Querying 101: DON'T

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Please do not praise an internet picture of the agent. Please do not praise said picture for four paragraphs. Not only does it not tell me what your book is about, but it sounds creepy and stalkerish, which are probably not characteristics of an "ideal client."

9 comments:

Rissa Watkins said...: Wow, just wow. Why would anyone think putting that information in their query is acceptable?

Yes, I plan on including a pic of my shrine to you as an attachment, but my query letter will be about the book. ;)

Yikes!; November 24, 2009 at 12:43 PM
Ash. Elizabeth said...: ahhh, the queries people send out amaze me. I read somewhere that one query quoted an agent's blog post as an opener. haha. When I eventually query you, I don't think I'll include pictures or blog references because, well, that's just not normal. : ); November 24, 2009 at 1:08 PM
Kristin Miller said...: Oh my stars. I'm trying to not laugh. Sorry. You are lovely, you know (*sounds stalkerish*), but yeah, I can see how that would be creepy coming from a complete stranger. :/; November 24, 2009 at 1:47 PM
Lisa and Laura said...: Um, wow. Hopefully these same queries aren't coming from inmates.; November 24, 2009 at 1:53 PM
Melissa said...: "Not only does it not tell me what your book is about, but it sounds creepy and stalkerish..."

Hold on, let me fix that for you:

"Not only does it not tell me what your book is about, but it's creepy and stalkerish and completely unprofessional. When reading a query, my first thought should not be, "Hrm, I'm going to need a restraining order."; November 24, 2009 at 11:53 PM
Nikki said...: So, getting a tattoo of your "dream agent" on your, um, shoulder, and sending a picture of the finished artwork along with the query letter would definitely be out? Durn.

But it's still okay to change the name of the MC in your steamy paranormal romance to the agent's name, right? I mean, what agent could resist that? (Example: Janet Reid gazed longingly at the finely chiseled torso of Blake, the space pirate captain who had just boarded her vessel. "What should I do with you, Janet?" Blake growled.)

I mean, that's gotta work.

Thanks for the laugh, Suzie.; November 25, 2009 at 8:46 AM
Mechelle Fogelsong said...: Okay, Nikki, you jest about the MC's name, but often read the credits at the ends of movies to come up with characters' names for my books. It's going to be truly bizarre someday, when one of my novels gets made into a movie, and the film crew suddenly realizes that all the story's fictional characters match the gaff dudes' names!

Maybe I'm weird, but under the heading of my blog, I very clearly state, "I am NOT a creepy stalker!"

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it! ;); November 25, 2009 at 10:50 PM
Lisa Dez said...: I'm sorry. ;); November 28, 2009 at 12:56 PM
Stina Lindenblatt said...: So telling Nathan Bransford he looks like a sexy cross between Zac Efron and George Clooney wasn't a smart thing to do. Darn it! :D; December 7, 2009 at 10:45 AM

Post a Comment

Five Random Things About Suzie

1. I drink so much orange soda, it's probably running through my veins. I've been known to go through a twelve pack of diet sunkist in a day.

2. I'm legitimately nocturnal (or a vampire). I will be so exhausted at two pm that I'm falling asleep standing up - it has happened before, at Six Flags no less - but as soon as the sun goes down I'm wide awake.

3. I have a gorgeous unused $6000 Reem Acra wedding dress hanging in my closet, and it showed up on my doorstep the same day my (now ex) fiance broke up with me. And thank God for that. I wouldn't have wanted to waste that dress on him.

4. Social anxiety plagues me daily. I write a script and practice in front of the mirror when I have to make a phone call, but most people who interact with me have no idea how nervous I am (or perhaps they lie) because I've worked so hard to try to overcome it.

5. I'm actually worried that I will never love my children (when I do have them in the far off future) as much as I love my dogs. I just like animals better than people - they're sweet and innocent and soft and furry - is that so wrong?

quotes

金不一定閃
流浪者不都迷路

"I dreamed you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane
I think I made you up inside my head
I fancied you'd return the way you said
But I grow old and I forget your name
I think I made you up inside my head" ~Silvia Plath, Mad Girl's Love Song

"Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." ~ Robert Frost

"Love is not love,
Which alters when it alteration finds." ~ William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 116"

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning-...So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE GREAT GATSBY

"For deadly secrets strike when understood
and lucky stars all exit on the run:
never try to knock on rotten wood,
never try to know more than you should." ~ Sylvia Plath, "Admonitions"

"The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become." ~ Milan Kundera, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING

William Wilberforce: "No one of our age has ever taken power."
William Pitt Jr: "Which is why we're too young to realize certain things are impossible. Which is why we will do them anyway."

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man." ~ Mark Twain

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." ~ Mark Twain

“You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace.” ~ Charles Dickens, A MUTUAL FRIEND

"I think the idea of life after death is a bad idea. It distracts you from appreciating the uniqueness of the here and now, the moment you are living." ~ Joseph Campbell

"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear...Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end." ~ Alan Paton, CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY

"To laugh often and much.. to endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better... To know even one life has breathed easier because you lived, This is to have succeeded." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"After telling the hard facts to anyone from lover or friend, I have changed in their eyes...[Some see it as] a mission, as if ...they can pull me back from the wreckage of that day. Of course, their best efforts are largely useless. No one can pull anyone back from anywhere. You save yourself or you remain unsaved." ~ Alice Sebold, LUCKY

"Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared." ~Tupac, The Rose That Grew From Concrete

Confessions

Tuesday, November 24, 2009