If you're a writer, read this.

I found the link to this post by Ira Glass on the DorothyL list (thanks Bonnie Riley). 

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste.

But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.

A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit.


Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this.

And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.

Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.


It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.

And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile.


You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Get ready!

Say it in Llama font!

Now, do you know what it says?

A prize for the first correct guess in the comment column!

Good company!

The April 15th edition of Library Journal had a nice article on crime fiction. I read it on one screen with another screen open to Amazon so I could buy the ones I knew I wanted to read.

As I was clicking merrily along, I came to this:

Mysteries with muscle
Agatha Christie–style murder mysteries à la Jane Marple typically attract individuals—usually more female than male—interested in particular kinds of settings/communities or in stories that highlight characters and character relationships before crime. This year, a somewhat overlooked mystery genre subset featuring tough-guy narrators in gritty worlds dominated by male characters is muscling its way into prominence.

Among the most hard-boiled of these titles are three excellent series debuts. The Cut (Reagan Arthur: Little Brown, Aug.) by acclaimed crime fiction writer George Pelecanos deals with an ex–Iraqi War vet who recovers stolen property for anyone with enough cash and whose work gets him entangled with the criminal underworld.

Fun & Games (Mulholland: Little, Brown, Jun.) by cult crime and Marvel Comics writer Duane Swierczynski channels pulp fiction noir in the story of an ex-cop who stumbles across a ring of sociopathic hit men specializing in accidental deaths. In newcomer Wayne Arthurson’s Fall from Grace (Forge: Tor, Apr.), a prostitute’s death leads a down-and-out reporter to uncover a scandal that could cost him everything, including his life.

Purgatory Chasm (May) a first novel by amateur race car driver and builder Steve Ulfelder, is one of several “tough guy” mysteries St. Martin’s Minotaur imprint plans to launch in 2011. Other titles by the likes of Steve Hamilton and David Housewright are also on the list. Ulfelder’s protagonist is an ex-alcoholic and mechanic who finds himself embroiled in a murder investigation involving a fellow AA member with a shady past.

However testosterone-driven these novels may appear, St. Martin’s executive editor Keith Kahla admonishes that “[it] doesn’t mean that men are the only readers of these books—in fact, [established writers of similar crime fiction] have a substantial following among women readers.” He argues that to label these mysteries as male- oriented or female-oriented is to shortchange both the books and the readers.

Holy Murgatroyd!!! That's OUR Steve Ulfelder! Mentioned alongside George Pelecanos! And Duane Swierczynski!

Dear Readers, I gasped for air, clutched my gills and swam for shore the nearest bar to quaff a celebratory glass of sparkling cider (since Conway Sax belongs to AA!)

Pub date is May 10!

I ♥ Zachary Ruthless!

(Please don't tell his mom.)

Zachary Ruthless is clearly a shark in training.   (He's also 10, which reveals a lot about the level of my sense of humor.)

If you or one of your young friends would like a blueprint for becoming Ruthless! Evil! Dastardly! this is the book for you.  And it's your lucky day: it's on sale NOW.

Awesome Aussies!

They've nominated THE PERICLES COMMISSION for the Ned Kelly Award!




I've always wanted to visit Australia. Now I have a legitimate business reason to do so! I wonder if they'll let a shark swim through the Panama Canal?

The art of a template query letter

Obviously you do not write a new query to every agent. (You do know that, right?)

What you do have is a template: the body of the query, the signature, etc. that stay the same for each agent. If this is new territory for you check out the QueryShark blog that critiques query letters sent to the Shark. Read all 200 entries and you'll see what I mean.

Where you want to be careful on those templates and in personalizing the query is that you get the information RIGHT.

Here are some mistakes I've seen recently:

1. "I'm querying you because you like MG fiction"
I love my colleague's MG fiction but I don't rep it and I don't sell it. You're welcome to query me for it; I'll send you a form rejection. When you specifically write that I like MG fiction, it shows me you're either not paying attention, or you're keeping sloppy records. Neither of those things are positive attributes.


