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

One thing that makes me put down a book or a submission is a world where the behavior of the inhabitant doesn’t bear any resemblance to what you can expect of people as a whole with a their cultural history. The Pearl Harbor attack affected the American psyche because it was the ( Read more... )

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

Good Day,

I’ve had the privilege of meeting many very smart, talented and interesting people in the years I’ve attended conventions and been part of the professional end. It’s been an undiluted pleasure to meet people like Elizabeth Bear, David Drake, and Lois McMaster Bujold. I’ve ( Read more... )

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

There are lots of forms of this, in writing there’s the ancestral sword that happens to be sharper and stronger than normal metal. My absolute least favorite is the plot convenient personality traits. The character who has an issue with authority so big they pick fights with anyone ( Read more... )

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

Some reviews are bad, but ok because they just show the reader picked up the wrong book. I’ve done it, some books just aren’t for me and I can recognize this. I grok that not everyone thinks the same, or likes the same things. Romances, or novels that spend more wordage on ( Read more... )

Originally published at Agent Incite. Please leave any comments there.

I’m going to start off with a shocking and possibly even blasphemous fact about the publishing industry.

The Publishing industry is an entertainment enterprise.

Just like comic books, movies, television, major league sports and music. People turn to fiction, and some forms of ( Read more... )

There are times when I become convinced that people who send me their work think they are trying to cook spaghetti and not get a book published. These people have me half convinced my submission guidelines are all written using Polish words, Bantu grammar, and that they still only appear on my website about as often as one can find Brigadoon, and ( Read more... )

Thanks Stacey.

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There have been a few posts lately about the value of agents across the internet. Some by agents, some by writers who love their agents, and some by people who seem to think agents are on the far side child molesters on their list of favorite kinds of people.

Leaving completely aside the debate of if an agent is needed to publish a book, I'd ( Read more... )

The text below was written a while back for a psychology class. It was written with no thoughts to the issues of my last post, but it does have some neat tie ins when you look at what is being done and how.

( Popping Pop )

b.) NO PERSONAL IDENTIFIERS from queries. #queryfail

Colleen_Lindsay: It’s about educating, not about being mean! =) #queryfail
This was repeated more than once. And yet, several people got upset about it. Why, who knows. From the admittedly light skimming I did, it looked the usual offal about "My original idea might be stolen!!!!EventyANGST!!! ( Read more... )