I've come to the conclusion that writing a 120,000 word novel is easy. Yes, I said easy, but that is compared to surgery sans anesthetic (trust me here) or, say, writing a query letter. Over the past couple weeks I've been hitting the query thing pretty hard, reading good and bad samples, memorizing the do's and don't's, trying my hand at my own...and have discovered there's as much information out there on querying as there are hairs on a shedding cat.
That said, and to keep my head from exploding with information overload, I've decided to post the good sites I come across here, not only for my own therapy, but also for my followers, or follower (Hi Rob!) to assist in making their own query adventures a bit less mind boggling.
On Couch #1 is an excellent site by literary agent Jennifer Jackson. Jennifer is an agent with the Donald Maass Literary Agency and attended the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, OH (I was there too!) One simple sentence on her site literally grabbed me by the shirt and said "read on!" That sentence is: "She believes in a hands-on approach with a focus on career planning and editorial support." I don't know about you, but that is exactly what I want in an agent - someone who is hands-on, cares about my career and will ensure my manuscipt is in top form.
Visit Jennifer's site and check out her blog for her series of Query Wars posts. The numbers are a little intimidating - number of queries received vs. number of partials or ms requested, but that's the writing world, folks. She hands out fantastic query advice and comments with a gentle hand - I like that.
Enjoy!
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