Cool Links Friday

There were so many great blog posts this week, but here are some of my favorites. Enjoy.

Writing YA and want to make your kisses smoocherific? Kristin Otts has some great advice. Warning: Have your significant other nearby in case the urge to kiss him (her) strikes. Trust me on that.

Emilia Plater (YA Highway) points out the the five protagonists you meet in YA. A definite must read.

And don’t forget your antagonist. Kelly Lyman has some great advice to keep yours from becoming a cardboard villain.

Is your shiny manuscript now ready for the world? Is it free of the 15 things that frustrate readers? Then check out Tahereh Mafia’s hilarious post, What Janet Reid is Really Thinking. If you’re not following Tahereh . . . well, you seriously should be.

Now that you’ve written that fab query based on Tahereh’s superb advice, pop on over to visit Weronika Janczuk and learn how to email it to your dream agent. You’ll be glad you did.

And while you’re at it, be sure to check out the Blood Red Pencil to get your pitch ready in case you happen upon an agent in Starbucks. It could happen, right?

Spring break starts today, so my family and I are flying south. Just not as far south as they would like—as in Mexico. So I’ll be going unplugged today and next week. I’ll see you when I get back.

Have a great week!

Hail to the Query Ninja

Last week I volunteered to have Elana Johnson (aka the Query Ninja) from the Query Tracker Blog do some spectacular moves on my query. I’d bought her e-book FROM THE QUERY TO THE CALL (brilliant book by the way, especially with the examples) and wanted to take her up on her offer to crit the query.

This is the before version:

Ten months ago, Calleigh Clarkson was a star on the high school swim team. But after a fan assaulted her, she quit swimming. Unwilling to tell anyone the truth, she buried herself in her studies. Now it’s summer vacation. She wants to be the fun-loving girl she once was, the one her friends miss.

Great plan, except her nightmares are growing more intense and frequent. And now she’s experiencing flashbacks. So not part of the plan. Calleigh’s determined to deal with them on her own, before anyone figures out something’s wrong. Fail that, and her mom will drag her to a shrink. And that’s the last thing Calleigh wants.

Then she meets Aaron. He’s a former competitive swimmer, haunted by a secret. As a romance develops between them, Calleigh discovers Aaron’s sister committed suicide. She realizes that for them to heal, they both need to return to the sport they love. But before she can do that, Calleigh has to push past her fear, and find the courage to swim again. Only someone doesn’t want that to happen.

LOST IN A HEARTBEAT is a 76,000-word young adult contemporary novel, which will appeal to readers who enjoy books by Sarah Dessen and Sarah Ockler.

I’m not going to rehash her comments here, but do check them out on the QT blog. You can learn tons from them.

I love her examples in her e-book, and really wanted to make mine sparkle just as much. So after much thought—and rewriting—I came up with the following:

Seventeen-year-old Calleigh has a plan for summer vacation, and it totally doesn’t include burying herself under the truth of what happened ten months ago. Once a star on her high school swim team, Calleigh quit when a fan assaulted her. Now she wants to be the fun-loving girl she once was. The one her friends miss. Great plan, right? Too bad her nightmares are growing more intense and frequent, and now she’s experiencing flashbacks. So not part of the plan.

To top it off, her best friend’s seriously hinted this’ll be their summer for romance and guys. And gasp, she’s even lined up a guy for Calleigh. As a romance develops between Calleigh and Aaron, he tries to help her deal with the disturbing dreams while also trying to convince her to start swimming again. And geez, is he ever persistent. But when Calleigh discovers his sister committed suicide, she realizes that for them to heal, they so need to return to competitive swimming. Only thing is, Calleigh and Aaron’s sister are linked in a way she could never have imagined—a connection that could be deadly for Calleigh.

LOST IN A HEARTBEAT is a 76,000-word young adult contemporary novel. It will appeal to readers who enjoy the character-based stories of Sarah Dessen and Sarah Ockler, and also to those who love the romance and danger in PERFECT CHEMISTRY and the VAMPIRE ACADEMY series.

See the difference? As you can tell, voice played a big part in it. Plus the ending is way better. That part was driving me crazy. Elana’s book really helped me there. (There’s my not so subtle hint that you need to check out the book if you’re planning to write a query soon).

The best part is I’ve modified the query slightly (I don’t want the reader to know about Aaron’s sister just yet) and turned it into a blurb for the novel. That and the first three pages can be found under the tab MY BOOKS at the top this blog.

Thanks Elana for your help!

PS. my new query landed me my first request yesterday. Okay it helped that I did major rewrites on my voice in the novel, but Elana made sure it came out in my query.