Tempest frenzy!

Have you guys heard of this book by Julie Cross that just came out last week?  It's called TEMPEST, and it's the first of a series, and DUDE...it has time travel.

You can buy this at B&N, Amazon, or through IndieBound.

So yeah, if you haven't heard of it, GET IT NOW.  Here's the description:

The year is 2009.  Nineteen-year-old Jackson Meyer is a normal guy… he’s in college, has a girlfriend… and he can travel back through time. But it’s not like the movies – nothing changes in the present after his jumps, there’s no space-time continuum issues or broken flux capacitors – it’s just harmless fun.

That is… until the day strangers burst in on Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly, and during a struggle with Jackson, Holly is fatally shot. In his panic, Jackson jumps back two years to 2007, but this is not like his previous time jumps. Now he’s stuck in 2007 and can’t get back to the future.

Desperate to somehow return to 2009 to save Holly but unable to return to his rightful year, Jackson settles into 2007 and learns what he can about his abilities.

But it’s not long before the people who shot Holly in 2009 come looking for Jackson in the past, and these “Enemies of Time” will stop at nothing to recruit this powerful young time-traveler.  Recruit… or kill him.

Piecing together the clues about his father, the Enemies of Time, and himself, Jackson must decide how far he’s willing to go to save Holly… and possibly the entire world.

The author is also totally awesome herself. So awesome in fact, that she arranged some pretty cool events for the kids and teens in her hometown.  I'll let Suzie Townsend give a rundown on that later.  But in the meantime, check out some images from her book launch:

She totally drew a big crowd of enthusiastic readers.

And all of them wanted the book after she told them about it, of course.  Did I mention time travel?  Um, yeah.

She signed everyone's copy personally...and look! Suzie's there, too!

And one of the coolest parts of the night was when Uni High Student, Jackson, got to read from the book...as Jackson (the main character)!

So what's the takeaway?

That this book rocks.

Nuff said.

MOMMIES, GOD & A REAL HOUSEWIFE OF NEW JERSEY

How a thirty minute social media marketing consultation with Joanna and Kathleen led me from ‘like’ to ‘love’.

I’ll admit it. I want to be liked.

‘Like’ in the facebook sense of the word, of course. But not just for validation. Because I’ve experienced the Power of Like.  

Actually, if it weren’t for social media, my project, Boy Sees Hearts wouldn’t exist.   My heart collecting mission started a year ago when I began photographing hearts in nature, food and garbage. When I shared them on facebook, I started seeing more, posting more and making art.

And then others started seeing hearts.

The response blew me away: Features on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Aha Life, Beliefnet and others inspired Boy Sees Hearts to grow from something interesting to something that impacts lives: Charitable giving, meaningful elementary school visits and a children’s book project repped by the inimitable Joanna Stampfel-Volpe.

Recently--when my social media platform started to plateau--Joanna suggested we enlist the expertise of social media empress (and Nancy Coffey Literary & Media Sub-Rights Director and Agent), Kathleen Ortiz.

That brainstorming conference call thirty days ago jolted me from social media stagnation to new levels of Tweet Cred:

First a church.

Then a Real Housewife of New Jersey.

Then, the Mommies. 

(Hearts discovered by Boy Sees Hearts facebook fans)

My revamped social media outreach inspired a connection with Marie, a new facebook fan who informed me that her pastor recently led a Boy Sees Hearts-themed sermon at First Lutheran of Blooming Prairie in Minnesota.

Soon after that, a twitter shout-out from Real Housewife of New Jersey, Fabulicious Theresa Guidice:

Then, two prominent Mom-Blogs, Design Mom and Cool Mom Picks featured Boy Sees Hearts in a twenty four-hour period.

Oh, and my stats skyrocketed. Within thirty days of our brainstorming session my facebook ‘likes’ increased two thousand percent and my twitter followers more than doubled.

By no means am I a social media guru, but here are five tips I’d love to share from my thirty day Extreme Makeover: Social Media Edition:

1.     Talk to people.

Tell your friends what you want to do. Brainstorm with them.  Implement the best ideas.

