October 20,  2015 Agent One-on-One: How to Craft Query Letters  & Other Submission Materials That Get Noticed Boot Camp October 26 - October 29, 2015 Don't Miss Out! Starts Monday! Start Date: Monday, October 26, 2015 Tuition: $199.99 REGISTER NOW When your submission materials - a query letter, synopsis, manuscript, or book proposal - arrive in an agent's inbox, they land among hundreds of others. At that point, one of two things will happen. Either the agent (or the agent's assistant) will like the submission and request more materials, or they will reply with a rejection. Authors who get rejected tend to fall in one of two categories when submitting materials: they try too hard, or not enough. This Writer's Digest Boot Camp is designed to help you streamline your submission materials to stand out in a good way.  Attendees will learn how to write a dynamite query letter, tackle a one-page synopsis (for fiction) and a book proposal (for nonfiction). The instructing literary agents will also explain the importance of author platform in addition to basic etiquette in dealing with an agent and manuscript basics.  Lastly, all attendees will have an opportunity to interact one-on-one with an agent and submit ten double-spaced pages of materials (in any combination--query, synopsis, book proposal, first pages of your manuscript) for valuable feedback provided by successful literary agents. Agenda: Monday, October 26: Online Tutorials Tuesday, October 27: Agent Q&A 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM (ET) Wednesday, October 28: Agent Q&A 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM (ET) Thursday, October 29: Writers Submit Materials Friday, November 19: Agent Critiques Due Here's how it works: On October 26, you will gain access to a special 60-minute online tutorial presented by literary agents Kimberley Cameron and Elizabeth Kracht. This tutorial will provide nuts & bolts advice on how to help you streamline your submission materials-including the query letter, novel synopsis, nonfiction book proposal, and first pages.  After listening to the presentation, attendees will spend the next two days revising materials as necessary. Following the tutorial, writers will have two days in which to log onto the discussion boards and ask your assigned agent critiquer questions related to revising your materials. The agents will be available for a discussion session from 4-6 p.m. (ET) on both Tuesday, October 27 and Wednesday, October 28. By end of day (11:59 p.m., ET) on Thursday, October 29, attendees will submit up to 10 double-spaced pages for review to their assigned agents. These pages can include any combination of double-spaced query, synopsis, book proposal, or pages of their manuscript.  For the submission, you will send in the first 10 pages of your double-spaced manuscript and a query letter for review. You are also welcome to send a synopsis, if you want to include it in the first ten pages (ie. 1 page synopsis + first 9 pages of the manuscript). The query letter is separate and does not count as part of the first ten. The agents will spend three weeks reviewing all assigned pages, provide relevant feedback and offer suggestions to help attendees improve upon them. The agents reserve the right to request more materials if they feel a strong connection to the work and want to read more.  Only registered students can access the discussion session. You'll also be able to ask questions of your fellow students. Feel free to share your work and gain support from your peers.  Please note that any one of the agents may ask for additional pages if the initial submission shows serious promise.  In addition to feedback from agents, attendees will also receive a download of "Everything You Need to Know About Literary Agents," an on-demand webinar by WD editor Chuck Sambuchino.

