Hot Damn! I won a query critique!

So after my first rejection, I turned around and won a query critique from the fine folks at Writer Therapy!

For my non-writing readers, a query is a bare bones (250-300 word) summary of your book designed to 'hook' an agent and get them to read your book. Think of the back cover blurbs of all the books you see on the shelves. A query reads a lot like that back cover copy. You make a decision on a new book at least in part because of what is written there and the agent makes the same decision by reading a query.

Agents see hundreds of queries a week, so making a query stand out is vitally important. You can write the next Great American Novel, but it doesn't get published if you can't find an agent or editor who can make a decision to read it. To do that, you need a great query.

Quite frankly, queries are often harder than writing the book. As I mentioned in previous posts, a typical novel is between 70k and 120k words. Trying to distill that down to 300 and convey all the humor, suspense, and enough plot to hook a reader -- not to mention a professional reader -- is really frikken hard.

That is why I am so psyched to have won this contest. To have someone look at the query and give their input is a leg up on thousands of other writers that I didn't have yesterday. So, yeah, I have perma-grin on my face today!

By the way, a quick editing update: 48,900 words, 180 pages. Halfway home!

And a shout out to my friend Jamie over at This isn't Rocket Science!, who was also one of the ten winners and without whom, I would have never known about the contest. Thanks, Jamie!