Public Critique: DREGO'S SWORD Query

 

Are you guys up for a query critique? It's been awhile! This one is for a YA high fantasy (fun!) and it's nice and short. Let's see what kind of feedback you have for Ashley who'd really love some outside input. If you're interested in having a query or excerpt posted for critique, please e-mail me for details.

Dear (Agent)

War is tearing apart the countries of Cyrah. Power-hungry Gordar has killed the previous king and has ascended to the throne. Using a kidnapped seer and a ruthless assassin, Gordar is bent on finding the three gems hidden throughout the land. A single gem holds an infinite amount of magic. Whoever possesses all three will have power unlimited.

But the first of the gems has already fallen into the hands of seventeen-year-old Drego, a talented young warrior from a small coastal village. He sets out to find the last two gems and defeat Gordar, a journey that will take him throughout Cyrah, into the arms of a headstrong young woman, and to a darker, more violent part of himself he hadn’t known existed.

Drego's Sword is an epic medieval fantasy that is 95, 000 words in length. It is the first book in a young adult series.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Ashley

Thursday Spotlight Update

Hey guys! I just finished updating Regina Brooks's profile and sent her an e-mail for review. It has a lot of new info and links. Check it out!

I had hoped to update at least two profiles this week but things have been unusually insane. With any luck I'll be able to tackle a few next week.

I already have a couple requests for new agents to profile when I start up again. If you have one to add, feel free to e-mail me. It might take me a few days to respond but I will.

Hope you're having a fantabulous day!

Tip Tuesday #73

It's Tuesday and I have another great tip! This one was sent in by Christine Tyler, a.k.a. Martinelli Gold. Please visit Christine at her blog, The Writer-Coaster.

While writing rough drafts, I often get bogged down with my "literary voice." I'll want to say something, but I don't have the research done yet, or I am out of synch with the flow of my story. Instead of getting up and researching right then, or getting up and pretending I'm "thinking about it" while I have a bowl of cereal, I just write it the exact way I'm thinking about it. So instead of:

Lance ran toward the...*distraction*
or
Lance looked at the sky and said...*distraction*

It looks more like this:

Lance ran toward the big huge thing that kind of looks like a tank but isn't but I think they had them in WWI.
and
Lance looked at the sky and said, "dude, that's totally awesome."

I call these "place savers." The whole point is that instead of hitting a road block and allowing it to stop traffic for four hours (or days), you just drive around it. I underline my place savers so while I'm typing up my draft, or doing my research, I can easily change my notes into what I meant, and spend more time thinking of the perfect words, without slowing down my entire manuscript.

Hope this is useful!
Christine Tyler

Love this tip, Christine! Anyone who doesn't do this should definitely try it. Place savers are great for keeping momentum. Another idea is to put an asterisk next to them so you can ctrl+f and find them quickly when you need to.

So Tell Me: ?!

I've seen interrobangs in the form of "?!" used in a number of published YA books in the last year or two. I'm a fan, but I know others writers weep at the combination. One of my critique partners feels it's lazy writing. She argues it's telling, that one's writing should show the exclamation, and even says it's degrading to formal punctuation.

So Tell Me: How do you feel about "?!" in published books? Love it, hate it? Would you like to see it made into a standard punctuation mark and printed superimposed as invented in the 60s?

Live Chat with Pippin!

In case you missed the notice, we have a WriteOnCon Live Chat happening MONDAY with the amazing agents at Pippin Properties, Inc. I'm pasting the deets below. Also, we're looking for a VBulletin-savvy forum manager, if that sounds like you, check out this post.

Hello! Happy New Year from all of us here at WriteOnCon!

We hope you’re ready for WriteOnCon 2011 (come August) and a full year of live events–because we’ve been VERY busy behind the scenes, planning some new awesome. We thought we’d start the year off with a bang and announce our amazingly fabulous January Live event.

Are you ready for this? Got your shiny, new calenders out? Here are the details!

We’re SO excited to announce that we’re bringing in the amazing ladies at Pippin Properties, Inc for a special live chat/panel discussion!!!!!

Holly McGhee, Elena Mechlin, and Joan Slattery of Pippin Properties, Inc. will be joining WriteOnCon to discuss query writing do’s and dont’s and what they’re looking for!

When: Monday, January 24th, 2011 at 5:00 PM EST

Where: http://writeoncon.com/

In case you didn’t notice, the event is scheduled a little earlier than you might be used to, so make sure you make a note of the time and don’t miss out. We knew some people have had a harder time attending our later panels, so we thought we’d have a little variety.

The chat will go up about 15 minutes to 5:00 here on the homepage, and can also be found under the “live events / chat” tab above.

