Week in Review 5/15/16

Welcome to the week that was.

First, thanks for all the help on the redesigned website. I did figure out how to make the text darker.

I've not yet figured out how to optimize it for mobile devices.

I can't seem to fix the white space at the bottom either.

Some of these are just a matter of tinkering which is actually kind of fun and gives me sympathy for all those writers I've told "get a website, it's easy!" 

Colin mentioned the pictures of NYC on the new website made him want to visit:

The pictures of NYC are cool, and make me want to visit properly. Of course, I would love a guided tour. In fact, that might have to be part of the contract should I land a NY-based agent:

"Must give author guided tour of NYC at least once in the life of this agreement." Perhaps if the advance is good, I'll bring the whole family! :D

Oddly enough, I'm the world's worst tour guide for NYC. Unless you want to see the L-train, my local bodega (turkey and cheddar on a roll), the local bakery (coffee and a muffin) or any of six zillion watering holes, I'm kind of useless. Well, I can take you to the Met, or MoMA of course. Mostly though, I just live here, I don't go see "sights" In fact, I actively avoid the places big crowds of people are. One of my favorite websites is this one: Quiet City Maps.


And Donnaeve comes clean about why she didn't want her dear mother hanging about with us hooligans at Bouchercon

Having said that, HA! Ms. Janet, I thought I was so subtle. NOT. The thing with Mom...ya know I tell stories right? Yeah. So, Mom tends to tell stories too, and she EMBELLISHES them. And they're about ME. Running around the back yard in my underwear. Um. No. If I can't keep my eyeballs and ears tuned in to Mom? She will have you thinking I swung from the power line attached to the house playing Mighty Mouse with my brother. Oh wait. We did that.

Colin, you and I are going to need a plan to wrest Donna's mum away from her get the dirt on Our Donna! I love hearing those stories! And my sisters have EXACTLY the look that was on Donna's face at Bouchercon when my nieces and I get together cause they love love love stories of when my sister/their mom was little. And I have no qualms about telling those stories. Payback baby!!!


On Monday, the results of the May We Have (a writing contest) were posted.

nightsmusic picked up on the common refrain about not getting some of the entries:

*disclaimer: I still don't get some of them, but what do I know?

you know a lot. I didn't get some of them either. When I don't get an entry, I do read it more than once, and look carefully for clues. But if I still don't get it after looking at it twice, I pass on it.

Claire scramble to clarify her comment from last week on the writing contest judging

Gadzooks! I'll stop labouring this point now, but I feel the need to make absolutely clear I was not looking for critiques of anyone's flash fiction entries! Perish the thought. Was simply interested in the process by which you go about whittling down so many entries to a final few - i.e. is it simply a gut feel, or does it start with scanning every entry for the prompt words, then eliminating ones with errors of grammar/vocabulary, etc. As applied to the contests in general, not a specific one.

Completely understand you don't have time for this, but didn't want to let a heinous misconception stand!

(Packs bags for Carkoon...)

I read for stories first. If a line or lines, or a phrase stands out, I flag those too. Once I've culled for story, I read them all again. The ones that are too oblique get a pass. That's a real tightrope with flash fiction as someone pointed out recently: the difference between not enough, too much, and just right. I think that line moves depending on the reader and what she brings to the story. I'm not going to understand any oblique Dr. Who references. I mostly get the math and science references. Any kind of high faulting' poetry form, not so much.


A good example of this is the Kae Ridwyn entry

Daddy, quick - watch me slide! Whee!
Sally, four. All giggles, sloppy ice-cream kisses.

Daddy, please may I have Jaimee over to play?
My daughter, nine. Nudges and whispered secrets.

Daddy, I love you. Father’s Day, thirteen. No more under-the-table cubbyhouses…

My own car? Thank you, Daddy! Squeals; hugs of gratitude.

An aisle; a walk; a bride on my arm. Tears, threatening, choked back. My heart too big for my chest.

These memories should be treasured forever.

But they’re ones I’ll never have.

The tiny limp body in my arms? My Sally?
Stillborn.

I curse the day brie was created.

Kae had to decide whether to explain brie or not. Her choice (not explaining) worked out because I'd watched The West Wing and knew brie isn't good for pregnant women. She'd probably have been ok if the judge was a person who'd had children and been warned away from brie during pregnancy. That's most likely a large swath of the population.