About the Instructors: Kimberley Cameron: Kimberley was educated at Marlborough School for Girls in Los Angeles, Humboldt State University, and Mount St. Mary's College. She began her literary career as an agent trainee at the Marjel de Lauer Agency in association with Jay Garon in New York and worked for several years at MGM developing books for motion pictures. She was the co-founder of Knightsbridge Publishing Company with offices in New York and Los Angeles. Elizabeth Kracht: Elizabeth Kracht represents both literary and commercial fiction as well as nonfiction, and brings to the agency experience as a former acquisitions editor, freelance publicist and writer. Elizabeth's career in publishing took root in Puerto Rico where she completed her BA in English and worked as a copyeditor for an English-language newspaper. When she returned to the mainland she found her "vein of gold" in book publishing. She thrives on working closely with authors and researching the potential market for new books. Mary C. Moore : Mary started her career in publishing as a writer. She graduated from Mills College with an MFA in Creative Writing. After freelancing for two years as an editor and writer in non-literary sectors, she began an internship with Kimberley Cameron & Associates with the desire to learn more about the literary business for her own writing. During the internship she discovered a passion for helping others develop their manuscripts. Now she balances three jobs: writer, editor, and agent, and finds that the experience in each helps and supports the other. She is looking for unusual fantasy, grounded science-fiction, and atypical romance. Strong female characters and unique cultures especially catch her eye. Although she will not consider most non-fiction, stories about traditional dance or pagan culture may interest her. Above all, she is looking for writing that sweeps her away. Douglas Lee: Douglas came to Kimberley Cameron as a writer in 2014 with the purpose of learning what hid behind the curtain of publishing. While completing his MFA, he found that he loved the work both behind and ahead of the typewriter. At this time, his sole focus is representing science fiction and fantasy that stimulates the imagination. As an agent he is looking for SFF manuscripts that utilize the craft elements of literary fiction and the best parts of imaginative genre. He is seeking novels with writing just as enticing as the story. Subtle and deft world-building techniques capture his attention; as do characters with raw magnetism and confused moral compasses. Douglas welcomes all SFF sub-genres. He has a soft spot for Cyberpunk, Weird Fiction in the flavor of China Mieville, Steampunk and noir influenced voices. He seeks writers who write against genre and bend preconceptions. LGBTQ based manuscripts are welcome, as are unconventional SFF protagonists with marginalized voices in their world. Register Now

Free Screenplay Teleconference

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with Jacob Krueger presents this FREE Teleclass Fix Your Pitch with Award Winning Screenwriter, Jacob Krueger Award Winning Screenwriter, Jacob Krueger is back again to help you revamp your pitch delivery with FREE PITCH ADVICE. Everyone can use some pitch advice to get those top influential professionals hooked on your material, so be sure to be on this call tomorrow,Thursday, the 20th at 5:30 pm Pacific Time. Register Today and FIX YOUR PITCH! Hope you can join us!   Register Today  »   When: October 20th at 5:30pm - 7pm PDT   Price: Free!   Notes: Call-in Details will be sent in your confirmation email. Please be sure to check your spam folder if you don't see a confirmation email within a few minutes. Late Deadline: October 23 Get selected to participate in Atlanta Film Festival's annual 3-Day Writer's Retreat complete with a public staged reading of an excerpt of your winning script!   Plus, get full access to events, panels and screenings at theAtlanta Film Festival! Register Early for ISA's Next Teleconference: Register Today  » When: November 14th at 10:30 am - 12 pm PDT Price: Free! The Visual Mindscape of the Screenplay with Bill Boyle Bill Boyle believes that a fully realized screenplay reveals itself primarily through images, which he refers to as the Visual Mindscape. This allows the reader or viewer to ‘discover’ elements of the story rather than being told.  It is a far more intimate and visceral experience. Bill feels this is the true magic of the screenplay and is the basis behind his book The Visual Mindscape of the Screenplay.

19th Free “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest: Young Adult Fiction

Dear Readers,

I've got great news!

To all fellow writer's who have completed a Young Adult novel of any genre and that novel is unpublished, you can enter a free contest by the Writer's Digest. I found out about it in an email today. I am going to enter my novel in the contest, however to qualify for a free entry I have to spread the word twice and provide proof. So I'm making this post on my Blog. 

Here is the link to the Writer's Digest Contest: 

http://www.writersdigest.com/...12&rid=239104506 

If You don't feel like going to the link, here are the guidelines word for word from the email: 

Welcome to the 19th (free!) “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest on the GLA blog. This is a FREE recurring online contest with agent judges and super-cool prizes. Here’s the deal: With every contest, the details are essentially the same, but the niche itself changes—meaning each contest is focused around a specific category or two. So if you’re writing any kind of young adult fiction, this 19th contest is for you! (The contest is live through EOD, Thursday, Oct. 29, 2015.) 

