Your Query Letter

I just had a good friend get a critique of her query letter by an editor who said she looked for three main points in the letters she received. were three main points made by this 

The query should answer three things:

1. Who's story it is.

2. What they want.

3. What's stopping them from getting it.

So I'm going to go back and look at my query letters and ask myself these questions.

Have a really written about the protagonist. Sometimes I get caught up in letting the antagonist take over. Sometimes they are interesting enough and powerful enough to do it.

Do I state what the protagonist really wants. What is his or her quest? Even in my picture books I don't know that I have done this as clearly as I could.

Now I can say what's keeping my hero from getting what he or she wants. Now's the time to let the antagonist have a little glory in the sun. (Not that much,but a little.)

I know  summer is  a busy time, but take a few minutes and see how your letters stack up. I'm going to.

Happy writing.

Christy

PS Sorry I've been kind of out of commission. My mom has stage 4 bladder cancer, and we thought we would lose her the last few weeks, but she has rallied and will be with us a little longer. What a blessing for all of us.

Will Ida Mae survive Her Own Wedding?

 

If you’ve been following Tristi Pinkston around, you know she’s a little kooky.  Til Death Do Us Part, the last installment in the Secrets Sisters series, is no exception.  Ida Mae and her friends have a knack for finding trouble.  This is a warm and funny story that will keep you reading.  There are five books in the Secret Sisters series.  You’ll want to read them all, but if you only read one, I’d pick Til Death Do Us Part.  It’s my favorite.

Linda Garner

 

When charming—and mostly bald—widower George Gilmore asked Ida Mae Babbitt to marry him, she was surprised and delighted.  But now he has made another proposal—to hold the wedding in two weeks, while all his children are in town.  Flustered but sure she can handle it with the help of her friends, Ida Mae agrees.

The plan doesn’t go over so well with George’s family, however, and Ida Mae finds herself the victim of a plot to stop the wedding.  At first the incidents seem like harmless pranks, but they escalate until Ida Mae finds herself in real danger—and in real pain.  Bells are ringing, but are they wedding bells or death kells?

 

Tristi Pinkston is the author of fourteen published books - "Nothing to Regret," "Strength to Endure," "Season of Sacrifice," "Agent in Old Lace," "Secret Sisters," "Dearly Departed," "Bless Your Heart," "Hang 'Em High," "Targets in Ties," "Women of Strength," "Million Dollar Diva," "Virtual Book Tours," "Taking Out the Trash," and "Turning Pages."

She also works as a freelance editor and online writing instructor.

When she's not writing, editing, or homeschooling her children, she enjoys reading, watching good movies, and taking really long naps.

Reading Rocks!!

Summer is a great time for reading.  It's a perfect time to branch out.  Parents and Grandparents can take advantage of relaxed schedules and encourage the reading bug to bite.  It's a nice time for reading together, trips to the library, and family read- a-thons. 

Here's a fun series for the chapter book set.  Heroes of the Highest Order by R.K. Hinrichsen.  This is an easy read, perfect for developing readers.  The vocabulary is not taxing and the story involves magic and mystery, with enough twists and turns to keep the pages turning.  If your chapter book readers love adventure and super powers, they'll enjoy this series.

 

Book 1 is called The Hidden Kingdom, followed by The Prisoner of the Shadows,  and The Mouth of the Dragon.  You can buy all three in paperback or kindle edition right here.

Reading Rocks.  Especially in summer.

Linda Garner



R.K Hinrichsen has been writing for children for several years. She enjoys history, fantasy and exotic locations. But most of all, she loves to learn about real life heroes.

Allergic

I'm allergic to stuff.  Grass, weeds, hay, trees, that kind of stuff.  The cottonwoods are particularly bad, and our neighborhood is buried in cotton right now.  It's everywhere. 

I sound like I have bronchitis, and I feel like I'm mostly dead.  Not all dead, just mostly dead.

I love spring, but I'm allergic to it.  I'm not getting much done. I'm not very functional. In a couple of weeks this stuff will be gone and I plan to feel better.  Meanwhile, I've been thinking about other things I'm allergic to.  Here's a partial list:

mopping floors
folding clothes
pulling weeds
vacuuming
cleaning up messes

that's bad enough, but unfortunately, I'm also allergic to people:

mean people
negative people
unreliable people
and especially...
people that don't say what they mean and don't mean what they say.

