Taking Pitches At SFWC This Friday!

I and my esteemed colleague, Amy Cloughley, will be taking pitches during the Agent Speed Dating sessions at the 2015 San Francisco Writers Conference. 

I have gotten a few questions whether I am taking pitches even though it states that I am closed to submissions on the KC&A website. 

Although my current schedule does not allow the time for unsolicited queries via email, otherwise known as the slushpile, I am always looking for new clients, albeit at a slower pace. Thus conferences are one of the few places I do take pitches. (I also make requests via #PitMad, a wonderful resource for writers, and I consider Writers Digest Bootcamp participants.) I hope to someday soon to be open to a slushpile, but for now those are the places I take submissions. 

If you are attending SFWC, I am most actively seeking adult science fiction and fantasy. I also will consider literary/upmarket fiction with magical realism or a surrealistic bent, romance, historical, and speculative YA. I am not interested in non-fiction (memoir included), mystery, or women's lit. 

Amy, on the other hand, enjoys literary and upmarket fiction of all types in addition to commercial—including well-researched historical and well-told women's fiction. She also loves a page-turning mystery or suspense with sharp wit and unexpected twists and turns. She has a soft spot for distinctive, strong, contemporary characters set in small towns. She is also interested in narrative nonfiction when the plot and characters are immersed in a culture, lifestyle, discipline, or industry and will  consider a travel or adventure memoir.

She is not currently focusing on military/government thrillers, fantasy, or YA projects. 

So if you have a project that fits one or both of us, stop by and give us your pitch!

Looking forward to seeing you there. 

@AmyCloughley

@Mary_C_Moore

Rejection and Publishing

Rejection, it's a word all writers loathe and fear. I myself have been rejected as an author by zines, agents, editors, workshops, and readings. It's a difficult road, and I feel for the thousands of writers that pass through our slushpile everyday. It's hard not to take each rejection like an arrow to the heart and I've seen writers who have become bitter, angry, sad, and then broadcast it online. They vent their frustration, believing they have been wronged, calling publishers, editors, agents alike nasty names and blaming them personally for the rejections.

One of the most important things I have learned since entering the other side of publishing is that rejection is not personal. Publishing is first and foremost, a business. The people within publishing love books (they have to, for it is rarely a lucrative career), but they are not artists per say, so they are looking at each submission with a practical eye. For example, as beautiful as your prose may be, if the book is hundreds of thousands of words long, an agent knows that a publisher will not probably not pick it up because to publish a book that large costs more money. No one is saying the writer is a bad writer for having a long book, it just means the writer probably doesn't understand the business side of publishing and is likely inexperienced.

So if you are like the average writer and wish to have a financially successful career, do your research, know the business and understand that it's similar to any other job. Your first project is your entry-level resume. You're going to have to submit it to as many places as you can, be rejected or ignored, and even if you do get hired, you won't be the CEO within the year. But if you keep honing your craft by going to school or workshops or conferences, doing online research, critical reading and practicing writing, just as you would invest in another career, your odds of success become much higher.

And you will see that rejection is just business as usual.

For more tips on writing and publishing follow Mary @Mary_C_Moore.

Why You Should Never Respond to a Rejection Letter

As we slog through hundreds of submissions in the slushpile, day after day, week after week, year after year, it is hard not to become the hardened cynical arrogant bastards that many authors think we are. When you see the same mistakes made over and over again, the same cliches done, the same "thinking out of the box" tricks, you sink lower and lower beneath the mounds of manuscripts, grumbling and growling and rolling your eyes the whole way down. But here at KC&A we actually read and respond to every query, with what we hope is a gentle rejection and encouraging words, even as we descend into the depths of slushpile madness. Most authors are professional and only write back to say thank you for the response. But some, some get angry. And then we get responses such as this:

You aren't extremly selective.
This book is the next Harry Poter.
You know about what you're talking.
If you were extremly selective, you would choose my book.
To say that this book isn't selective, it means you know nothing about what works or what doesn't work.
You are the shame of the market.
You discuss me.
THIS BOOK IS EXTRMLY SELECTIVE.
YOU UNDERSTAND NOTHING.
YOU DONT WANNA MAKE MONEY
This is your problem,not mine.
Being extremly selective, I choose that uncapable like you aren't enough strong to sell my  book.
You're fired!!!!

So think before you respond to a rejection. Because we will remember you. And please know this, we did consider your submission. If we rejected it, then for whatever reason it was not a good fit for us. We love our authors and we love books. We want you to succeed as much as you want to.

For more query tips follow Mary on Twitter, @Mary_C_Moore

How To Tame The Wild Slusher: Formatting Your Submission to Professionally Stand Out in The Slush Pile

Authors, if you are looking to submit to KC&A, I hope you will find this post useful, as it gives some insight to the slushpile process, and the animals that guard the threshold, the slushers.

