I am so excited to say that I was signed by a literary agent, Sara D'Emic of Talcott Notch Literary Agency!  The process has been great so far.  I sent her agency a query in late August.  She got back to me asking to see the first fifty pages of ELECTED.  Then she asked for the whole manuscript, and a few days later, she sent me an email saying she'd like to work with me.  We talked on the phone about specifics, and the contract is being signed by both parties. My lovely husband even framed and matted the email correspondence, which is now hanging in our office. Someone told me they...

Someone asked me the other day what I thought the next paranormal trend would be in young adult (YA) novels.  Supposedly, from market reports, we're done with vampires.  Done with dragons.  Almost done with werewolves.  Seeing a lot of books about angels.  And now we're onto...mermaids!  If you're a writer trying to tac onto the next big trend, it's actually already too late with mermaids.  If you haven't written a book about one yet, the process of writing and publishing would take too long before the trend ebbed and flowed its way out of the market. Some say you should be imagining...

I think everyone likes a story that wraps up with a proverbial hand slap on the table.  When you're reading a book and come to the end, you know when you've been satisfied or not.  A good ending closes all loops (unless there's a sequel book coming later) and leaves the reader feeling as though the main character learned something or accomplished his/her goal.  You can tell when the story completed its circle.  You'd think this would be common sense for most writers, but we've all read books that leave us feeling empty and wanting more. An example of this emptiness is in a movie I saw recently,...

I'm not even kidding with the title of this post.  I saw Jennifer Garner give a talk today.  During her speech she told a funny story about how sometimes writers create such dynamic characters, people start treating actors like they're the characters in real life.  The story Jennifer told had to do with her time on Alias.  Quentin Tarantino asked JJ Abrams if he could guest star on the show, but only if he could do a fight scene with Jennifer's character, Sydney Bristow. Jennifer sometimes had stunt doubles do the fight scenes on the show, but in this case, Quentin wanted it to be real...

You don't know how many new writers say they are "wallpapering a room with rejection letters."  A non-fiction writer I know said she and her writing partner got so many rejections that when they finally got their big break, they actually re-read the binder full of rejection letters...reread them just to feel the gravity of how mighty their acceptance moment really was.  And here's an example....Carl Sandburg, the poet, was so forlorn by all the rejections he received, that he vowed not to write again.  However, unbeknownst to him, his wife kept on submitting his poems...and finally they were...

Here are some useful writing sites I've come across in the last few months.  These come from other writers who've all found these sites valuable too. 1.  Lists of agents and what they're looking for: www.agentquery.com www.literaryrambles.com http://www.verlakay.com/  (this is a site referred to time after time.  People LOVE this one!) 2.  Writing advice from either former literary agents or authors: http://blog.nathanbransford.com/ http://veronicarothbooks.blogspot.com/p/faqs.html  (Go to the bottom of the page here for a list of her past blog entries that share writing...