2. "I"m querying cause you're at a small agency."
This just makes me laugh. In case you think FPLM is small, consider that we have 12 agents on the FPLM team and we're actually one of the biggest independent agencies in town. There's nothing wrong with wanting a small agency, but FPLM isn't that. Again, this shows you're not paying attention.


Personalization can be tricky. The truth is you really don't need it. Write well enough, and have a project I want to read, and you can leave off all the personalization.

Be careful. Don't bite yourself in the asterisk. Leave the chomping to The Shark Herself.

A very smart guy said

"For all of the "how-to write" blog posts and con sessions, the best place to learn the craft is by reading voraciously."

I believe that is true.


On the list of things to read is GALVESTON by Nic Pizzolatto.  The first 22 pages are a master class in how to start a novel.

If you're looking for a place to send some "thank you God" money

I am profoundly grateful to have work I love, colleagues I respect, clients I admire, and a life that is full of amazing.  I never want to take that for granted.  One of the ways I try to remember to say "Thank you God** for all of this" is to make donations. Some small. Some not.

Here's the place I'm sending money today.

I found it via this email from a friend:

The NYC MS Society is beyond amazing. They helped me with paperwork and campaigns to cut my hospital bills by half, they helped me fight with my insurance company to ensure they cover my medication (that would be close to $1,300 a month without insurance), they gave me the medication for free for 12 months when my first insurance company wouldn't cover it, they sent nurses to my home free of charge when I didn't feel well and they've been a support system since day one.

I would never ask you for money, nor do I expect you to donate. I know that one's greatest fear when donating to an organization is "well, what will they actually DO with the money?" However, if you make a donation to any charity this year, I urge you to make it to the NY MS Society, because I know from experience they go above and beyond what they are required to do.

**To whomever you thank when you realize it's been a very blessed day.

Impromptu Writing Contest Results!

Award for understatement of the decade
"The junk-punch hurt" Dan Krokos 8:10pm


These lines just cracked me up:
Then this manly ray of sunshine sauntered in with all his teeth
Traceyhansenwrites 8:14pm

I knew she hadn't been hungover since the first time she'd stolen the whiskey from behind her mother's toilet tank.
Inkasrain 9:37pm


Excuse me," said the cowboy, "I gotta go powder my junk."
Wayne Plourde 10:12pm


Someone has seen some of the brawls here at the office:
Jared X 4:48pm



A whole sub-genre on missing pants (I blame Jeff Somers and Sean Ferrell for this)

Where was his dignity? Or his pants?
Traceyhansenwrites 8:14pm

But his dignity was irretrievable, like his pants.
Shelley Watters 8:48 pm


And soon as I crawl out of this ditch and find some damn pants
Richelle Morgan 11:59pm



He called me a simpleton without pants. I checked. Sure enough, junk.
David 1:50pm




Who wouldn't want to know more about these characters!?
This is the story of an amazing, selfless girl, whose super power was the dignity-punch.
S.K.Walker 8:15pm


He’d lost the pig-riding race, punched dignity in the mouth and now stood, in a cow suit with a quarter suspended between his horns, awaiting her fabled “nailgun-through-the-eye” trick. Praying they’d meant the quarter’s eye, not his.
Helen 12:29am



Some of the entries had a particularly brilliant line:
I was hungover on the morning of the second zombie werewolf attack.
MaryOwen 11:03pm

The Jeep only grinned, the steam leaking from under the hood and the gaps in its grill making it look like a toothless, hungover wino smoking a cigarette butt.
Kari Lynn Dell 10:54am

I washed my face in the toilet.
Kelly 11:49am

The junk slipped quietly between the shoulders of land into the inlet
Micah 11:57am


These entries made the final cut:
C.L. Moyer 8:26pm

Amy Parker 12:35am

L.Scribe Harris 2:40am

SarahB 9:02am

Joel Q Aaron 11:10am

Bettyfokker 11:14am

Kevin 11:54am

Jenn 2:45pm

Karen 5:18pm


And here are the four finalists:
Chad 10:28pm

The garage-door-barely-opened- first- blue-haired-yard-sale shopper scurries up the driveway, zeroes in on her find, and inquires, “What's with the gunbelt, Honey?”