This is a perfect example of the knowledge wars about what should be in "the canon." In other words, what must a person know to be considered educated. As one wag put it "how much do you have to know to get the jokes."

There's no one right answer to this, as these contests show. The more contests we have, the better your sense of what I know (and don't!)

And once you know something (Dr. Who trivia, the names of the Star Wars planets; the rules of bridge) the more likely you are to think everyone knows it. A lesson I relearn often when what I know about querying isn't the same as what the QueryShark readers do.

abnormalalien (Jamie A. Elias) said

I'll admit there were a few I had to read more than once to understand.

Yup, me too.

And I needed help to find "whee" in Christina Seine's entry which Solidus and Kitty provided:

Re Christina Seine - "whee" is in there, split across three words: "how he even". Subtle! :-)

When I can't find a prompt, I use spell check and look for "wh" or other parts of the word. That little trick didn't even help on this clever entry!



Craig's entry got attention for burying a great line:

Even more amazing it seems like my Queen was insinuating that I might have been a contender if I had formatted differently. Maybe more like this:

At the bottom of the picnic basket I found a gun instead of dessert. Her face was a plea.

Consider this: At the bottom of the picnic basket I found a gun.

You don't need "instead of dessert" and it undercuts the power of the sentence. I think this is one of the places where reading something aloud would help. You get all the power in "At the bottom of the picnic basket I found a gun" and then you would hear the drop off with "instead of dessert."

Do you guyz read your entries aloud?

This from CynthiaMc just cracked me up:

I hadn't intended to kill anyone off (I'm usually a sunshine and lollipop kind of person. I finished writing and went "Whoa! What just happened?"

It was fun, though. I might do it again.

And in honor of her great entry, Christina Seine decided to burn down her house:

That I still have a home to sneeze in is nothing short of a miracle in my book. We all decided to celebrate by getting the flu.

I am very grateful that life is never boring.

On Tuesday we discussed what to do between getting an offer and accepting the offer.


kittykat asked:

but do you email only the agents who have fulls to tell them about your offer, or all the agents, including the ones who only have queries?

It depends where you are in the process. If you've sent queries within 30 days of the initial offer coming in, I'd let those agents know because they may not have had time to read the query yet.

If the offer comes in and you queried (and didn't hear back) six months ago, no you don't alert them.

General guideline to offer alerts: everyone who asked for a partial or full AND those agents you queried initially within 30 days of the offer.



Lennon Faris asked:

Couple questions - on Day 1 - So you actually *say* to your agent that you are taking a little time to notify other agents? I thought that was something you just skirted around ("I need time to... consider"), and it was assumed by the agent, but would be rude to actually say out loud.

Also, when you contact the other agents, you politely give them say 4-5 days to get back to you, I'm assuming?

Yes you say exactly that. Being oblique does not help at all here. You want to be very clear in your communications.

So: Dear AgentGood Taste,

Thankyou! (insert joyous remarks about offer/excitement etc)

I have a full manuscript out with XNumber of agents. I'd like to give them a heads up on your offer and some time to get back to me. Will a week work for you on that?

While I wait for those slackers may I get a copy of the author agency agreement from you? And of course, I have some questions. Can we set up a time to talk, or do you prefer answering by email. And it's ok to talk to your clients?

Again, I'm thrilled beyond measure at your offer and look forward to talking with you further.

Yours truly, madly, deeply

Woodland creature on a roll



nightsmusic asked:

kay, I'll up the ante for a trip to Carkoon...when you offer, do you send the paperwork at the same time to give the client an opportunity to look things over? Or do you send it on day two - four? And is it a terrible thing to ask for that up front during the offer? The reason I'm asking is because it seems to me, when I got in trouble for what I was thinking on the last post regarding this, that OP there had not either had the paperwork up front or didn't ask all the questions (of which you have a great list here!) prior to informing the other agents she'd had a bite from. I had a huge red flag that went off when I read that initial post as well, but I'll shut my mouth now..

I try to remember to offer to send it but I forget a lot (a lot!) If however the potential client is savvy, s/he asks for it and of course I send it right away. It's TOTALLY OK, in fact it's smart to ask to see the agreement as early as you can. I'd rather have more time to answer your questions and give you time to think than have you rush into a decision you later regret.

Having a client become unhappy isn't any picnic for us either.



Robert Ceres asked:

You initially had us giving the agent a week to decide, but you don't notify her of your decision until day ten??

A week is ballpark. If you have ten agents in the scrum it takes longer to sort things out than if you have two.

