T.D. Severin - Award-Winning Medical Thriller Author

  This is another great post that came across the Guide to Literary Agents blog. Since we were talking about queries, I thought I'd share it. Agent Janet Reid of FinePrint Literary Management gave an intensive workshop on queries at the South Carolina Writers Workshop. Here are 20 tips to writing an effective query, according to the Query Shark herself. FOR STARTERS • Be professional. It’s a business letter—not a personal letter. 1. Regarding salutation and tone, err on the side of caution because formality is never out of place. 2. “Dear Agent” or “To Whom It May Concern,” however, is too impersonal. 3. Pet peeve: If you’re querying an agent’s direct e-mail (i.e. “janet@” and you address the query “Dear Agent,” you don’t come across as being too smart. • Be comfortable with computers. Publishing is moving toward the electronic age, so move with it. 1. Have an e-mail address with your name in it (e.g., SuziWriter@gmail.com). This shows her you are professional. How is she to take y...

Have you ever heard of a soundtrack to accompany a book? That’s right!  When my debut novel, Deadly Vision gets published we’re gonna release with Ripple Music a reading soundtrack album to go along with the book.  Songs created to set the mood for the novel: some psychedelic, some space rock, some spooky doom - and I’m so honored by the amazing musicians that have come forth and volunteered music to make that soundtrack happen.   Man, speechless.  Wino/The Obsessed, Yawning Man, Kabbalah, House of Broken Promises . . . and more!  So grateful.   Look for the novel Deadly Vision and the accompanying soundtrack to worm into your nightmares next spring.

The dreaded slushpile, the one place each of us hopes our writing never lands.  I found this interesting article a long while back on the  Guide to Literary Agents   blog, a once excellent writing resource, and one of the few blogs that I subscribed to. The topic was Agents and the Slushpile: Ten Reasons they Stop Reading, and I thought I'd share it with you. Here are the top 10: 10. Overdone description that doesn’t move the story forward 9. Spoon-feeding the reader what the character is thinking 8. Having the characters address each other repeatedly by name, as in, “John, let’s go!” 7. Introducing a character with first and last name, as in, “John Smith entered the room.” 6. Beginning a story with dialogue 5. Opening with a cliché 4. Yanking the reader out of the action with backstory 3. Not giving the reader a sense of place or where the story is going 2. Characters are MIA until bottom of page 2 1. Telling instead of showing Lots of these are items we've discussed in ...