After four days away, my equeries have piled up. Some are pretty easy to discard:
1. "I think my book will sell a million copies in hard cover" is your opening line = ZAP!
2. The email address you use is janet@ and you address the email to "dear agent" = ZAP!
3. You tell me your manuscript has 65.200 words. What's 2/10 of a word?? (not zapped, but you just made it much more likely I'll think you're not very careful about what you write)
4. You query me about a novel and then describe what looks like a biography = ZAP!
(With 100 queries staring me in the face tonight, I don't want to slow down to ask questions. I want to find the 3 or 4 queries that look yummy and jump all over them).
5. I hate hate hate it when you misuse lie/lay. I can get over it if I have to but you really don't want me to hate you on paragraph #1 do you?
6. "personal demons". Let me just make this a rule from now on: if your demons aren't of a professional caliber, I don't want to hear about them. Professional demons only. And they should come with weapons. BIG ones.
7. any mention of me "publishing" your book. I'm an agent. An evil, sardonic, sarcastic agent. I'm NOT a publisher. Those guys are the ones with the checkbook. I'm the one with the cattle prod. If you don't know the difference, see #6.
13 comments:
Don't forget number 8: 'my book is the next Harry Potter' or 9: 'All my brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles love the book'
--Kaleb
Professional demons with weapons. Hmmm. I can do that. ;)
Number 3: " You tell me your manuscript has 65.200 words. What's 2/10 of a word?? (not zapped, but you just made it much more likely I'll think you're not very careful about what you write)"
The writer might be European. They use a period instead of a comma for denoting thousands. Then they use a comma for denoting tenths!
Had fun with this writing tech manuals in the Netherlands.
I didn't think you were evil. Sarcastic yes, honest, oh yeah but also very funny.
I liked you. I know you don't care and you didn't ask for my approval, but I'm giving it anyhow.
(From the Surrey Conference)
There will be none of this "not evil" stuff allowed here!! No sirreeee je!
Just because RCMP didn't allow me to bring my broom, don't even hope I'm nice.
I might have to come up there again just to reiterate this!
Professional demons with big weapons?
Does that mean if I came up with a character like Mallory or Reacher BUT different, you'd be interested?
Tom, you're right. I went back and looked at the query. It had a gmail address but the physical address was not-US.
It failed on several account, not just the decimal point thing but that's a good piece of info.
Thanks.
I find that professional demons often have the most unnervingly sticky personal problems. Blab, blab, blab all the time.
I'm a little concerned about arming them, but okay!
Cattle prods and professional demons...sounds like fun chick lit!
:-)
any mention of me "publishing" your book. I'm an agent.
Right back atcha. I get query letters asking me for representation. Should we swap?
Sorry, Janet, but you were nice to me too, more than once. I can't even pretend you were evil.
(did we all just ruin your rep?)
Wish you were around to use the cattle prod on me! Some days I surf the Internet, check and recheck e-mail, wash every piece of clothing in the house and give my dog a bath before finally getting down to the business of writing!
Great blog, great tips!
Church Lady, I just read Julie Kanner's "Demons are Forever" and she does have professional demons, with large weapons and a distinct MomLit feel. It was a fun book. Dear Agent, this post is a joy to read. Thank you.
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