Rocking THE CALL

Today, the Publishing 101 series takes a look at what happens when that query leads to a full read and the reading leads to … THE CALL. For those of you unfamiliar with publishing-ese, “THE CALL” (usually all-caps) refers to an agent’s suggestion that (s)he and an author talk by telephone. The call usually — but not always — means the agent has decided to offer representation. Sometimes The Call serves another purpose: the agent does not offer representation, but wants to give the author advice on what the manuscript needs to reach the mark. I’ve had this version of

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BLADE Cover Contest Reveal Winners!

Thank you to everyone who entered the BLADE OF THE SAMURAI cover reveal contest and left comments on all the participating blogs last week. I had a great time sharing the cover, and I hope everyone else enjoyed the fun too. Big thanks to my friends and fellow authors Kerry Schafer , Julianne Douglas, and Heather Webb for helping me spread the word and joining the game. And now, as promised, THE WINNERS of the cover reveal contest! 1. The $25 Barnes & Noble gift card goes to Aimie Runyan. 2. The ninja mug goes to Tez Miller. 3. The

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“See”ing Chocolate

As a child, I loved See’s Candy. (Full disclosure: I still do.) See’s is a California chocolate company, founded in 1921, with shops throughout the Western United States. To this day, if you enter a shop, they’ll give you a free piece of candy – a fact I adored as a candy-loving child. The adult version of me likes it, too. (I recently bought some of their foil-covered chocolate balls for my son and his roommates as a Halloween treat.) The distinctive white box, with its delightful chocolate smell, brings back memories of standing in my parents’ kitchen, tiptoeing to

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Cover Reveal: BLADE OF THE SAMURAI

Well, it’s Friday, and thanks to the diligent efforts of everyone who helped us track the cover clues, I’ve managed to retrieve the cover art from the ninja thieves! And so, with no further ado, allow me to present the cover for the second Shinobi Mystery, BLADE OF THE SAMURAI: June, 1565: Master ninja Hiro Hattori receives a pre-dawn visit from Kazu, a fellow shinobi working undercover at the shogunate. Hours before, the Shogun’s cousin, Saburo, was stabbed to death in the Shogun’s palace. The murder weapon: Kazu’s personal dagger. Kazu says he’s innocent, and begs for Hiro’s help, but

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Rejections and Partials and Fulls … Oh, My!

Today’s post continues our ongoing Publishing 101 series with a look at what happens “after the query.” (For a look at writing the query letter itself, click here or check the archives for Publishing 101.) Most writers agree that the query process isn’t the most fun you’ll have on the way to publication. Essentially, the query is a new car design … and the author, the crash-test dummy. If you’re like most of us who query, you’re going to hit a few walls before you reach THE CALL that leads to representation. However, the querying process is neither a license to gloat

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Celebrating a Shiny New BLADE

This morning, I received the cover art for the second Shinobi Mystery: BLADE OF THE SAMURAI. This afternoon, my cover art was stolen by ninjas. (They did it last year, too, and I suspect this might be a pattern forming.) If you want to see it, I’ll need your help to get it back. I’ve called in some friends to help me track down the shards the ninjas left behind, along with bits of the jacket copy describing the new Shinobi Mystery, which will release from Minotaur Books in July of 2014. The first clue might leave you a little

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Some Thoughts on the Value of Time

Last month, my son started college. Last Monday, I had emergency oral surgery. Three hours ago, I talked on the phone with my brother. These things may seem unrelated, but (like many things) the connection behind the scenes goes deeper than the surface facts suggest. I’ve spent this week doing little-to-nothing, recovering from the surgery. “Little-to-nothing” leaves lots of room for thought. Among those thoughts: the value of time. Most of us don’t know how much time we have, but spend a lot of it worrying and complaining about the fact we don’t have enough. We multitask. We procrastinate. And,

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The Key to the Competent Query

Today we continue our Publishing 101 series with a look at writing a Competent Query – by which I mean the one that hooks an agent enough to spark a request for pages. Many authors feel great angst about queries. There’s so much talk of perfection, and many authors fear the process because they worry that “the perfect query” lies beyond their grasp. Don’t fear – you do not have to be perfect. You simply have to write a query that does (and does not do) a few specific things – I call it a COMPETENT query. Let’s look at

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A Challenge to the Explorer in All of Us

In the U.S.A., October 14 is Columbus Day – a day we used to celebrate, which now fades into the obscurity reserved for vaguely embarrassing things we’d rather forget we lauded (mostly due to their culturally insensitive properties). *Public Domain image: First landing of Columbus on the shores of the New World, at San Salvador, W.I., Oct. 12th 1492. Painted 1862 by Dióscoro Teófilo Puebla Tolín, originally published by Currier & Ives. In October, 1976, I learned about Christopher Columbus – the shining, kindergarten-colored version many Americans learned in school. The brave explorer, Christopher C, who set off to sail the

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