Six-Sentence Saturday 06/30/2012

Can you believe it's the last day of June? This year is just FLYING by!

Ahem, okay now.

1.) I saw the first X-Men last night, and my favourite character was Wolverine.

2.) My laptop's desktop photo tends to change depending on which movie character I'm currently fond of.

3.) After X-Men, can you guess who is now my desktop photo?

4.) I'm reading something called THE LAST OF THE HIGH KINGS, by Kate Thompson, and I'm really loving her style so far.

5.) I am close to finishing a braided bookmark. Whoot whoot!

6.) I'm currently in love with some of the Avengers-inspired outfits. I want to make some!

That's all for today. How about you?

God bless.

Cat

Little Things, LOLcats, and Words of the Day

Little things bother me.

Like a fly buzzing around the room. That really  bothers me. Or water dripping. That constant plink, plink, plink. It's SO irritating. Or the people next door, blasting jazz. That makes irritation more of a slow smolder.

What do you do when something is driving you crazy? I do one of several things. I either: 1.) Go to Pinterest or Amazon (or both) and browse for awhile, 2.) Browse Google Images for my (current) favourite movie actors, or shows, or 3.) Look up weird and random facts, words, or slides of LOLcats.

I looked up LOLcats. I liked these best:

Afterward, I looked up the word of today. It's abstergent (ab-STUR-juhnt)

As an adjective;
1. Cleansing.
2. Purgative

As a noun:

1. A cleansing agent, as a detergent or soap.

It comes from the Latin word abstergēre, which means "to wipe off."

So, there you go. Maybe after you crawl under the sink to fix whatever's causing the tap to drip, break your pipe, flood your house, and call a real plumber, you might want to call forth your abstergent nature and take a shower. Good luck.

Six-Sentence Saturday 06/23/2012

Hello!

1.) Off to Carson for a second-hand-store spree!

2.) Cannot WAIT to see BRAVE!

3.) Need to get many different trilogies: the 100 CUPBOARDS trilogy, the ABHORSEN trilogy, the STONEHAND trilogy, the BARTIMAEUS trilogy...

4.) Halfway through the SCORPIO RACES, and I love the horse details!

5.) I love Pinterest hairstyles. :)

6.) For those of you who have not gone, you MUST go and see FOR GREATER GLORY in theaters... it was such an amazing movie! (Bring kleenex)

That's all! Have a wonderful Saturday.

God bless

Cat

Six-Sentence Saturday 06/16/2012

1.) I cannot WAIT to watch FOR GREATER GLORY!!!

2.) I love Pinterest, 'cause you can make personal scrapbookish pages for your book characters.

3.) Prismacolor colored pencils make me oh-so-happy. *sigh*

4.) What is it about coffee that makes me so much calmer?

5.) Amazon is a dangerous, dangerous place to go.

6.) So is Ebay.

That's all for now. :) Hope you all have a fabulous day!

The Query Quandary

You've probably heard this question before. How do you write a query. What do agents want in this darn thing? Is there something, similar to a mathematical equation, that authors can copy in writing the perfect query?

Well, sorry folks, here's the bad news: there is no equation. There's no potion, no magic wand that you can wave, no recipe you can follow to produce a well-written query. Queries are all unique, written to each agent. And guess what? Agents don't care what kind of a query you send them, as long as it's interesting, and makes them want to read the entire manuscript.

An agent simply wants a good story.

You're job is to show that story to an agent. You want to hook them, feed them tidbits, and end with a cliffhanger that makes them think, I want more!


Queries should lightly contain a bit of your novel's "voice". Basically, you want your query to reflect the tone and style your novel is written in. However, even if your novel is written in the first person (i.e. "I turned to see who was behind me, but no one was there.") always always always write your query in third person ("When Sandra turns to see who's behind her, no one's there.").

Your query can end on a cliffhanger. You want to entice the agent into reading more, remember? However, avoid rhetorical question. In fact, avoid questions altogether, okay?

