Hey gang, it’s David. It’s been a while!

In 2021, I archived Strobist as a completed project. I can’t honestly say that I’ve missed the breakneck pace of running a solo site. But I’ve definitely missed interacting with so many cool people all of the time.

That said, I am still teaching. X-Peditions gives me the twin advantages much smaller class sizes, plus being in Hanoi every fall. And that’s been wonderful.

Better yet, my new schedule has given me the breathing room to be able build my current project. Like Strobist, this project is designed for photographers. But unlike this website, it has nothing at all to do with flash.



Today I’m introducing my new book, The Traveling Photographer’s Manifesto. It aspires to be for traveling photographers what Strobist always tried to be for lighting photographers.

The premise of the book is that your camera can, and should, be much more than just a pricey recording device when you travel. It can also serve as a passport, opening up new connections and possibilities that otherwise might not have happened.

Using a photo trip to Southeast Asia as a framework, the book walks through many things that you can do to help this to happen.

I have uploaded three documents to help you to know if TTPM might be suited for you:


1. A 5-minute summary: This will quickly give you a feel for the book.

2. A 27-page supplement: Only a small portion of the book, which is unillustrated, is about camera operation. This visual supplement is available for readers who are more visual learners. And it will give you a quick skim of parts 4 and 5.

3. A sample chapter: How to become more comfortable meeting and engaging with people as a photographer.


As you'll see from the summary, most of the book is not about camera operation at all. It’s more about the countless little things that working photojournalists do while on assignment that an enthusiast might not think of.

These little habits, taken together, can start to form the impression of a photographer being consistently, conspicuously lucky. When in reality, luck had very little to do with it.

So, if this is the sort of thing that interests you, I hope you’ll give the book a spin. It is available now, on Amazon.com worldwide.

Just as with Strobist, I welcome your feedback from this project as well. My email is listed on the copyright page and elsewhere. And of course, I will read and take to heart every Amazon review. Because my goal is for the project to continue to evolve and improve over time, just as the material on this website did.

Thanks for your interest, and for your readership of Strobist. As always, please say hi at any time on Twitter at @Strobist.


Cheers,
David


The Traveling Photographer’s Manifesto (Amazon.com)

Hi Everyone, it's me, Grace. You might remember that a couple of years ago I earned my Canine Good Citizen award with my foster dad. Well, my mom said to me about a month ago, "Hey Grace, I know you already know this stuff, but what do you say you and I take the Canine Good Citizen test again?" So I told her I would do it again, just for her if it would make her feel good.


So we practiced all these things like sitting, staying, coming, not pulling on the leash, and passing by dogs nicely without staring at them. I didn't mind it at all, because she gave me lots of treats for doing it.




This past weekend I went with my family to this place with a ton of dogs. They called it a "dog show", but there was no TV there. Anyway, I had to wait for a long time and finally, I heard them call my me and my mom's names and we went into this fenced area. There was a lady with a blue shirt and she told my mom to have me do all these things. She kept saying "nice" after I did them.




After about 10 minutes of doing what she asked me to do, my mom looked very happy and gave me a delicious beef tendon and told me we had passed the Canine Good Citizen test. It was a great day.

В поколении людей, родившихся в 1930-е годы, были невероятно талантливые ученые, среди которых можно назвать Серафиму Евгеньевну Никитину. С. Е. обладала множеством способностей. Она могла бы стать певицей или актрисой, музыковедом, этнографом, географом, биологом, физиком или химиком (химиками были ее родители, а старший брат — физиком). Но стала филологом, и филологом необыкновенным, многопрофильным.

Сообщение Серафима Евгеньевна Никитина (01.09.1938–02.10.2024) появились сначала на Троицкий вариант — Наука.

Группа радиоастрономов под руководством Сергея Тюльбашева, работающая в Пущинской обсерватории, обнаружила необычный радиоимпульс длительностью 211 мс с показателем дисперсии около 134,4 пк/см³ на частоте 111 МГц. Этому импульсу присвоено обозначение FRB 20190203.
28 октября NASA предоставила обновленный список из девяти возможных мест посадки на Луне для миссии Artemis 3. Каждый из этих объектов отличается своим уникальным геологическим разнообразием, что открывает новые горизонты для изучения лунных ресурсов и истории нашей Солнечной системы.
В новом исследовании, проведенном с помощью космического телескопа «Джеймс Уэбб» международной группой ученых, ведомой астрономами из Университета штата Пенсильвания, было выяснено, что некоторые из протопланетных дисков, изначально обнаруженных «Хабблом», окружают коричневые карлики — звездные объекты, которые слишком малы и холодны, чтобы в них происходил синтез водорода. Новые результаты, полученные «Уэббом», помогут астрономам лучше понять, как формируются коричневые карлики, как они связаны с другими звездами и планетами и есть ли у них быть собственные спутники.
В ходе телеконференции с журналистами Национальное управление океанических и атмосферных исследований США (NOAA) и Международная группа по прогнозированию солнечных циклов объявили о достижении Солнцем периода максимума, который продлится в течение следующего года. Каждый из 11-летних циклов характеризуется сменой магнитных полюсов Солнца, что приводит к переходу звезды из спокойного состояния в активное. Затем активность постепенно снижается до минимума, однако ученые не могут точно предсказать, в какой именно момент это произойдет.
Изображение номера — микроквазар SS433.

Сообщение Астроновости: сюрприз микроквазара SS433, подробности миссии Artemis 3, пик солнечной активности… появились сначала на Троицкий вариант — Наука.

Accessing the power of the Heart -- Intuition -- is fundamental to surviving the 2012 Transition.

As we've seen, the intellect can't function as the dominant modality any longer. The human brain doesn't have the ability, and even more important, it no longer has the prerogative.

The intellect (logic, rationality, materialism) has been the unchallenged overlord for millennia. But it has a number dire and insurmountable intrinsic flaws... It knows only what it sees/hears/touches/feels -- locked into material reality as the only thing of consequence. It is the slave to the ego's drive for comfort, control, and immediate physical survival at any cost. It is adept at rationalising even the most destructive, evil actions.It is designed to see what it wants and expects to see.It is cut off from Divine Wisdom and the ways of compassion.It is limited to a functional speed that is too slow to deal with the current speed of life.What other modality could have brought the entire planet to the brink of destruction? You can be sure that this is the paradigm that will also take us right over the edge, if we allow it.

We can't afford the intellect's self-delusions anymore.

If we are looking to prevent an apocalypse, we will need something completely different. As Einstein said, "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."

 

If the intellect can no longer guide us, what source of information is left?

Only our intuition.

Luckily, that's more than enough.

Intuitive insights are the new dominant modality of thought. Without them, you won't be surviving the 2012 Transition very well. Because this Transition is all about liberating the Power of the Heart, and intuition is the Heart's Voice.

The intuition speaks through the spiritual Heart. You might perceive it through your body's sensations. It may appear as an idea, a sound, or words. The important thing to know is, it doesn't originate in your own brain.

Intuition accesses the Source of all knowledge.

Everything that can be known, is known by this Source -- past, present, future, alternate dimensions, etc. It is the source of infinite knowledge.

So the question is no longer, "What is the logical choice?"

The fundamental question is, "What does your deepest Heart tell you?"

That is the Voice of the Divine.

Learning to distinguish this Voice from the urges of the ego/mind is the tricky bit.

That's what we'll look at next.

 

Learning to hear and understand the quiet Voice of your intuition takes practice. It's a little like developing an ear for music -- at first, you're not really sure what to listen for, or what a good one is like. With practice, you learn to hear more clearly.

Really, you can only learn by doing.

Follow your intuition!

Start with little things. Don't use your intuition, the very first time, to decide to move across the country or adopt a child or something. Because in the beginning, it's trial-and-error. Sometimes you will hear your intuition precisely. But sometimes you may not.

But begin paying attention to it. Your intuition knows more than you think!

There have been studies on women who've been attacked on the street, and every time, it seems, something inside of them was warning them -- but they ignored the warning because it seemed impolite to just walk away or whatever. And if you've heard stories about people who survive cataclysmic events, they usually say they "just had a feeling" and they followed it.

Your inner Voice knows infinitely more than your logical brain ever could!

As we proceed with the 2012 Transition, it's really time to access this source of infinite knowledge.

The biggest difficulty is that we also have another voice inside of us -- the voice of the personality/ego ... and it definitely has its own agenda.

Learning to differentiate between these is the real key to accessing intuition.

When you first begin trusting your intuitive guidance, you may find that it seems to lead you astray at times. What's really happened, of course, is that your ego has tricked you into thinking it was Divine guidance.

Nothing is as tricky as the ego!

There's also an element of deep trust that is needed, though. Sometimes even the best intuition will lead you into an unpleasant situation. But I can guarantee it's because that unpleasant situation will turn into something you really needed.

The biggest block to accessing intuitive guidance is a cluttered mind. When there are a lot of thoughts, worries, plans, grudges, desires, etc. taking up space, how could you even notice when the Divine quietly offers a bit of advice?

Clear your thoughts and quiet your mind.

Clear your emotions.

Only when your mind is empty of the ego's thoughts and drives, can you clearly hear the Divine's advice -- and be sure of it. Then your intuition will seem much more obvious, and it will not lead you astray.

Meditation is a perfect practice for this. That's why intuitive ideas so often pop up when you are meditating.

A Mind-Watch, or Purging Papers, as well, are wonderful for clearing the mind and emotions. Reflection (spiritual journalling) and working with symbolisms like in dreams and with Animal Spirit Guides are also extremely beneficial. There are some things you can do that are like exercises for developing your intuitive muscles.

Divination helps develop this skill. Tarot or runes or palm-reading, even astrology or numerology? anything that offers you guidelines to follow (like in a book) gives a great starting place for developing intuition.

As you begin to interpret your divination readings, you can rely on what you remember, or what jumps out at you, that you read in the book.

After a while, you will realise that you will remember or notice the precise bit that is most relevant. Your sixth sense is already at work, and without any pressure it can work most effectively.

Gradually, you will start to extrapolate... using what you read as a starting point and making intuitive leaps from there.

Eventually, you may notice that most or all of your reading becomes intuitive.

With Bright Blessings,

移動映画館cinéma birdは東日本大震災以降に劇場の無い地域に劇場体験をお届けすべく鳥の様に自由に北海道から沖縄まで時には海を越えマダガスカルやパラグアイで飛んでいき開催してきました本来ならば今月の子供の日にもとある場所で開催予定だったのですが3月の段階で中止と言うか"無期延期"と判断しましたさてさてcinéma birdはいつも開催時に開場時間から開演時間の間にcinéma birdsなる出演者による即席bandを組みウェルカムソングを奏..

皆様こんばんは。 気付けばもう9月が終わりますね。 秋の食べ物が沢山出ていて、やはりお芋系には惹かれてしまいます。 食欲が止まりませんが皆様は如何お過ごしでしょうか。 上記画像は、 「ケープ付ヴィクトワールコート（ブラック）」 「フォレノワールボーラーハット（ブラック）」 「Victorian Queenタイツ（オブシディアン）」 などのコーディネイトです。 ブラックのお色だとブリティッ...

皆様こんばんは。 昨晩は中秋の名月でしたね。 皆様は月を見られましたでしょうか。 お団子を食べられた方もいらっしゃるでしょうか。 私は残念ながら今年はどちらも出来ませんでしたが、 季節を感じられるイベントがあると気分も高まりますね。 さて、本日は現在発売中商品のご紹介を致します。 上記画像は、 「ロングスリーブオーバードレス（シュールージュ）」 「コットンギャザーアンダードレス（シナモン...

皆様こんばんは。 最近は天気の優れない日が多いですね。 秋晴れと呼べる日が少なく残念ですが、 雨にも負けず色々なところへお出掛けしたいと思ってしまいます。 皆様もどうかお身体を大切にされつつお出掛けをお楽しみ下さいませ。 さて、本日も発売中商品と次回ご予約受付商品のご紹介を致します。 上記画像は、 「ヘンリエッタブラウスワンピース（ブラック）」 「コットンフリルドールドレス（アイスグレー...

皆様こんばんは。 ここ最近はぐんと寒くなり雨も続いているので、 寒さに慣れていない今の時期には厳しい気候ですね。 秋らしさを味わう間もなく冬になってしまうかと思うと 少し勿体無いような寂しいような気持ちになります。 皆様もお出掛けの際には勿論、眠る際にも暖かくしてお過ごし下さいませ。 さて、本日は現在ご予約受付中の「ブリティッシュチェックシリーズ」のご紹介を致します。 上記画像は、 「ブ...