Annoyed by the presence of this shopper prior to start time, the hungover homeowner mumbles, “A fluke purchase after a late night of junk-punch drinking . . ..”

“It belonged to the Duke, you say?”

Frustrated, the homeowner inhales deeply and responds with purposeful enunciation and elevated volume, “No, Ma’am . . . a buck for the 'fluke?!'”

The elderly woman's back straightened, “I got my dignity, but the Duke is the Duke!”

-----------------
Christwriter 11:50pm
“He’s junk-punch.”

“I think you mean punch drunk.” We’d had rum combos the night before. “Why?”

“He’s so hungover, his dignity’s tied to his gumbelt.”

I looked. “Dingbat. You mean he’s got the dinghy hooked to his gunbelt.” My sister’s boyfriend did indeed have his belt hooked to the yellow boat.

“Whatever. Hey, watch this.” Julie exited stage right. A few seconds later I heard two angry roars, first the boat, then the man. Julie returned, smiling.

“So when are you going to dump him?” I asked.

She watched him chase his runaway jeans. “I think I just did.”


------
Briandbuckley.com 9:49am

She rose from the ketchup-stained carpet by a series of escalating efforts: elbows, hands, knees — vertical! Sunday morning. No, argued her fuchsia BudgetChrono wristwatch: Sunday afternoon.

Hungover from an ill-advised 3 a.m. experiment with absinthe, Commodore Platypus rum, and an industrial-grade pomegranate processor, she wobbled kitchenward, seeking the cappuccino machine and dignity, in that order. She was not seeking Damien, who crossed the faux tile out of nowhere with gunbelt swagger.

Damien.

Shit.

"It's not what you think," he purred. She cracked her knuckles, preparing to deploy a shaky but enthusiastic brand of punch-junk love.

----------------------
Alice 3:27pm

“You’ll get him next time.”

He wished she’d said “I told you so.” It’d hurt his dignity less.

He took the icepack she offered and grimaced. He felt punch-drunk. No, punch-hungover. The kid had handed him his ass--much longer and he'd have cried "Uncle!" just to get him to stop. Christ, he was too old for this shit. He opened his desk drawer, dropping his gunbelt in the junk next to his PI license, and made a decision.

“No, Kiddo,” he patted his daughter –Partner!-- on the hand.

“You’ll get him next time.”




And the winner is Christwriter.  As you can see it took a LONG time to decide. You guys wrote some really amazing things on this contest! Thanks to everyone who entered!


Christwriter, drop me a line with your mailing address and we'll send you the Chelsea Cain audio book edition of THE NIGHT SEASON.

if you're a writer...

I've said it before, I'll say it again right now:  Toni McGee Causey is brilliant.

Whether she's writing (how I love Bobbie Faye!) or teaching, she always entertains and illuminates.

Here's her post on POV.  If you're a writer, read this. Then really REALLY study it. Then implement it.

You're welcome.

What are you going to read in the dog days of summer?

Have you planned your summer reading yet? We're here to help!

Our Person is reading a lot of Berkley Prime Crime lately:

Here, we'll pick a good one just for you!

Ooops!

"Sorry Steve, I forgot to mention some character name changes in Purgatory Chasm.  Conway Sax is now Janet Reid"



ok, that's not true.
Really.

Here's the real picture of Steve Ulfelder holding his brand new book Purgatory Chasm, coming to eager readers everywhere on May 10!

Impromptu Writing Contest!

I've got a copy of THE NIGHT SEASON audio book version by Chelsea Cain!  You want it, yes you do!

