Seriously, I kind of like the idea of having an invisible transsexual named Lugo in our dining room. If the FBI ever drops by for a chat, I can ask Lugo what s/he thinks about it, and scare the g-men to death...

We really are a classic San Francisco house, though, all joking aside.

Dude.

Cruel Sister word count: 74,219.

Just finished the Big Bang. What's left is a winding down and the epilogue.

And then?

Done do0-be-do- done DONE.

One of my editor/agent chair duties is to have a list of questions ready to start discussion at the Saturday morning editor/agent panel and for filler in case there's a lull in the Q&A, and I'm trying to make a good list. Here are the ideas I've had so far:

- What are the most common mistakes writers make when submitting to you?

- What makes a submission stand out and make you want to see more of an author's work?

- What do you see as the main trends in the romance genre?

- What would your advice be for a writer whose muse and/or interests don't match the trends? Most people in the industry that I've met advise you to write what you love anyway, because that's your strongest work--given that, how do you improve your chances of finding a niche in the marketplace?

- What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of being an editor or agent?

Any other ideas? I'm trying to make them general enough to apply to most of the people in the room, and save the "How do I find a home for my quirky overlong historical romance-military fiction hybrid?" stuff for one-on-one discussion.

erika! This month's column by my editor at Minotaur - Ruth Cavin - should interest you:

It's the quality, stupid!

Susan, BTW, how about a "what NOT to do" question? Sure ways to turn the agent and editor off?

From deb's link.

(A few years ago, there was discussion in the American mystery field about adding more categories to the usual ones of “hardboiled” and “cozy,” and Lawrence Block suggested trying “books with cats and books without cats.”)

Yet one more of the many reasons why I love Lawrence Block.

What about books with small dogs and books without small dogs. We know where Crusie would go.

Hee! Yep, Block became the stuff of instant legend with that one. He just rocks.

I posted this elsewhere, and am adding it here, as well, because I need the info:

Italian speakers who (unlike me) do not stiffen like a corpse at gender-specific grammar, a question:

One dying man telling another man to, essentially "live on": Go, get out of here, I'm done for, you carry on for me: go, live.

The word that immediately came to mind there is "vivere".

In that context, male to male, am I using the right form?

ita, thing is, there's a ridiculous preponderance of cat-oriented mystery novels out there. The genre literally has its own sub-genre featuring cats; hell, if I do this Boston thing, I'll be doing it with Clea Simon, and her first mystery is called "Mew is for Murder".

there's a ridiculous preponderance of cat-oriented mystery novels out there

I know ... I was just riffing on a strange (and a bit annoying) repetitiveness the lady shows.