Ladies and Gentlemen,
Get yourselves over the blog of the very awesome Lisa Amowitz for the entry rules for her contest!
Prizes will include a 5 page critique from me! So if you’ve wondered what a crit. looks like from me or you just want an excuse to talk things over with a short associate lit agent who owns disabled cats – YOU CAN WIN IT!
A signed ARC of FRESHMAN YEAR AND OTHER UNNATURAL DISASTERS by Meredith Zeitlin.
and COMPROMISED, by Heidi Ayarbe
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I m so excited, you guys! YOU GUYS! New York Times Best-Selling author Suzanne Elizabeth Phillips raved about JB Lynn’s CONFESSIONS OF A SLIGHTLY NEUROTIC HITWOMAN on Facebook! It cropped up all by its onesy and I couldn’t be more thrilled!
The wonderfully funny, quirky, fantastic CONFESSIONS OF A SLIGHTLY NEUROTIC HITWOMAN came out on 1/24/12 from Avon Impulse and has been knocking folks dead (pun intended! BA-ZING).
See how happy I am! I took this when I got the hard copy:
It was released from Avon Impulse (telling you guys, “digital” is NOT a dirty word!) and I’ve been so impressed by it all!
I’m going to direct you to awesome reviews here, here and especially to the girl-who-reads review here . Also, be sure to check out JB’s website for links, resources, and general awesomeness.
What’s the book about? HINT: talking lizard, sexy cops, and a gold medallion mob boss.
Maggie Lee is not your average hitwoman. For one thing, she’s never killed anyone. For another, after hitting her head in the car accident that killed her sister, her new best friend is a talking lizard—a picky eater, obsessed with Wheel of Fortune, that only Maggie can hear.
Maggie, who can barely take care of herself, is desperate to help her injured and orphaned niece get the best medical care possible, so she reluctantly accepts a mobster’s lucrative job offer: major cash to kill his monstrous son-in-law.
Paired with Patrick Mulligan, a charming murder mentor (who happens to moonlight as a police detective), Maggie stumbles down her new career path, contending with self-doubt, three meddling aunts, a semi-psychic friend predicting her doom, and a day job she hates. Oh, and let’s not forget about Paul Kowalski, the sexy beat cop who could throw her ass in jail if he finds out what she’s up to.
Training has never been so complicated! And, this time, Maggie has to get the job done. Because if she doesn’t … she’s the mob’s next target.
JB Lynn is amazing, and you can follow her on twitter or check out her website at www.jblynn.com She’s kind of the bees knees.
YAYPANTS!
-Vic
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I am digging the 30 books chosen for 2012′s WORLD BOOK NIGHT.
World Book Night , hosted April 23rd (Shakespeare’s b-dayy!) promotes literacy, booksellers, libraries and general awesomeness by sharing FOR FREE a list of 30 selected paperback books.
To learn more about WORLD BOOK NIGHT and to get involved or register as a giver – check out the website
Here are the 30 books for 2012:
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The Revision Request can be awesome… or it can be soul-crushing. Meredith Barnes blogged about The Exclusive Revision here, go check it out for a better summary.
Essentially, when an agent likes your manuscript, but feels it need extensive revision before it can be sold, that agent may ask you to revise it, send it back to them, and pending those revisions, they may offer representation. The key word there is “may.”
Why don’t we just offer on the manuscript and have you revise under contract? Sometimes we do. And (if we seem overly keen on revision requests) sometimes it backfires.
Revising is a different skill than writing. It behooves us to know that you can revise before we offer, because all too often it goes wrong. Why? Well. [Expletive deleted] if I know, but I suspect it has more to do with the troubles of communicating than any sort of failure on either the part of the agent or the author.
here’s how people think it works:
Here’s how it actually works:
Look at all that noise, the distractions (including perceptions, anxiety, fear, excitement) we both have to sift through! And it’s not just about communication with each other, but with ourselves. We have to successfully verbalize (and in the author’s case, write down) our vision.
You authors out there, you are dealing with a great divide; that seemingly unbridgeable gap between what you want to write and what you actually write, the black hole between your vision and your execution.
Don’t worry, it’s okay! Consider yourself a member of the team if you’ve wailed at a keyboard having aimed for John Green and hit somewhere closer to Highlights Magazine (no offense, highlights, I loved you at the Dentist’s office!)
Most of you talented devils find a way to navigate it. My point here is to illustrate the many opportunities one has to fail to meet expectations.
Offering and crossing our fingers that the revision is successful seems unwise and a little cruel, so we offer the revision request in the hopes that we’ll get lucky.
Mike wells blogged about the odds of the revision request calling it The Slow No; believing that 98% of revision requests are on a long road to “no,” that results in a lot of heartbreak, frustration, anger and wasted time on behalf of the writer. And you know what – he’s right. IT SUCKS. It sucks out loud.
But, I think Mike’s portrayal of the situation is decidedly one sided.
I can totally understand why an aspiring author, after months of revisions and positive exchanges would feel led on, taken advantage of, bull-dozed and utterly devastated. All that work for no pay-off. UGH.
