what I think

I was just watching DannyMarks volg on...

        Hari-Query--Brutal Query Smackdown 

wherein Danny talks query letters and stuff. a good place to start is agentquery.com. check 'em out!

[spliced because you may not care]

Anywho, he was going on about (well, it all) but there were a few things that stuck for me. 1 being that your relatives aren't your best place for honest reviews and fix up work for your novel. It’s one thing that I already knew, I'm the type of person that can't believe them fully when they say nice stuff about my books, I always think there working under the whole relative thing. Though my Nan is notorious about brutal honesty and wouldn't care if I teared up in front of her as long as she got what she wanted to say out (I may be excaudate a little bit, but she’s one of those up front woman. And I love her for it)

She doesn't in any way sugar coat things. But I did ask her to be nice, being that it was my first book and all, and well.... I just can't. my mum is the same, she's always been there to get me threw whatever I wanted, and she always tells me that it's the style I write in that she likes, not so much the books. She likes my pure honestly and younger style writing. though she did read my first book and said she wouldn't read any sex scene I ever write, but she's real busy at the moment and doesn't have time, so I turn to my Nan. 

Still I don't believe them, and yet I let their good words roll over me in a way that makes me feel better and gets me wanting to write more. 

The second thing was the synopsis....

Make it quick, simple, and fun. make the people want to read your work, or more so--at least what I was getting, give them the story in simple flowing points that lets them know what's happening as well as give things away, and still if they want to read it to find out what's what then they will. 

How I see it it's more like a review of your own book isn't it? You tell them in quick simple easy to understand words about the book. it's not in any way a place to tell them they should read it, but more in a way that lets them know what's doing before the decide to pick the thing up (really synopsis’s not always like that and I can't see a editor, or publisher picking, or even publishing your book if they read it and it be nothing like they thought, I would toss it aside on principle, can't think they wouldn't themselves)

He also said something about divorcing your work. Easy. I think its crap anyway.

Don’t love, or brag about yourself or your book. I take the above on that one too. 

Um... Oh and spell check/grammar edit everything (with me that's a giving, even with the computer I still fuck up. but then it's not like I would ever be able to write one of these things myself. hell, first it would mean that I would have to figure out what the hell my book is about in the first place, and I can never tell, even after writing and reading it. like it's about what I want it to be about. but I'm not that parsing of myself.

He also went on, or maybe this was at the start. About the fact that it's not finished unless you get someone you don't know to read the thing. Or until your first several chapters are so impressive you can't believe you wrote it.

Anyway, I think that's it. you really should check it out, and maybe go onto the Nightstand they are about to get into all that crap about query, which is probably why he's done a volg on it--that or it's because of YARebels. 

Who knows?

Well thanks for the time.