If you have ten agents reading fulls and nine drop out, you need less time than if all ten make an offer.

None of these guidelines are legal requirements or sell-by dates on perishable produce. They're more like guidelines: useful most of the time, but will also help you sort out what's really out of bounds (like asking for a month to decide, or an agent who says "say yes now or the offer is rescinded")


LynnRodz asked:

But! I think you did mention before we could have two weeks before accepting an offer. Or was that wishful thinking? I need that extra time. Day One would be spent jumping up and down. Day Two would be hubby picking me up off the floor because of Day One and then Day Three would be convincing myself I wasn't dreaming on Day One. So is two weeks too long to ask an agent to wait, especially if there are other agents that also have the full ms?

This is really agent-dependent. At this point in the conversation with my potential source of income, I'd hope s/he'd say something like "I need three days to calm down" or (worse) "Hey, there are ten agents with fulls, and one is LaSlitherina Herself so I need some time here."

In other words, this time line does not happen in a vacuum. Tell the agents what's going on. We get it. We've been the ones juggling 12-editor auctions (oh wait, that wasn't me, that was Brooks Sherman.)

E.M.Goldsmth asked:

I reread this post with my brain turned back on (more or less). On step 6- schedule a phone call- I had the impression that an offer usually came with a phone call and that was how this whole week to 10 days started. Is that not so? Can offers come with just an email?

I've taken on clients who've only had email conversations with me. Several in fact. If a potential client wants to talk on the phone, of course I call them but I LOVE email: it's permanent for starters. I can remember what I said, they asked, and I can revise and spell check before sending.

Amelia Creed asked:

I'm a bit confused about No. 4, though. Maybe y'all can help me out. I always thought you asked the agent questions during the call. I didn't know it was kosher to send an entire list of Qs to a probably very busy agent. Maybe I misunderstood. Or maybe my entire paradigm has shifted.

It's faster to write answers than talk them. And wouldn't you rather have the questions and answers in writing and not have to depend on your notes? And I'd MUCH prefer to answer in writing because I can, again, revise and clarify before sending.

Lisa Bodenheim asked:

The one question I had, I think you answered in the next sentence. Under #4 you mentioned an editorial letter. Your description sounds the same as some of the commenters here who have referred to an R&R, a revise and resubmit. But just to make sure creeping charlie and quackgrass haven't overcrowded my brainspace...is an editorial letter and an R&R the same thing?

Not really but often the terms are used interchangeably.

An R&R is shorthand for Revise and Resubmit. It's used almost exclusively by authors to describe where they are in the querying process. In fact, someone had to explain what R&R meant when I first saw the term crop up.

An editorial letter is the actual letter describing what changes are being suggested. It can be written by an editor to an author with a book under contract. It can be written by an agent to a client with a book being prepared for submission. It can be written by an agent to an author with a book being considered for representation.

An editorial letter is what is sent to an author who is being asked to revise and resubmit.

Nancy Adams asked:

I was surprised to see that you’re not supposed to discuss the particulars of revising the ms., because for me what I most want to know is whether the agent’s vision of the novel matches mine. (For example: A writer at a conference once told me that her agent had actually asked her to change the MC’s gender and she complied! For me, that would be a deal breaker.) I never realized that asking for that would be a problem, and though I can now appreciate this from the agent’s point of view, is there some way of at least getting an idea of what she might want to change without being too presumptuous?

Let's distinguish between broad stroke revisions and a detailed editorial letter too.

Changing a character's gender isn't an editorial letter, it's a huge revision. DEF something you'd want to know about first. On the other hand, if I wanted such a major revision, I'd ask to see it before I offered representation. I'd assume some risk in this: the potential client might query the revised ms all over town.

A more detailed letter with specific suggestions on how to fix things like ramping up the tension, etc. Those you don't get till you've signed on the dotted line. I assume some risk in that as well: if you can't deliver, I've got a ms I can't sell, and a really Unhappy new client.

There's no one right answer here. Each agent handles this his/her own way, and it may depend on the potential client too.

If you've got ten agents wanting to rep you, this is def something you'd ask about: Do you envision revisions? Can you tell me what they are in general.



Julie Weathers weighed in on revisions with this:

Nancy,

When a friend made a choice between two agents who had offered, the suggested changes to the ms did come up. Super agent one loved the manuscript so far, but wanted some significant changes that would have meant writing three different books instead of one. Second super agent had some different ideas how to deal with big ass novel.