2.     Do what you’re doing, better.

Are you truly connecting with your audience? Kathleen made a really insightful comment: ‘You’re replying with one-word answers.’ Start a dialogue.

3.     Do what you’re doing, elsewhere.

Joanna liked what I was doing on tumblr and urged me to do more. “Why not try flickr?”  Awesome tip. Kathleen suggested foursquare, where I could post hearts for others to discover. Another great idea.

4.     Step out of your comfort zone.

Find small ways to reach new audiences. I discovered that a slight expansion of my sphere of influence paid off big time.

Have you resisted contests and giveaways because they seemed tacky? Maybe there’s a way you can do them elegantly.

5.     Give your fans a reason to like you.

Create compelling content.…and give away free stuff.

The Boy Sees Hearts Sweepstakes generated a significant number of likes and followers. I found that Wildfire is a great contest app that can be incorporated into facebook and twitter.

Aside from escalating likes, steadily-increasing followers and housewives (Real and otherwise)--for me--the best thing about social media is how it encourages collaboration. If executed well, social media can not only create dialogue, but foster the creative process.

What are some social media practices that have worked well for your platform? I’d love to hear your ideas.

After all, I don’t just want to be liked.

…I want to be loved!

Boy Sees Hearts on facebook

Boy Sees Hearts on twitter

Boy Sees Hearts on tumblr

Boy Sees Hearts on flickr

www.BoySeesHearts.com

Enter the Boy Sees Hearts Sweepstakes

UPDATE NOTE: In the week since this was written, he is gained another 1000 followers!!! - JoSV

Boy Sees Hearts Contest!

We are super excited to share with you agency client Eric Telchin's Boy Sees Heart contest!

While hosting a party at his home in 2009, Eric spilled chocolate ice cream on his kitchen counter. He noticed that the puddle formed the shape of a heart and he grabbed his iPhone to snap a picture. Since then, Eric has seen thousands of hearts in the unlikeliest places, on everything from egg yolks to palm trees.

He photographs these hearts and transforms them into abstract and representational art. Within a year of launching his web site, BoySeesHearts.com, his artwork has been recognized on network prime time television and featured in magazines, newspapers, blogs and luxury retail web sites.

And Eric is offering up an original print of the heart that started it all!

How do you win?

Go to BoySeesHears.com and click on ENTER TO WIN
at the bottom of the page in the orange bar.

OR

Like Boy Sees Hearts on Facebook

To increase your odds of winning dramatically, invite your friends to enter the Boy Sees Hearts Sweepstakes. If the winner lists your name as the referrer, YOU will win a signed 16”x20” museum-quality giclee print of the Boy Sees Hearts design of your choice.

A randomly selected winner will receive the grand prize
(valued at $10,000) consisting of:
1. An EXCLUSIVE signed 20″×16″ museum-quality giclee print of the first heart captured on 7/31/09 by Boy Sees Hearts Creator and Founder, Eric Telchin: The heart-shaped puddle of New York Super Fudge Chunk formed on his kitchen counter during a party. The winner will receive the very first print of this image, as it has never been offered before.

2. An EXCLUSIVE, 2nd Anniversary Heart, which Eric will find and capture with his iPhone on 7/31/11. He will dedicate this heart to the winner, and retire it from the collection permanently. Eric will sign this ONE-OF-A-KIND 16”x20” museum-quality giclee print. It will never be printed again.


A second-place winner will also receive a 16”x20” museum-quality giclee Boy Sees Hearts print signed by Boy Sees Hearts Creator and Founder, Eric Telchin.

The contest closes at 11:59 PM EDT on SUNDAY August 7, 2011.
The grand prize and second place winners will be announced on August 8, 2011.

This is an excellent opportunity to share Eric's message that beauty is everywhere and love is all around. Check us out on Thursday when Eric blogs here about his journey to reach others using social media!

Do YOU have a heart photo? Share it! Tweet at @KOrtizzle or @JoSVolpe and @BoySeesHearts. We'd love to see them!

~K

A Writer's Guide to Comic Con

Hello All!

