Guest Post: How to Know When to Query

Quinn: Things that make
 you go 'Wow'

Today's Guest Post by Susan Kaye Quinn 
Launches her new novel, Open Minds.

How do you know when your story is ready to query (assuming you’re going to make a pass at the get-an-agent-traditional-publishing gauntlet)?

This was always my question, when I first started writing. In my previous life as an engineer and scientist, there were measureable goals, actionable items. Projects came with deadlines, tests, and presentations. You knew what you were supposed to do (for the most part), how to do it (sometimes), and when you were expected to have something to show for your efforts (always).

This is how it works in the normal muggle world. But in the world of fiction…not so much.

In creative works, you are in charge of deciding what to write, and how many times, and what revisions must be made. And when to stop. That last one was the most difficult of all for me, because how was I to know I had reached THE END of the endless revisions?

Book Review: Tankborn

The girl in the bubble.

I admired Karen Sandler's sci-fi novel Tankborn more than loved it. Tankborn is one of a debut line of novels published by Tu Books, a new publisher specializing in fantasy, sci-fi, and mystery books for kids, devoted to showcasing characters and authors of color. (I'll also be reviewing Tu's Galaxy Games in coming weeks).

And Tankborn foregrounds race matters: The futuristic society on the Earth colony planet Loka is as rigidly stratified as colonial India. The heroine, Kayla, and her best friend Mishalla, come from a lower caste called GENs, genetically engineered, literally untouchable slaves. The upper classes puppeteer the GENs as they please, assigning them to jobs, uploading and downloading data into their annexed brains. Upper class Highborns have light brown skin and black hair; the Lowborns and GENs are a rainbow ranging from very dark to red-haired and green eyed, or, in Kayla's case, piebald.

Sandler: dipping her hoof
into Y/A

High Moral Stakes
Both heroines get their class-consciousness raised, of course, and so does Kayla's Highborn boyfriend.

Interview With Author Louis K. Lowy

Lowy: Penning a mid-50s riff on flying
saucers and commie paranoia

If I’d been an agent pitching Louis K. Lowy’s novel Die Laughing, I might have called it Mad Men meets King of Comedy meets The Outer Limits. As Lowy notes in this interview, he spent a lot of time researching his 1956 setting for his first novel, and the period details—from the “burnt orange cigarette slacks” and black beret of his leading lady to his main character’s quest for TV fame (Sam E, a stand-up comic, is slated for “The Steve Allen Show” when things start to go downhill fast)--are exacting and very, very entertaining. Lowy’s work has appeared in, among others, Coral Living Magazine, New Plains Review, Ethereal Tales Magazine, Pushing Out the Boat, The MacGuffin Magazine, and The Chaffey Review. He’s been awarded a Florida Individual Artists Fellowship, and he lives in Miami Lakes.

Lowy will be participating in a panel sponsored by Writers' Network of South Florida

Author Publicity: Promoting Your Book

Yay You're Published! Now Comes the Hard Part


Wed. Sept 21, at 6:30pm

Broward County Main Library, 6th Floor, 100 S Andrews Ave.,


Fort Lauderdale, FL 


RSVP to: contact@writersnetworksofla.org

On Oct. 17 at 6:30 p.m., Lowy will be reading at

Park Road Books

4139 Park Rd., Charlotte, NC

(704) 525-9239

Questions for Louis K. Lowy:

Three Easy Ways to Refresh Your Writing Today

1. Jump In to WriteOnCon

This free, two-day, on-line live writers conference starts this morning and runs through Thursday, featuring live forums for pitch sessions, queries, Q&As with agents, and critiques. Agents featured include Jessica Sinsheimer, Carlie Webber and Christina Hogrebe, Sara Megibow, Suzie Townsend, Jenny Bent, Kelly Sonnack, Ginger Clark, Holly Root, Alissa Eisner-Henkin, and Roseanne Wells, among many others.. Plus a slate of top-notch authors. The full schedule is here. The submission threads open 24 hours in advance of the live event, which means, basically, that you should be getting ready to submit right now if you want a pitch or query critique. Hint: the Middle Grade/Young Adult query critique opens at 10 a.m. this tomorrow morning. Click here to get started.

2. Find a Page of Dialogue in your WIP and Rewrite It