Contest results

I should mention the reason for this contest: on Wednesday night my mail management program crashed. I had it backed up, but I'd done something to it such that the only back up that worked was from ten days ago (I back up daily so godiva knows what the hell I did to this thing.)

This has happened before so I knew what to do. Download all my email again. In this case, I was lucky. It was only all the email for a year. The first time it happened it was for five years.

So Wednesday night, and most of Thursday I sat at my compute and pushed Send/Receive cause the email program only downloads 500 emails at a time.

There were 35,000 emails. It takes about 20 minutes to download 500. Then you have to clean out the Outbox, cause all the mail to QueryShark generates an auto response.

Needless to say I was a burned out husk of a figment of a wisp of a shark by Thursday night. I couldn't have come up with a blog post if you'd given me ten prompt words and a head start.

Thus the contest. And true to your usual form, you guyz really cracked me up and lifted my spirits. Thank you!

Herewith the results:


Kitty went there!

They're searching for the results from the last contest.

errr...I'll get right on that.

AJ Blythe has eagle eyes

Alot: Cute Otter picture on wall

That's the centerpiece art for I Am Otter which I love so much I have it hanging in my office. It's the aftermath of the toast restaurant.

Another set of eagle eyes, Dena Pawling

queries current only through 3/20/2017

yea well, I've been busy not judging contests.


KdJames did some sleuthing too

I can't think up a caption. I'm thoroughly diverted and dumbstruck by the condition of that laptop. What the hell did you do to it?

Well, it's kinda old so it needed a truss.


Special recognition for a great line:

EM Goldsmith

We're gonna need a bigger slush pile.

Laurie Lamb

Shark: Janet out-Scotched us.

Special recognition for an entry that breaks all the rules, with style and charm
Kate Higgins

Great entries but not quite captions:

The Noise In Space

I keep hoping that one day- ONE DAY - we will get a caption contest with a 30 word maximum, so I can do a "my nayme is" poem (I love that meme with an undying passion.) Well, I'm armed with both a splitting headache and a devil-may-care attitude today, so I'm doing it anyway.

Our nayme is plush,
an wen its nite,
an our grate shark
turns off the lite,
we crank some tunes
we know by heart-
We let a Wilde
Rumpus start.

*spray paints "Vive le Revolution" onto the wall and runs cackling into the distance*

Ardenwolfe

"Take me, you beast!"

"Not so rough!"

"What the hell? I thought this was a literary agency, not The Lifestyles of the Sick and Stuffed."

Here are the finalists
Janice Grinyer

"when the phone rang, they all froze; who was going to be query shark this time?!"

Cheryl

Spiderina still hasn't quite got the hang of playing hopScotch.

Melanie Savransky

Missed Connections: You were a leggy 18 year old with a killer smile and alot of charm. Pity I only heard your voice.

Rio

Moments before finding out why you never play spin the bottle with a spider.

And this week's winner is Melanie Savransky. There's just nothing like clever word play to charm my fiendish heart!

Melanie, if you'll email me with a list of what you like to read, and your preferred mailing address, I'll get a prize in the mail to you.

Thank you all for taking the time to write captions and enter the contest. You really made the end of the week a WHOLE lot better than it had been.

What the heck is going on here after hours?/Contest closed

Security cam footage caught some shenanigans.
What the hell is going on here?

25 words or fewer.
Post in the comment section.

Take wagers on how long it takes me to post the results (I hang my head in shame)

Yes there's a prize.
No it's not any of these hooligans. Those are my beta readers until I get new interns!


Contest is now closed! (sorry!)

Ghost writing novels

Over the past few years, I've ghostwritten/edited nearly a dozen romance novels with a friend who then self-publishes them. The way this has worked for us is she acts as a James Patterson type: she has great high-concept ideas that she then hires out to writers to fill in. I have no qualms about saying I'm very good at what I do (confidence--what a new notion for me!), especially as I've recently expanded my clientele to do the same work for another romance writer. I'm paid fairly well as a work-for-hire when there are projects to be had, and I love this work as it's fun, comes naturally to me, and is far from what I write/want to write as far as my own books, so there's no competition.