I'm back from Comic Con, and it was tons of fun.  But really? It's boring if I talk about Comic Con.  Better to hear from one of our lovely clients, who can describe it much better than me (writer and all).  Merrie Destefano is the talented author behind FEAST and AFTERLIFE.  You can read more about these books and buy them here.  You can also read more about Merrie at her website.  But wait to do all that.  First read her blog post about the Con!

The Road to Comic Con

The road to Comic Con is paved with superheroes, movie stars and cartoon characters. For someone like me—who spends 24/7 immersed in a world of sci fi and fantasy—it’s a tiny bit like heaven. Every year I get to spend 4 days with fellow geeks and nerds. And for once in our lives, we’re actually the cool kids in the crowd. Nobody laughed at the Viking-sized guy whose centaur costume had fully-functional, motorized hind legs. Instead, we stood in awe. Whether you came as a professional, like I did, or as a participant, there’s always plenty of time to play fan girl (or boy).

If you’ve never been to Comic Con, here are a few of my favorite things:

1. The author panels:

Panel subjects range from Magic & Monsters to Immortality: An Obsession With Youth to Writing the Apocalypse. This year’s authors included Kim Harrison, Richard Kadrey, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Carrie Vaughn and more. It was a great opportunity to hear your favorite authors talk about their books and their creative process. On top of that, there was almost always a book signing right after the panel. This year, I spoke on the No Damsels in Distress panel with Marie Lu, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Carrie Vaughn, Kathy Reichs, Chloe Neill and Jeanne Stein. It was a lot of fun, especially once the audience started asking questions.

2. The movie star / TV star panels:

Morning to night, the Comic Con universe is star-studded. Iconic figures from film and television fill the panels, with topics that range from existing TV shows like Big Bang Theory and Vampire Diaries to movies-in-production like Snow White And The Huntsman and (last year’s) Cowboys And Aliens. Fans sometimes wait in line for hours to get in to the panel they want. Here’s a trick I learned last year: If you want to see a really popular panel (like Vampire Diaries), get in line for the event held an hour earlier in the same hall. You can stay in the hall for as many events as you want, plus you can move up to better seats between events.

3. The costumes:

This is one of the few times in your life when you can dress like a kid and get away with it. At Comic Con, every day is Halloween and no costume is too outrageous or silly. Granted, some of them look pretty uncomfortable—like the Spiderman full-body suit that even covers your face—but I’ve never seen anybody complain. Well, okay, I did see a Disney princess get irritated when a guy standing behind her on the escalator trampled on her gown. But in reality, she did a good job of staying in character and barely batted a glittering eyelash. My favorite costume this year was a zombie superman that I saw at the Marriott. Cool note: People weren’t the only ones who got dressed up. The Marriott dressed up too. Take a look at the elevator doors below.

4. The freebies:

There’s almost no end to all the swag you can find at Comic Con. From signed movie posters to ARCs to tote bags, you’re going to be tempted to take it all. Just remember, you also have to carry it all and you won’t get to sit down very often. Comic Con is a standing room only event, where crowds swarm from one end of the convention center to the other—but they almost never stop and they rarely sit down. There just aren’t enough chairs. So, I waited until the last day to gather up my swag and I focused almost entirely on books. ARCs I snagged include: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor, Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee, Unleashed by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie, Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts and Infinity by Sherrilyn Kenyon. (I’ve already started reading!)

5. The Comic Con bag:

Nothing compares to the amazing Comic Con bag, given freely when you register at the entrance and get your badge. One side of the bag displays a popular television show like Fringe or Vampire Diaries or Big Bang Theory, and the bag can hold an unbelievable amount of swag. This year’s bag was phenomenal—it could be used as a super-long tote bag or it could be configured into two different styles of backpack or it could be folded in half to look like a woman’s handbag. I’m definitely keeping my bag and have already used it for errands.

Was Comic Con fun, exhausting, like an adventure to another world? Yes. Will I go again next year? You better believe it! This is one event I don’t want to miss.

Jaime's BRAND NEW web site!

Woohoo!

Jaime Reed, author of LIVING VIOLET (Dafina Books (Kensington) / January '12), book one of THE CAMBION CHRONICLES, has a brand new web site up and running!