 
WHY YOU SHOULD GET EXCITED 
After a previous “Dear Lucky Agent” contest, the agent judge, Tamar Rydzinski (The Laura Dail Literary Agency), signed one of the three contest winners. After Tamar signed the writer, she went on to sell two of that writer’s books! How cool! That’s why these contests are not to missed if you have an eligible submission. 
HOW TO SUBMIT 
E-mail entries to dearluckyagent19@gmail.com [this email went active as of 9 am Monday morning]. Please paste everything. No attachments. 
WHAT TO SUBMIT (AND OUR SOCIAL MEDIA REQUIREMENTS) 
The first 150-250 words (i.e., your first double-spaced page) of your unpublished, completed book-length work of young adult fiction (all categories of YA are acceptable). You must include a contact e-mail address with your entry and use your real name. Also, submit the title of the work and a logline (one-sentence description of the work) with each entry. 
Please note: To be eligible to submit, you must mention this contest twice through any any social-media. Please provide a social-media link or Twitter handle or screenshot or blog post URL, etc., with your official e-mailed entry so the judge and I can verify eligibility. Some previous entrants could not be considered because they skipped this step! Simply spread the word twice through any means and give us a way to verify you did; a TinyURL for this link/contest for you to easily use is http://tinyurl.com/nz6n2p8 [this links is updated as of Monday morning — sorry]. An easy way to notify me of your sharing is to include my Twitter handle@chucksambuchino at the end of your mention(s) if using Twitter. If we’re friends on FB, tag me in the mention. And if you are going to solely use Twitter as your 2 times, please wait 1 day between mentions to spread out the notices, rather than simply tweeting twice back to back. Thanks. (Please note that simply tweeting me does not count. You have to include the contest URL with your mention; that’s the point. And if you use Twitter, put my handle @chucksambuchino at the middle or the end, not at the very beginning of the tweet, or else the tweet will be invisible to others.) 
Here is a sample TWEET you can use (feel free to tweak): New FREE contest for writers of Young Adult fiction http://tinyurl.com/nz6n2p8 Judged by agent @ericsmithrocks, via @chucksambuchino 
WHAT IS ELIGIBLE? 
Completed young adult novels (any category is acceptable, from quiet contemporary to loud sci-fi and fantasy). 
Please note that this is a contest for young adult fiction only. So if your book has a main character who is not in high school, it would not qualify for this contest. Sorry. 
CONTEST DETAILS

1. This contest will be live through the end of Oct 29, 2015, PST. Winners notified by e-mail within three weeks of end of contest. Winners announced at the top of this blog post thereafter.
2. To enter, submit the first 150-250 words of your book (i.e., your first double-spaced page). Shorter or longer entries will not be considered. Keep it within word count range please.
3. You can submit as many times as you wish. You can submit even if you submitted to other contests in the past, but please note that past winners cannot win again. All that said, you are urged to only submit your best work.
4. The contest is open to everyone of all ages, save those employees, officers and directors of GLA’s publisher, F+W: A Content and E-Commerce Company, Inc.
5. By e-mailing your entry, you are submitting an entry for consideration in this contest and thereby agreeing to the terms written here as well as any terms possibly added by me in the “Comments” section of this blog post. If you have questions or concerns, write me personally at chuck.sambuchino (at) fwmedia.com. The Gmail account above is for submissions, not questions.

PRIZES!!! 
Top 3 winners all get: 1) A critique of the first 10 double-spaced pages of your work, by your agent judge. 2) A free one-year subscription to WritersMarket.com ($50 value)! 3) Their choice of any of Chuck’s 3 new books (mentioned at the top). 
MEET YOUR (AWESOME) AGENT JUDGE! 
Eric Smith is a literary agent with P.S. Literary. He is the author of the YA novel INKED (Bloomsbury Spark) as well as the nonfiction humor book THE GEEK’S GUIDE TO DATING. (See all the ways to buy his books here.) Along with Tim Quirino, he’s the co-founder of Geekadelphia, a hyperlocal blog in Philadelphia, covering all-that-is-geek in the City of Brotherly Love. In 2011, he co-founded thePhiladelphia Geek Awards with the Academy of Natural Sciences, a ceremony honoring local geeks. Before he joined P.S. Literary, Eric could be found at Quirk Books, an indie publishing house in Philadelphia. A native of New Jersey (don’t hate), he currently lives in Philadelphia. You can find him on Twitter at @ericsmithrocks and @geekadelphia. His writing is represented by Dawn Frederick of Red Sofa Literary. 

