Month: July 2016

Posted in In which Anna vomits her thoughts at you

Folklore Thursday Guest Post: The Loch Ness Monster by Allison Thurman

Posted on by annakalingauthor

Anyone who follows me on Twitter will know I’m a big fan of the Loch Ness Monster. So much so that my third novel, jokingly assigned the working title Love is Nessie-sary, is set at Loch Ness.

Hoaxed_photo_of_the_Loch_Ness_monster

Once upon a time on Twitter I saw a link to a blog post from a fellow author, Allison Thurman, about her love of “the weird stuff”–ghosts, UFOs, cryptozoology, and other Forteana / paranormalia. In it, she mentions making papier-mâché Loch Ness monsters.

I’d found a woman after my own heart.

So I asked Allison if she would write a guest post for a Folklore Thursday, and she kindly agreed. So check out her blog, follow her on Twitter, and read on…

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Allison: What can I say that hasn’t been said about the Loch Ness monster?

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Posted in Writing advice that may or may not be completely wrong

A Successful Romance Query

Posted on by annakalingauthor

I haven’t given birth but I’m pretty sure it can’t be as painful as writing a query for literary agents.

Trying to condense 100,000 words into 250 is hard enough, but you know what doesn’t help? The pressure. The well-meaning advice articles kindly explaining that agents don’t buy toilet paper because they print and use the 10,000 awful queries they get a week–but not before they’ve posted them on their Secret Agent Groups and laughed at you and your pathetic dreams of being a writer.

Agentreject.jpg

The worst thing of all? The pressure is completely unnecessary. Queries don’t have to be perfect. They have one job: to make the agent want to read your pages. A typo isn’t going to spoil that (psst, here’s a secret; agents make typos too). Not perfectly explaining all of your sub-plots is not going to spoil that. Sending it just after the agent realises she’s bought a decaff coffee instead of a regular isn’t… actually, it might. Agents really do take coffee seriously.

But, really, QUERIES DO NOT HAVE TO BE PERFECT.

To prove it, I’m sharing my less-than-perfect query; the one that landed me my fabulous agents, Amanda and Michelle, with Amanda’s comments on why it did its job. (Psst: If you want to query Amanda, check out that link.)

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