Their different views did weigh her decision.

kdjames asked

OK, so when you say: "The most important question you'll ask is whether the agent wants you to revise before sending the manuscript on submission."

And then go on to say there are agents who won't give a prospective client an editorial letter, does that mean you should expect an agent will at least discuss it with you in general terms but specific enough that you can tell if the vision you each have for the work is similar or wildly different? I hope that's what you mean. That's sort of a big deal.

An agent should be willing to tell you how much more work s/he thinks you need to do before the ms is ready to send.

Generally I'm not going to be discussing representation with anyone until the manuscript is what I believe to be publishable.

That means any kind of revision is generally limited to fixing typos, answering questions (did the ancient Greeks have apples?) and making sure all the character's names are spelled right (you'd be surprised how often Katharine becomes Katherine in a manuscript!)

Often the major revisions come in a second novel with already signed client. Those are the ones with things like: ditch the entire middle section; the tension isn't tense enough; what were you thinking here?; have you ever read a book before?

And there's no way to foresee that, so don't even worry about it.



S.P.Bowers asked

Okay, I'll bite, what's a three year agency commitment? I'm assuming that it's a contract for three years, rather than the life of the author or until either party wants to separate. And at the end of three years they would once again be discussing whether the agent is the right one for representation. I'm off to google and see if I'm right.

It's a requirement that you stay with the agency for three years, OR (worse) that if you leave, you still have to pay the agent if you sell the work s/he represented within three years. That is an undue burden on a writer and you should NOT agree to it.

A good representation agreement allows you to leave within a reasonable amount of time with notice. Mine says you can leave anytime with 30 days notice. It also allows me to collect the FULL commission on any work I represented if sold within six months of my submitting it to the publisher.

If you decamp from The Reef with your submission list in hand, turn around and sell the ms I pitched to BigAssMoneyBags Publishing LLC, you owe me 15% of not just the advance but all the royalties too. Just like I'd sold it directly. And if another agent sold it? You get to pay them too.

Clearly this is designed to prevent both clients behaving badly AND client poaching. Generally, if this is happening, there are many MANY other problems in play as well.



Craig asked:

I would personally like to call the client you didn't hear about from the agent.

Generally I direct prospective clients to my client list on the right hand side of the blog. That's the list of clients for whom I have sold work. There are others, yes indeed, but I haven't sold their work. If you asked, I'd probably give you a list, but don't you really want to talk with the guys who've had a complete publishing cycle experience? Lemme tell ya, the ones who've just signed and are out on submission are a whole lot less likely to tell you something valuable than the ones who've had multiple books published, are now out of contract, and finding out just exactly how hard an agent works when you need to reinvent yourself. You want to talk to the clients who've been through hell. Not the ones who are just now entering the fray.

If you really mean you want to talk to former clients, you're out of luck. I don't give out that info. I'm sure you can find it if you cross reference enough, but I won't make it easy. Except for Kari Dell of course.


Julie Weathers said:

Carolynn,

I've tried offering my first born to agents. I've even penciled it into the contract. Unfortunately, they cross it out with extreme prejudice. It seems no one wants a cowboy.

*note to self when making offer on Cowgirls Wanted; addendum one: firstborn*



Colin Smith said

I don't plan to offer my Firstborn to agents, but I will offer her tasty cakes and pastries. That shouldn't be construed as a bribe, BTW. ;)

*note to self when seeing Colin's query: ask for R&R--revisions and refreshments*



On Wednesday I urged you to celebrate the milestones along the way, not just keep looking toward the end.

It generated the most comments of any blog post in weeks!



Donnaeve said:

Congratulations to QOTKU and her new client!

aha! You guyz assume this was a new client. Nope. No indeed. I signed her for a novel that didn't sell. We put our heads together and came up with the idea of non-fiction essays. She shopped those and had some nice successes. Then we came up with the idea of the non-fiction book. 19 revisions later it's on submission. We've been together for eight YEARS now. When I sell this book it will be a HUGE milestone for both of us, but along the way, we gotta celebrate the smaller stuff too.



I really loved what Susan Bonifant said here:

First of all, Colin, not for nothing, I've been reading and thinking about your advice since long before you became a platinum level commenter.

Second, I am celebrating a different kind of milestone. Last week, for reasons that had to do with good timing and miles traveled thus far, and maybe an assist from my God, I decided to let my book go.