But it can be just as tough for the agent! It is not our plan to turn you down even though it happens often. We are hoping for that last 2% that DO meet expectations and DO get offers. We’re hoping to be an exception. We are ALL hoping for an exception, are we not? Our jobs -both our jobs- are about beating the dismal publishing odds.
Still, unsuccessful revision requests can feel an awful lot like a break-up. There’s a relationship based on expectations, reinforcement and maybe genuine fondness, and when it all goes south everyone is pissed off and crying and WHERE IS THE CHOCOLATE AND WINE AND MY DVD OF “SOME LIKE IT HOT?!”
So, what are the risks and what are you supposed to do?
1.) in addition to feeling heartsick, like, truly in mourning…You also might end up working for free. You could put months into revisions and when all is said and done never be paid for that time. Granted, so can the agent. Some agents might be willing to work on your manuscript with out signing you. Some may never be willing to (agents can get burnt by authors who end up signing with another agent), but you’re certainly allowed to ask.
Is the agent just going to write you an e-mail or give you one phone call? or are they going to give you an editorial letter or maybe even line edit?
It still may not matter. It may only get your hopes up. But you might also get a better book in the end. Gauge how you strongly you feel about the agent’s efforts AND what they suggest because…
2.) You could always wind up changing the book so it works for only one person. Mike writes “Even if the agent or editor does not understand the highly subjective nature of the feedback he or she has given [a writer] [the writers] do! [Writers] know better than to spend weeks, months or years customizing their book,” and I agree. Don’t change things just because we say to. Don’t do it multiple times because we ask you to. You are allowed to disagree with certain points. You are allowed to choose an end date. You are also allowed to say, “I appreciate the offer, but I’d rather revise non-exclusively and re-query you.”
3.) Finally, Mike says, ” do not let so-called industry experts dictate what is “good” or “bad” to you. “ ( I don’t love his use of the phrase “so-called,” like we’re all running around flashing business cards we made out of construction paper and the lone office sharpie) but he is right. If you feel strongly about a point then stick to your guns. Take back your writing.
If that means turning us down- that’s okay. Obviously, I don’t want you to say “no” to me, but c’est la vie…
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I am excited. Meredith Zeitlin’s FRESHMAN YEAR AND OTHER UNNATURAL DISASTERS comes out from Penguin Putnam in a little under three months! March 1, 2012! Meredith and I will celebrate with Kelsey themed antic activities ( there will be musicals, bad photographs, cute boys and dancing!)
Description:
Laugh-out-loud funny high school drama – perfect for fans of Lauren Myracle and Meg Cabot
Let’s say you’re fourteen and live in New York City. You’d think your life would be like a glamorous TV show, right? And yet . . . You don’t have a checking account, much less a personal Black American Express card. You’ve never been to a club, and the only couture in your closet is a Halloween costume your mom made from an old laundry bag.
In other words? You’re Kelsey Finkelstein – fourteen and frustrated. Every time she tries to live up to her awesome potential, her plans are foiled. Kelsey wants to rebrand herself for high school to make the kind of mark she knows is her destiny. But just because Kelsey has a plan for greatness . . . it doesn’t mean the rest of the world is in on it.
Kelsey’s hilarious commentary and sardonic narration of her freshman year will have readers laughing out loud
So, if that’s not awesome enough you can watch the book trailer (all sorts of clues about Kelsey’s hilarious antics!), check out the blurbs, and read all about Kelsey at her website!
SEE HOW PRETTY THE WEBSITE IS? I TOOK A SCREEN SHOT!
click the link above or head to www.kelseyfinkelstein.com to check it all out.
I’m so pumped!
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I received this from my friend. He’s always been an imaginative dude, and as such, did both the illustration and the tag-line. Inspiring, funny, and a little weird. All things of which I approve.
” Where will you be when Canada drops the bomb? Will you cry under your mother’s skirt and pray for death?
Or will you saddle up your polar bear, strap on your rocket launcher, and slog through the nuclear winter to join your Mexo-merican brothers and sisters at arms at the siege of Montreal? – James Rand
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It can be tempting to introduce readers to your world and its inhabitants. I get it. Introductions are important, well-mannered, and knowing how to introduce people at a party can spare everyone the awkwardness of a single unidentified person attempting to be part of the conversation in ways that will always sound like “will you let me talk to you?”
We’re tempted, I am at least, to provide backstory. How many times have you explained a friend with basic character traits? Amy is a singer. Mike is really funny. Chris is smart. It helps make connections and establish the parameters of a future meeting, an anecdote about last night etc…
Resist this temptation. the key to three-dimensional, authentic characters is that we’re beyond introductions. Think about people you love. Your close friends. You had a first meeting, once. Maybe – in the first few minutes – you decided that Amy or Chris or Mike (for example) were talented, funny, or smart. But now, because you’re friends, when you think of them you don’t think of their traits – you think of them.
Amy, Mike and Chris are the sum of so many things; behaviors, senses of humor, opinions,experiences, stories, neuroses, a preference for chocolate over vanilla, a middle school crush on Jonathan Taylor Thomas. At some point, you went out for a drink with Amy and she told you about that time she accidentally selected Anne Murray instead of Anne Margaret during a round of Karaoke and had to sing a Canadian 70′s soft-jam to a crowd of musical theater graduate students.