皆様こんばんは。 ここの所は長く雨続きでしたので 久しぶりのすっきりとしたお天気を嬉しく感じます。 秋晴れの朗らかな陽気につられて、 どこか素敵な場所へお出掛けをしたくなりますね。 さて、本日は秋のお出掛けにもお勧めのコーディネイトを 現在発売中商品よりご紹介を致します。 上記画像は、 「アンティークレーストップス（ホワイト）」 「フラワーエンブロイダリージャンパースカート（ブラック...

皆様こんばんは。 いよいよ11月に入り、朝晩はとても冷え込みますね。 着るものに困ってしまう季節ですが、重ね着を楽しめる季節でもありますので 是非様々なコーディネイトをお楽しみ下さいませ。 さて、本日はご予約受付中商品のご紹介を致します。 上記画像左 「クラシカルドールロングドレス（ボルドー）」 「クラシカルドールミニドレスハット（ボルドー）」※ご予約特典 上記画像右 「クラシカルドール...

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皆様こんばんは。 12月に入って早くも1週間ですね。 昨年に比べて寒さが厳しくコートが大活躍です。 この季節ならではのイベントも沢山ありますので 寒くてもお気に入りのコートを着て沢山お出掛けしたいと思います。 皆様は如何お過ごしでしょうか。 さて、先日発売致しました新作商品のご紹介を致します。 上記画像は、 「ファー付エレガントロングコート(ネイビー×ブラック)」 「エレガントリボンキャ...

皆様こんばんは。 昨日から大阪でも気温が一桁台になり寒さの厳しい日が続いておりますね。 インフルエンザや風邪なども少し前から流行ってきておりますので、 皆様どうかお気を付け下さいませ。 さて、本日は発売中商品のご紹介を致します。 上記画像は、 「フォレノワールロングドレス（ダークネス）」 「ヴェルサイユリボンハット（ブラック）」 「ローズブーケヘアクリップ（ボルドー）」 などのコーディネ...

皆様こんばんは。 本日は大阪でも一瞬雪が降りましたがすぐに止んでしまいました。 来週はぐんと冷え込みそうとのことで、皆様もどうか温かくしてお出掛け下さいませ。 さて、本日は間もなくご予約受付を開始致しますシリーズのご紹介を致します。 上記画像は、 「シャーリングシフォンロングアンダードレス（ボルドー）」です。 定番の「シャーリングシフォンアンダードレス」がロング丈になって登場です。 ロング...

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“That roof is the wrong shape to talk to God.”

Chloe Reed hears this inside her head when she looks up in a coffeeshop, her house, her church, everywhere she goes. And the strange, static-laden voice is getting louder with each repetition.

It tells her she’s been chosen to build a correctly shaped roof.

Chloe bounces between thinking she’s going insane and hoping she’s been singled out to talk to God. She needs it to be the latter. She needs to know God loves her, that anyone loves her. She needs to know why her own father doesn’t even want to be in the same room as her.

She builds the roof and puts it on a shed in her backyard. She steps inside. The distorted voice that had been confined to her head crackles down at her from the roof. Chloe prostrates herself on the wooden floorboards.

The voice tells her it’s God. It tells her it has a plan and it needs her help. But it’s not the God she was expecting. This one doesn’t know who Jesus is.

Chloe must find out if the voice belongs to God. If it does, Chloe finally has concrete proof that she’s worthy of love. She finally has a way to get all the answers.

But the voice wants more than her faith. It wants all of humanity to believe. It wants total control. And it needs Chloe to get it.

CHLOE’S ROOF (80,200 words) is a work of speculative fiction. This would be my debut.

Put your comps here. Yes, you need them.

Put your bio here. Yes, you need one.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

This is clear, concise, well-written.
It works for me, I'd read the pages.

But, this is not going to appeal to every agent.
Which means even a clear, concise, well-written query is going to get some passes. 

Any questions?

 

Dear Query Shark,

When Wren’s weird dreams begin to take on a reality all their own, she finds a strangely addictive second life in her dangerous dream-world, Irisen

This doesn't really hook your reader, does it? There's no tension. There's no sense of wondering what will happen next.

 

Compare that to the first line of Leviathan Wakes by James Corey

 

The Scopuli had been taken eight days ago, and Julie Mao was finally ready to be shot.

 

Now THAT grabs my attention.

 

Back on Earth, things are unraveling; her father’s recent cancer diagnosis is fracturing her family and Wren’s painstakingly organized post-college plans now feel futile.

 

Still no tension. What's the problem here that Wren must deal with?

Feeling futile is not a problem. It's a state of being. (for many of us in publishing, it's just called today)

 

While exploring Irisen, she teams up with Jasper—a headstrong botanist with reality-defying experiments—and his band of gung-ho rebels bent on undermining the oppressive autocracy that controls the region. 

 

I kinda love the idea of a headstrong botanist!

But you've brought in oppressive autocracy here like that's all we need to know.

 

Are they censoring free speech?

Are they making you read Ayn Rand?

What's the autocracy doing such that they need overthrowing?

In other words: what's the problem with the autocracy?

 

Notice a theme here?

You need to get the problem these characters face on the page, specifically. That's the essence of plot. Without it you don't have a compelling query.

 

On Earth, Wren is powerless and reminded of it every time she tallies the furniture stains in the oncologist’s waiting room. On Irisen, she’s useful; it’s a relief to fight a fight she can shape.

 

This is interesting.

 

 

Despite the wear and tear of a dichotomous existence,

 

I suggest you take this out only because if you try to explain it (it's too abstract to have much meaning as it stands) you'll just get lost in the weeds.

 

living two lives proves to be the revival Wren needs. Learning to build bombs from botanicals and helping the rebels subvert the autocracy, Wren all but disregards the woes of her Earth-life reality—until those woes clutch and drag her back. The day her father’s diagnosis goes from open-ended to terminal, her ability to dream-travel to Irisen mysteriously fails. With time running out on both her father’s life and Jasper’s rebellion, Wren must find the link between her realities (tricky, but doable) and face her circumstances at home (way fucking harder) before everything she loves is lost. 

 

DREAMWALKER, at 250,000 words,

 

oops.

instant pass.

 

If you don't want to take my word for it, how about these two recent tweets from agents I know and follow:

 

 

 

 

 

 

is a multi-perspective fantasy novel and the first in a planned series. The conversational tone, along with the layered worldbuilding will resonate with the twenty-something set currently reading Black Water Sister.

 

My academic background is in biology, and I have a soft spot for botany and bending the rules. And though I’d love to tinker in Jasper’s lab, filled to the brim with magical flora, I work in healthcare rehabilitating broken and neglected bodies… by day. 

 

Thank you for your time and consideration,

 

 

Question:

1. I like thick books: GOT, Pillars, Mistborn (don't fret, not my comps), and I like them because there are plots, subplots, and what-the-heck,-where-is-this-going?-OH-DANG! moments. But I'm a nobody. Do I cut plots/ characters now to make the WC more appealing, or do I risk it for the biscuit?

 

No. You make this 250,000 word door stop into three books.

 

 

2. Wren is the MC, but the story is told through multiple POV. This isn't represented in the ‘hook’ of my query, should it be? The other characters add twists, turns, eyes and ears in different locations (ie: Jasper's POV in Irisen). Thoughts?

 

Even if I hadn't fainted dead away at the mere idea of 250,000 words, your query does NOT support the word count.

 

You've got one storyline: Wren

 

You need a lot more.

 

Querying epic fantasy (epic anything) means you have to give us a sense of the big picture.

 

What you have here is the Winterfell aspect of Game of Thrones.

You're missing the dragons.

 

You need to figure out how to present this Incredible Hulk word count in more Bruce Banner type ways.

 

 

And you need to make the story more Hulk than Banner. 

 

Kind of an interesting problem.

 

I look forward to seeing how you solve it.

 

Revise and resend.

 

 

 

WYSTERIA Wysteria Collins

don't cap the names of your characters in a query. That's for synopses and film scripts.

 is the twenty-four year old owner of a magic shop in downtown Olympia, Washington. She runs it with her familiar, a turtle named PANTS Pants. Things are her normal brand of chaos until her dear friend PRISCILLA Priscilla calls in a favor.

The Fae

who?

In a short form work like a query, it REALLY helps if you don't call characters two different things in short order. Were you worried about using Priscilla's name twice in short succession?

You can avoid that by paring and combining the sentences:

 

Things are her normal brand of chaos until her dear friend Priscilla calls in a favor

 

can’t break her promise to go on a date and  

persuades Wysteria to go on a date in her place. It’s supposed to be a one time event, except that Wysteria likes ARIEL Ariel and he didn’t seem put off by the way she had to chase her turtle across the restaurant floor.

 

The story is told in a series of vignettes, ranging from comforting a grief-stricken student with a request for necromancy, to an excitable baseball coach. There’s a visit to the beach that ends with bartering with mermaids, and the time Ariel shows up unannounced with a lost snake.

 

Well this sounds fun and all but there's NO PLOT.

Even a series of vignettes needs a plot, and worse: each vignette needs one, plus you need an overarching story arc.

 

WYSTERIA AND PANTS is a 60,000 word adult fantasy

I'm not convinced you have enough word count here.  The previous Query Shark post is about a book that's got too many words.

 

You've got the opposite problem.  Fantasy needs world building. World building takes words.

And not having a plot means you're going to need to add words too. You can double the word count here and still be ok.

 

 

 #ownvoices novel with series potential featuring a diverse cast of queer characters.

 #ownvoices is being replaced with #specific under represented voice you mean.

Here's the announcement about that:

We Need Diverse Books announced that it will no longer refer to books using the term #OwnVoices. Instead, they will use "specific descriptions that authors use for themselves and their characters whenever possible (for example "Korean American author" or "autistic protagonist").  They write in the release that the hashtag was originally created "for readers to recommend books by authors who openly shared the diverse identity of their main characters," but has since become a "catch all marketing term" and caused problems with its vagueness.

 

COMPS HERE

Most agents now want to see comps in a query. Effective comps are recent books (no earlier than 2018) and published by a trade house (ie not self published), and on the same shelf you envision for your book. Don't use YA titles as comps for books for the adult trade market (or vice versa.)

 

I moved from California to Washington to live with my shouty cat Icarus where I enjoy wandering around in the greenery and eating blackberries from my bush. I’ve been involved in a writing and critique group since 2015 and together we have published several collections of short stories.

 

Nice but NOT a publishing credit. Leave that for your website.

 

Thank you for your time and consideration,

(name)

 

Fae/faer or they/them

 

 

 

Questions:

 

    I want to be clear that the chapters are a little disconnected but still related without sounding like they’re short stories all to themselves.

 

"A little disconnected" strikes fear in even my sharkly heart. You don't want your novel to feel like a pinball game where the reader caroms about.  That's NOT an immersive reading experience.

 

A novel in stories is very much a thing, and are lots of fun to read. Is there any way to make that happen?

 

 

 

    Will it put agents off to include my pronouns?  How should I handle this?

Put off?

Hardly!!!

I'm tickled fuchsia to have writers indicate their pronouns.

It's helpful for gender fluid names (Dylan!) plus if you are non-binary, I'd like to respect that.

 

While I don't have a clue what fae/faer is, I do recognize they/them. How you have it listed is just right.

 

Any agent who is put off by pronouns in a query is NOT someone you want to work with.

Dear QueryShark:

College is supposed to be full of new experiences, but a failed assassination attempt shouldn’t be one of them. At least, that’s Anna Michael’s opinion.

 

 

You want your first sentence to be as taut and compelling as possible.

Reordering the sentences will help with that:

 

College is supposed to be full of new experiences, but 

A failed assassination attempt shouldn’t be one of the new experiences of college.  

 

This is awkwardly worded but you get the idea. Start with the thing that's going to hook your reader's attention. 

 

 But when you look at that revised sentence, it still doesn't really do the job well, does it?

 

Revision is almost never one and done (well, typos: fix and finished)

So, let's remember that starting with the main character's name is almost always a good idea.

 

Anna Michaels wasn't expecting an attempt on her life to be one of her new college experiences

Still not great, but that's also the nature of revision.

So let's reorder the elements again:

 

Anna Michaels didn't think one of her new college experiences would be surviving an attempt on her life.

 

 

You prod and poke and try a gazillion ways to make this sound taut and compelling.

 

 Once you think you've got it, let it rest for at least a day, then go back the next day and look at it with fresh eyes.

 

At least, that’s Anna Michael’s opinion.

I think we can all agree this is not something we think is a benefit of enrolling in college.

The problem with starting with something as attention getting as a failed assassination attempt is that your reader is keen to know what happens next.

 

And if you don't provide that info, the reader is disappointed.

 

There is no connection between how you start and the next paragraph.

All Anna wants is to find her father’s murderer and protect her mother. 

And what does this have to do with her going to college? 