Here's your chance to get your paws on it:

Enter the impromptu writing contest that starts TONIGHT at 8pm and runs through Friday (4/15) at 8pm. (All times are Eastern Daylight Time aka Shark time)

Write a story using 100 words or fewer.  Include these words in the story:

junk
dignity
gunbelt
hungover
punch

Bonus points if you use ONE hyphen to connect any two of the five words!

Post your story in the comments. Comments are closed till the contest starts.

Ready? Set? Write!

Calling all Cowboys...and Cowgirls!

Need a horse fix?

Can't have a horse in your house? Here's the next best thing!

WILD HORSES OF THE WEST is on sale today! Yay!

What did Barbara Poelle leave at the bar last night? **UPDATED

A great time was had by all, particularly the ever-slithery Barbara Poelle, agent extraordinaire (and by extraordinaire I mean Potato Vodka Queen of the Known Universe)

Sadly Barbara forgot an item at the party. She texted us to ask us to hang on to it if we found it.

What did Barbara lose?

Was it A: her tiara?

Was it B: the keys to her dungeon manuscript reading room?

Was it C: her pink sombrero?

Was it D: her own version of BossyPants?

Was it E: her date for the evening?***

***Barbara telexed from her hideout an undisclosed location to let me know the date did not quite as well as she'd hoped:

Was it E: All of the above?

Was it F: none of the above?

Hasta la vista, Tekserve!

Last week wasn't much fun.  The icing on the cake of crapola was Friday, when my laptop seemed to be on its last legs.

I'd been having problems with my beloved laptop ever since I'd run some sort of software designed to free up harddrive space by removing the extra languages.  (I'm really not going to need Finnish any time soon, no matter how much I liked James Thompson's SNOW ANGELS)

The computer was running slowly, taking an ungodly amount of time to turn off and on.  I'd taken to just having it sleep most of the time, rather than actually power down.

Then Thursday I downloaded a bunch of movies, and the computer said "naw, not doing that" and sat down on the metaphorical curb and cried.

Great.

Well, I knew I needed to back up data before taking it in, but I couldn't get the software installed for the new remote harddrive.  I sucked it up and trudged down to Tekserve. I've been a customer there since 2002. I've bought five or more computers there, almost all my peripherals, and been content enough to keep going despite a glitch or two.

I expected to wait a while for repair, but I didn't.  I was surprised how few people were there.  The first time I'd been to Tekserve was on a Friday night and you'd have thought there was an open bar there were so many people standing around. This time there were maybe five people waiting.

I explained my problem to a very pleasant young woman who had a really nice bird tattoo. I explained I'd probably done something stupid by trying to clean the computer a while back, and then probably downloaded too much stuff the previous night.

Fine. The young woman tells me what she's going to do as if I'll understand it. Do what you need to I say to her, and she does.

Fifteen minutes later she says "your hard drive is corrupted. You need a new one. Fortunately it's covered by warranty. Of course, none of your data can be saved, but we can try to restore it for you for $549.  If we can't, you don't have to pay."

Whoa!
Hang on a second.

I'm pretty sure my hard drive is working, albeit slowly. I'd sent emails on it five minutes before leaving the office.  It turns off and on, slowly yes, but it does. The screen doesn't go blank.  It doesn't suddenly fail.  It's just slow.

And what's this about losing all my data?  I don't think so.

I ask if it's possible to drag and drop my file folders onto a flashdrive.
The birdlady says "no, your hard drive is corrupted."

Fearing the worst I ask how long it will take to fix. "Oh just a day," she says.

"So if I bring it on Saturday, I'll get it on Monday?"
"No, you'll get it on Tuesday."

"And if I bring it on Monday?"
"You'll get it Tuesday."

Well, it seems clear that the thing to do is go home and try to salvage as much data as possible, either by emailing myself files or getting them on flash drives. There's nothing to be lost by bringing the computer back on Monday instead of leaving it now.