Kimberley Cameron & Associates has one of the classiest submission policies that I have seen.
Firstly, the policy allows--in fact even would rather--you attach the first 50 pages of your manuscript. There is no need to convince them to read your partial via the dreaded and ubiquitous QUERY LETTER. Your writing sample is right there, and yes, it gets read.
Secondly, every query is responded to. every. single. one. This does back up things a bit, so have patience, you will get a response, hopefully within a few months.
Thirdly, the submissions are open year round. All the time. Whenever you want.

This means that already, as an author, you have an advantage submitting to KC&A. Your writing is getting read! That means you can go wild, right? Submit! Submit it all, right now! SUBMIT! Feed the beasts!

I am here to say, please, take a moment, a breath. As a slushpile reader, I beg you for my sanity and the sanity of the other agents/interns in the office, please follow the submission guidelines and make sure your query is clean and easy to read. Let's put it this way. We are reading 100 plus emails a day, sloughing through hundreds of writing samples a week. Our eyes hurt, our brain hurts, our butts hurt, heck, even our hair hurts. But we do it, because we love it. We love to read, and we love books. And when we do stumble across that breathtaking novel, it's all worth it. That excitement of getting someone signed, watching their manuscript draft develop into a full-blown book, and then seeing it out on the shelves, there's nothing like it. We are not evil gatekeepers, rather hopeful hunters. So when you do send us your query and writing sample, take the time to make it as painless as possible for us to read it. Trust me, if you do this, you have an advantage over other submissions, because a grumpy slusher is way more trigger happy with the rejection button than a slusher in a good mood.

A few things to sooth the wild beast that is the slushpile reader:

1. First and foremost. Formatting. Times. New. Roman. 12 point. Double spaced. Please. For the love of sanity, NO COURIER NEW. Don't get me wrong, Courier New is a lovely font. It looks great on some websites, fine on paper, adds a touch of class to designed work, makes poetry pop, but on the screen, after straining the eyes reading for five plus hours, multiple pages of Courier New looks like a bunch of ants squirming around on white sand. It hurts. Beastly we may be, but we're not anteaters.
2. "Unique Formatting." Know this. Anything that is meant to make your submission stand out, i.e. images, colored fonts, LARGE FONT, borders will not make your submission stand out in a good way. It will appear unprofessional, and again. IT HURTS THE EYES! This causes the slusher's hackles to raise and they can't read like that.
3. Your front matter. A lot of authors like to insert in their submission an opening quote, or dedication, or table of contents, as if it were already in print. It's not. This is a draft manuscript. Anything that requires more work to get to that opening sentence, the less patience the slusher has. The less patience the slusher has, the more likely your manuscript gets chomped.
4. Italics. Or more specifically, the loathed ITALICIZED PROLOGUE. I must confess I have been guilty of this offense as well. It looks so... dreamy. I now realize, dreamy = blurry which equals, rumbling growls from the slusher and no desire to read any of it. *see comments on Courier New for a clearer explanation. (Now if you have the sort of manuscript that has caught the slusher's eye, and they are happily reading along, when suddenly flashback! Pages and pages of italicized flashback! It goes on forever and ever and ever! You may have just broken the slusher's spirit. Doesn't mean you'll get a full request though. Just a tear stained rejection.) 
5. Which brings us to the prologue. Try reading your manuscript starting at Chapter 1. Does it need the prologue? Yes? Then the prologue is Chapter 1. No? Take the prologue out. Start your manuscript where the story/action starts, i. e. Chapter 1. Trust me, this will make your slusher purr.
6. Minor points. Number your pages. Don't use the term "heaving" to describe a woman's uhm assets. Have your name and the title of your manuscript at the top. Make your query brief (a paragraph, maybe two). Address your email query to the agent you are querying and spell their name correctly. Follow their submission guidelines. Try to keep your manuscript between 75,000 and 90,000 words.
7. Finally, the big one. The thing that causes the slusher to bare their teeth and growl and futilely swipe at the screen. The cliche introduction. Here's the big three cliches. In the first paragraph, does your main character: - Wake up? - Look in a mirror (or any other reflective surface)? - Die (or almost die)? If your character does one (or all) of these these things, don't be ashamed. You are the majority. Over 50% of the submissions that go through the slusher's claws have one of these three cliches in the opening paragraph. Just slink away, start your story in a different, unique way that is full of action.

If you are reading this blog, then you are already ahead of others in getting your submission to stand out. Remember, although content is king, formatting that content professionally will create the gentle reading mood to sooth the wild slusher and may even cause them to drool just a little bit. If your slusher is drooling and purring, then that means your submission is in the place you want it to be for a proper read.

For tweets on slushpile advice follow me @Mary_C_Moore
To see what I'm about besides slushpile reading: marycmoore.com