Did you include college to signal her age?

I think that's going to confound you if college is never mentioned again.

 

And now she’s fleeing her hometown with two strangers who claim to know her better than she knows herself. They introduce her to a world that exists alongside her own, a world where a girl can walk through walls and a boy can affect time.

 

Unless walking through walls and affecting time are gender-specific abilities you might reconsider how you describe them.

She uncovers a forgotten childhood where she grew up surrounded by magic . . . as the daughter of the king and queen. And a deadly coup has just made Anna the sole member of the monarchy. 

being specific usually helps your reader get a fuller picture. Anna is the sole surviving member of the monarchy not just the sole member.

The strangers, Brie and her brother Max, want Anna to save the magical community. It means discovering who wants to end the monarchy—and why. Were they responsible for the death of her father? As Anna gets involved deeper and deeper into the insurgency . . . she might not be on the right side of this war after all. 

Really? Why?

What's at stake here?

The King and Queen are dead, Anna is the next in line.

So what?

In other words, what happens if she isn't on the right side?

What's at stake for her? For the kingdom?

Max knows more about her altered memories than he’s willing to tell her. Even though she trusts him with her life, maybe even falls in love with him, she knows she shouldn’t. A relationship with him would mean forfeiting the crown and everything they’re fighting for.

Anna must decide if finding her father’s killer and stepping into the role of queen is worth the sacrifice of her identity and family, when she’s already lost her parents and the woman who raised her. She learns one thing: It will be the death of Anna Michaels.

Long live the Queen.

SIX & TIME (123,000)  is a New Adult

 

New Adult isn't really a category you want to use.

It started off being just what you'd think it would be: books for people who are post-YA. Then it morphed into something more like erotica light: 50 Shades of Something Wicked This Way Comes kinda thing.

 

If your main characters are college age, this is adult fantasy.

 

But the problem here is that you're describing a book that uses many themes associated with YA.

 

Confusing indeed.

When agents are confused, they pass.  Clarity is essential in a query.

contemporary fantasy novel complete at 123,000 words.  

You don't need to say it's complete. That's assumed.

 

This is the first in a planned series. It will appeal to fans of Avatar: the Last Airbender and The Ash Princess (by Laura Sebastian).

 

Always include the author with the title of your comp books.

Titles are not subject to copyright; more than one book can be called The QueryShark's Guide to Tasteful Writers.

 

Also The Ash Princess is YA.  Your comps must be on the same shelf as your book. (You'll gnash your teeth trying to find NA comps, which is another indicator you need to revise the ages, or the category)

 

While I work with numbers as a tax professional during the day, I am ruled by writing at all hours.

 

This is the kind of hyperbolic statement that makes you sound like an amateur.

I hope you've got a life other than writing.

 

This is the kind of thing that makes you sound LESS enticing not more.

 

Leave it for another forum.

 

 I am pursuing my Master in Fine Arts with a focus in Creative Writing. (you might want to add which school)

Thank you for your consideration. 

 

 

Questions:

- Here's where I shoot myself in the foot. This book can NOT stand alone. I know, I know. But I reached 100,000 at the "halfway" mark of the original novel, so I decided to split it in two with a cliffhanger ending.

 

Talk about one quick way to make your readers HATE YOU.

Seriously.

Back in the day when cliffhangers were more the norm, you only had to wait a week to find out what happened.

 

There can be a year between Book One and Book Two.

Some are faster, but the fastest I've ever seen was three months.

 

You're asking NEW fans to wait three months to resolve things?

This is a recipe for disaster. And disaster these days means being trashed on Goodreads, Amazon and any other forum people can use to complain in.

 

The closest I've read to a cliffhanger recently was Lee Child's 61 Hours (pubbed March 18, 2010) and resolved in Worth Dying For (October 19, 2010). It was his 14th book, not his debut.

 

I could always remove a subplot or two, but part of the reason why this novel works is it takes the tired "royal chosen one with elemental magic" trope and turns it around - without the layers, this book is generic as hell. 

 

 It would help if that were on the page here, but it's not.

 

 

Revise and resend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 REVISION #1

Question: When comping a series, does the 3-year rule apply to the most recent installment or to the first?  What if the series hasn't been concluded yet? 

You want to use comps that are as close to the specs of your book as you can. That means using the first book of any series because yours is the first book in your series. And you want that first book to have been pubbed recently, no earlier than 2018 and 2019 is better.

If you're banging your head against the wall on a comp search, you're doing it right. 

 

Dear Query Shark,

 

Three years ago, Aman once had an entire barn full of horses he loved.  Unfortunately for them, the Düzen were desperate for food.

 

Three years ago, Düzen soldiers invaded Aman's village, slaughtering the animals he had been entrusted with.   

Let's put this sentence about the Düzen soldiers in the first paragraph, then start the next paragraph where there's a shift in time.

 

Thus:

Three years ago, Aman once had an entire barn full of horses he loved.  Unfortunately for them, the Düzen were desperate for food.  Düzen soldiers invaded Aman's village, slaughtering the animals he had been entrusted with.

 

 

 New paragraph here for shift in time.

Now in his early twenties, Aman serves in the Corthiaks' heavy cavalry, hiding his guilt, grief, and self-loathing from his fellow soldiers.  His only source of hope, the one horse he has left, is old and inexperienced with combat—far from an ideal war horse.   

 

I stumbled over source of hope here because we don't have any sense of what Aman wants. You've described how he is now, but not what he wants.

 

Surrounded by hardened warriors and their younger, better-trained steeds, (some of whom aren't even horses,) Aman can't help but wonder if he or his horse really belong here.

 

I am intrigued by a cavalry that doesn't have horses, that's a nice detail to include. 

 

The Düzen have a new king, named Karib, and he wants peace with the Corthiaks.   

 

And here is where I lose the thread of the plot. 

 

Aman is sent to recount the story of his village to Karib, but he didn't take his last horse into war so that he could forgive the Düzen.  

After all, Karib believes that animal welfare means nothing in times of human suffering.  He and his soldiers would kill this horse in a heartbeat, along with anything else that isn't human.  

 

 Well, the Düzen should all burn in hell of course BUT you've set them up here. In the first paragraph, they slaughtered horses for food. Understandable but yucky. But here they are simply equicidal maniacs and that's a whole different bucket of entrails.

If Karib wants peace, what's standing in his way? What does Aman need to do?

Whether from a negotiator's seat or a war saddle, Aman must show Karib that animals are worth more than their weight on a butcher's scale. 

or what? The or what is what's at stake, and that's what you need here. 

 

 One will have him face difficult questions about the value of animal life and the ethics of eating meat, but the other will pit him against hordes of infantry that outnumber the Corthiaks forty to one, volleys of arrows that darken the skies, and rideable, venomous, twenty-foot carnivorous lizards.   

 

This sentence is 49 words long. That means it's got too much information in it for your reader to absorb easily.  Let's cut it down to two or three shorter sentences for easier understanding. 

 

 One will have him face difficult questions about the value of animal life and the ethics of eating meat.

One what? It's not clear who/what you mean. 

 

 Nothing is more off-putting in an otherwise good query than the idea the book is some message driven polemic. No one reads novels to hear about the ethics of eating meat. They read novels for the story.

 

If you want themes about the ethics of eating meat in the novel, that's up to you, but here in the query focus on the story.

 

but The other will pit him against hordes of infantry that outnumber the Corthiaks forty to one, volleys of arrows that darken the skies, and rideable, venomous, twenty-foot carnivorous lizards.   

 

This is an odd choice in that they don't seem to be alternatives. You can philosophize about eating meat while you battle lizards. There doesn't seem to be an either/or here, and that's what you need. 

 

Either way, he cannot hope to succeed without his fellow cavalrymen, and the horse who has carried him all this way.

CURSORIAL is an 82,000-word work of adult fantasy. You can add here: It explores themes of the ethics of eating plants etc.  

You can mention themes here (rather than above). I know I've said in earlier QS posts that you don't need them, and you don't BUT it can help elevate the query beyond plot points and characters.

 

It will appeal to fans of The Masquerade (by Seth Dickinson) 

When you list comps in a query, the first thing I do is look at the books on Amazon. The Masquerade appears to be the name of the series, not the first book. And the first book, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, was pubbed in 2016.   You need to use titles of books, not series. Sales figures are by book, and that's what we look at.  And of course, the book is too old to be an effective comp.

 But the description of the book is utterly compelling. 

Tomorrow, on the beach, Baru Cormorant will look up and see red sails on the horizon.

The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They will conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She'll swallow her hate, join the Masquerade, and claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free.

To test her loyalty, the Masquerade will send Baru to bring order to distant Aurdwynn, a snakepit of rebels, informants, and seditious dukes. But Baru is a savant in games of power, as ruthless in her tactics as she is fixated on her goals. In the calculus of her schemes, all ledgers must be balanced, and the price of liberation paid in full.

 If I saw that in a query I'd fall all over myself to request the full.

The closer you can come to this vivid writing, the better.

 

and The Unbroken (by C. L. Clark).

 

 Don't put parentheses around the author's names.

I've seen a lot of that recently. There's probably some query advice that says to do so, but don't. 

 

I'm an equestrian, and an absolute geek for natural history, paleontology, medieval warfare, power metal music, and the color green. This is a terrific bio. It's the most vivid thing in the query. That tells me you're holding back in the query, maybe trying to be all serious and business like. Businesslike does not mean flat. Vivify!

 

Thank you for your time and consideration.

 I don't have a sense of the plot there that would compel me to request a full.

What does Aman want?

What does Karib want?

What's getting in the way of each of them getting it?

What choices do they face?  What sacrifices will be required?

 

Don't get lost in the weeds with lizards and vegans.

Focus on the plot. 

 

 

 ******

Original query

Question: I realize my comp titles are rather old, but I find them to be the best representatives of the emotional tone of this story. I've literally had beta readers tell me that they can't think of comp titles, so I went with my gut on this one. Is it a dealbreaker that the most recent comp title is almost 20 years old now?

Yes.

Comp titles need to be recent, no more than three years old (no earlier than 2018).

It's not up to your beta readers to find them (nice try). This is your job.

Dear Query Shark,

Aman once had an entire barn full of horses he loved. Today, only one of them is still alive.

Aman and his horse, Arty, barely survived when the Sacramouth army invaded their village and slaughtered everything in sight.

I thought Sacramouth was a person. Turns out, later in the query, it's a country. To avoid that misapprehension you might add the army.

Three years have since passed, and Aman and Arty now serve in Aerdoth's heavy cavalry together, seeking vengeance against the people who took everything from them.

You need to tell us what problem Aman faces. You have to get plot on the page here.


To Aman's dismay, the King of Sacramouth agrees to host a series of peace talks with Aerdoth. Aman is sent as an ambassador to recount his story to the King, but refuses to forgive him for what his country did. However, as the peace talks begin, the King proves to be more persuasive than even Aman could have foreseen.

Persuasive about what? The last thing you want to do in a query is be coy!

The threat of war looms throughout the negotiations, and Aman faces difficult questions about the value of animal life, his own capability, and the relationships that he chooses to make. His only hopes of success lie within his own intuition, his fellow cavalrymen, and of course, Arty.

The plot is not clear. Aman faces difficult questions, ok, but what problem does he have? You've said his only hope of success, but success at what? Plot must be on the page.


CURSORIAL is a 55,000-word war story that skirts the line between fantasy and ecofiction.

This is fantasy. The question is which shelf: adult or MG.

You have an adult plot and it sounds like Aman is also an adult (or at least not a child.)

But 55K is way too short for an adult fantasy novel. Fantasy needs world building and world building needs words. And the comps below are kids.


It closely follows the bond between horse and rider,

Really? Cause there's no sense of that here in the query.


inspired greatly by works such as War Horse (by Michael Morpurgo) and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. The story can stand alone, but is also the first of a planned series.

War Horse is for grades 4-7. Spirit is an animated movie (not a book) ie for kids. That and your word count signal make me think this is not an adult book.


I'm an equestrian, and an absolute geek for natural history, paleontology, medieval warfare, and the color green.

Thank you for your time and consideration.


Another thing that leaps off the page to me is the plethora of A-names: Aman, Arty, Aerdoth.

But the biggest problem here is you don't know your shelf. You've got adult themes, and MG comps.

This is confusing, and confusing often leads to an instant pass.

If you can't find suitable comps, you're searching too narrowly OR you haven't read enough in your category.

If you're having trouble finding comps you might try reading reviews in Publishers Weekly (which is NOT the same as Publishers Marketplace). Your library has a subscription to PW, but they don't put it out in the circulation area. You'll have to ask. Read the reviews going back a year or two. It will take you a while, but it's worth it.

Get plot on the page, and get comps that reflect the book.