Make sure you come armed with plenty of your most pressing questions about query writing and what Pippin is looking for. We’ll be spending 30 minutes on each. And to help you better figure out what to ask, here’s a little more info about these lovely ladies:

About Holly:

Holly McGhee founded Pippin Properties in 1998, after seven years as an Executive Editor and Associate Publisher at HarperCollins, and four years in adult trade marketing. She still can hardly believe that she gets to work with books every day, and she firmly believes that you can learn just about everything you need to know in life from children’s books. She is honored to have spent more than a decade representing talented authors and artists such as Kate DiCamillo, William Steig, Harry Bliss, David Small, Doreen Cronin, Kathi Appelt, and her very own sister, Alison McGhee, as well as many other amazing people. In her personal life, Holly writes under the pen name Hallie Durand and she likes spending time with her three kids and husband, going bowling, grocery shopping, and taking care of her nineteen year old dinner-plate aurelia tree, the best plant on Earth!

About Elena:

After a few years of bopping around the publishing industry, Elena finally found the perfect position from which to pursue her love of all things children’s literature at Pippin Properties. At Pippin, she loves reading queries and loves the treasure hunt that ensues! A uniquely collaborative agency, Pippin represents publishing greats such as Kate DiCamillo, David Small, Peter H. Reynolds, Kathi Appelt, and Doreen Cronin, among many others. Elena loves funny picture books, is typically averse to rhyming texts, likes goofy middle grade, and is on the hunt for some hot YA! She spends much of her free time enjoying New York City on foot.

About Joan:

Joan Slattery joined Pippin Properties, Inc., as a literary agent in November 2010. Prior to that, she spent nearly twenty years editing fiction and picture books for Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers (Random House). As an editor, she had the pleasure of working with Philip Pullman, Jerry Spinelli, Jane Smiley, Cynthia Voigt, Adele Griffin, Shelley Pearsall, Jen Bryant, Laura McNeal, and Tom McNeal, among many others. She also holds great admiration for librarians (and their sway over the children’s book industry) and received her own Masters in Library Science while working as an editor. Joan lives with her husband and twin five-year-olds in a suburb of New York City.

You can learn more about Pippin and their fabulous clients at www.pippinproperties.com

We’d like to kick 2011 off with pizzazz so please spread the word.

We’ll see you Monday, January 24th!

Thursday Agent Spotlight Profile

Ginger Knowlton, Curtis Brown, Ltd.

Just a quick note to let you know I've updated Ginger Knowlton's profile, originally posted in 2009. I've e-mailed her with a request to review it and will add a line to the profile if she does, probably at the end under "Contact" (unless you think there's a better place?).

I started contacting each (newly) profiled agent in Feb of 2010 with a review request and have been leaving a note in the comments if they respond. I'm not sure everyone reads the comments though, so I think it's a good idea for me to add this information onto each profile with the date of review. It will take me awhile to go through them all, so please check the comments in the meantime.

I'll keep you updated!

ETA: Ms. Knowlton has reviewed her profile. This is what I added under "Contact" info:

Profile Details:
Last updated: 1/21/2011
Agent Contacted For Review? Yes – 1/21/2011
Reviewed By Agent? Yes – 1/22/2011
Comments: Positive response. No requested changes.

Look good? Thanks for the input, everyone!

Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Hello! How are things? You're looking chipper today. I've had a pretty great couple of weeks myself. The weather has been lovely, I started my last full term of school, and one of my uber-amazing critique partners debuted...


Heck yes, I'm excited!

I'm trusting you've read ACROSS THE UNIVERSE by now, but if you haven't, well, consider this my belated OMGYOUHAVETOREADTHISBOOKWHATAREYOUWAITINGFOR? Clearly, I'm biased, but I've also read hundreds of YA novels and know a good one when I experience it. PLUS, I wasn't one of her CPs when she wrote this. And Guys, if you're looking at the pink and purple-y romantic cover and the tagline, thinking, "yeah, this isn't for me" you might be surprised. The romance is surprisingly subtle. The story has a lot more to do with oppression, mystery, and murder. Really. But the sci-fi aspect isn't overwhelming, either. Trust me, I don't really do sci-fi and I love this book.

Here's the blurbage:

A love out of time. A spaceship built of secrets and murder.

Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.

Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone-one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship-tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn't do something soon, her parents will be next.

Now Amy must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there's only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.

And here's Beth looking gorgeous and glowy, talking about AtU!



You can also find Beth at these places:

Website: http://www.bethrevis.com/
Blog: http://bethrevis.blogspot.com/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/bethrevis
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4018722.Beth_Revis
Penguin's AtU FB page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/acrosstheuniversebook

If you've already purchased AtU or if you do SOON, you can enter Beth's epic Launch Contest, open until January 25th. The details are HERE. ETA: Contest extended to Jan, 31st!

Here's the pic I just uploaded to the FB page (sorry about the reflection!):



In blog news, I ran out of Agent Spotlight requests last week so I'm going to go ahead with my plan to update old spotlights. I've given it some thought and I don't want to re-post, mostly because I don't want to create multiple links for each profile, but I WILL post and let you know which I've updated and keep you aprised of my progress.

So, have you read ACROSS THE UNIVERSE yet? What did you think?