You’ve had months with Amy, maybe even years. But your readers are on a truncated time table and every word must matter. We don’t have time for introductions, set-ups, or first meetings. Trust Us. Just chuck us into that Karaoke booth with Amy.
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Last night I was fortunate enough to receive a free ticket to see Harry Belafonte in conversation at the New York Public Library.
Harry Belafonte is a singer, songwriter, actor and activist. He wrote “The Banana Boat Song” which is mostly known as “Day-O,” and “jump in the line” which conjures an image of a levitating, goth-kid Winona Ryder doing some sort of merengue at the end of Beetlejuice.
Harry was also a serious activist. The man bailed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. out of jail.
Harry told us a story last night that I want to share.
Sometime in the late 40′s – early 50′s, after his early rise to fame as a singer in New York, he booked a gig in Las Vegas. A native Harlem resident who spent most of his nights at The Royal Roost (later called Birdland) backed by Al Hague and Charlie Parker and Max Roach etc., Harry was unfamiliar with the social customs of Vegas in all it’s gaudy, shimmering, kaleidoscopic, flash-bulb glory. So he walked in through the front door of the hotel. This, it turned out, was a mistake. Harry was not supposed to come in through the front door. He was also, it seemed, banned from the cafeteria and rest rooms and main lobby. He was politely, condescendingly, disgustingly showed where he and his people were permitted.
Harry made a call to a powerful uncle, who made a call to his guy in Cleveland, who made a call to Vegas and it all worked out … as well is can when you’ve been told you’re more like a scrappy stray dog than a man.
Anyhow, Harry gets up on stage later that night to perform. He starts doing his whole “let me entertain you!” jazz handed, two-stepping, toothy-grinned shtick. And to quote Harry: “you never heard so much noise in your life, glasses clinking, shouting… they totally ignored me.” Harry was pissed. So he calls his manager. They argued.
“They ignored me. I didn’t even exist!” fumed Harry bitterly.
“You failed to captivate them.” replied the manager cooly
So, Harry changed his game plan. The next night. He marched out on stage and screamed ‘Tiiiiiimmmmmbbeer! Tiiiiimmmmber!” and launched right into Jerry (This Timber gotta roll), a powerful ballad about slavery. He said he poured all his bitterness and frustration into that song. And everyone shut up. They saw him. They were mesmerized.
So last night, when he was asked about that moment in his life and what it meant to him, Harry paused briefly and said “well, I realized at that point, that the mission was not to entertain, but to be an artist. When I committed to the art, the entertaining just happened.”
Now walk around with that quote for a while. Just for today, don’t think about your reader, your deal, your agent, the small voice in your head that tells you you’ll never make up your mind or find a way to finish (or start), that you’ve definitely got that rare disease that’s killing you slowly. Just think about your art, find a muse, be inspired.
Harry Belafonte, who knew, right?!?!?
XOXO
V
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# Trendz
Check this out. I don’t know if it’s a ” Steig Larsson was my muse” thing or what, but these three keep circulating in brain/conversation space and I realize the “noun of noun and noun” formula is gold.
Next on my to read list:
“The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer” which doesn’t quite match up to the formula, but it’s similar enough. And I heard about at BEA on the YA Buzz panel, and thought “I’m gonna read that.”
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Hello Everyone,
I’m sorry it’s been so long. I’m writing to address two issues; timliness and guilt. In this case, the former begat the latter.
I’m running desperately behind on answering fulls and partials and getting to queries. I’ve also, in trying frantically to catch up where I could, made things completely disorganized. I don’t know how many I need to get to, what dates they’re from etc…
The guilt has been churning in my gut for weeks. I’ve got indigestion. I figured I should explain.
Summer was nutty. A lot of things happened at work and personally, for me. Some good things. Some bad things (for those of you who saw the bruise I tweeted, it’s faded to a not unpleasant mottled green 
) So I fell a little behind.
Then something catastrophic happened. My poor little HP mini netbook died a horrible, flu-ey death.
Then I fell so far behind that other agents have lapped me, finished the race, and are sipping apple juice boxes on the bleachers and I’m still jogging.
I work from home a lot. Not technically, I work from a cafe down the street where a girl with black-brown curly hair gives me free chai lattes because I order enough to put her kids through a moderately priced private school. That’s where I get most of my reading, querying, and responding done.
Without my teeny, gutsy netbook I can’t do that. I’ve hated it to the point that I dreamt about it twice over the summer. Waking to find I’m still earth-shatteringly behind. Someone needs to invent a word that means “the disappointment of reality after a good dream.” Someone German, they’re excellent with words that mean complicated feelings.
I’m so sorry, everyone. I truly am.
Now for the better news: After 30 + hours and weeks of rest, tinkering, virus killing, rest, crashing, re-installing windows, rest, and new drivers – Mr. Netbook has risen!
Like clockwork, I had a mild family emergency (don’t worry, it’s going to be fine) today so I’m off the grid for the weekend, BUT I promise to start catching up, and quickly.
Thank you for your patience.
xoxo
Victoria
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