 

 

Dear Query Shark,



Come with me to Crustacean University and join this year’s class of mismatched Pollywogs! Watch through this world of science imagination as Adrian keeps finding strange artifacts and accidentally turns Allison’s hair purple, Alex skyrockets his watershed board to the sky, some of the group gets lost in a cave of crystals and Simon falls into a stinky mess. All of this while there is a Dead-Zone outbreak!

 

I wouldn't have known what category this book was by reading the first paragraph. If I'm confused I generally pass. Most agents get so many queries they don't/won't/can't spend time trying to figure out what you're pitching.

 

You want to avoid that.

 

The way to avoid that is starting with the name of the main character and what problem has befallen them. 

 

If you think the way to avoid this is to put the category in the subject line, you're half right. If you said this was middle grade educational fiction in the subject line, I would have passed then.

 

 

Educational books are not trade books. They're acquired and sold much differently.

 

But this really isn't an educational book; it's a collection of stories (you say so below.)

 

Join the Pollywogs as they make their way through a series of adventures, blunders, and classroom lab activities as they learn the principles and concepts of ocean literacy. While learning about the ocean environment these new Pollywogs will dodge the Evil Dr. Debris, a giant squid, and toothy sharks! It will surely be a challenging year for these new ocean explorers as they encounter these and many other dangers along the way. While all of this is happening, the Pollywogs find clues to an ancient island puzzle saving Crustacean Island! Learning important life lessons as they go fishing with their minds, finding answers to their curious Crustacean questions in their first set of adventures.

 

There's no story here.

 

Middle grade books are story-driven.

 

If there's educational aspect, it should not the focus of the query or the book.

You should read this book cause you'll learn something is the kiss of death in a sales pitch —and not just for kids books.

The Pollywog Tails

Puns in the title can be a database nightmare.

Don't outsmart yourself here.

 

is a collection of watery modern adventures that is reminiscent of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,

 

which was first published in 1869. Using it as a reference point misses the point of comps. You need current books.

 

It's also adult science fiction, and that's not what you're describing here (as far as I can tell.)

 

with a touch of The Magic School Bus

1986. Same problem.

 

 

woven throughout along with a kick of Kratts creatures.

 

I had to google this one, but again 1996 is before your target readers were born.

 

Effective comps share the specs of your book: what shelf it goes on in the bookstore, target audience, thematic elements. They're also recent, pubbed no earlier than 2018 and 2019 is better.

 

 Crustacean University is led by Dean Crusty, a tough ole’ crab, Scud his amphipod assistant along with the Professors that teach at Crustacean University. And don’t forget the Island’s resident Researcher’s,

 

it's plural, not possessive. Researchers. No apostrophe.

Yes, I notice that kind of things.

 

Sure typos happen but that's why you run this by Miss Picklepuss, the copy editor whose idea of a wild night is splitting infinitives after a brewsky or two.

Scuba Scooter and Surfer Joe, together with Molly who keeps track of everyone and everything.

 

Middle grade books need a middle grade protagonist.

They're often written in first person as well.

They need a plot: what dilemma does the main character face?

  

The Pollywog Tails, Ancient Secretes and the Mysterious Dead Zones is a mid-grade Educational Fiction Short Story series, where S.T.E.M/S.T.E.A.M concepts meet ocean literacy and is the first Pollywog installment of a planned series of five short-story themed volume sets that are based at Crustacean University. This first introductory set of adventurous tails reads in at 5 volumes varying between 14,00-40,000 words each volume.

 

I'm not sure you would know this but a series of books needs to have books that are roughly the same length. 40K is 3x as long as 14K.

 

And you query ONE book, ONE story at a time.

 

With the need for the understanding of ocean sciences and a basic introduction to S.T.E.M./S.T.E.A.M concepts, and nothing recent on the shelves

 

 

When a writer tells me there's nothing recent on the shelves, I ALWAYS go look for myself.

 

Here's a list of 15, and just about sharks.

https://bookriot.com/shark-books-for-kids/

 

About half of these are current enough to count as recent. 

 

This is where I'd stop reading the query. 

 

A lot of this is fixable, but not knowing your category is a deal breaker. It means you don't know what's fresh and new cause you don't know what's been done before

 

I have created Crustacean University—a magical campus where readers are introduced to these principles and ideas through creative storytelling.

 

You can't set a middle grade book at a university.

Middle grade kids want to read about kids like them, and that means middle school.

 

I have always had the ocean close to my heart, both as a child and as a sailor in the U.S. Navy. As an avid saltwater aquarist, I have written and published articles for the local aquarium societies and have made online contributions to Reef2Reef website as well. Thank you for taking an interest in the entertaining Pollywog Tails.



Enjoy!

 

You're not a server at Applebee's.

This is a business letter.

 

 

Close with Thank you for your time and consideration or something similar.

The closing isn't a deal breaker of course, but it's like shining your shoes for a job interview. You want to convey a business like demeanor.

 

 

I'm not sure how much current middle grade you've read.

I usually say you need to have read 100 books in your category before you should write a book, let alone query one.

 

That standard seems applicable here.

 

Middle grade needs a middle grade main character.

There needs to be ONE story per query.

 

That you envision this as a series is mentioned in the housekeeping section. 

 

 

Read more. A lot more.

Revise to tell us one story.

Resend.

 

 

Question

After reading the archives, banging my head on the wall of current comps, this is what I came up with. My biggest struggle has been the series in my head is one far reaching arc, with each novel containing its own smaller arc. Trying to pare that down into something manageable and interest grabbing without tangling delicate threads that weave and weft has been quite the challenge. I believe in this story, my question is; did I convince you to pick it up and be transported too?

 

Not yet, but that's the whole point of QueryShark. Revise till you get there!

Don't pare down the entire story, just focus on the start of the story.

 

Dear Query Shark,  

907 A.D. Britain is suffering birth pains of becoming a united land, divided into separate kingdoms, barely able to resist Danish assaults. Rhiannon, orphaned young during a savage incursion by the heathen Northmen was raised by a Viking warrior plagued by regret. Trained to be one of the best archers in the land, Rhiannon earns a name, The Northern Flame, 

 

I suggest adding The Northern Flame here, so that when you use it below, your reader is not confused about who you are talking about. 

and a vaunted place amongst King Anarawd ap Rhodri’s teulu, single-minded in her quest to avenge her parents.

 

 Ok, and?

What you need in a query is a sense of where the story is going. That's often shown by telling us what problem the main character faces.

Story is not events.

Story is NOT set up and background (what you have here).

 

Story starts with what problem does a character face, and what are her choices, and what's at stake.

How must she change/grow or what must she do to overcome that problem?

 

Rhiannon is a great archer.

She wants revenge for the slaughter of her parents.

What's the problem?

What are her choices?

What's at stake?

 

Mercia is ruled by King Alfred the Great’s daughter; the intrepid Aethelflaed, Lady of Mercia.

It took a minute to sort out the who and what here.

Let's revise:

 

The intrepid Aethelflaed, daughter of King Alfred the Great, rules Mercia.

 It's a tad awkward, but it's clear. Revise further as needed.

She is threatened on all sides by invasion on all sides: of —Danes and Norsemen intent on conquering everything in their path and subjugating her subjects.

 

subjugating her subjects is really awkward. You'll hear these things if you read your query aloud. 

Revise here for smoothness.

Hearing tales of The Northern Flame’s skill, she makes a deal with the Welsh king.

 

To do what?

Marry him?

Kill him?

Foist her mean sister off on him?

 

Commander Wulfric, a man haunted by the past, leads Lady Aethelflaed’s hearth-guard and is sent to retrieve the infamous archer. Opposed to bringing a foreigner to his land during these tumultuous times, yet unable to disobey his liege, he discovers a passionate woman who tests his patience and makes him question his vows to absolve his family’s name from the shadow of treason that cloaks him like a death shroud.

 

Rhiannon and Wulfric must find a way to trust each other before the Viking warlord, Ingimundr, lays siege to the burgh of Chester, annihilating the dream of a united country. They try and fail to resist their explosive passion while struggling to keep their sworn oaths of vengeance.

  

What makes this hard to read and absorb is you've got too much going on. For starters, you've got too many characters:

Rhiannon

King Anarawd

King Alfred the Great

Aethelflaed

Commander Wulfric

Ingimundr

 

Six named characters is three too many.

See below for notes on how to focus the query, but also get a sense of the series.

 

THE NORTHERN FLAME (122,000 words) is historical fiction that will appeal to fans of early medieval history like The Last Kingdom, by Bernard Cornwell

 

Was first published in 2006 so it's not an effective comp.

Effective comps are recent; pubbed in 2019 or later.

 

 

as well as sweeping historical romances such as Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon

 

First published in 1991, same problem

 

 along with strong female protagonists as in The Warrior Maiden, by Melanie Dickerson.

 

Pubbed in 2019, so that's ok, BUT take a look at the publisher: Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson publishes Christian fiction. Unless your novel is also Christian fiction (which I don't get the sense it is) you don't want to use this as a comp.

 

Your comps should be in the same category as your book. Christian fiction is a separate category.

 

THE NORTHERN FLAME can stand alone but I envision it as the start of a series.

 

Here's where you develop the series idea:

From above

Set in 907 A.D. Britain is suffering birth pains of becoming a united land, divided into separate kingdoms, barely able to resist Danish assaults.

develop this further of course.

 

New paragraph for bio.

 

I am a debut author, wife, stay-at-home mother working on my history degree, and wear so many hats I resemble the dog from Go Dog, Go! 

 

this is a terrific line. It gives your reader a sense of your wit.

 

 

New paragraph for pub credits.

My non-fiction essay, (Amazing) has been was published in the literary magazine (Woohoo!) winning and won 2^nd place for best prose.

 

 

Thank you for your time and consideration,

 

 

As for getting the whole of the story line into the query, you can't.

 

What you can do though is give us the start of the story, and then sketch out the larger picture.

Using Game of Thrones as an example (cause almost everyone has read/seen it), Ned Stark has discovered the King is not the father of his children. When the King dies Ned is faced with the choice of staying silent while an illegitimate son ascends the throne, or going public and risking not just his life but those of his family.

That's the individual problem.

The thematic problem is who is entitled to rule.

You can get that on the page with meanwhile, or what he doesn't know.

Example:

Meanwhile, each of seven power hungry families is plotting to take the iron throne.

What none of them know is a pawn has just become a queen. And she has dragons.

 

We need plot and drama on the page to compel your reader to want more. 

 

Revise and resubmit.

 

 

 

 

Question: I’m a former Christian so I approached this work and pantheon with respect, but I also wanted to express the importance of separating church and state. From my understanding Christian Fiction has underlying themes/motifs relating to the faith. Christian Fiction isn’t my goal, I just wanted to bring what I know into the realm of spellswords and gunslingers. Do I need to state that this is not explicitly intended for Christians in my query? I don’t want to mislead anyone.

 

Dear Query Shark,

 

Jericho Brightbolt trudges into the withered husk of a town, weary from scavenging through the desert wasteland.

 

His search for food and water leads him directly into a demon ambush. The doors burst open around him and the street floods with the damned.

 

Jericho unleashes his astonishing speed as a storm disciple, brandishing his revolver and katana in a barrage of muzzle flashes and steel. 

 

You've got about 65 words here to set up the start of the story: Jericho has piqued the Devil's interest.

How much of this do you really need?

 

This isn't plot, and it's not character development. It's just set up. You only get 250-300 words in a query. You don't want to use 20-25% of them on set up?

 

Before the final demon is vanquished, Jericho discovers he’s piqued the Devil’s interest.

 

The Devil needs him brought to Hell in order to restore the Aether, something dismissed as an ancient myth.

 

It will help if we know what the Devil wants here. He wants Jericho to restore the Aether, got it, but what is Aether and why is Jericho the (only) guy who can restore it? What problem would that solve for him (the Devil)?

 

Jericho flees home to Nazareth in a desperate attempt to hide, a problem in itself. His face is peppered across the city on wanted posters for crimes he did not commit. 

 

I assume you chose Nazareth on purpose.

If you want to avoid the slings and arrows of outrage, consider using a different name for the town.

 

 

Lo and behold, Jericho finds his only ally in a mess of her own. Mason Earthbreaker is being forced out of active duty as a soldier and thrust into arranged marriage for child-bearing.

 

It’s wedlock in two days, or prison. She has devoted her life to combating the demons since she lost her brother to possession, and this is the thanks she gets.

 

Jericho sneaks in looking for Mason, and she does her best to shoulder his crisis while wrestling with exchanging her armor for a wedding ring.

 

I thought Jericho was already in Nazareth? And we already know Mason's predicament.

Now you have him sneaking in, looking for Mason; how does he know about her predicament?