I also love her comics involving characters from the series. ^

Check out the fabulous graphics! She's so talented both with words and visuals!

~K

Hallo and Some Blogs

*waves to blog followers*

Hello! I'm the new addition here at NCLA :) I won't go into my history, because if you follow me on Twitter or my blog, you'll know where I'm from, what I do and the awesomeness that happens here in the office.

See? Awesomeness ------------------------------------>

(ok...so I don't have any updated pictures of awesomeness...clearly this will have to be fixed asap)

Anyway, just wanted to point you to a few blog posts regarding the recent WSJ article on YA books in general. There are hundreds of posts online, but there are two in particular by NCLA clients you should definitely read if you haven't already.

Veronica Roth, "This WSJ Thing"

and

Sarah Fine, "A Child Psychologist's Take on 'Darkness too Visible'"
(NPR linked Sarah's post!!)

My personal opinion?

Thoughts?

~KO

Good News and Winner!

Hey guys,

Starting off the new year has been rocky. First, I had the flu--woohoo. Then I had to contend with THE APOCALYPSE THAT HAD HIT MY INBOX. Seriously. So. Many. Emails. And that was not including queries. I don't want to even go there (beginning of a new year there is always a tidal wave of submissions). And now we have a snow day, which would normally be awesome!awesome!awesome! except we're already so behind, this just makes it worse. Feh.

So if it seems like we haven't been around as much on twitter or on the blog, there you have it.

But I can't delay some good news and announcing the winner to our first giveaway of the year!

Good News: Kody Keplinger's THE DUFF (Designated Ugly Fat Friend) has been chosen byYALSA as one of the Top Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. Yaaaay!!! This is such awesome news, and so well-deserved. Congrats, Kody!! Read her own announcement about it here.

Winner of first 2011 giveaway: Stefanie Kramer! Please email PeeWee to claim your prize at PeeWee (at) nancycoffeyliterary (dot) com.

And if you don't know who PeeWee is...read here.

Start the New Year with 2 fabulous books!

Nancy Coffey Literary knows how to start the New Year off in literary style. Check out 2 of our latest titles (both historical!), the first about the Civil War (book for young readers), and the second the conclusion to a thrilling and romantic historical family saga.

At a time when most people have grown weary of the war between the states, two young children are desperate to find their way to the battlefields. Jeremy DeGroot wants nothing more than to join a troop as a drummer boy. For Dulcie, a runaway slave, freedom means she must head directly toward the fighting in the hopes that she'll become "contraband," that is, property of the Union troops. Both Jeremy and Dulcie find a place with the 107th New York Volunteer Regiment and even start to forge a friendship. But all that is threatened when they keep crossing paths with the mysterious Charlie, a young Confederate soldier, who may look like the enemy but feels more like a friend.

Young readers who like their fiction filled with exciting historical details, rich characters, and action-packed adventures will be drawn to The Storm Before Atlanta.

Buy copies at B&N, Borders, IndieBound, or Amazon.

The stunning conclusion to the Blood Rose trilogy.

Daisy Etheridge always yearned to sing. But along the way she fell in love, had her heart broken, and bore a child to a man who loved another. Now she has a second chance to realize her dreams.

Jack Wilkins left his family's ranch three years ago with his childhood love, only to lose her. Now, he's back to try and win her one last time. Then a woman from his past appears...with a baby that has eyes like his own.

Now, Jack and Daisy must choose what they want out of their lives-and out of each other.

Buy copies at B&N, Borders, IndieBound, Doubleday Bookclub, or Amazon.

*And make sure to check out the first 2 titles in this trilogy: the award-winning titles PIECES OF SKY and OPEN COUNTRY.

Now who is a big fan of historicals? Who wants to these 2 books? For a chance to do so, enter here and follow these rules:

1. You must follow this blog.

2. You must comment on this post.

3. You must tweet, facebook, vlog or blog about this contest and include the link in your comment.

4. You can enter only once.

5. US participants only (OR anyone with a US address for mailing the winning package).

This contest will be open until Sunday, January 9th at midnight.

