letter with 20/20 hindsight, and to that end, I have not done any retrofitting of the letter. It appears as I sent it, warts and all. My comments are in italic purple, and my agent Deidre Knight’s are in bold red. At times we have a little she said/she said action. A couple of spoiler warnings in effect here. Though the story changed a lot in the writing and revision process, cover your eyes in the plot description if you don’t want to hear anything. _______________
Dear Deidre,
DIANA SAYS: I call her “Deidre” here because by this point, we’ve already exchanged about a dozen emails (I’d previously sent her another project, she was currently looking at a full of yet another, and we’d partied at a conference). If this were my first (or near-first) contact with her I’d be calling her “Ms. Knight.” I know Miss Snark goes on and on about how she hates being called “Ms.” when it’s actually “Miss” but until agent listings specify honorariums, I’m going with my safe option. I don’t know all the details of their personal lives! Usually, in business relationships like this, I let the other party lead the way when it comes to informal address. If they write back and sign “Deidre” then I’ll write back to Deidre, etc.
DEIDRE SAYS: Truthfully, if someone addresses me as Ms. Knight after our first email interchange, I begin to feel uncomfortable. I’m an approachable person, and I’m not sixty years old either. Although I appreciate the show of respect, it’s much more important to me to feel as if we’re on at least a somewhat relaxed footing.
I know you probably haven’t had a chance to look at my February submission yet, but I wanted to keep you updated on what is going on at my end.
Immediately I appreciated Diana’s sympathetic appraisal of my reading schedule. Many authors don’t realize that the “reading stack” is a source of great guilt for most of us in publishing. Having her acknowledge that, yes, I obviously hadn’t read it, but that she understood—and was simply sending me an update—immediately captured my respect and attention.
I’m writing today because my recent work-in-progress has garnered some attention from publishers. (Agent sits up slightly, listens more attentively. Often authors will toss this claim around in a meaningless way, but the smooth way in which Diana segued into the next sentence had my ear.) Last weekend, one of my critique partners mentioned it off hand at a conference, and now “whatever I have” has been requested by St. Martins Press as well as a few agents. I recently heard that you were looking to acquire some YA projects, so I thought it only fair to let you know that this is my latest.
At this particular time I was, in the immortal words of Duran, Duran, “Hungry like the wolf” for both YA, and also really looking for a few new clients. That she had a project that had already attracted publisher interest, and that it was in a genre I was looking for definitely had me sitting up even taller in my virtual seat. Another thing? She’d done her homework; she knew what I was looking for. When an author approaches me and has had her ear to the ground about what our agency, or what I’m personally doing, is always a good thing.
Looking back, I find this query really apologetic. At the time, I was very stressed about the idea of sending in another project when the agent in question hadn’t yet given me an answer about the manuscript she was looking at! Note all of the commentary suporting my concern.
Funny, but it never struck me as apologetic, just respectful, excited, and relaying pertinent facts. Beware the “haughty” update that seems to indicate the whole publishing world is already at your feet. This approach is amateurish. Diana seemed to be a personable, pleasant person who was also aware that her work was gaining some value in the marketplace, even though no deals had been inked.
I probably could have left it out or been more aggressive, but agents hate hearing “I’ve got this extraordinary novel!” so that concerned me, too. I wasn’t sure how to get across “the only reason I’m writing you when you haven’t gotten back to me yet is that this thing is about to pop!” Also, note that even in my self-aggrandizment, I leave room to point out that I do know what the agency is looking for and I think I’ve got it.
CONFESSIONS OF A (SECRET) SOCIETY GIRL is a 60,000 word novel suitable for older teens and college students. It twists conventional “secret society” yarns like THE SKULLS into a chick lit tale of college life, complete with classes, keggers, and… conspiracy theories.
This had me at hello. I have always been intrigued by secret societies and conspiracy theories. The word “keggers” brought back my own college days with just one word.
Boom. Welcome to my high concept. One sentence including title, word count, genre, target audience and premise.
The last thing college junior Amy Haskel expects is to be tapped into Rose & Grave, her Ivy League school’s most prestigious secret society. As far as she can tell, she’s lacking a potential initiate’s two basic requirements: 1) a Y chromosome and 2) the ambition to become the leaderof the free world. Sure, the sassy, independent Amy is an honor student and the editor of the literary magazine, but everyone knows that“Diggers” (as society members are called) only want future industrial kingpins or shadowy government types of the male variety. Not women –not even smart ones.
Absolutely phenomenal pitch. Was nearly frothing with excitement. It was well written, smart, and made me want to read a whole lot more.
I’m really proud of this paragraph. I think it’s funny, smart, and to the point. I hear a lot of writers complaining that they can’t get their voice across in a short query letter, but all it takes is a little quip here or a lush description there to say what kind of writing you’re giving them. It also very subtly gets across major characterization and hints at the conflict. Also, in the very first paragraph of the query, I’m indicating Amy’s list-making habit which is such a strong part of her character. My synopsis has the same paragraph in it. And, lest you think that these things aren’t important, compare to the actual flap copy on the cover of my book:
Elite Eli University junior Amy Haskel never expected to be tapped into Rose & Grave, the country’s most powerful–and notorious–secret society. She isn’t rich, politically connected, or…well, male.