 

In short form work like a query, unfolding the story in chronological order goes a long way to making the query easy to follow.

 

 

When the demons lay siege to the city in the hunt for Jericho, Mason straps on her cuirass in defiance and heads to the battlefield, wielding her titanic strength as a stone disciple.

wielding her titanic strength as a stone disciple is confusing. What is a stone disciple?

 

 You used storm disciple above in reference to Jericho, but right now we don't know what disciples are. You don't explain it till later in the query.

 

 

You can just cut the reference here and avoid the need to explain anything.

 

 

Wanted by both Nazareth and the horde befalling

 

befalling is probably the wrong word here. It generally means something bad about to happen. I think you mean here is closer to besieging. 

 

 its walls, Jericho must choose his fate - help Mason shield the very people who will execute him, or let the demons drag him to Hell for the mysterious Aether.

 

 The stakes here are pretty small: Jericho's fate.

 

DISCIPLES - PREY TO THE DEVIL (124,000 words)

 

124K can be an auto-pass even for fantasy. 120K is often cited as the top word count. 

 

 is the first Dark Fantasy in a planned series set ages after the apocalypse.

 

This is a nice place to put the world building, but it will also help if you have themes. What is the book exploring?

 

The few million humans left have become a superhuman species known as disciples, each born with one of seven distinct physiologies respective to the archangels. While they battle the wasteland’s monsters, they must also navigate the ruptured socioeconomic terrain left in the wake of the archaic belief system that supports Nazareth’s infrastructure. 

I have no idea what navigate the ruptured socioeconomic terrain means.

Plain writing in a query is essential. This is not some sort of treatise. It's a novel. Your reader should be able to picture what you mean in her mind. 

 

 

It’s reminiscent of GUNMETAL GODS by Zamil Akhtar

This book is self-published so it's not an effective comp. Comps need to be published by a trade publisher (small or large.)

 

 

with some MASTER OF SORROWS by Justin Travis Call.

Always include the author's name with the title of your comp. Titles aren't subject to copyright so more than one book can have the same title.

 

I’m a furnace operator who works seventy hours a week on third shift, and my wife and I just welcomed our first child into the world. Between working and spending time with my son, I plod about like something a necromancer summoned. But don’t worry, I’ve learned to write during between bouts of microsleep.

 

Thank you for your consideration,

 

I don't think you need to worry about this being mistaken for Christian fiction.

Christian fiction has very specific tropes, and this query doesn't refer to any of them.

And since you call it dark fantasy, an agent reading this will know you intend it for the secular market.

 

But the larger problem is that I don't see enough story on the page, or reference to enough story in the summation to support 120K words.

 

Right now you have one character driving the plot, and the big question is what will happen to him.

 120K words needs a more epic sweep. Not quite Game of Thrones size, but certainly something like Leviathan Wakes (189K). 

 

Here's the description of Leviathan Wakes from the publisher's website:

 

Humanity has colonized the solar system—Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond—but the stars are still out of our reach.

Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for—and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.

Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.

Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations—and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.

 

 Notice there are two main characters, and the stakes are much more than personal. It's a bigger story.

 

When an agent checks the word count in a query, it's not only to see if it's too long or too short.

It's to assess if there's enough story to support a large count, or if there's  not enough story in a short word count.

One of the biggest problems with high word counts is that it can signal writing that is repetitive or  glacially paced (every moment described.)

 

I'm absolutely willing to read a taut, tightly paced novel of 127K if there's enough story to warrant the word count.

 

So you need more story in the query, or a ruthless reduction in word count.

 Focus on conveying mental images to your reader. Plain writing is VERY difficult. 

 

 

 

REVISION #1

Dear Query Shark,

 

I am writing to you seeking representation for my 122,000-word adult fantasy novel THE CROSSOVER.

This is better than the 137K you had the first time, but paring down to under 120K is a good idea.

 

The last thing you want is an agent seeing the word count and swiping left without reading another word.

 

When ELENORE and BENAIAH

don't cap character names.

 

 inadvertently stumble across a portal to another world.

 Elenore just wants to gather evidence of their strange discovery to prove it to her university colleagues.

 

None of this matters, not really.

The story starts when they arrive in Swordlandia.

 

Let's refocus to make that clear.

 

Driven by her curiosity, she

 

 

Eleanora and Ben find a portal and of course, they want to see where it leads.

 

She leads Ben, her horse, and her dog through the portal.

Not to pick nits but did you notice the dog is never mentioned again?

Having your dog with you in a strange land would be comforting, no?

And does the dog get superpowers too?

 

 

They pop popping out in an entirely different universe.

 

This is a big moment in the query. Making it a separate short sentence gives it power and drama.

 

You want to stay in Elenore's point of view here, so let's revise this:

 

Two sword-bearing forces arrive with one obvious goal:

They're met by two, separate sword-bearing forces.

 

Let's add separate here so the reader doesn't think these are two platoons of the same company.

 

 

capture the strangers from another world.

We don't really need to know what the SBFs want. They're not the important antagonist.

 

 Elenore is captured by the king's brigade, and Ben is captured by the resistance movement. against the king.

Let your reader do some of the work here. If you say resistance movement, the reader will fill in that they're resisting the King. 

 

 

From their captors inform them that they learn that when they entered the portal, they passed through “the pathways” and  coming through the portal developed gave them abilities  that allow them to wield energy from the space between worlds.

 

Out of desperation to

Desperate to reunite and return home, Elenore and Ben accept separate, yet similar deals.

 

So, you learn you have superpowers. What's the first thing you want to do?

Give them up and go home?

Really?

 

Cause if you told me I had superpowers, I'd want to know what they were, and how I could use them to do fun stuff, like fly (Sharknado!), or eat ice cream without sacrificing my svelte sharkly silhouette, or get the world to quit using the phrase safety deposit box (it's safe deposit box, and yes this is a hill I will die on.)

 

 

But here you have her using her abilities (still unspecified) to do something that she doesn't have a stake in. Why would she do it?

 

When we're puzzled by why a character acts in what seems to be an illogical or unrealistic way, we're NOT engaged.  You want your readers to engage, to care what happens to Elenore (and the dog!!!)

 

Elenore agrees to use her new abilities to help the king recapture the same city where Ben is held, and Ben agrees to use his powers to aid in the movement  resistance and to dethrone the king who captured Elenore.

 

These two characters don't seem to have much depth or personality.

It's ESSENTIAL that your characters be interesting and right now they seem lacking in imagination or sense of adventure.

 

 As part of the deal, Elenore gains a vast understanding of the nature of time, reality, and mortality from the space between worlds.

 

Well, that's nice but what can she DO?

 

 Despite that knowledge, she doesn’t realize the danger they are in.

Of course not. What's the fun of that.

 

 

 

VICTORIA, Elenore’s mentor,

 

wait, what?
Who the heck is Victoria?

And WHERE is she? As in which side of the portal.

 

Introducing a main character this late in the game is confusing.

 

 

 

 

has no idea that she is fated to inadvertently catalyze the end of the universe, causing it to be wiped from existence layer by layer. 

 

Ho hum.

If a character is fated for something they don't have any choice in the matter.

The essence of a good story is what choices the characters face and what path they choose.

 

 

 

Ben’s captor, the leader of the resistance movement against the king, might be the only one with information on how to prevent the destruction of the universe and has no intentions of sharing it. Unaware of their larger role, Elenore and Ben are sure their hardships will come to an end if they can manage to avoid manipulation and survive long enough to see the deal through, but it is only a matter of time before Victoria finds a way to seize power from the king, setting the unraveling of the universe into motion.

 

Ok, who's the antagonist here?

 

You've got (as you did in the first version) too much going on.

You don't need as much world building as you think.

 

You need to focus on Elenore. She seems to be the main character.

What does she want?

Make sure what she wants makes sense to us the reader.

You're in an alien world with superpowers! What would you want to do?

 

Then give us a sense of the dilemma she faces

There must be some sort of conflict or there's no plot.

 

 

You do need more three-dimensional characters and we must have a better sense of choices and stakes.

 

 

 

The style, tone, and characters of THE CROSSOVER will appeal to readers of are most comparable to A.K. Larkwood’s The Unspoken Name meets and Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library.

 

 

Here's the description of The Unspoken Name

What if you knew how and when you will die?

Csorwe does—she will climb the mountain, enter the Shrine of the Unspoken, and gain the most honored title: sacrifice.

But on the day of her foretold death, a powerful mage offers her a new fate. Leave with him, and live. Turn away from her destiny and her god to become a thief, a spy, an assassin—the wizard's loyal sword. Topple an empire and help him reclaim his seat of power.

But Csorwe will soon learn—gods remember, and if you live long enough, all debts come due.

 

Notice there is almost NO world building.

There's one sentence of set up.

The choices the main character faces are clear, as are the stakes.

All in fewer than 100 words.

This is your goal.

 

You have 380 in the query.

 

It is intended to be the first installment of a series that I hope will span 3-5 books.

It can stand alone but I envision it as the start of a series

 

new paragraph for personalization

(Insert personalization here).

I am querying you because you like kale and I like rabbits (or whatever.)

 

 

Thank you for your consideration,

 

 

Focus.

Pare down the events and increase character development.

 

There are a million portal stories in my inbox.

Show me (don't tell me) how yours is better, faster, more enticing.

 

I'd start with the dog.

That's interesting.

 

Dogs? DOGS??

 

 

 

 

******

Initial query

Question/Concern:

I have been submitting queries to agents since May of 2022 and have only received kind rejections so far. I have decided to blame this on my query letter for now, and so I come to you with my struggle after reading the archives. I have a complex first installment of a fantasy series in progress, and it seems impossible to include the necessary information in a concise manner. I have left many important characters unmentioned, and I have failed to include the aspect of my plot that involves the protagonist's impending trek through the infinite layers of an infinite universe in a war of fate and freewill. In addition to that, I feel that some of the appealing aspects of my book, like the presence of ghosts and alternate timelines, alternating chapter perspectives, intricate arcs, and relatable societal problems can't be included without getting to a 1200 word query letter.

Dear Query Shark,

 

 I am writing to seek representation for THE CROSSOVER, which is a 137,000-word new adult, fantasy fiction novel.

 

For starters, your word count is high. 137K is an auto-pass for many agents.

Your category, new adult, is one that you might see referenced on Goodreads etc., but isn't all that useful for queries. New Adult started as a way to categorize books for readers above the YA age range (that tops out at 18.)

 

All too quickly it morphed into porn light. Think 50 Shades of Grey.

 

Now it's trying to make a comeback but in a query you want to use the most solid description you can. Your book is fantasy. You don't need to say fiction, cause fantasy is not non-fiction. (Current events not withstanding.)

 

And fiction novel is an instant pass for a lot of us.

 

So: The Crossover (137,000 words) is fantasy.

 

Except when you start with this, it just gives agents permission to pass without reading another word.  That's why I suggest you put this at the close of the query, NO MATTER WHAT.

 

 

(Personalize for agent here).

Personalization goes below as well. So many writers botch this up that it's just safer not to lead with it.

 

Comps go at the end too.

And you can NOT use Stephen King as a comp. He is in a category by himself. People read his books just cause he wrote them.  You don't have that advantage yet.

 

 

THE CROSSOVER is most comparable to Stephen King’s newest novel Fairy Tale mixed with Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone.

 

Shadow and Bone was first pubbed in 2013. It's too old to be an effective comp.

 

 

ELENORE (23), a curiosity-driven student of science,

This is not a police blotter, or a newspaper article. Don't put the ages in parenthesis.

 

and BENAIAH (Ben, 22), her grumbly companion with a heart of gold,

 

heart of gold is a cliche.

Agents are looking for things that are fresh and new.

 

 

inadvertently stumble across a portal to another world on their rental property in Indiana.

 

Elenore’s desire to prove their discovery compels them to enter the undulating void despite a vague, menacing message found graffitied on their wall promising death to Ben should they go.

 

What?

What does prove their discovery mean?

Also, try this without all the modifiers.

 

Elenore’s desire to prove their discovery compels them to enter the undulating void despite a vague, menacing message found graffitied on their wall promising death to Ben should they go.

 

A lot easier to understand without all the descriptors.

 

Over-modifying is a common flaw in early work.

Watch for it, and pluck out everything you don't need.

And you don't need anywhere near as much filigree as you think.

 

 

After entering the portal and becoming separated by the sword-bearing forces in the Kingdom of Corva, Elenore and Ben are informed that when they entered the portal, they passed through “the pathways” and developed abilities.

 

This sentence is 35 words long.

That means you've got too much information for your reader to readily absorb.

Short form work like a query usually means you want short sentences.

 

 

Other people have some abilities, but allegedly, none can wield the pathways like those that walk through time.

