The Rules of Querying

The Demon has decided it's time for some rules to guide aspiring authors as they go about the Herculean task of querying literary agents:

• No bitching!  Okay, you are allowed a small whine only after your fiftieth rejection.
• No voodoo dolls. If you’re stupid enough to think this will work, odds are you’ll end up sticking the pin in your hand instead of the doll.
• No dart boards with pictures of famous literary agents.
• Never imply that Tony Soprano is a friend of yours and he really, really wants to see your novel published.
• As much as you hate being ignored by agents, Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction should never become your role model.
• Hunger strikes are fruitless.

The Rules of Querying

More Haiku as Query Letters

In an earlier post, I looked over several haiku by Bashō, the famed Japanese poet of the Edo era, and tried to imagine which author might have used which haiku for one of their query letters. Here are a few more:

In my new clothing

I feel so different, I must

look like someone else                             

     (The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain)

With dewdrops dripping,

I wish somehow I could wash

this perishing world                                 

     (The Road by Cormac McCarthy)

Taking a nap,

Feet planted

Against a cool wall.                               

      (Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain)

Bright red

the pitiless sun

autumn winds                                           

     (Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury)

Lightning

clenched in the hand:

torchlight in the dark                                   

     (Frankenstein by Mary Shelley)

More Haiku as Query Letters

No Country for Snowmen

From Rejecting Sobriety, this holiday poster lampoons a movie based on the book No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. It made the Demon chuckle!

http://rejectingsobriety.com/

No Country for Snowmen

Another Third Sentence Thursday

The third sentence of this book reads, "She had a little thin face and little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression."

OMG! This must be YA novel, probably of vampire/Twilight genre, featuring a heroine based on Paris Hilton having a bad hair day. Will she be forced to choose between the handsome, yet fashion-impaired vampire Luigi or the debonair werewolf, Omar, who suffers the heartbreak of psoriasis? And what of her darling pet albino Chihuahua who is aptly named Assassin? What unspeakable (or is it unbarkable?) secrets does this vicious little critter hide?

Fortunately, this novel is none of the above. It is the story of Mary Lennox, a nine-year old girl who is the heroine of The Secret Garden, which was published in 1911, way before Ms. Hilton's time.

Another Third Sentence Thursday

The Pleasure of Books (part 2): Long Live Print!

In an earlier post, The Pleasure of Books, we touched upon the touchy subject of print versus E-books. The Demon, being partial to print, was therefore delighted to find the following book, with the spot-on title, It's a Book by Lane Smith.

The Pleasure of Books (part 2): Long Live Print!

Third Sentence Thursday

Sniffy Kitty's Mostly Books Blog has started a new meme: Third Sentence Thursday. The goal is to find a funny thirdy sentence of a book and make some egregious commentary on said sentence (or something like that!). 

My chosen third sentence is from Jim Butcher's White Night:

Usually, by the time the cops call me, things are pretty frantic; there’s at least one corpse, several cars, a lot of flashing blue lights, yellow-and-black tape; and members of the press – or at least the promise of the imminent arrival of same.

Jeez buddy, you just have to be the center of attention, don't ya? Cripes, it's because of people like you that "I" appears twice in the word narcissist. Okay, I'm putting down this book; I need some time for myself...

Third Sentence Thursday