Congrats Holli!

It looks like next week I'll be sending out my first queries. It's just about game time.

Bother, the Sony Reader Store has my short story up, but they've got an author bio for a different person. No, I'm not the person who wrote "Thunderstruck" and "Devil in the White City". Cripes. The pitfalls of using your actual name.

I don't suppose there'd be anyone will to take a peek at the synopsis. It's about 1,100 words or a little under four double-spaced pages. It seems like 3-5 pages of synopsis is all I'll have for most submissions.

Go, Holli! What's the novel about?

Gud, I can read your synopsis tomorrow, if you want to send it. Profile address works. I had some thoughts, in the midst of holiday craziness, about your query letter, too, but I don't think I ever posted them. If you want to shoot that along, too, I can feedback that, as well.

That would be awesome, thanks. This synopsis stuff is really hard, at least for me.

A survey about editing processes for book length manuscripts. Once a full draft is complete I iterate in chunks. That is I will take a chunk, edit it, edit the edited verison, rinse lather repeat until that chunk is done, then move to the rest. I say "chunk" rather than section, because I do it on word length (about 14,000 to 15,000 words) stopping at the end of the logical unit that falls within that range. Reason for that word length is that it is long enough that I am not seeing the same paragraph too often in too short a length of time, and short enough that I can get through it in one sitting without losing concentration. I wonder how common this is. I can easily imagine some people prefer to edit in logical chunks, or even people who edit all the way through from beginning to end before starting the re-edit. I'll bet whether your style is to do many many edits or not affects this. (I tell people I'm not really a writer; I'm a self editor and re-writer.)

Even though I suspect this is something that will vary a lot from person to person, I'm curious as to varying editing styles, and why they work for you if you care to discuss.

Beginning to end. With some exceptions

Amy, it's about a group of Goth teenagers who do real magic by accident, which results in one of them getting kidnapped to a fairy kingdom and another one having to go rescue her.

One of my readers told me that it's kind of like what would happen if you sent the Baby-Sitter's Club to Mordor to destroy the One Ring.

If you are looking for some readers (at least for the early chapters, though some will go for the whole book) you might consider joining a website I'm a member of.

[link]

You've got to be a member to post chapters/stories and do reviews though since they can't be public.

Worth it just for the monthly story challenges alone IMO, I've only had time to do three of them, but I've gotten two good short story from doing them. I keep getting second place each time for some reason.

Ooh, thanks. I have a few good readers, but that is a good idea.