 

The construction of this sentence seems to convey that pathways walk through time.

My guess is that's not what you mean.

An easy fix is just to change out that for who.

Other people have some abilities, but allegedly, none can wield the pathways like those who walk through time.

According to the warring rulers, Elenore and Ben are potentially the most powerful in the kingdom. Out of desperation, Elenore and Ben accept similar deals by agreeing to help in the conflict that envelopes the kingdom in exchange for help returning home.

 

At this point I'm utterly befuddled.

 

Unbeknownst to Elenore, Victoria, her mentor and advisor to the misguided King Gael, has a vicious ambition to seize power. Despite the knowledge Elenore gains on her journey, she doesn’t realize the danger they are in. Opal, the scheming, untrustworthy leader of the resistance movement that captured Ben, is the only one who understands the extent of the danger they are in, and she intends to use the knowledge to bargain for her life when Elenore and the king invade the city she holds. Meanwhile, Victoria  has no idea her antagonistic actions will eventually lead to the collapse of the infinite layers in their cyclical universe. Even worse, Elenore, Ben, a dog, and several other friends are the only ones that stand a chance of altering fate enough to prevent it. They must decide between risking their lives for a foreign universe or living with the guilt of doing nothing to prevent its demise.

 

There's so much information here it's impossible to follow.

 

In a query you don't need anywhere near this much detail.

 What you need is:

What does the main character want?

What's blocking them from getting it?

What choices do they face?

What's at stake with those choices?

 

That's all you need.

 

 

I have been writing for as long as I can remember.

This may be true. It's not useful to say so in a query.

 

The ideas that shaped this novel often surfaced in the night, causing me to leap out of bed and take notes on a post-it stuck to a book next to my bed.

Also not useful in the query.

 

Now, as a 25-year-old high school English teacher with a Bachelor of Arts in English Education, I finally had the tools to sit down and finish it.

Also not useful

 

The manuscript is complete and ready for review.

I hope so, cause if you're querying an unfinished book, its an automatic pass.

In other words, no need to  state the obvious.

 

And review means something else. You're submitting your ms for consideration. But you still don't need to say so.

Agents do not generally care about how long you've loved to write or your process.

 

 I truly appreciate you taking the time to read my query,

Don't sound like I'm doing you a favor here.

I'm not.

I'm reading your query with the idea of becoming extremely wealthy by the sweat of your brow.

 

 

and I look forward to the possibility of hearing from you. 

Yea, my colleagues are notorious for no response means no which I find highly objectionable.

But let's not give them leave to do that by acknowledging it. Let them sauté in their own shame.

 

Thank you for your consideration, 

 

Unfortunately you've got a novel that has all the aspects of every other portal fantasy, and nothing that makes it distinctly your own.

 

That's the challenge to all writers. Fresh and new doesn't mean stories we've never seen. It means a different take or a different approach.

 

First Blood is essentially a fresh look at Beowulf.

Clueless is a new way to tell the story in Emma.

 

Every Jack Reacher novel is a Western, really: A stranger comes to town, shakes things up, then leaves.

A Western with no horses, no six-guns, no cattle rustlers. In other words, a fresh take.

 

So the problem here isn't the query. It's the novel.

Time to think about what you can change to put your own distinct spin on a portal fantasy.

 Think about what prompted you to write this. What do you want to say that hasn't been said before. 

As for your question: The problem is not lack of detail. It's too much detail. Agents don't expect to know everything about the book from the query. The query is the introduction, a brief taste of the meal that is the book.

You need to pare down here, but also figure out what makes your book distinctive, and get that on the page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Question/Concern

 

Regarding the acceptable word count of a query letter, the body of this letter is 250. I had other short versions (<200 words) but continued receiving form rejections from agents. I added more content to this letter to provide better story detail. Still, my concern is that the letter needs to be shorter, more enjoyable, or both. I don't know which.

 

Word count is a flexible target. You can go over the 250 target without worrying about some sort of auto-pass. Some queries need more words.  If you're over 400, that's when to sharpen your scissors. Anything under 250 runs the risk of not getting enough story on the page. 

 

BUT, word count isn't the issue with your query.

The issue is you don't have the story on the page.

 

Getting the story on the page means that after reading the query I should be able to tell you:

1. Who the main character is

2. What they want

3. What's getting in the way of getting what they want.

4. What's at stake if they don't get it. 

And I should be able to do this without needing to take notes. Remember, agents are NOT reading your query as though it's a text book. They're reading to get an idea of the story and your writing style.

A lot of detail, or too much abstraction stymies them.

Avoid that.

 

Dear Query Shark,

 

Meet Dr. Niklos Krylov, inventor of the Save-Transmit Machine (STM). With it, the world is forever changed... for the worse.

 

The excitement of the STM's debut 

What was STM designed to do? If there's excitement, your reader is led to believe it was something good.

 

quickly turns to horror when the machine unleashes identical hydrogen bombs in cities across the Earth. The event, known as the Trinity Attack, drives the world to anarchy. Nik, overcome with guilt and shame, retreats into hiding.

 

My hope is that Nik did not invent the STM machine in order to unleash hydrogen bombs.

What did he invent it for?

 

In other words, what did Nik want to do that was thwarted by the godawful results of his experiment?

 

But his concealment is short-lived. A slave-mining operation captures Nik and forces him to dig for the radioactive fuel that powers the STM.

 

Slave mining implies that the operation is mining for slaves.

I'm pretty sure that's not what you mean here.

 

What you mean is a mining operation that uses slaves to dig.  Revise this for clarity.

 

 

When a fellow prisoner's life is at risk, Nik's expertise as the STM's inventor is exposed. His captors issue a brutal ultimatum: reveal his identity or die in silence.

 

Ok, but why? What do the captors want that revealing his identity will get for them?

 

 

 

Nik surrenders to their whips, but a group of freedom fighters rescues him before he becomes another pawn in the STM-powered apocalypse.

 

What STM-powered apocalypse? You've told us that the world dissolved into anarchy when the STM unleashed hydrogen bombs. Is the machine still functioning? What is it doing? Who's got their foot on the metaphorical gas pedal?

 

 

With their help, Nik sets out on a journey of survival through the ruins of civilization and into the reaches of space. When he uncovers the origin of the Trinity Attack, Nik is shocked to learn a horrible secret. The STM was used to alter the human condition. 

 

Alter the human condition? That's too abstract to be useful. Specifics are very useful in a query.

 

Faced with moral and ethical dilemmas, Nik tries to right the wrongs of his past and end the destruction caused by the STM.

 

He can't end the destruction if it's already happened. He can either fix the destruction, or stop the destruction from continuing. 

 

So, who's the antagonist here?

Is it the STM machine, or the person who's operating it?

 

 

Comps go here

You should include 2-3 books that your intended readers will have read and liked. Comps need to be recent (pubbed no earlier than 2019); on your shelf (in this case SF); and pubbed by a trade house large or small (but not self-pubbed.) 

Bio goes here

It's useful to include a couple lines about you. It warms up the query. If you don't have any pub credits don't worry. Your bio is about you, not your work. Where you live; dogs/cats/dragons and other pets. That kind of thing.

 

Eschaton, an 87,000-word science-fiction thriller, explores the consequences of technological advancements gone wrong. It would be my debut novel,

 

One of the main requirements of a thriller is a ticking clock. That's not evident in your query. If it's NOT in the book, this isn't a thriller. That's ok. Just don't call it one if it isn't. 

and I would be grateful for the opportunity to bring this work to publication with you. 

 

 You are not a supplicant even if it feels that way sometimes.

You are providing an agent with the opportunity to sell your work and make some money. Be grateful when she does that. Right now just thank her for her time and consideration as you do next.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

  

It sounds like your story is: A machine goes haywire. Chaos ensues.

That's the concept for a gazillion movies, most of them based on books.

In other words, something that we've all seen a lot of.

Agents are looking for fresh and new.

That does NOT mean you can't have a machine going haywire and chaos ensues.

What it means is that you need your fresh take on this. You need distinctive characters that we're engaged with and care about. You want to tell us a story in a way that makes us see things in a new light. You have to elevate the category, not just add to it.

 

In other words, you gotta tell me what makes your book better and different.

And that's not by saying "my book is better and different."

You have to show it in the story you're enticing me to read.

So your revision is twofold: get the story on the page, and frame it in such a way that it feels fresh and new.

This is NOT an easy task. It's not a matter of changing up a few words here and there.

Good revising requires deep thinking.

 

Revision #1

 

 

Dear Query Shark:

 

Lily Carter has hid her singing voice away for years for fear of rejection.

Lily Carter has hidden, not hid.

 

These kinds of mistakes can fell your query before you know it.

If grammar and syntax aren't your forte, it's ok. It's not a sign of bad writing, or low character.

 

Just recognize that it's a stumbling block and make friends with Miss Picklepuss, the copy editor from hell. She'll help you remove these gremlins. It might cost some money, but this is something you do want to invest in.

 

Her best friend (now ex-best friend)

you don't need both of these.

Your reader will intuit that they were once best friends if she's now the ex-best friend.

 

Watch for this kind of over-writing.

 

 

made it clear she should never sing in public if she can help it.

Suggest taking this last part out just to give the sentence more drama.

 

So Lily sings only when she's sure no one else can hear her. Imagine her embarrassment when the new kid in town catches her in the act.

 

Imagine her embarrassment takes us out of the narrative.

You're telling, not showing.

 

Avoid that.

 

She's embarrassed.

 

But embarrassed is such a tepid word for the plot point that's driving the narrative.

Here's a good place to get out the Thesaurus and dig around for more vivid words.

 

mortified

humiliated

(and there are others, take your pick)

 

Already at odds with Jack Sutton after an encounter with him at school, Lily expects nothing but scorn from him.

Again, pare out what you don't need.

This is the meat and tater tots of revising. Early drafts are almost always too long. Pare out everything you don't need.

 

But instead of making fun of her, he compliments her, throwing all her preconceived notions about what a terrible singer she is into question. 

It's NOT a preconceived notion, is it? It's what someone told her (someone with some sort of malevolent agenda it sounds like.)

 

Internal conflicts in a query are huge red flag. It tells me you don't have a handle on the plot, and the full manuscript may not hold together very well. Again, here's where Miss Picklepuss can be of great value.

 

 

Suddenly, the aggravating yet undeniably charming Jack keeps is popping up all over the place. At school, at church, and then there’s the real icing on the cake. It turns out that Jack is the brother of her new best friend.

Do we need to know any of this?

 

This next sentence connects to the previous one more directly.

 

With a musical background himself and a dogged belief that Lily has talent, Jack makes it his mission to get Lily back on the horse. Or the stage, so to speak.

 

Consider:

Jack has a musical background himself, and seems to think Lily has talent.

He makes it his mission to get Lily back on stage.

 

There's a LOT to be said for starting your sentences with the subject, not burying it in a clause.

 

 

 

 

 

As Lily spends more time with Jack and his spirited sister Cat, a self-consciousness Lily didn't even realize she had developed begins to mend.

She didn't realize she was self-conscious about her singing?

Are you serious here? That just doesn't make sense unless Lily is blindingly un-self aware.

She's literally stopped singing outside of the shower.

 

She even gets up the courage to enter the high school talent show thanks to a little prodding from Jack and his agreement to help her prepare for the show. When Jack starts giving her singing lessons, Lily slowly begins believing in herself again.  

 

But Lily has a few obstacles to overcome. Like that pesky stage fright thing. Or the ex-best friend who unexpectedly resurfaces and tries to sabotage Lily’s chances. Or the growing feelings she’s developing for her best friend’s brother. Lily must rely on her friends, her family, and her new-found confidence in order to get ready for talent show day.

 

You've got a lot of stuff going on here, but not very much plot.

What's the problem here?

Lily has been told she shouldn't sing in public.

What problem does that create?

Then Jack comes along and tells her she does have a singing voice.

 

What problem does that solve?

 

TAKE A DEEP BREATH is a young adult novel complete at 60,000 words

You don't need to say it's complete.

That's assumed.

 

And this just doesn't feel YA to me. There's no sense of Lily or Jack learning to navigate in the real world. There's no real romantic element.

 

 

 

that portrays the sarcastic, yet vulnerable Lily along with her lovable family and kindhearted friends.

Sarcastic?

Not in these pages she isn't.

 

 

 

A story of personal growth with a touch of romance, this novel is similar to Maybe This Time by Kasie West or Eyes on Me by Rachel Harris.

 

I am a small town Minnesota gal, where a person can go from wearing a sweatshirt and wool socks one day to a tank top and sandals the next. This is my first novel.

 

Thank you for your time and consideration.

 

 

you've got a lot of concept but not enough story.

