Kit Whitfield, already responsible for the best writing laugh I've had in ages, here

http://www.kitwhitfield.com/lexicon.html

has now constructed a guide to how not to write a query letter, conceived as equivalent to chatting up a stranger. Brilliantly funny, excellent advice

http://www.kitwhitfield.com/publisherdating.html

KW is an editor turned novelist, so knows what it's like both sides of the game. (Is that the equivalent, in dating, of having a sex change do you suppose?)

Emma

<Added>

PS Oops! Failed to credit Miss Snark's blog for alerting me to this latest pearl from KW's lips.

LOL, Emma, LOL.

God, i'd love to start a letter to an agent/publisher saying

"Hey Babe,

you've pulled, get your coat."!

I think the notion that approaching an agent/publisher should be viewed like a man approaching a woman in a bar is excellent.

Thanks for posting this.

Casey

Thanks Emma - both brilliant. I recognised one of my characters at once - definitely a pet man.

Naomi

Sooooooooooo funny!

Thanks Emma.

Dee

Wonderful! From the first link: I loved the definition of the Slippery Page - 'unreadable fiction in which the eye slips down the page, failing to take much in'.

And 'Why. I'm glad you asked' - even some 'good', or at least 'should-know-better' authors do this and it never fails to annoy me - unmasked as the villain, the character feels inclined to spend three pages enlightening the hero as to his every cunning move of the last 15 chapters.

But I think I empathised most with the Phantonym: The feeling you get when you're searching for the perfect word: that there is a word for this concept that's not in the thesaurus, but you can't quite remember it. Usually this is not the case, and you're forced to go with a word that's slightly wrong, or else rewrite the whole bloody sentence.

Usually this is not the case - indeed.

Thanks for the link, Emma.

Yes, there are some good points in here. However . . .

You say: "I'm sorry but our lists our full at the moment."

Dating equivalent: "You didn't approach me with exactly the right set of non-threatening words, submissive body language, and recognition that I am a goddess way above your ability to impress; in fact, you dared to be original/spontaneous/honest (delete as appropriate). Therefore, you can take your filthy little proposition to some online vanity site where, if you pay them enough, it might even be acceptetd, and leave me with one more rejection tool in my armoury: the spurious and unsubstantiated sexual analogy.

Her book will be filmed, so I read, by the guy who made Shrek and Chronicles of Narnia.

Number one with a bullet, eh?

Jim

Very funny. I liked the Plot Cosh.
Tony