Recently, I was on Upwork looking for editing jobs and noticed there are quite a few requests for ghostwriters who are given the concept and then asked to run with writing the story. I'm led to believe that the majority of self-published authors in certain genres are using ghostwriters. I'm wondering how this works in traditional publishing and if it's similar. More than that, I'm wondering if it's possible to break into traditional publishing as a ghostwriter and if it's lucrative to do so.

So I suppose that's the question, which I'm hoping with your knowledge might provide some much-needed guidance. Can writers break into the industry as ghostwriters and is it financially lucrative for them? Or should I stay the course and continue as-is? 

There are certainly a number of people writing novels that are published under someone else's name, or with the writer listed as a co-author. James Patterson is the classic example. I think John Sanford does some of his novels like this. And certainly there are now entire franchises written by a new author (Dick Francis, Robert Ludlum, Robert Parker)

Thus it is financially lucrative to be a successful ghost.

How to break in? The only people I know who have those gigs had writing careers before they had ghost careers. Their agents got them the ghost jobs, or their personal connections with estates did.

As a relative new-comer with self-pubbed titles in your resume, it's going to be a LOT harder.

The first thing you need to verify is that you are contractually allowed to tell people you wrote "someone else's book."

This is sticky point in all ghost negotiations. Some ghosts are contractually prohibited from telling anyone they wrote something. Others are allowed to mention it only within the industry as a reference for a gig. And some are allowed to have their name on the cover.

If you don't have this established in writing, you'll need to. The last thing you want to do is damage your income stream by having your "James Patterson" say "whoa Nelly, why are you telling people you wrote my book??"

The second thing you'll need to do is cough up sales figures. Self-pubbed books often don't do well. Trad-pubbed books often don't either, but there's a stereotype about the quality of self-pubbed books that has not entirely dissipated. You'll need to be prepared to address that.

How you'd query for this I do not know. Generally I'm not looking for ghost writers for my novelists. The ghost writers I have hired were for non-fiction, and I knew of them from their agent.

As you work on your own novels, you might just keep this mind as something to discuss with your agent when you hook up with her. It's another way to make money and I'm all in favor of my clients making wheelbarrows of dough.

Vodka is not the answer, don't tell @bpoelle

I just got in a request for a revise and resubmit. The agent wants to set up a phone call to discuss the potential changes, which I'm all for. But in the letter they sent me, they said they had some significant issues with the manuscript, including not feeling connected to any of the characters, feeling like the characters all blended together and had no outstanding personality traits, that most of my plot was over done and convoluted, and then listed out for me the similarities they found between my manuscript and a very popular series in the genre. Is this typically how R&R letters go?

I've had beta testers read this, and the one problem I never had was anyone telling me they thought my characters blended together. Some of the agent's suggestions were quite helpful but others left me lost. I also noticed that in the agent's notes, there's a handful of times where they point out that I forgot to introduce something to the story before using it later, but every time they had pointed it out, I had actually introduced it previously in the story, sometimes only paragraphs before. They also spelled the name of one character incorrectly consistently through the letter. I feel both grateful for the time they've spent on my manuscript as well as confused. If they had a problem connecting to my characters and thought my plot was over done, is there really anything I can do for an R&R? I don't drink booze, should I start?

yeesh!
Did they mention anything they liked?

Every agent does revision requests differently. I tend to reject with some notes, and if the author asks to resubmit, sometimes take another look.  Requests for resubmission are rare rare rare.

Other agents might request a lot of resubs.There's no right or wrong way here.

But what perplexes me is the lack of enthusiasm about anything. Generally if I'm thinking of reading something again, I'm pretty enthused about the ms and think there are one or two things that can be revised to the point of showing it around the office for beta reads.

An overdone and convoluted plot isn't something you can revise. It's start over again time.

Characters that blend together aren't fodder for revision. They're an indication that the writer needs more practice.

The real question here is what these guyz have in mind for you. My first suspicion is they are running some sort of editorial factory out the back door and have the idea that you'll "benefit" from their services for the low low price of one arm and one leg.