Fantastic Marketing Advice for Authors!

Have you guys heard of the Kid Lit Authors Club yet? One of their members, Nancy Viau, stopped by to give us the skinny on forming this wonderful group and marketing books.

CHILDREN’S BOOK AUTHORS TAKE ON TRUMP

I’m a big fan of the show The Apprentice. I like watching savvy professionals market a product until they fold under the pressure and become teary-eyed morons or become so arrogant that they get fired. I dream of the show where I’ll hear Mr. Trump say: “Your task today is to market your book. You will be given the email address of the publicity director at your publisher and he/she will choose whether or not to communicate with you. You will be given no special allowance with which to launch your book campaign, but feel free to use your funds for brochures, bookmarks, and postcards. You’re expected to sell enough books to earn out your advance, gain the attention of booksellers, librarians, and teachers, and participate in book signings.”

That would be an interesting show, wouldn’t it? However, as authors, we’re not trained in marketing. Our bottom line is not a sales figure. It’s a line that says The End!

I got together with another New Jersey author: Keri Mikulski, and we chatted about marketing our books in a time when everyone had very little to spend. What could we do to get noticed? Knowing that we wanted to concentrate our efforts close to home (travel is expensive and we’re both raising kids), we decided to form a regional marketing group. The KidLit Authors Club started out with 12 members from PA, NJ, and MD. A year later, we’re twenty members strong, and we have dozens of events to our credit. An article about us appeared in The Writer in December, and we’re mentioned in Writer’s Digest in January! Who knew our little idea would gain such notoriety?

Want to know our 10 Secrets to Success?

1. Our membership is limited to a particular type of author. In our case, it’s children’s book authors—authors who have books with major publishers with varying release dates. We include picture book authors, as well as middle grade and young adult novelists so everyone who meets us leaves with a signed book that’s suitable for them.
2. We have a friendly name: The KidLit Authors Club.
3. We have a cool logo and website that was designed by member Tim Young.
4. We created a party brand with the tagline: Making every event a celebration of children’s books. Who doesn’t like to party? We bring balloons, give away party bags, have activities that go along with our books, and create a literary festival for the whole family.
5. Not only do we sign together, but we speak at conferences, present writing workshops, Skype, and even go to schools in groups of two to four. We understand budget cuts and offer a variety of authors for about the price of one.
6. We’re team players. We reach out to our independent contacts or we contact new booksellers and organizations who may be interested in hosting us.
7. We readily volunteer for tasks like designing print materials, writing press releases, fielding emails.
8. We split expenses.
9. We communicate via a Yahoo Group.
10. We stay ambitious about book promotion. Our goal is to keep our names in front of booksellers and our books in print!

Mr. Trump, the KidLit Authors Club has successfully completed our task. Give us a call.

Nancy Viau is the author of Samantha Hansen Has Rocks In Her Head and the forthcoming picture book I Can Do It! She writes from South Jersey, but will consider relocating to New York at Mr. Trump’s request. Visit her on the web: www.NancyViau.com or www.kidlitauthorsclub.com

Susan and Cookies

Hey all!

I am beyond thrilled to introduce you to our newest client: Susan Dennard.

Whether you pop over to her blog, explore her webpage, or follow her on Twitter, you are going to want to get to know her. Here's why:

1. She is the newest blogger for Let the Words Flow, and in her introductory post, there is a picture of her hanging out with penguins. No. Really.

2. She lives in Germany, and occasionally posts extremely gorgeous pictures she's taken there. Why hello, Vicarious European Experience. Do come in.

3. She is hosting an Extravaganza on her blog this week that involves giving away a number of free books, and also cookies. German cookies. Very delicious looking German cookies. Mmmmm.

See why we're so excited to introduce you to her?? She is an endless well of awesome, and she wants to give you cookies.

I won't keep you a second longer. Go say hi! And good luck at winning one of the Extravaganza packages!

The Duel over DECEPTION!

Remember this post from Friday?

Well, here is PROOF of what went down while I was out. It's the T-rex herself, Kathleen Ortiz vs. The Shark's slithery assistant Meredith Barnes!