You need more plot on the page. The problem Lily faces, and the choices to solve, and what's at stake.

 

It will help if we see those things for Jack too.

 

You've only got 60K here so you've a got a LOT of room to add more depth.

 

 

 

******

Original query

This query is a completely revised one from the one I started with as that one got me a couple of partial requests, but nothing serious. Now, since I've started using this query, I haven't even gotten a nibble. 

In the first  53 words you have two problems that could lead to an immediate pass.

While agents aren't actively looking for reasons to pass if you give them two in short order, that's what's going to happen.

 

My first query was succinct but a bit commercial in my opinion. So I tried to offer a quirkier approach with this one.

 

 

 A bit commercial isn't a bad thing. Agents are looking for things they can sell (ie commercial).

 I did beef up my bio after reading your archives. 

141 words is about 100 too many. See notes below. An extensive bio doesn't make up for problems in the query so lets focus on that.

You also stated in the archives that queries should have at least 2 comps. Is it okay to comp an author instead like I did?  

 No, see notes below

 

 

Dear Query Shark:

People are creatures of habit. They take the same route to school every day, they buy the same brand of soap they always do, and they listen to the same radio station, day in and day out. And they also sit at the same school desk every morning in first period English class.

 

When I read this, I have no idea if you're querying for fiction or non-fiction.

That's a big problem when agents are getting dozens of queries a week.

Big problem = pass.

It's more effective to start with the character's name and what problem she faces

 

At least, that’s what Lily Carter used to do.

 

Consider instead:

People are creatures of habit.

Lily Carter is a creature of habit.

 

They take the same route to school every day, they buy the same brand of soap they always do, and they listen to the same radio station, day in and day out.

 

She takes the same route to school every day, buys the same brand of soap, listens to the same radio station, day in and day you.

 

 

 And they also sit at the same school desk every morning in first period English class.

And sit at the same desk every morning in first period English.

 

 

But when you revise like this the real problem becomes very clear.

You're describing someone who doesn't sound very interesting. In fact, she sounds dull as dishwater.

That's DEATH in a query, particularly in YA.

Death = pass.

 

Now, if there's a reason Lily is so methodical in her daily life, that would give her some depth.

Is this how she feels safe?

Did she read Gustave Flaubert and take his advice to heart: "Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

Let's give Lily some context here.

 

 

 Until Jack Sutton just waltzed in and stole it right out from under her. The gentlemanly thing to do would have been to give it back. Instead, he refused to acknowledge her rightful claim of dibs and in the process managed to ruffle her feathers, push her buttons, flip her lid, and get her goat. If you know what I mean.

 

Because he sat in her chair?

Does this seem like a very intense reaction to something that's essentially not important?  It's not like he said her mum wears army boots.

 

So, Jack is the last person on earth that Lily wants witnessing her humiliating attempt at singing.

 

There's no connection here between Jack stealing her seat in English class and witnessing her humiliating attempt at singing.

 

How is it that Jack is in her life at all?

 

 

Lily has been very careful to keep her voice under wraps after receiving rejection at the hands of a close friend.

What was Lily trying to do that a close friend rejected her?

Specifics are much more compelling than generalities.

You don't want to be awash in too much detail, but you need more than you have here.

 

Surprisingly though, Jack challenges her belief of mediocrity. 

What he actually does is challenge her belief that her singing is mediocre.

You need razor sharp, precise sentences in a query.

 

He actually begins to make her question a lot of things. Like the idea that the talent show is out of her league. Maybe, it's not. Maybe, she could even win it.

 

Although there is the small matter of that pesky stage fright thing…

So far, there's nothing interesting about Lily, and she sounds rather like a basket case. This is a HUGE problem in YA that is character driven.

 

As Lily gets closer to Jack and his spirited sister Cat, a self-consciousness Lily didn't even realize she had developed begins to mend. Thanks to a little prodding from her new friends, Lily signs up for the talent show. 

 What does Jack see in Lily that he's investing time and emotional support in her?

But someone from Lily's past is determined to see her fail. 

This is absolutely out of left field. With no context it's like a big ink blot on the page.

Let's give the antagonist some more page time.

 

Lily must rely on her friends, her family, and her new-found confidence in order to overcome the obstacles in her way. 

What obstacles? I thought there was an antagonist trying to thwart her.

 

 

Take a Deep Breath is a young adult novel complete at 60,000 words that portrays the sarcastic, yet vulnerable Lily along with her lovable family and kindhearted friends. A story of personal growth with a touch of romance, this novel will appeal to fans of Kasie West.

You need to use titles, not authors. Those titles need to be recent, no earlier than 2019.

 

Your bio is 141 words. Given a query should be 250-300 you've spent a larger percentage of your word count on your bio and not your book.

 

I am a small town Minnesota gal, where a person can go from wearing a sweatshirt and wool socks one day to a t-shirt and sandals the next. With a penchant for staying in every night with my two cats and a DVD collection to rival a Blockbuster store (are there any of those in existence anymore?) one might be tempted to call me an introvert. If it weren't for my extroverted husband, I just might be. Kudos to him for getting me out of my comfort zone and making friends with the outside world. Who knew I would enjoy things like pickleball and Korean BBQ? (not at the same time, for heaven's sake). This is my first novel and

 

 

 I'm looking to team up with an agent who can help an eager, wide-eyed newcomer navigate the ropes of the literary world.

 

This kind of statement is counter-productive.

Agents see this as code for needy and naive.  Even if you are these things, they're not something you'd put in your bio.  Remember a query is also about the agent assessing if you're someone they want to work with. Someone who clearly will need a lot of hand holding is less likely to get a nod. Just leave this kind of statement out.

 

Thank you for your time and consideration.

 

 

 

This does not have enough edge to be YA.

It sounds middle grade to me.

 

There's no sense of Lily coming to terms with the larger world, or figuring out her place in it.

It's all character development and very light on plot.

 

There's not enough story on the page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've been querying agents for the last 6-months and have over 50 rejections. I'm not sure if my novel isn't very interesting/sellable or if my query letter is the problem. After reading the archives on your site, I did a total rework and would appreciate any feedback!

 

 

Dear QueryShark,

 

There are stories that never get told, but need to be. TITLE, a 92.000 upmarket women’s historical fiction tells the remarkably true stories of three generations of Italian women as they face World War II, the Fascist Movement, immigration, unexpected pregnancies, and a global pandemic. Challenging societal expectations, they experience the love, loss, and yearning for better that binds us all across generations.

 

Are you thinking this is a hook?

(it's not)

It's more like the start of a book review.

 

An effective hook gives us a sense of the problem that drives the book.

 

Here's the hook for All Roads Lead Me Back to You by Kennedy Foster

 

Hard-working, no frills Alice Andison barely scrapes by after her father's death when Domingo Rolodan, an undocumented Mexican horse and cattle man, knight in shining saddle, arrives to not only save her father's legacy but win Alice's heart if he can just steer clear of the oppressive clutches of the increasingly gestapo-like modern INS.

See the difference?

The characters have an emotional component and we see what problem they face.

 

Vittoria was born in a small town in Northern Italy in 1914. Growing up in the absolute poverty of a war torn country, she longs for better and isn’t afraid to take on anyone, even Mussolini himself to find it. But challenging societal norms takes unexpected turns and soon she finds herself with the broken promise of a soldier, a growing belly, and no ring.

 

Anna was born an illegitimate child amidst the height of World War II. Distrustful of men, yet always seeking their attention, she solicits the attention of the boy next door– the one with big dreams, who soon leaves for Canada, asking Anna to join him. She sees a chance for a new land, a new start, a new life. Who needs love when you have an opportunity?

 

Grace was born the child of immigrants. Trying to make something of herself, she is tired of trying and quitting a million things – including relationships. No sooner does she commit to completing her master’s degree, then she meets Jax, and everything comes together and falls apart. Suddenly, there are too many choices and one big question: How does one define “better”?

 

You've introduced three characters here, but there's no plot.

Plot isn't what happens. It's not the events of the book.

Plot is choices the characters face and what's at stake with those choices.

 You must have plot in a query, even if you're querying a character-driven book.

 

You also don't tell us how these women are connected. (Are they?)

Three generations makes me think they're related to each other, but that's not obvious from the query.

 

Also, by introducing all three characters equally, you can't focus on the start of the story.

 

If the story begins with Vittoria, let's give her more page time. If the story starts with one of the other two, lead with her, give her more page time.

 

You have a limited amount of space here to engage your reader. Focus on how the story starts.

 

 Vittoria (or whomever) wants to (what?)

BUT, (problem) prevents her.

Now she must (choose a path.)

Get that on the page first.

Then show how the characters are linked.

You do NOT need the details of  Anna and Grace, unless one of them is the main character, not Vittoria.

 

TITLE would be the love child of

Resist the urge to be clever with comps.

Just say your book will appeal to readers who liked:

 

Sisters in Arms by Kaia Alderson,

 

Untamed by Glennon Doyle,

This is a memoir. Don't use NF as a comp for a novel, even historical fiction.

 

 

What We Carry: A Memoir by Maya Shanbhag Lang,

also a memoir

 

 

and The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah.

This was pubbed in 2017 so it's too old to be an effective comp.

 

If you take a look at the Amazon description of Sisters in Arms by Kaia Alderson, you'll see there is conflict and tension (which is what you need in the query)

 

Grace Steele and Eliza Jones may be from completely different backgrounds, but when it comes to the army, specifically the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), they are both starting from the same level. Not only will they be among the first class of female officers the army has even seen, they are also the first Black women allowed to serve.

 

As these courageous women help to form the 6888^th Central Postal Directory Battalion, they are dealing with more than just army bureaucracy—everyone is determined to see this experiment fail. For two northern women, learning to navigate their way through the segregated army may be tougher than boot camp. Grace and Eliza know that there is no room for error; they must be more perfect than everyone else.

 

When they finally make it overseas, to England and then France, Grace and Eliza will at last be able to do their parts for the country they love, whatever the risk to themselves.

 

 

 

A melding of immigration, identity,

 

I have my master’s in English with an emphasis in Technical Writing, and currently work as a content creator and SEO specialist. When I’m not working or writing you can find me reading a million children’s books to my one and two year old sons (or removing whatever object they’ve found to turn into a sword). I’m passionate about telling untold stories in literature, the stories that make us feel like we aren’t alone.

 

[INSERT PERSONAL DETAIL].

I am querying you because (whatever).

 

 Thank you for your time and consideration of my submission.

 

Best regards,

You only need one closing.

 

 

 

 

REVIEW – My first smartwatch was the Pebble, which I found to be instantly invaluable by displaying my notifications right on my wrist and then letting me decide if they were important enough to pull my phone out. For me, this has been the primary function of my smartwatches to this day. Other functions and […]

REVIEW – 3D printing is fun and challenging. You can download countless free files from sites like Thingiverse and Printables, Cults 3D, and Thangs, or create your own using Fusion 360 TinkerCAD. It takes time, patience, and a love of tinkering, but it can be great fun. Many 3D printing enthusiasts will agree that incessant […]

REVIEW – There seems to be a number of different form factors popping up with projectors recently. Very slim projectors, portable cubes, and today’s variation which looks more like a spotlight than a projector at first glance. The XGODY Gimbal 3 projector looked like a fun projector to try out and looked very portable. Read […]

NEWS – The color-capable K2 Plus has been a hot topic, since Creality, a world-leading 3D printer brand, heralded it in the spring of 2024. “Your dreams in color come true” as the K2 Plus x CFS Combo hits the shelve on November 11. Unifying multicolor, speed, intelligence, and a 350mm cubed format in one, […]

During the early reign of King Charles III (Charles the Simple) in West Francia, the area was besieged by Viking invasions, while the memory of the previous and frequent Saracen incursions was still fresh in the minds of the general populace. The Saracens were Muslim - mostly Berbers from Africa – and had only let up on the Franks because they’d been pushed back by the Vikings. The local nobles were left largely to fend the Vikings off on their own.

In Paladins of the West Kingdom, players assume the role of these unnamed nobles (most likely Dukes), working to keep the region safe and spread their faith (historically: Christianity).  I really enjoy this theme, and in fact, playing the game nurtured my interest in the historical kingdom of West Francia.  That’s why I can tell you that while the rulebook notes that the King lends his Paladins to the nobles to aid them in their quest, I’m giving all the credit for the loan to the designers, Shem Phillips and S J MacDonald.  Paladins are a fictional group of knights in French lore (think of them as similar to the Knights of the Round Table in British lore),  or alternatively, a translation of the Frankish royal title of Palatine Count, which was a noble that focused mostly on judicial and governing matters and was not known as a knight.