Agents Seeking Writers

Hi, readers!

Following are some agents seeking writers of women's fiction. I got their names and contact from an email I received this morning.

10 Agents Who Have Confirmed to Me That They're Seeking Women's Fiction Submissions NOW 

To celebrate the release of my 3 new books, I'm doing some guest blogging on other writing sites. One of those sites is Amy Sue Nathan's Women's Fiction Writers site. And the post I compiled is called "10 Literary Agents Seeking Women's Fiction NOW." Check out an excerpt from the list below, or the whole list of 10 over on the WFW site. Note that all listed agents confirmed to me personally that they were happy to be on the list. (And keep in mind this is solely for women's [sometimes called upmarket] fiction, not romance or erotica. If you're writing romance or erotica, check out the Corvisiero Literary camp on Oct. 12.)  

1. Scott Eagan of Greyhaus Literary 
How to contact: E-query scott@greyhausagency.com with "Query" in the subject line. Keep the word count between 75,000 and 110,000. "Please focus on one issue and not a ton of personal problems the protagonist has. Stories can have happy or sad endings. Please no adultery."

2. MacKenzie Fraser-Bub of Trident Media Group
How to contact: Send a query letter, pasted in the body of the email, to MFraserBub@TridentMediaGroup.com. Please do not send a manuscript or proposal until you have been requested to do so.

3. Kimberly Brower of Rebecca Friedman Literary 
How to contact: E-query Kimberly@rfliterary.com. Submit a brief query letter and your first chapter (pasted into the email, not to exceed fifteen double-spaced pages). No attachments.

See the entire list here on the WFW site.

September 25,  2015

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Reg. $17.99 Your Price: $12.99 + Free Shipping! Buy Now Fire Up Your Writing Brain How to Use Proven Neuroscience to  Become a More Creative, Productive, and Successful Writer By Susan Reynolds Fire Up Your Writing Brain takes a scientific approach to training writers. Backed by neuroscience, this book presents a compelling concept: anyone can train their brain to become better at writing. Written in a friendly tone, Fire Up Your Writing Brain provides entertaining and beneficial exercises for writers, regardless of the genre they write in. This resource covers all topics related to becoming a successful writer, including brainstorming, organization, establishing a writing rhythm, overcoming writer's block, editing and revision, and promotion and marketing. You'll appreciate Fire Up Your Writing Brain if: • You're a writer of any genre looking for exercises to help you improve your craft • You're looking for practical techniques to train yourself to a stronger writer • You want to become a more creative, productive and successful writer

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Important Writing Advice

Hello readers.

It's been a while. I've been busy at working on my own material and helping other. Today I have an important piece of writing advice. It is quite simple:

When writing a script or novel, write the script or novel in full first. Then go back to read and revise it. Never write the first chapter or act 1 then keep redoing it until you get them right then go on to write the rest of the script or novel. Doing this takes time away from focusing on completing the story and can confuse you. Worst of all, you'll never get the material done. I tell this to writers all the time.

Also don't worry over grammar and spelling. When doing the first draft just focus on getting the idea down. Then make adjustments and correction and changes in future drafts. That script or novel will never come out perfect in the first draft.

That is all I have to say for today .

Differences Between Middle Grade & Young Adult Novels

Lately I've been getting questions from writers wondering what is the difference between Middle Grade and Young Adult novels. Following is an article from Writer's Digest that gives the best explanation.

The Key Differences Between Middle Grade vs Young Adult Miss your mark with your target audience and you won't be graduating to the pros. Here's how to ace the key differences between MG and YA. Read more ...