And if you can't see what they're fighting over in their grubby little paws, that's a copy of DECEPTION by Lee Nichols, a fun, creepy, action-packed paranormal YA (think Buffy with ghosts...seriously).

!!!

Maybe we should duel over good reads every Friday afternoon?

October is the month to be SPOOKED!

Does everyone know the talented Amy Lukavics yet? Well if you don't, scamper on over to her blog: hello, moon. Go on. I'll wait.

See? Isn't she awesomely talented?

Well another talent Amy corners the market on (in my book) is her talent for writing How-To articles for eHow.com. And one of her recent articles is perfect to share for Halloween Month.

How To Cast Permanent Love Spells.

I feel like everyone goes through some type of spiritual/magical/one-with-the-other-realm phase, right? Or was that just me? If you haven't yet, isn't October the perfect month to start?

And if you're looking for good spooky reads to share with your kids this month, check out Whatcha Reading Now? In fact, you should check out this site regardless because they've got author interviews, book reviews, talks about YA and middle grade and picture books--they cover everything! In this month's Scare Your Pants Off issue, they've got some creepy titles to share....

BOO!

Did I scare you?

Dang.

Well, I'll get you...when you least expect it!

Clarification on the agency's NEW submission guidelines

As you may well know, we’re changing our submission guidelines here at Nancy Coffey Lit starting November 1, 2010. For those of you who haven’t heard yet, please read the post on it here.

We invited readers to respond/pose questions at this time so we could better understand what about the new guidelines works for querying writers, and what doesn’t.

This was one of the comments made:

Anonymous said...

For a mutually dependent relationship (the agent needs her author's ms to sell, the author needs the agent to sell her ms), the power structure between a querying author and an agent is completely one-sided. The author pursues the relationship with the agent. I do not find it unreasonable for the agent to in kind show professional courtesy and say that the query was not only received but reviewed and rejected (automated response or not, there's nothing else that can confirm for an author that the query wasn't lost after the fact--which does happen).

There is free software on the internet that allows a user to enhance her copying and pasting abilities. You can write a standard rejection letter (or multiple variations to cover the most frequent responses you may encounter [this isn't right for me, keep trying, look at our submission guidelines, etc]). CTL+ALT+# and you've pasted and sent your form rejection in a matter of seconds.

Even if our work is not to your liking, we are worth a couple of seconds.

Anonymous brings up some good points that I’d like to address.

I think where the confusion lies is in the very beginning of Anonymous’ comment. What he/she says is absolutely correct. An author-agent relationship is mutually beneficial and dependent. And yes, the power structure between a querying author and an agent is one-sided. But these are two different things. The first line refers to clients, and the second refers to querying writers.

I can completely see how from a writer's perspective, queries are the most important part of an agent's job. And because there are so many blogs about queries, and posts about queries, and websites devoted solely to crafting a query, it may seem like agents spend most of their day looking at and evaluating queries.

But that’s not what agents do.

An agent’s job is not to read queries or submissions. An agent’s job is not to attend conferences, or judge contests, or do interviews, or offer critiques for auction. In fact, an agent has very, very little time to spare to do any of those things at all. 98% of an agent’s time is spent on his/her clients: submitting, negotiating contracts, reading, writing up editorial notes, advising, acting as liaison, brainstorming, meeting with editors, planning with publicists, etc. And in truth, if we (at NCLMR) wanted to close to queries completely, we could and it wouldn’t affect our job at all (which is why so many agents have employed this guideline).

But that’s not what we want.

We love to find new talent. We love to discover a treasure among the pile, a writer who has all of the right tools and just needs a little help to finish creating. I know that is one of my most favorite things to do when I read my queries late into the night (because I often don’t have time while in the office). I love, love, love when a new voice has me captivated.

But this doesn’t mean that every query/submission in between isn’t worth anything.