It didn't happen because of stats, I wasn't depressed, and it didn't fail. It just happened that one day, I woke to a head full of the next book and there was no longer room for the other.

It was so clear and brilliant and natural, it seemed to be writing itself. Characters, conversations, personalities, conflict - all there.

I guess I'm the type who doesn't leave until there's somewhere else to go. And so, book 3 and I have parted friends. And now that I'm sure I wasn't just remembering a movie I once saw, book 4 and I are now in a relationship.

and what Brian Schwarz said:

This might be of some service to someone!

2 months ago I started a draft of a new book. I spent 4 months plotting it (something I’d never done), and all that was left was the execution of the words. I figured on writing a chapter a day for a month or two and I’d be completed with a better-than-rough draft. This is my third book, so I wasn’t under any delusions, but after a week of writing a chapter a day, I stalled. And stalled. And then stalled some more. 45 days of no words. None.

Until finally I decided I needed to go backwards to go forwards. My problem wasn’t the goal. The goal was achievable. My problem was what I did when I didn’t hit the goal. I felt bad, and I wanted 2 chapters in a day. And then when that didn’t happen I just got more frustrated. And it snowballed from there.

So I went backwards. Forget 1 chapter. How about 100 words. Just 100 words. You can’t screw up 100 words, right? At that rate, I’d be done with the book in a year. But perhaps some days I’d do more than 100 words? Maybe it’d be quicker. But 100 words is forgivable. I could miss a whole week and sit down and write 700 words to make up for what I’d missed.

The first 100 words took 6 hours at a coffee shop. The next 100 took 2 hours. And then it steamrolled. Now I’m averaging a half a chapter to a full chapter a day, but if I ever miss a day, I only missed 100 words. So I do 200 instead.

Maybe I finish. Maybe I don’t. But I found something that works, something with enough built in grace to keep me moving, and something that I shoot higher than but gives me a soft landing when I fail.

and Panda in Chief corrected a typo for me:

Forgive me for correcting the QOTKU, but I believe the proper term for "woo-woo" is "woo-woo". Wu-Wu is the junior panda living in San Diego (Xiao Liwu, Mr. Wu or Wu-Wu to his friends)

Cheryl said:

I'm celebrating that I'm not imagining things and I did see this post on my Feedly feed last night -- but when I came to comment it was gone. I searched every other writing blog I read and nope, not there. And then I was wondering why Janet didn't post this morning.

Ah, the case of the disappearing post! What happens is that I revise a post and have it slated for a future date (like this one) and the "scheduled date" gets lost somehow. I usually catch it within seconds, but that can be enough for a couple people to "see it"… except of course, it's now gone cause I corrected the date.

Just another way the universe has provided me with tools to torment writers! Ah, it's a good life!



Julie M. Weathers said:

I've been going down to my son's house to bake cookies when the munchkin gets out of school. Warm cookies when you get home from school isn't a big milestone, but it's a comforting memory and maybe those are just as important.

Warm cookies were often the difference between a bad day and a really nice day when I was a kid. I was not a successful child. I hated being told what to do. I hated not being able to do stuff well. I really wanted a horse. Or alternatively, to go visit Misty on Chincoteague Island. It actually never occurred to me until today that when I read those books Misty would have been my grandma's age when I planned to visit her. So, now I need MORE warm cookies.



And let's all welcome Emily Kate to the fray

Today is the first time I've commented after being a lurker for 2.5 years.

On Thursday we talked about what happens when you're doing a revision for a small press editor and still want an agent

nightsmusic asked for some clarifications:

OP subbed to a small publisher?

yes, many small publishers take direct queries and submissions.

No querying involved?

Yes, querying was involved. The writer queried, and got a bite, and the editor liked the project but is suggesting revisions.

The publisher's editor, one of them anyway, did all that work to make it more appealing for publishing but OP still has no idea if that publishing house would want it?

That's actually the norm.

So query an agent and...what? Would the agent just rep OP to the publishing house?

That's largely dependent on the client. If I liked a project and thought it would sell to a large house for oodles of cash, I'd advise the author of that. The author decides though.

Or does agent then have the right to rep OP to others to see if there are any bites?

Not without the writer's ok s/he doesn't.

And what if OP can't find an agent?

Then she gets in touch with me, and I refer her to a contract review specialist to help her.



As did CarolynnWith2Ns:

Do publishes really devote that kind of effort without the author being on their list?