Amy soon learns that much of Rose & Grave’s rep is a combo of Hollywood hocus-pocus and carefully cultivated rumors. After an initiation ceremony that is one part Harry Potter and two parts amusement park thrill-ride, Amy begins to bond with her new brethren, who come from all walks of life, and discovers that the society’s imposing tomb is no more intimidating than your standard frat house. The Diggers are elite, sure, but not in the blue-blood way she always thought.
Compare to the flap copy:
Whisked off into an initiation rite that’s a blend of Harry Potter and Alfred Hitchcock, Amy awakens the next day to a new reality and a whole new set of “friends”–from the gorgeous son of a conservative governor to an Afrocentric lesbian activist whose society name is Thorndike.
After that, the flap copy writers go in a different direction, to appease marketing and avoid spoilers. But I don’t need to be vague in my query. In fact, vagueness is probably a negative. I want to be very upfront about the nature of my book.
But she also learns that some of the more nefarious rumors about Rose & Grave are true. The alumni members exert an enormous influence, and they aren’t afraid to wield it. The society’s prominent “patriarchs” are none too happy that this year’s seniors have gone behind their backs to tap women for the very first time. They threaten to close the tomb and sabotage the future of both the graduates and the “illegal taps.” When Amy’s confirmed summer internship evaporates after speaking out against the patriarchs’ sexism, she begins to fear that they have the power to do just that. Enraged, the new female taps organize against the patriarchs to prove that women, especially Digger women, are a force to be reckoned with. It’s a move that may save their society, but also earns them some very powerful enemies.
Amy has other worries as well. Her best friend (who has been vying for a society tap since the day she first stepped on campus) refuses to share even one detail about her own secret society experiences, though the outlandish hints she drops make the elaborate Rose & Grave rituals look about as hard as a Rocks for Jocks exam. The editor of the campus newspaper seems to have an ax to grind against both Amy and her society “big brother,” and is willing to blackmail them to get an expose on Rose & Grave (Amy knew she shouldn’t have spent the night at his place!). Of course, it doesn’t help that Amy’s “barbarian” (non-society) friend-with-benefits won’t let the Boyfriend Issue go. And then there’s the little matter of final exams.
Plot summary, and again, note the little inroads I’m making into revealing the voice of the manuscript. Not overwhelming, just a hint here and there. This is probably a lot more plot summary than I needed (I feel like I throw everything by the kitchen sink into it!) and if I were doing it again, I’d probably pare down.
One thing that I made sure to do was highlight the weird world I was taking people into, with the society jargon like “patriarchs,” “barbarian,” and “Diggers.” This seems as if it goes against what some of you have heard me advising in reagrads to fantasy queries, to keep the weird language and stuff out of it as much as possible. But this isn’t a fantasy book, so I have some leeway. The trick in fantasy is making it seem real, and if you’ve invented a world, people are already going to have some adjustment period getting used to your world without trying to get all the jargon in. My book is the real world. I wanted to show how bizarre this real world was and cement the insider status by slinging some of their strange jargon.
Again, as before, Diana intrigued me to the extreme. Please remember how many queries an agent sees every day. I can honestly say that Diana’s was wholly unique and very fresh. She’d pitched a book that I’d want to pick up in the store and buy—I couldn’t wait to “dig” in (sorry for the pun, Diana!)
As you may remember, I graduated from Yale University in 2001 so I’m extremely familiar with the culture of campus secret societies. Though the story is fictional, many of Amy’s adventures are based on the experiences of my friends and fellow students, as well as the true history of societies like Scroll and Key, St. Anthony Hall, and of course, the notorious Skull and Bones.
Yes, Diana called forth a mutual acquaintance and our previous interchanges here with this paragraph. Plus, she absolutely highlighted that she was THE person to write this book.
The “as you may remember” part was just for Deidre’s benefit, since we already knew one another, but you can bet I highlighted my platform on every query I sent out, as Bantam Dell has been for my marketing campaign (the radio ad describes me as “Yale grad Diana Peterfreund”).
Given the current fervor over secret-society books like THE DA VINCI CODE and the success of Yale-set stories like CHLOE DOES YALE and THE GILMORE GIRLS, I feel CONFESSIONS OF A (SECRET) SOCIETY GIRL is a very marketable concept with series potential.
This part is an example of how to reference other books without saying something like, “I write just like Nora!” I’m not saying my books are like any of these things (indeed, at the time, I’d only read Chloe). But I do know that those things are popular, so maybe now is a good time for my book.
Please note, everyone: Agents find queries that claim to be the next “anything” both vaguely insulting and amateurish. However, helping an agent see where a project could fit into the market is always good—it expands our five second impression and takeaway from the query, allowing us to immediately picture selling the book. Even the editors we might approach.