What are you allergic to?

Linda Garner

Never Give Up

Recently, we found out about winter gardening.  What a fascinating idea.  You can grow a garden in winter.  Who knew?

Winter was drawing to a close, and a reluctant spring was on its way.  Anxious to learn more, we decided to try fava beans—a cool weather bean that can grow in summer if planted early.   It can also grow in winter if planted in the fall and given some shelter from the cold.

We needed experience.  This was a good place to start

We planted the beans around Easter time.  That was late March.  We didn’t soak the beans, but did get them wet before planting them, as the directions suggested.  There was enough wet weather that we didn’t worry about watering them.  They were buried in snow more than once, but hey, they are a cool weather bean, so no worries.

We don’t even know if we like Fava Beans.   Never tasted them, as far as we know, but we like to try new things.  We weren’t sure which spot of our garden they would like to call home, so we planted our eight beans in eight different places.  That’s about as scientific as we get around here.

Weeks passed and nothing.  No little green sprouts appeared.  We checked often.  After six weeks had passed without any results, we stopped checking.  Those beans were not coming up.   Disappointed, we gave up on our Favas. 

Those are not the only seeds I have planted that haven’t taken root. 

I’m not talking about the garden.  I’m talking about ideas, once planted with enthusiasm, that didn’t sprout and grow.  Often circumstances beyond my control kept the seeds from sprouting, or once sprouted, thwarted the tender plants.  Sometimes people didn’t keep their promises. Sometimes there just wasn’t enough sunshine and water to go around.  Disappointed, I have given up on promising seeds, planted with care. 

Last week we began planting warm weather plants.  To our surprise we found seven thriving fava plants, in places where we had stopped checking a few weeks ago.  Six of the seven were over six inches tall.  All seven looked hale and hearty.  We don’t know yet about number eight, but for now seven is enough.

Seven feels hopeful.

You never know when an idea will grow into something significant.  Give it some time, some tender care, introduce it to friends, and then watch and wait.  A seed has its own time table, and so does an idea.

Never give up.

Linda Garner

Critique Groups

I have learned a lot about writing from taking classes and going to conferences, but the place I've learned the most is in my critique group. If you're thinking about creating one or changing the one you have, here are some questions to think about.

 1. Critique group sizes: what's ideal...pros and cons of larger/smaller groups
2. How often should a group meet?

 3.  How does the written critique differ from what's brought up in the meeting

 4.  Should pages be read in advance or read aloud at the meeting? What we do and why we've decided to do it this way
5.  How many pages? This is a function of how often a group meets, oftentimes. Some do a chapter. But groups should also consider how much time there is in an evening to go over things. 

6.  How to balance the need to get through a lot of material with the fun we have together
7.  Supplemental activities like retreats and hanging out together at writing conferences
8.  Support, both in writing and in life's troubles/good stuff
9.  Adding new members...how do you vet them? How do you tell if someone will click with the group?
10.  Critique group members...is it important to have similar goals (like striving for publication vs. writing for fun) or similar genres or commitment levels or ?
11.  Groups can include other activities besides critique. Some groups may choose to have a short lesson or writing activity before starting the critique part
12.  Food--pros and cons
13.  Talk about the skill of giving a helpful, not hurtful critique...balancing positive and negative, etc.
14.  Talk about the skill of distilling what you want to say about someone's piece into a concise comment that all can benefit from, not just the writer of that piece

Characterization

I have just been listening to Lucy Maude Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables books on CD.
Why do we like them so much? Why were the videos so popular? When you read the books, the descriptions are way too wordy. She jumps fro person to person and doesn't keep a single perspective. Sometimes the author doesn't have the main character solve the problem. Someone else swoops in to save the day. The plots of each book are rather rambling. So what is there about those books that we love?

I think it's Montgomery's ability to create memorable, believable characters. We fall in love with each one of them--even if they're not major. She has a talent and gift for doing this. Reread the books and see what you think. Here are a few things she does to enhance her people.

1. She gives them a singular figure of speech that they repeat.
2. She has some people that are very talkative, and others that are shy.
3. She gives them particular thoughts, unique to themselves.
4. She makes them down to earth. They are not perfect. Everyone of them has flaws.
5. She is descriptive of their person and clothing.
6. Some of them have particular actions peculiar just to them.

Read the books for yourself and see what you think.

Happy reading, Christy