My novels have come a long way since last year, and I have many blogs and websites to thank for getting me closer to where I want to be with my writing hobby. I want to give credit where credit is due, so here is short list of blogs that I've found especially useful.
*author's note: I have only submitted 4 query letters so far, and they were early last year. After my initial excitement wore down from having just finished the basic storyline, I realized just how much work the novel needed, so I've taken a step back and gone back to the basics. That doesn't mean that the following links might not be useful, just because I don't have representation. These blogs helped me realize that I wasn't quite ready for prime time. There is a lot more work left to be done. I hope you find these links as useful as I have found them.
Name: Nathan Bransford's Blog
Type: Blog
Link: http://blog.nathanbransford.com
Brief:
Nathan was a former agent at Curtis Brown, a major literary agency, and he shares a lot of great knowledge about the state of the industry, how to write a query letter, synopsis, etc. Nathan has a great sense of humor, and a thriving community of posters who aren't afraid to disagree with his thoughts on the state of the industry. He has now made the switch to being a full time author and has left the agency, but he still has plenty of contacts and plenty of great info on his site.
Name: Query Shark
Type: Blog
Link: http://queryshark.blogspot.com
Brief:
Most agents simply respond to queries with a "Thank you for submitting, but..." The Query Shark blog is an agent not only just responding to queries with form rejections but also outlining, in painstaking detail sometimes, the pitfalls that the query is falling into - or how well it shines and why. This is a great blog for digging into the mind of an agent and seeing just how differently they approach the querying process (and how you can learn from this to tailor your query letter better).
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