Also note the very casual way I throw in “series potential.” If you are writing a series and you are currently unpublished, this is the best way to handle it. Make the first standalone and say the book has series potential. Don’t say, “first in a tetralogy” or whatever. Keep it flexible, especially in the query. You can play hardball once you have an offer.
I am in the process of completing the manuscript right now and expect to be done within the next two months. However, the partial is complete, and I have attached it to this email. I know I keep throwing unfinished projects at you, and I apologize, as I had no intention of trying to market this book before it was done. But because of our personal connection, I didn’t want to keep you in the dark.
Lie. Lie, lie, lie. (This para was just for Deidre, by the way, since we’d exchanged probably more than a dozen emails by this point, and had met in person and talked about our lives, there was a personal connection and informality here I would not have used in other queries.) I have since learned so much more about my process and luckily, Deidre saw right through me and set my deadline at the end of August. I finished the book in five months. And again with the me apologizing. But it was because I’d broken all the “rules.” I knew it was wrong to query on an unfinished project, but I “had a feeling,” based on the kind of rabid interest Marley had garnered, and the current market climate. Turns out I was right. I don’t recommend it though. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, you’re just going to piss people off. More on that later.
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So it wasn’t perfect, but I think the good parts (i.e., the description of the story and the reason behind its timeliness) were so good that not only did this query get requests, it got quick reviews once I sent the pages. Some parts were even used on my eventual flap copy. As you can see from this as well as Kristin’s examples, often the needs of queries and marketing flap copy are decidedly different.
This query got results. My timing was right, and I’d captured her attention. She read the partial that afternoon and offered me representation within the hour. I’ve been counting my blessing ever since.
So I was blithely reading the paper the other day, and came across this whole hare-brained scheme to start adding planets to our solar system. “Why, that’s ridiculous!” I thought, and did a dramatic reading for Sailor Boy, right there in the elevator.
And then I pretty much forgot about it because, well, Pluto and the Planetoids (which, by the way, would be a rocking band name) are really far away, and there are some damn pressing matters on Earth right now. (Ceres is right over the other side of mars, but whatever.)
Well then, I was reading the blog of Scott Westerfeld, who is all, Screw the new plan, and while we’re at it, screw the current scheme too. Pluto should not be a planet.
And I thought to myself, Scott, baby, don’t do this to me. I may have to find myself a new professional crush. I may have to start posting willy-nilly about some other hot young YA writer. (Kelly McClymer, whose new book,Salem Witch Try Outs, is on shelves now, might be a good option. If I were shopping. Or maybe I’ll just pick Justine, who should not be reading this right now, becuase she has work to do. Keep it in the family, as it were.)
I was, as Scott so colorfully put it, a culture vulture. I love me my Pluto. My “pizza-pie” in the mnemonic I’ve been spouting since forever. I was siding with John Scalziandhis daughter. Plu-to. Plu-to. I mean, look at how pretty the artist’s rendition of it is. Lonely outpost at the edge of space… it’s poetry, man. Plutonian poetry.
And then I kept reading, and slowly, it occurred to me that Scott and his buddies may be right. Seems this isn’t the first time we’ve reordered the solar system. It’s just the first time we’ve done it recently. According to Scott, and people in the know far more than he is, we spent much of the 19th century giving names (and even pretty ridiculous astrological symbols that look like they came out of some medieval illuminated alchemy handbook) to a whole bunch of asteroids in the asteroid belt. And then we decided that was silly and scrapped the whole plan.
And all of this was pre-Pluto. So I’m thinking, let’s just stop the madness. If getting rid of Pluto (which, by the way is apparently several times larger than Ceres, according to the U.S. Navy) means that we don’t have to suddenly have 20 planets in our solar system, I’m all for it.
Curse you, Scott Westerfeld.
However, I’m not for the “we have four planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune” plan. (Though if you look at one of the newspaper photos of the new proposed solar system, that’s what it looks like: those four and some specks of dust.) Call me biased, but I like the idea of living on a planet. Though maybe I should get all Star Warsy and be satisfied living just on some rock that can sustain life. All of this, of course, has shown me how appallingly large the gap is between what I know about my planet and what I know about the rest of the solar system. I had no idea Uranus and Neptune were that large. Obviously, in the middle of all of those Geology classes, I should have taken a few about the other planets, but mostly, what I know about outer space boils down to 1) moon geology, 2) sunspots and how they effect the earth, 3) meteorites, and 4) whatever I learned in high school.
Pathetic.
However, that nine-planet mnemonic has always been one of my favorites, so if we’re sticking with eight, we gotta switch it up.
My Very Earnest Mother Just Served Us Nectarines?
Doesn’t quite have the same oomph.
PS: Prize goes to the first person who correctly identifies the meaning and stand-ins behind the following mnemonics, which have always been my favorites:
When A Jolly Man Makes A Jump Very High Tyler Pokes Taylor
and
Come Over Some Time Maybe Play Poker Three Jacks Cover Two Queens
Today’s winner of the Dirty Little Lies Week Giveaway is: PAM. Pam please email me your address and I’ll get you your prize. As for the rest of you, leave your comments here to be entered into tomorrow’s giveaway of this fabulous new release!
