Danette!

Lucky kitty! YOU, MY DEAR, are the grand prize winner of $40 to Amazon and a free copy of Average Girl’s Guide to Getting Laid! WOOOOHOOOOO!

AND THE TWO OTHER LUCKY RECIPIENTS of Guide are JMC and Katie Ann! Luuuuucky!

Babies, please email me and give me your contact info and all that stuff. CLAIM YOUR PRIZES!!

And now, I leave you with the ever-so-brilliant… PARTY ALL THE TIME by Eddie Murphy.

Grade: C

I’ve never read this book before, but tonight, as I was flipping through the channels— ’cause FUCKING HOUSE wasn’t on for some reason —I found the TV version of this book on Lifetime (duh). Since I didn’t have the benefit of knowing who the good guy or the bad guy was, I was genuinely afraid for the heroine, Reena Hale, because some crazy dude is setting her boyfriends on fire and I was suspicious of everyone as the psycho. At one point, I was convinced that the pyro was Reena herself ’cause what a tweeest! but hell-o! She’s the spunky red-haired heroine! She can’t be the bad guy. Unless she had a doppleganger, I guess, and I wasn’t ready to rule that out. You can’t ever tell with these Lifetime movies, man.

The best part of this movie? Scott Bakula! Dude, don’t even get me started on my Sam Beckett love. It’s intense, all-consuming, and kind of creepy. At one point, I was convinced he was the killer, but NO WAY, MAN! He’s Sam Beckett! […and so Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.] He never made it home! *sobs*

Spot La Nora: In one of the MANY flashback scenes, the Hale family is watching their family restaurant go up in flames and when the camera pans to the crowd, we see Ms. Roberts, looking on, all concerned and stuff. The camera was on her for like… two seconds. I was so excited that I started shrieking, but Tim was out with his homies, and I had no one to share it with. *sad face*

Oh, spoilers and shit.

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[Cool Prize Alert!]

Yes, yes, our dear friend Annie is going to be leave us soon in order to concentrate on her upcoming novels, but didn’t I promise you guys she’ll be back? Well, Annie has written us this long but very informative article about how to find an agent. If you’re not a writer, post a comment anyway… it’ll be worth your while, I promise.

So you’ve come to the stage in your writing where you’re either sick of peddling your stuff yourself, or you’ve realized you don’t entirely know what you’re doing. Maybe a little of both? In any event, this is the point where you start seriously thinking about looking for an agent. It can be daunting, finding the right person for the job. It isn’t enough to find someone willing to sign you. The wrong agent is, most definitely, worse than no agent at all.

First, you have the research stage, and in my opinion, Agent Query offers the most comprehensive resource when you’re starting out. You can search by fiction / non-fiction genres, or if you can search for book titles and authors in the keywords section. Generally, I would advise searching by genre. It’s not a good idea to limit yourself to only querying agents who rep authors you like or whom you think write similar material. It’s best to query widely, unless you have some introductions via other colleagues, which can be helpful. Just don’t make yourself look like a dipshit by pressuring people to refer you to their agents.

Once you’ve come up with a master list of agents, you’ll want to organize them. For me, because I live outside the US, highly effective agents who accept e-queries go on my A-list. That doesn’t mean you’ll want to rank agents in the same manner. Maybe you’ll rate them based on some other criteria, and that would be up to you. The next step is to send out your queries. If you suck at writing those, then your search is over. No matter how good the book is, if your query reeks, then you’ll receive a lot of form rejections (or no response at all, as it’s becoming a more standard practice to ‘reply only if interested’). For query help, go here.

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The good folks at Liquid Silver Books have given my novella, Waking Kitty, a home and it will be a part of an anthology to be released sometime in the fall. Who’s in the anthology with me? Why, the very talented and very kickass chicks, Bonnie Dee and Annie Dean. The too-gifted-for-words April Martinez is gonna be doing the cover. AWESOME! How cool is that? I’m so excited to share the news with y’all, I think I even peed a little. Okay, I’m kidding about the peeing. I think that was a line I crossed there. BUT WHO CARES! *running around, wildly shrieking*