Gronk. Awaiting meds...

Susan, the "highly qualified" is bland enough to sound generic. Hooking an editor is always a tricky business; don't judge the rest of your writing on your selling of your skill by way of this kind of pitch. Not in the same class or even on the same planet.

Liese, I liked the "Something doesn't fit" as well. The problem is, she's got a hard, strict word limit on this one, which means that every sentence has to be complete as well as connected: there's no room for freeform. So having the eye stop, falter and bring itself back to the beginning is fatal, in a piece of this length. In a novel, yes. In a hard-count short piece, no. The additional problem was that it was so early in the story; you make the editor double-read that early in, and you've lost them. Damn it, where's Amy when I need her? AMY! You're the editor; back me up here, please.

How about if I changed the second sentence to:

As a freelance writer with experience writing research-intensive news articles, I believe I could do excellent work for you.

These really are much easier to write when you're querying a specific article. It's hard to come up with a good hook when your message is "I can write about most anything, really."

ION, I just read a review of a historical romance set in my era where the heroine read Pride & Prejudice two years before it was published, and mentioned its heroine, "Miss Bingley." The characters also discussed Waterloo as if it were on the verge of happening. In 1811. To name just a few glaring inaccuracies.

Please help me find a way to laugh rather than cry about the fact that woman is an author and I am not. I know that historical accuracy is not the one be-all and end-all of what makes a book good, and I don't claim to be perfect at it. But I at least care enough to Google dates. (Actually, I care a lot more than that. I care enough to write strangers in England about their regiments' history. I care enough to make Interlibrary Loan my bitch. I care enough to go all geeky about weapons specs and siege tactics.) And I think I'm a decent writer who tells pretty good stories that are made all the better by me caring enough to try to get the setting at least kinda sorta right.

just close enough to Hollywood to fear it’s radiation

Victor, I'm almost positive you want its the possessive, rather than it's the contraction here.

Other than that, I like it a lot.

Susan, yep, that works better.

As for the writer in question, it might be interesting to find out who her agent is, and ping them. Your stuff is actually researched.

As for the writer in question, it might be interesting to find out who her agent is, and ping them. Your stuff is actually researched.

Hmm, I was thinking the opposite--that any agent or editor who'd accept that is wrong for me, because they clearly don't know or care about getting this stuff right. To me it's insulting to the readers--sort of, "Who cares if all the history is wrong? It's just a romance novel." Except of course that I've run across readers who say much the same thing.

And it reminds me that in some ways what I'm writing is bucking the current trend toward light-and-fluffy historicals, though most of them aren't nearly as bad as the example I cited--they don't so much contradict actual history as use it in a surface way. Which I know could eventually benefit me--I could be the author of that fresh, different book that's not like everything else on the market. But it makes it harder to get your foot in the door, and frustrating when you receive rejection after rejection while seeing books inaccurate enough to send you into a rage get published.

No, no, not ping them with your stuff; ping them to let them know the book is full of historical inaccuracies. But really, I'm just being spiteful. The usual move there is a polite (in my case, the word is chilly, since the old history tutor in me hates bad research) note to the author via her website or publisher, pointing out said inaccuracies.

All most agents care about is whether it's saleable or not.

Susan, the choir was just here nodding away. The state of research is very sad in many genres, not just historical. You may have heard the loud thump when I threw the Patricia Cornwell book about the nuclear plant across the room. She had the terrorists gun down a few guards and immediately have access to anywhere in the plant. I have been to the plant in question a number of times. Every door requires a card swipe. There are guards behind bulletproof glass who just have to push one button to lock all the doors. There is no way to get enough exposure to radiation in a nuclear plant for it to be instantly fatal, as happened in her book. Shall I go on?

Omigawd, yes, I've heard quite a few people (including my brother, the actual real live rocket scientist) on the subject of how fiction writers deal with nuclear plants. Do they honestly think security for this stuff is two guys with Saturday Night Specials?

But I think the woman Susan's talking about has no excuse at all. While Cornwell might not have been able to get access to a nuke plant, all this woman had to do was open an encyclopedia, or google a few dates. This is laziness.

Ah, but until 9/11 everything about nuclear power plants, including the layout, was on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's website and Virginia Power gave public tours.

Ah, didn't know that. So all Cornwell had to do was look? No biscuit for her - that's also plain laziness.

I still think putting it up on a website is a stupid idea, but then, Joanna's dad was working for the UKAEA when I married him, and they had little free pamphlets you could pick up in the lobby, including one handy dandy little DIY called "how to build a nuclear reactor".

Um, no. Especially when I'm standing there reading this pamphlet the day after the London Times ran the front page story about how the UKAEA was running plutonium through London's main yards on anonymous trains.