Generally an agent isn't going to request an R&R on something she thinks is a total mess unless there's at least some redeeming factor, which she would mention. A redeeming factor would be voice, memorable charactes, crackerjack plot, you are Oprah Winfrey's love child.

My guess is your manuscript is not a total mess because your question to me is concise, cogent and funny. Good writers write well even when they're penning letters to me and running on their Anxiety Wheel.

I suggest you see what they have to say. It's free to listen. Take notes.  You might actually have a second listener on the call (muted) to take notes for you.  Then you thank them for their time and consider what they have to say.

Just because an agent says something doesn't make it true. (Except for me. Believe everything I tell you)

This industry is as subjective about tastes and preferences as any other industry populated by people convinced they're the arbiters of all that is eyeball worthy.

Yanno that phrase "Great minds think alike?"....welllll....

So I have two fulls out with agents right now and a handful of query letters. I've been really excited and hopeful about the process, but I recently saw that a new ARC had been released in my same genre. It has a pretty different plot line than mine, but I thought up a snappy name for a potion in mine that's pivotal to the plot, and it turns out they have the same exact name for their own potion that's pivotal to the plot. Now I'm worried that the agents reading my manuscript will see this and assume I somehow either copied it or that my story is too similar to this ARC for it to sell, even though the plots are different. I'm also pretty upset that I'll now have to go into my own story and find a new name for my potion when I was so happy with what I'd come up with. I know this seems like such a small thing, but can it have a big impact on the agents reading my work? Do I contact those two agents, or just leave them alone and hope they don't get turned off by it?

Because this is the first time this has happened to you, you think it's a big deal.

This happens a LOT. It's NOT a big deal.

Example: this past weekend I was at ThrillerFest. A lovely writer asked for help on a query. Her query included a phrase that I thought meant one thing; in fact the usage is now for something else, a site on the Dark Web. I'd never heard of it before and I was positive agents would confuse this new usage with the historical usage. With that in mind, I advised her to change her phrase.

Within a day, two OTHER writers, in two separate conversations, referenced the new usage as a plot point.

I'd have laughed if I wasn't quite so mortified about my confident insistence that people would not recognize the new usage.

Agents will not think you copied this other writer. For starters, the book isn't published.

And the reason I know you didn't steal this idea is cause you're worried about people thinking you did. The blatant plagiarists never think anyone will notice. Meticulous writers are sure everyone will...and assume the worst.

You didn't steal this idea, or this nomenclature. People come up with similar ideas and phrases more often than you'd think.

Bottom line: you're fine.

Your contact page

Recently I was skulking around the contact page of an author.
I was looking for the name of the author's agent.
It was nowhere to be found.

No problem. Most readers aren't looking for that info and not listing it might be the agent's choice.
But, what was a problem was how prickly the tone of the "Contact me" page was.

It was overtly hostile to any writer wanting to make contact.
It was ice cold to any reader.
And everyone else could just go to hell.

Zowie.

Take a look at your contact page.
(You have one, right?)

Does it have the words "thank you" anywhere?
Does it have the phrase "I'm glad to hear from readers" or some approximation thereof?

If you're not able to blurb other author's books, do you phrase it with any kind of apology or regret (even if you aren't apologetic or regretful?)

I purposely did not buy the book this author wrote because I was so put off by the tone of this page.

I realize that many writers get blurb requests or personal favor requests they can't or don't want to agree to.  I know that eye roll of annoyance when those requests roll in. (Let's all remember I see queries from people who wouldn't know a submission guideline if it arrived gift wrapped.)

That's the cost of doing business these days.
Have a form letter ready to deal with those requests, or at least observe the social niceties by saying "I'm sorry I can't blurb any books right now."

I like to support writers, even those I don't represent.
But I'll be damned if I'll give hard earned money to someone who seems to disdain reader contact as an annoyance one must put up with.


If you want an example of a contact page that does it right, look no further than blog reader Donnaeve.

What is it?

A client brought me a gift on Monday.
It's in this photo.

What is it?
(25 words or fewer)

Contest closes later today so enter sooner rather than be left out! now closed!