Originally published at Agent Incite. You can comment here or there.

I have a pretty simple criteria for words I don’t want to see in books. It probably hasn’t changed in years. I don’t think I’ve ever explained exactly what it is. Your mileage may vary, but for me it is real simple:

If I haven’t heard a word spoken in conversation at least three ( Read more... )

If those words will appear in your cover letter, query or elevator pitch, thank you but not for me. I've never been a fan of topical fiction, and this is one that I dread seeing spill over into my inbox. The number of ways it can be done is essentially limitless, the number of ways it can be done wrong, poorly, or in poor taste is statistically ( Read more... )

Sunset without shadows

Let me start off by saying I’ve read more YA in the past three years, than I did as a young adult, or teenager, or adolescent or young person or whatever it is we’re supposed to call homo sapiens between twelve and eighteen. That said, the total number of YA books I’ve read all of is probably under twenty five.

Cory ( Read more... )

Scintillate. I hate this word in all it's shapes and forms.

I shall post three links ( Read more... )

I'm always amazed by the weird things that people name their children. While people across the country have plunged deep into the well of weird and decided to call their children things like “Lexus” or Nicolas Cage naming his son “Kal El”, or Cher and Sonny naming their dear daughter “Chastity”, i can sorta forgive all of those. I mean seriously, ( Read more... )

Two words i wish never to see next to each other again;

• Undulating
• Rhythmic

and any of their conjugations.

Diminutive.

Really, i find this word nearly as horrifying in relation to books as i do the word Prologue. The reason for the near omniscient loathe i have for those words is that they are usually used in such a bad way as to drag down the quality of everything around them. In this case we have an author who's novel has been consistent in its use of ( Read more... )