I’ve won a few and lost a few games of Paladins. It’s a worker placement game that incorporates card drafting.  At the beginning of every round, players draw the next three Paladin cards in their deck and choose one to play for the round, one to put back on top of their Paladin deck to draw during the next round, and one to put at the bottom of their Paladin deck. Each Paladin boosts faith, influence, or strength (usually more than one of these), and also provides a special benefit. If you’ve got players prone to analysis paralysis, this is where they may get stalled, especially in the first few rounds. After Paladins are selected and put into play, workers for the round are selected by each player and put into their personal resource supply. You have many stations on your player board to place your workers during the round,  and when you do so, your moves are independent and walled off from your opponents (they cannot tamper with your player board or placement of your workers on it). However, there is one area on the general board (the King’s Favour card area) where you can also place your workers and those spots are competitive. Also contributing to player interaction – some of the stations on your player board where you place workers allow you to move resources (monks and outposts) from your player board to the main board, consuming a competitive spot that provides a placement reward. And all the resource cards on display around the main board – the townsfolk you can hire, the walls you can build, the outsiders you can attack or convert, the tavern cards you draw workers from, and the suspicion cards you gain $$$ from, are all lucrative items for which players must compete. So we’ve got a good mix of independent action and player interaction in Paladins.  There are not a lot of opportunities for  “take that” behavior in this game, other than perhaps timing your draw of suspicion cards to trigger an inquisition when you know your opponents will suffer a penalty and be forced to take on more debt.

Strategy Tips: [1] Don’t be afraid to take on debt. It’s not too hard to flip debt cards for additional victory points and the income generated from the suspicion cards + the usefulness of the criminal workers are worth the increase in debt. [2] As with all worker placement games, look for opportunities to get more workers. For example, try to recruit any townsfolk that provide workers as a reward for other actions. [3] Attacking outsiders is a reliable way to get provisions and build influence, which are prerequisites for building the wall, which in turn give more strength and allow you to attack more outsiders. When paired with the townsfolk card that provide a bonus worker for every attack action, it’s a powerful combination.

Giving the game more intellectual weight, worker placement on your board and the actions workers trigger often have additional requirements beyond number and types (i.e., colors) of workers. The actions triggered by worker placement may be constrained by your strength, faith, or influence level. And some spots or actions triggered by placing workers in those spots require money or provisions. All of these prerequisites can be gained as rewards from prior actions triggered by various worker placement, so much of the game is finding the most efficient ways to obtain prerequisites associated with the series of actions you’d like to take as the game progresses. I worried this decision making would be a weak point for analysis paralysis (I’m a pretty good candidate for testing potential AP, as I’m prone to it) and while there can be a bit of that during the game, nothing excessive was logged during our plays.  

The artists (Shem Phillips on graphic design and Mihajlo Dimitrievski on illustrations) have printed helpful indicators next to each placement location on boards and cards to identify any prerequisites as well as rewards. It’s an example of how the designers have worked with the artists to layer meaningful game information into the layers of artwork. In fact, all of the symbols implemented across the game components are really quite helpful. Bonus: once you familiarize yourself with them in one of the West Kingdom games, you’ll have learned them for the entire series as the artists reuse the same symbols in all three titles.

Beyond the iconography, the illustrations and other artwork are lovely. As with the iconography, the same style of artwork is implemented across the entire series and it carries the theme well. There was a good mix of cisgender representation, but not a lot of racial diversity, especially as would be suggested by the historical setting of the game (for example, Berbers in the area had skin tones ranging from light to to dark brown).

The components for Paladins of the West Kingdom are well made.

There are wooden meeples, an assortment of foldable boards constructed from cardboard, and various plastic coated card decks. We found the rulebook to be clear and direct, and there weren’t any items we had to look up online. It would have been nice if the designers included a player aid in the components, but I was able to compensate for the oversight by downloading a detailed player aid another user uploaded to the forums on BoardGameGeek.com.

Paladins of the West Kingdom is my favorite game of the West Kingdom series. All of the worker types and available actions make sense within the context of the theme, the mechanisms (worker placement, card drafting) integrate tightly with the scoring system to provide opportunities for building a victory point engine, and the game is complex and interesting yet still accessible for new players. The game is also a great value at its price point (approx $50) given you’ll get dozens of multiplayer games in before even a hint of same-o same-o creeps in. Many games with comparable replayability and complexity are double the price of Paladins. There’s also a solo play mode, which provides an additional way to explore the game.

-------------------------------------------------

Publisher: Renegade Game Studios
Players: 1-4 (We played with 2)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 2 hours per game
Game type: card drafting, worker placement
Retail Price: $50

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

- Scarper; British slang for 'run away'. From Scapa Flow - Go. 

- Grass; as in informant. From Grasshopper - copper (and from there to copper's nark) 

- Dukes; slang for fists, as in 'duking it out'. From Duke of York - Fork. ('Forks' being now-forgotten slang for hands.) 

- Donkey's years; a long time. From Donkey's Ears, rhyming slang for Years... but then the Y crept back in. 

Alt Text: Donkey's ears. And between them, a donkey. Well, I suppose there's always a donkey between a donkey's ears. I mean: another one, framed in the photo between the ears of the first donkey. Glad we've got that clear. It doesn't matter in the least.

 

Alt text: A trailer, made by the excellent people at Stage Fright Films, which eventually tells you it's called 'The Researcher's First Murder', and revealing the excellent cover illustration by Tom Gauld.

You can pre-order it here, and I won't at all mind if you do. 

Gaza Mon Amor [Palestine/France, Tarzan & Arab Nasser, 3] Middle-aged fisherman discovers a Greek statue and courts a wary dress shop clerk. Deliberately paced dramedy of life under oppression.

The Way I See It [US, Dawn Porter, 3.5] Documentary profile of Obama-era Official White House photographer traces his arc from work for the Reagan administration to anti-Trump social media gunslinger. Whether American viewers consider this slickly fashioned film heartfelt or sentimental will depend on party registration. It’s certainly explicitly framed to fire up Democrats to get out there to de-elect the current president.

Under the Open Sky [Japan, Miwa Nishikawa, 4] Out of prison after a long sentence, an aging yakuza (Koji Yakusho) struggles with his volcanic temper as he attempts to go straight. Bittersweet drama anchored by a lead performance from Yakusho, a mainstay of contemporary Japanese cinema.

Penguin Bloom [Australia, Glendyn Ivin, 3] A former surfer left paralyzed from the chest down by a freak accident reluctantly bonds with a magpie chick named Penguin, which one of her young sons has rescued. Sun-dappled animal-related family drama about the depression and anger that can accompany a life-changing injury.

In a regular year I would definitely have programmed Under the Open Sky, and would possibly have picked Gaza Mon Amor, depending on its position on the schedule grid.

---

Capsule review boilerplate: Ratings are out of 5. I’ll be collecting these reviews in order of preference in a master post the Monday after the fest. Films shown on the festival circuit will appear in theaters, disc and/or streaming over the next year plus.

Last weekend my class and I headed to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park for a Leave No Trace Trainer Course. The training was a part of a Wilderness Ethics class being offered by San Juan College. We were all super pumped to be headed to a beautiful place like the Black Canyon for a “class”.

If you have ever been on a Leave No Trace Trainer Course, then you will know that the first topic talked about is Plan Ahead and Prepare. Our instructor mentioned that it might be the most important principle as it will set you up for success for your next outdoor adventure. Included in the discussion were the hiking/backpacking 10 Essentials, in which a map is one of those ten. As a self-proclaimed “map geek”, I was pretty excited to see our instructor pull out the Trails Illustrated Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and Curecanti NRA Map.

The map was a vital resource for planning our hikes for the weekend. By studying the contour lines and trail distances on the map we were able to determine which trails were the most suited to our group’s physical abilities and the class’ educational purposes. The map provided basic details like restroom locations, but was also detailed enough to show us what areas of the park required a backcountry permit. The map made several appearances during our hikes and quite a few more back at camp while students planned a return trip later this fall.

David Whitford – Student, San Juan College

New and Complete Map of Cuba, supplement to National Geographic magazine, October 1906; NG Maps.

Since our first post, this blog has addressed the history of cartography at National Geographic, geographic names (toponyms), and even the cartographic exploits of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, the American artist best known for the painting "Whistler's Mother." I hope that these topics have proven of interest to some if not all of you. But what we have not addressed is the personal more intimate side of cartography here at the Society.

Unquestionably, National Geographic is the place to be if you love the science as well as the art of mapmaking. Our production schedules are full of stimulating and challenging projects that often test our knowledge of the cartographic profession. Once in a while, we will be assigned a project so close and near to our hearts that it becomes an overriding passion. Several months ago, I was given such an assignment—a large format (36" x 24") political map of Cuba.

The last time the Society published such a map was in October 1906! Those of you in the exiled Cuban community, both in the U.S. and abroad, know the significance of this map. Anyone who has visited Miami's Little Havana, Tampa's Ybor City, or even Union City, New Jersey, can't avoid seeing maps of Cuba painted on walls, plastered on windows, or even printed on the sides of grocery bags.

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Да, я тот самый парень, который согласился ждать у алтаря свою лучшую подругу.
СТОП! Нет-нет-нет, это совсем не то, что вы подумали. СОВСЕМ.
Мы с Лией – старые приятели, которые годами выстраивали свою дружбу на любви к «Властелину колец», настольным играм и фанфикам. После колледжа стали жить по соседству и всегда забегали пожелать друг другу спокойной ночи, а еще вместе делили ужин. Лично меня все устраивало, но это ее кольцо на безымянном пальце (крайне уродливое, кстати!) и бесконечные разговоры про грядущую свадьбу… В общем, такой поворот смешал мне все карты.
Не подумайте, я желаю Лие счастья, просто жених ей не подходит.
Она умная, смешная, интересная. И красивая. Господи, какая же она красивая! Почему я раньше этого не замечал?!
Ладно, Брейкер, все в порядке. Твоя лучшая подруга выходит замуж, ты должен за нее порадоваться. Но как, черт возьми, она оказалась в моей постели?!

Общий очерк отечественной истории, написанный тремя выдающимися испанскими историками и выдержавший несколько переизданий, в Испании по праву считается классическим. В нем изложены основные события истории страны с древности до первых десятилетий XXI в. В частности, исследована эпоха господства мусульман на Пиренейском полуострове и борьба христианских государств за освобождение страны. Рассмотрены особенности социально-экономического и политического развития Испанской монархии, эволюция колониальной империи, взаимоотношения Церкви и государства, социокультурная специфика исторических областей. Проанализированы бурные события XIX — начала XXI в., включая Войну за независимость в начале XIX в., Гражданскую войну (1936–1939), франкистский режим, переход от диктатуры к демократии, особенности развития общенациональной и региональной национальной идентичности.
Для преподавателей и студентов, историков-испанистов и для всех, интересующихся всеобщей историей.

Не связывайтесь с ведьмами, а то можете оказаться в другом мире. И ладно бы человеком, а то в енота превратят, так бегать и придется. А страшно. Мир чужой… разве что повезет – и подберет вас на улице добрый человек. Женщина с ребенком. И придется аристократу – красавцу и просто светскому льву, то есть Е.Н. Отту, – жить в звериной шкуре, пока не представится возможность вернуться. И спокойно жить не дают! То погони, то бывший муж к спасительнице Соне лезет, отгонять приходится, то ведьмы в гости приходят. Надо разбираться здесь со всеми делами и уходить в свой мир. Глядишь, и прихватить с собой кого-то захочется. Свое счастье в другом мире не оставляют.

Жила себе спокойно, выращивала экзотические цветы и растения на продажу, никого не трогала. Пока в один далеко не прекрасный день по несчастливой случайности не вляпалась в… знакомство с наемником, принявшим меня за девушку по вызову! И все бы ничего, да только угораздило меня с размаху угодить в расследование таинственных убийств все с тем же вредным, наглым и раздражающим наемником! Можно было бы, конечно, отказаться, но ведь интересно до жути, да и напарник оказался очень даже привлекательным, несмотря на несносный характер. Но когда я сама стала предметом нездорового внимания маньяка, тут уж не до шуток и веселья.
Ничего, прорвемся! Нас, нимф, так просто не возьмешь. Найдем и скрутим! А там и до напарника очередь дойдет.

Российская империя, пережив череду внутренних и внешних кризисов, стала сильнее. Укрепив свои позиции, она готовится к решительной битве, которая заложит основания будущего для самой России и для всего человечества на многие десятилетия. Самое время четко определить, кто союзник и кто враг в неизбежно надвигающемся противостоянии. Эту миссию предстоит выполнить могущественному гроссу, главе крупнейшей мировой корпорации и пилоту-асу Мартемьяну Колычеву. Плечом к плечу с ним встанут его верные друзья и соратники. Но помните, Большая игра не заканчивается никогда!