A Writing Contest From Query Letter!

The folks over at QueryLetter.com are hosting a writing contest! Details below!

This writing contest is all about book blurbs. The twist? We want blurbs about completely made-up, nonexistent books. Get creative!

Write and submit a back cover blurb of 100 words or fewer that sets the stage for a novel, establishes the characters, and raises the stakes in a way that makes readers want to find out more.

Let your imagination go wild—and who knows? You may be inspired to turn your blurb into a novel of your own one day.

The award

We will award one prize of $500 to the best blurb.

The submitted blurbs will be judged by our team of query letter writers based on how effectively they hook readers, taking into account the writing style and the overall impression.

Requirements

• Your blurb must be original. Any submissions found to contain plagiarism will be disqualified.

• Submissions must be 100 words or fewer. Please run a spellcheck and proofread carefully.

• You may submit multiple entries provided each entry is a completely unique blurb.

• You can apply from anywhere in the world. No purchase is necessary to enter this contest.

• In applying, you grant us permission to publish your blurb entry on the QueryLetter.com blog.

• Please apply by noon (US Eastern time) on September 15, 2020.

J.C. Moore On Pitching A Series

If there's one thing that many aspiring writers have few clues about, it's the submission process. There are good reasons for that; authors aren't exactly encouraged to talk in detail about our own submission experiences, and - just like agent hunting - everyone's story is different. I managed to cobble together a few non-specific questions that some debut authors have agreed to answer (bless them). And so I bring you the submission interview series - Submission Hell - It's True. Yes, it's the SHIT.

Today’s guest for the SHIT is J.C. Moore. author of the Maggie White Mysteries, debuting September 2020 with Murder in the Piazza from Level Best Books. Her short fiction has appeared in Mystery Weekly, and she is the editor of the Mystery Writers of America Midwest newsletter. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America, as well an established marketer and entrepreneur. A transplanted New Englander, she lives in Chicago with her husband and two boys. 

How much did you know about the submission process before you were out on subs yourself?

Not a lot! I’d spent all my research energy on the agent hunt, and I went into the submission side of it pretty blind. I think I thought it was all out of my hands at that point, and that my agent would handle everything. 

Did anything about the process surprise you?

I had two surprises: 

Most of all, I was delighted how interested editors were in my story! I went through a long, long querying process until I landed the wonderful Dawn Dowdle as my agent. I’ll be honest, she wasn’t at the top of my agent list when I first started submitting. I had my eye on big time New York agents who worked with many high profile authors. I was delighted when many of those agents expressed interest in my MS and said some very kind things about my writing. But they ultimately passed, saying they just didn’t think they could sell it. 

So when I signed with Dawn, I was concerned about the marketplace. If the other agents don’t think they can sell my book, can Dawn really deliver? I didn’t have anything to lose with her putting it on submission, but I was prepared to hear that editors were passing, since that’s what the agents who’d rejected my story said they thought would happen. So the fact I got an offer was a wonderful surprise. 

The other thing that surprised me, though, was the submission package that Dawn put together. I’d written my book as the first in a series, but I didn’t think much about what the other books in the series would be about since I wasn’t going to write them until someone bought the book. After all, what if my editor had major changes? It’d be crazy to plot out the rest of the series, right? 

But Dawn sent me a note along the lines of, “Oh, and please send me the descriptions of the next two books that we can include in the submission and we’ll get it out the door.” Whoops. I could have spent the past few months while going through querying hell working on that! But instead I took about 15 minutes to write titles and two-sentence descriptions of four stories, and I told Dawn to choose the ones she thought were best and send them along.

Well, she liked them all, so she include them all in the packet, and when I got an offer, it was for all five titles. I signed a contract for three (I didn’t want to sign away the next five years of my life) and now I have to figure out where to take those stories. And I’m delighted about it, because otherwise I’d be facing a completely blank page for the next books. Now, at least, I have something a prompt. It’s not thought out and it may make me crazy, but I think constraints help the creative process. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself!

Did you research the editors you knew had your ms? Do you recommend doing that?

It didn’t even occur to me to do that! Dawn told me every editor who had it, and I just sort of forgot about it until I got her update email each month telling me who’d passed and why, who still had it, who else had requested it, etc. 

What was the average amount of time it took to hear back from editors? 

Gosh, it varied all over the place. I just checked my tracker, and the first submission went out in June and the offer came in October. Some rejections came within the first month, others took longer. Once we had an offer, though, it got the remaining two publishers to read pretty fast. 

What do you think is the best way for an author out on submission to deal with the anxiety? 

I like to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, so I told myself—and I think I really believed it—that it was OK if the book didn’t find a home. I’d gotten enough positive feedback to know that the story was good and that my writing was great. That was enough for me to be determined to write another series, smarter this time. After all, the chances of hitting it the first time out were pretty slim. And I had the confidence that I could always self-publish my first series if I wanted to. 

That said, in my heart of hearts, I wanted that validation that comes from a publisher on my first book out, and so I was beyond pleased when the offer came through.

All this is a long-winded way of saying that I think the best thing to do while on submission is work on something else. Your success isn’t tied to this single book. If you plan to be a pro, you’ll have other books in you.

Just getting to the submission stage is a huge milestone, and whether a publisher thinks the market is right for your story isn’t the point. The point is that people who know the industry say you have what it takes, otherwise you wouldn’t be where you are. So go out and write another book. You’ve done all you can on the one that’s waiting to be read by an editor. 

If you had any rejections, how did you deal with that emotionally? How did this kind of rejection compare to query rejections?