So I buy the three largest flash drives Tekserve has.  Three 32 GB flash drives, and off I slither into the subway.

I get home, and pop the first drive in.  I drag and drop a file folder. The computer burps and says "no, I don't think so"

So I drag and drop single files from the folder.

And lo and behold it works.
It's going to take a while, but it works.

As I'm loading up the flash drives I realize I need to find the software disc for my MS Office program.  Of course I have to hunt for it.  I'm pawing through my discs when I come upon something I'd forgotten I had.  The discs that reinstall the operating system. For this laptop.

Whoa.

When I'd screwed up the computer, maybe I'd screwed up the operating system. What if it's not the harddrive? What if it's just the operating system?

I get everything on the flashdrives but a couple of files from iTunes, and I sadly say "sayonara" to four seasons of Law and Order, figuring when I reinstall the OS, I'll never see them again.

Then I take a deep breath, install the discs and mutter a prayer.

And it works.

The OS gets reinstalled. The computer restarts itself and presto, magic turns on in about 30 seconds, not three minutes like it had before.

The computer coughs a few time like she's waking from a nap, then starts back to work. And my god, all my files are THERE. I have the backups, but the files on the computer are still THERE.

Es su milagro!

At this point I'm so grateful I don't have to 1. buy a new computer 2. lose any data 3. have three days downtime I forget that the technician at Tekserve not only had the wrong diagnosis, she didn't actually ever ask me if I'd tried reinstalling the operating system.

And she was right: replacing the harddrive WOULD fix the problem. It wouldn't cost anything. It was covered by warranty.  What she ignored was the cost in downtime and lost data. 


This is the second time Tekserve has been cavalier about cost when I've dealt with them. Once is a mistake. Twice is a pattern.

Now, I'm not going to say "I'll never buy another thing there again ever ever ever" cause those kinds of blanket statements can end up biting you in the asterisk.

What I am going to do is this: I'm not going to Tekserve first.  There are now other places to by Apple products in NYC. There are other places to talk to Apple techs.  I have no idea if they are any good, but I'm going to find out.

And losing my business won't damage Tekserve in the least. I'm a small potatoes customer.  Of course, I am intending to buy my assistant a new computer, and I am intending to buy a wireless router, and I was looking at Macbook Air computers with an idea of upgrading, so they maybe lost three sales in the next month.  That's not much.  But it's something.

So what's the point of this blog post? It's not an exhortation to boycott Tekserve.  Make your own decisions on that.

The point is that I was reminded how important it is to listen to what people say.  I can remember times I've just been so certain I was right I cut people off in conversation.  I've done it during pitch sessions. I've done it in conversations. I've done it a lot.

This incident was a pretty clear reminder to me to shut up and listen carefully. This was my reminder that you can be right, and still be wrong.

Backspace Query Contest leads to fisticuffs...surely you're not surprised.

The Shark, The Suzenator, the Were-Mer-Bear from the Lair, along with several other agents who shall remain under the desk clutching a bottle of Macallan 12 whimpring No Mo Query, No Mo Query nameless if not non compis mentis, gathered on Monday to read the entries for the Backspace Query Contest.

Each query was read by three different people who each voted yes/no.

Then the queries were separated into two piles:

1. The queries with three no's
2. Everything else

Each of us read the remaining queries, marking yes or no as we read.

Once a query accumulated three no's, it joined the pile of "not this time."

We were left with a pretty fair chunk of queries.

We read them all again and ranked them.

And then we had a fistfight.

Then Suzie brought out the firehose and threatened to melt me down like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Meredith Barnes leaped in front of me shrieking "no! no! She doesn't melt when you douse her with water, she turns into a REAL shark!!"

Suzie turned off the hose just in time.

Cooler heads prevailed.

We voted.

And we have two winners.

Congratulations to:

 Kris in Brooklyn

and

Joe in Florida!

I called them both tonight to share the glad tidings.

I love this job, I do!