Querying and submitting manuscripts

Spent 2 hrs replying to aspiring authors, all confused and frustrated by the process of querying and submissions; most are p’d off by literary agents. Sample concern: the time it takes for a literary agent to review submitted material, whether partial or full.

It can take well over a year for an agent to review a submitted manuscript; some will not reply / reject AT ALL. Reports I receive from writers suggest that the latter is a growing trend, and agents’ silence is the answer: rejected.

It reiterates the importance of querying and submitting, or what the industry refers to as — simultaneous submission. Writers who want to be published have no choice but to disregard the ‘no simultaneous submissions’ stipulations that so many agents add to their submissions policies. Waiting a year only to hear ‘no thank you’, or not to hear anything, means no book deal in a writer’s lifetime.

The process of querying and submissions is potentially disastrous — writers become so fixated on the reasons why agents aren’t responding that everything else gets thrown aside. Big mistake! It is important to realize that ALL writers receive rejections, even the already published ones.

My advice is to find a way to steer your mind from the dark thoughts, and one of the best ways is to write your next book while you await responses. The creative process will take over, with querying and submitting the previous book being only incidental, or the business side of being a writer.

Find more answers in:

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Cold War’s unintended consequences

Some day I’ll tell you how I used to cross the Cold War borders of various Eastern Bloc countries, including Soviet Russia, armed with … a chocolate bar.

Meanwhile, enjoy this interesting, if sad tale of Cold War’s unintended victims… the Red Deer:

Ahornia inhabits the thickly wooded mountains along what once was the fortified border between West Germany and Czechoslovakia. At the height of the Cold War, a high electric fence, barbed wire and machine-gun-carrying guards cut off Eastern Europe from the Western world. The barriers severed the herds of deer on the two sides as well.

The fence is long gone, and the no-man’s land where it stood now is part of Europe’s biggest nature preserve. The once-deadly border area is alive with songbirds nesting in crumbling watchtowers, foxes hiding in weedy fortifications and animals not seen here for years, such as elk and lynx.

But one species is boycotting the reunified animal kingdom: red deer. Herds of them roam both sides of the old NATO-Warsaw Pact border here but mysteriously turn around when they approach it. This although the deer alive today have no memory of the ominous fence.

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Amazon’s Kindle in trouble in Norway

It’s not the first group to complain about Amazon’s vice-like grip on the Kindle, not to mention its supporting services and customer information, but the Norwegian Consumer Council is able to impose fines against any company trading illegally in Norway, and believes that Amazon might just fit the bill.
Click here to find out more!

The Norwegian Consumer Council has been trawling through Amazon’s terms and conditions for the Kindle, and notes that the very language used is probably illegal, as Norwegian law requires such contracts to be clearly written.

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Fluorescent mice

Scientists create green, fluorescent mice:

“One of the activities that our researchers have conducted at the Rotyan Institute is producing green mice. In this project, a specific gene is inserted into the stem cells of a fetus,” Dr. Hamid-Reza Tayyebi said.

“The gene has a characteristic that allows it to change colors to purple when exposed to light,” he explained.  SOURCE

Chomsky: End of Christianity

Drawing a distinction between “stories” and “non-stories” in the media and academia, Chomsky pointed out that the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago was followed six days later by the “end of Christianity” through the defeat of liberation theology. This occurred when elite units of the army in El Salvador, trained by the US, murdered six leading Catholic intellectuals. Yet, in contrast to events in eastern Europe, few people knew about this event.

SOURCE

End of Christianity, says Chomsky. Not so fast, says I. Wait till you read my novel AGENTS OF CHANGE, about these  events.

Post-American Europe

European think-tank:

[...] a study on Monday called “Toward a Post-American Europe,” based on wide-ranging interviews and research conducted in the 27 E.U. member states. In it, the authors make a clear appeal to European leaders: This “fetishization” of the trans-Atlantic relationship must stop, write Jeremy Shapiro and Nick Witney. It is high time that Europe declare a new, “post-American” age and do away with old myths about the trans-Atlantic relationship. Myths like the idea that the continent’s security is dependent on American protection, is one example they cite. Or the one about American and European interests being the same at heart. Or the myth about European unity being damaging to the trans-Atlantic relationship because, as the authors put it, “ganging up on the US would be improper – indeed counterproductive – given the ’special relationship’ that most European states believe they enjoy with Washington.” SOURCE

Would I lie to you?

Couple of interesting studies:

This study set out to investigate the type of media individuals are more likely to tell self-serving and other-oriented lies, and whether this varied according to the target of the lie. One hundred and fifty participants rated on a likert-point scale how likely they would tell a lie. Participants were more likely to tell self-serving lies to people not well-known to them. They were more likely to tell self-serving lies in email, followed by phone, and finally face-to-face. Participants were more likely to tell other-oriented lies to individuals they felt close to and this did not vary according to the type media. Participants were more likely to tell harsh truths to people not well-known to them via email. SOURCE

This study aimed to elaborate the relationships between sensation-seeking, Internet dependency, and online interpersonal deception. Of the 707 individuals recruited to this study, 675 successfully completed the survey. The results showed high sensation-seekers and high Internet dependents were more likely to engage in online interpersonal deception than were their counterparts. SOURCE

US Corporations collect intelligence on Canadians

In the US, a new model of law enforcement has emerged in which police, military, security contractors and large corporations are collaborating on intelligence gathering.

“I am sure the data [US] companies collect on Canadian citizens is routinely shared with their headquarters in the United States,” he said. “Is consumer information being collected in Canada that is shared across the border and [then] being brought back to [Canadian] law enforcement in violation of privacy regulations? If the answer is ‘we don’t know’, that’s a problem, and if the answer is ‘we don’t think so’, that is still a problem. Because nobody is overseeing these intelligence activities it makes it very difficult to know the extent of the abuse.”

SOURCE

H1N1 vaccine, conspiracy, or savior?

The following is an excerpt from a transcript of a conversation with [BIG PHARMA] executive, offices in Canada.

Exec: I won’t be vaccinating my children with the H1N1 vaccine.

Why?

EXEC: Because I still have questions about its safety.

What worries you, specifically?

EXEC: [BIG PHARMA company that makes the vaccine] received the [Canadian] government’s guaranteed exemption from liability.

Conspiracy? Who am I to tell, I’m just a thriller writer.

Baron von Hügel’s letters

Picked up a book from my local used books store: Letters from Baron von Hügel to a Niece.

This one is intensely, if overwhelmingly spiritual. A letter or two a day just about does it for me.

“I wonder whether you realise a deep, great fact? That souls – all human souls – are deeply interconnected? That, I mean, we can not only pray for each other, but suffer for each other?”