Despite the non-formulaic problem of query drafting, some authors/agents provide wonderful tips for at least getting you started on the daunting road of query drafting. My personal favourite is Nathan Bransford's mad-lib query. If you are like me (i.e. terrified of queries) then Nathan Bransford is the place for you. He provides a wonderful mad-lib type query game that you can use to draft a rough query. It's helpful, because it breaks you out of the "queries are TERRIFYING" mindset, and lets you at least get words down on paper. But please, embellish. Add your own unique author voice.

For some great tips on the art of drafting queries, proposals, and synopses, read this transcript of the workshop held over at the Institute of Children's Literature. It is chock-full of some of the best information ever!!! Once you're done with it, here's part two of the same transcript. Enjoy!

'Til next time, God bless!

Cat

Six-Sentence Sunday 06/10/2012

I'm glad Sunday comes directly after Saturday. That way, when I miss my Six-Sentence Saturday, I still have the alliterative Six-Sentence Sunday to fall back on. (Aren't I awful?)

1.) I just finished watching NORTH AND SOUTH, a BBC miniseries that is way awesome, and I think I'm more than a little fond of Richard Armitage.

2.) What was Peter Jackson thinking, casting Richard as Thorin Oakenshield in THE HOBBIT?!! Thorin... well, better not say anything, if you haven't read the books.

3.) I'm reading SABRIEL by Garth Nix, and it's just my humble opinion, but I think he should stick with writing young adult. He seems more comfortable writing in that age group.

4.) Two of the best Broadway singers (and actors) up to date: Anthony Warlow, and James Barbour.

5.) I'm about 11,000 words into my NaNoWriMo revisions, and so far I'm liking the direction my novel is going. Yay!

6.) What are asphalt, pavement, and cobblestone? (This is a stupid writer joke. Can you guess?)

That's all for now! Hope you have a wonderful Sunday. God bless.

Cat

(And the answer to the question is this: Asphalt, pavement, and cobblestone are Concrete Words! LOL!... okay, you did laugh, right?)

Too many chapters?

Do you ever feel like you are getting bogged down with too many chapters when you write? Do you feel like you're just going on and on and on with a chapter, and it's leading you nowhere?

Maybe you can't cut a chapter because there's something important revealed in one single paragraph of the entire thing. Maybe you just love a certain description too much.

One way to see if a chapter is really that important is to ask yourself a few questions:

1.) What did I learn in this chapter?

2.) Did it move the story forward?

If you can honestly answer YES to both these questions, keep the chapters. If you can't, maybe take a closer look at them. You probably don't need them. Keep the "good stuff" and ditch the rest.

Someone once told me that there was an author who would find the best, the prettiest, the most perfect part if his book, and delete it. Ouch, huh? That's braver than I am right now! But if you can get rid of the best part of your book, you won't hold on to those pretty elements that will clutter your novels with too many chapters.

God bless!

Cat

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Six-Sentence Saturday 06/02/2012

Happy June, everybody!

First, I'd like to announce our WINNER for the UNICORN KEEP contest. Here is a snapshot of the Random Number Generator I used to pick our lucky number:

Since six is closer to five rather than to eight, our winner is...

SHAUNA!

Shauna, congratulations. Please contact me through the Contact Me button on the left, and I'll send you a gift certificate code so you can download a copy of Angelia's previous book, HORSE CHARMER, from the Smashwords website.

Now, for six sentences:

1.) I'm loving the warmth outside. It's about 8:15am, and I don't need a sweater for outside.

2.) Just finished DRAGON'S KEEP by Janet Lee Carey, and I thought the writing was beautiful.

3.) There's something about a warmish peach that just tastes so divine.

4.) I seriously want an iPad.

5.) Hurray for the second day of NaNoWriMo! Revisions are still going well. :)

6.) I'm taking my li'l sister to her baseball game. It should be fun.

That's all for today. Once more, congrats on the win, Shauna!