submissions

Querying and Submissions

October 5, 2009

This week, Michell Plested and I met up for another interview over on Get Published, talking this time about query letters and the submissions process. It’s a great interview, even though I’m a little sniffly in places. We aimed to cover a lot of the questions that writers have when they start to send out [...]

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Dealing with Rejection

September 24, 2009

We all have a deep-seated need for closure in our lives. We like to know why people have made the choices that they’ve made, whether we’ve done something wrong to bring about that choice or whether acting differently could have somehow changed the outcome. In the absence of answers, we tend to analyze situations and [...]

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What not to Write

September 21, 2009

Just as important as how to write, is what to write. In a panel at Anticipation 09 in Montreal, editor David G. Hartwell said: “The sincere desire on the part of the writer to write the book will communicate to the reader. This is not something that is often said in public, but it is [...]

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Proper Channels

September 14, 2009

This may sound a bit obvious, but when you send a query, please send it to the correct address as specified by a publisher’s submissions guidelines. If a submissions address is listed for a publisher, whether it’s a physical address or an e-mail address, that’s the best address to which you can direct a submission. [...]

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Sensitivity Training

August 13, 2009

Many of the authors who work with me ask, at one point or another, if I also write. I usually manage to evade with a vague sort of, “Yes, kind of, but…” type of answer. My usual writing outlet is interactive, collaborative fiction. It’s a cross between writing and chess: I write a line, you [...]

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Submitting Partials

June 25, 2009

If publishers want me to have my manuscript completed before I start shopping it around, why do they only want to see my first few chapters? In this electronic age, do you see publishers skipping the “sample chapters” step in the future? If I’m just sending a file, it doesn’t take up that much more [...]

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Exacting Standards?

June 11, 2009

…Yes. (But it’s still not a crapshoot!) Click through the image of Tuesday’s comic (above) and continue forward — it seems to be the start of a story arc!

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The Crapshoot

April 16, 2009

Authors will often refer to the submission and rejection process as a crapshoot. For those unfamiliar with the term, craps is a dice game of chance. A crapshoot is a roll of the dice, and it’s come to mean a gamble with random and uncontrollable results. You’ll probably have heard, more than once, that getting [...]

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