I had many rejections! And as I’ve written ad nauseam above, I was prepared for them. I was more delighted when big publishers read it and said they loved the book. It was disappointing when they said they didn’t think they could make it the breakout they needed, but I understand the economics of publishing well enough to realize their needs are not the same as mine, or those of readers. Not being the top of their charts doesn’t mean I can’t have a long and successful career in this industry. 

If you got feedback on a rejection, how did you process it? How do you compare processing an editor’s feedback as compared to a beta reader’s?

Editor’s feedback was based on the marketplace, and whether they thought my title would be big enough for their lists. That’s economics, which is different from art. And while I was disappointed, I didn’t take it as a rejection of my work. I didn’t set out to write the next big thing. It would be great, of course, but I really wanted to delight readers looking for a fun, traditional mystery in a fabulous location, and the feedback I received told me I’d accomplished that.

When you got your YES! how did that feel? How did you find out – email, telephone, smoke signal?

I received a phone call from my agent. She’d told me in advance that she emailed with bad news and called with good, so when I saw her name pop up, I knew it was something great.

Did you have to wait a period of time before sharing your big news, because of details being ironed out? Was that difficult?

I did wait because I’m a cautiously optimistic person. Even though Dawn had told me the publisher was making an offer, I didn’t tell anyone except my husband until the contract was signed. Because until it’s signed, who knows what could happen?

It was hard, but no one was asking me about it. My writing friends all knew what a loooong process it was, and my non-writing friends had lost interest long ago. Well, not really lost interest. But writing and publishing is such a slow process, they weren’t tracking every piece of the puzzle. They really just want to know when they can buy the book!

7 Tips to Write a Book that Leaves a Legacy

By Lynne Golodner

As a writer, by nature and by training, who was always close to my grandparents, I realized as I grew older, and they did as well, that if I didn’t capture their stories, they might be lost forever. So, in my 20s, I sat down with both of my grandmothers and my lone living grandfather and interviewed them over a series of months to collect their stories into a book the whole family could enjoy.

My grandfather and I used this project as an excuse to go out for lunch together and get to know each other in new ways. I recorded our conversations for later transcribing. 

One grandmother and I took our journey down memory lane slowly in the nursing home where she was confined. The other grandmother, who lived until almost 92, pulled out so many scrapbooks and photo albums to pore through, prompting stories about long-forgotten photos and lots of content for my writing. 

When my last grandparent died just before Thanksgiving in 2013, the whole family flocked to Michigan for the funeral. Arriving a few days before, and able to celebrate a subdued Thanksgiving together with so many relatives, I pulled out the book I’d written about my grandmother and ran to a copy center to multiply it for everyone in town.

We spent Thanksgiving laughing and crying as we read her stories, “heard” her voice in the dialogue, and peered wistfully at the pictures alongside the narrative. And then each family returned home with a copy of my grandmother’s life stories in hand.

People write books for a lot of reasons. When it comes to a nonfiction tome about your life, whether memoir or straight autobiography, you could be doing it for many reasons – with the most compelling being the ability to leave a legacy long after you’ve left this earth.

A distant cousin of mine who lived in New York and was more a part of my mother’s generation than mine, traced his family back several generations and wrote a huge book about what he discovered. Reading it taught me lessons about my own heritage and ancestry from a new angle – stories of beloved relatives that I’d never heard or considered. And, it introduced me to characters in my own life story that I’d never met. 

All of this taught me things about myself as much about the people who came before me. 

The biggest question I ask writers in my book coaching courses is, “Why do you want to write this book?” 

That question is followed by “Why now?” and “Who is your audience?” 

Discovering answers to these questions is the first step toward writing a book that leaves a legacy. 

Once you know who you’re writing to, and why, do some free-writing to help focus your storytelling. Set a timer for 10 minutes and see what comes up in answer to these questions: 

1. What life lessons would you like to share?

2. What are your top 2 or 3 experiences that changed you?

3. What do you hope people will remember about you?

4. What do you think is your life’s mission?

5. Do you have a sense of personal purpose or meaning? If so, what is it?

6. What are your favorite memories?

7. What are your worst memories?

After this exploration, you’ll have a lot of fodder for writing! In fact, you may have more than enough for one book, and that’s OK. Because you’ve recorded these ideas on paper, you can start with one and dig in, and then focus another book on the next topic. Who knows – you may have several books or a series in you, just waiting to come out!

Once you get started, focus your time and structure your writing. I like to create an outline of chapters to guide my progress. Then, I set a daily time and place for my writing.

I also set weekly goals – like, this week I’ll write chapter 1. Or, I need to get through the first 10 pages by Sunday. Structuring your book project into manageable chunks makes it easier to complete. 

I never edit while I’m writing a first draft. That’s for after the whole manuscript is done. Sometimes, especially when I’m writing about a period of time in my life, I may need to do research about that time or place in history. I just write a note in all caps where I’ll need to add some factual details and keep writing.

Finally, to leave a legacy with your book, it’s important to be honest, get vulnerable, and focus more on your journey than on what you want to tell others. By writing descriptively about your experiences, with details, dialogue, and compelling characters, your readers will glean the lessons you want to convey from the narrative. Tell the story more than the lessons – the legacy will come out more powerfully if you do! 

Lynne Golodner is the author of 8 books, with her ninth due out in February 2021. A former journalist, she is the host of the Make Meaning Podcast (www.makemeaning.org), a book coach, and a marketing/PR professional (www.yourppl.com). Lynne lives in Huntington Woods, Mich., with her husband and four teenagers.