It’s actually not a question of worth at all--as in, this writer/query is not worth a couple seconds of our time. The issue is not copy-pasting a form rejection. It's that sending any kind of response to a query can, and does, lead to a snowball effect. A form rejection, I'd say at least a third of the time, leads to a follow-up email from the writer in question. Either thanking us for taking the time to look at the query (which is well-meaning, but does take time to read), or asking for help revising the query, or asking for a more detailed explanation about why the query was rejected, or asking us to refer them elsewhere, etc. It occasionally leads to follow-up phone calls. Any response to these responses always--always--generates further communication. And the writer can say, at any point, "Aren't I worth the two seconds it takes to reject? The two minutes it takes to tell me why? The four minutes it takes to talk to me on the phone?" And it is never about worth. It's, do we have the time to talk to each of the hundreds of writers that we have to reject every week to explain why we can't take them on as a client?

The answer to that is No. We simply don’t have the time to do all of that and do our jobs. And just to clarify, our job is to represent our clients.

But I can say for us at NCLMR, whenever we DO have free time, we devote a fair amount of it to unagented writers whether it be critiquing, attending conferences, participating in contests, or even writing for this blog. And I’ve personally been on the querying end of this business before…I would have much rather the chance to win a critique then try to decipher what a form rejection means.

NCL announcements--yay!

I love news. Especially when it's fun, exciting, bookselling news to share! And to start this week I've got a coupe tidbits like that to share.

In case you missed it, Sandy William's debut urban fantasy series was announced on PM. FISSURED is about a professional college student and a shadow-reader for the fae, who is forced to choose sides -- and between the men she loves -- in a fae war.

Sandy's query is also featured in this month's Writer's Digest because, yeah...it's that good.

Also announced last week was Nancy Viau's debut picture book, IT'S NOT EASY to Abrams!

Nancy is the author of the contemporary middle grade,

SAMANTHA HANSEN HAS ROCKS IN HER HEAD. If you haven't read this and you're looking for the perfect sisters/mom relationship story (it's heartwarming and funny) pick it up...like NOW.

Nancy is also one of the co-founders of Kidlit Authors Club, a group designed for authors in the PA, MD, NJ area to work together to market their books.

Okay--off to work. Happy Monday everyone!!

My Clients Make Me :-)

When I find a submission that I fall in LOVE with, I don't just shoot off an email and offer representation right there. Because that is only one part of the whole package (a majorly important part, but still not the whole thing). What I do first is set up a phone call to talk (or start some sort of correspondence, stat). Why do I do this?

Well...to see if we'd work well together!

There are a ton of great projects out there to go around, and I turn down publishable stuff every day (whether just at query stage or beyond). But I think what makes a client-agent partnership work long and successfully is the relationship.

This doesn't mean you have to be BFFs or talk everyday...it just means that you have to fulfill the following criteria:

1. You both love the work (well, duh...I hope they love their own stuff!).

2. You have a revision style that meshes well (agents can typically mold their revision style just a bit to suit each client's needs, but they still have a typical style and it needs to work for both of you).

3. You feel comfortable talking to one another. Does this mean that you have to talk every day? Every week? Every month? No. But when you DO talk, it should be fairly easy to be open and honest with your questions and opinions.

4. You need to have the same goals.

This last one is important.

You may be scratching your head, thinking something like "Um, Joanna--isn't everyone's goal to get published?"

Of course it is!

But what I mean here is that your long term goals need to be the same. And what you want out from your career in publishing should be the same. At NCLit, when we sign clients, we want it to be long term. So when we go on submission or advise them in decisions, we're thinking not

only how those decisions will affect right NOW, but also how they'll affect your writing career years down the line.

But I digress. Because today I'm talking about why my clients make me HAPPY!! *twirls*

It's because they rock. It's only Tuesday and so far this week I've gotten to hang out with Amy Lukavics, Kody Keplinger and Shelby Bach (featured in my pic above, in that order, from L to R). And if you want to know what we did, just read Shelby's blog post about Monday night. Or check out a very happy-to-be-published Kody K below. Seriously...my clients make me happy, man. Who else gets to do this stuff and call it "work"?? I am more than happy to continue working like this for the rest of my life.

Don't forget to enter in the contest to win loads of DUFFiness stuff!

Happy DUFF Day, Everyone!