Sometimes, sure. We do it here a lot too. I have one author revising madly on a proposal and she's not a client. I hope it will get to that stage of course, but she's free to look around and see who else is out there.

I actually prefer to sign a client who has actively queried and has options. That way I know s/he chose to work with me rather than got me as a default.  Writers who've been through the query trenches understand that getting an agent isn't just a matter of picking a name off a list and saying "hey there."

Kate Larkindale is the voice of experience here:

This OP is in almost exactly the same situation I found myself in a couple of years back. A publisher opened for submissions for a brief period, and I submitted a book. A LOOOONG time later (I'm talking really long here; I think I'd written two more books in the time) they came back with an offer. I was querying a different book at the time and had several fulls and partials out. So I quickly emailed all the agents who had those, telling them I had an offer from this publisher, not for the book they'd requested, but for an earlier story.

I spent a week having some very intense conversations with three or four of these agents, but ultimately, none of them were interested n representing the book for this particular deal. Not necessarily because it was a smaller press (although I'm sure that was a part of it), but because they hadn't chosen the publisher, and weren't sure it was the best fit for me or my work.

I ended up taking it anyway because the book was an older one I wasn't so in love with anymore and wanted to go through the publication process so I knew how it all worked, but that's an entirely different story… But that offer wasn't how I got my agent. That happened about six months later and is another entirely different story, although once again, there was a publisher offer tangled into the mix.

kdjames said:

Back when I first joined RWA (long ago), it was generally accepted that you not only didn't *need* an agent to get published with certain publishers (primarily Harlequin), it was a waste of time since some of those contracts were non-negotiable. I know, everything is supposedly negotiable. But at the time, word was that either you signed or you didn't-- those were the only choices.

I'm not as versed on this as agents who work with Harlequin, but I believe they have a boilerplate contract, one size fits all for certain types of books. As a businessperson, I think this makes a lot of sense. As an agent, I think it's often not in the best interest of the writer.



As for the cat in the jar. The Duchess of Yowl has wriggled into places that were previously listed as much too small (including my very cold heart) so I thought this picture was pretty funny.

Unfortunately there are people in the world who abuse animals in ways that I will not go into because no one needs that in their mind ever. It was mentioned to me privately that this kind of picture might encourage some witless fool to actually DO this. I am pretty sure no witless fools read this blog but still…I'm not prepared to answer to God for anything that involves animal abuse if I can help it. So I changed the picture.



Celia Reaves has a cat who also likes small places:

Of course, my last and biggest thought as about that crazy cat in the jar. Some cats REALLY love tiny spaces, and they generally have no trouble getting out of things they can get into. I had a cat once that spent most of her time in places you'd have sworn she couldn't get into. She climbed inside the machinery in a fold out sofa bed, discovered when someone sat on the sofa and leaned back, eliciting a yowl. She crawled up the swell pedal on a small electronic organ into the guts inside; fortunately she was spotted coming out before someone switched it on (and we had to put a wire cage around the inside of that pedal to keep her out). She once got taped into a box we were packing for shipping, and we figured it out before we shipped it when we heard her scratching around in there. So while others here are all worried about the cat in the jar, I'm thinking, "Serves you right."

And then all of you just went completely hilariously off the rails and opened some sort of musical theatre blog in the comments column. It was great!

Then it was time for the writing contest, inspired by the Duchess of Yowl, who also thinks for herself as musical. The neighbors think of her as Florence Foster Jenkins.

The Duchess of Yowl generated a question from nightsmusic

I have to ask; Janet! Did the NYPD really show at your door in the middle of the night last night???

When don't they?

Hopefully the writing contest results will go up on Monday.


Here are the subheader noms:

And some weeks there's Fred, who is opposed to subheaders on some principle.--John Frain

Never expect the rainbow to carry you to a pot of gold. Expect something to get in the way.--Craig

This site is like: writers 101, a guide on what not to do.--Jason Vierra

expect the unexpected, and when the unexpected happens, act accordingly.-Donnaeve (author of the forthcoming Education of Dixie Dupree)

"Cowboy logic: Ride bulls, meet nurses."--Julie M. Weathers

Some days after reading this blog I feel so prepared to be a good client. If only I could convince an agent this is so.--Her Grace, Heidi, the Duchess of Kneale

I've been dating Debbie Downer, and just the other day she let me complain about something--Mark Ellis