My Query Letter

I've been motivated to rewrite my query letter. Again. For the seventh? time.

I wrote my first one and I'm rather embarrassed now to look at it. Rewrote it, sent it to a friend for a critique, wrote it again.

Starting sending out query letters to agents. Several rejections. Times a dozen.

Sent it to an author friend. Revised again. Resent to other agents. Several rejections.

Sent to another author friend. Revised again. Sent it off again. Second verse, same as the first...

*SIGH*

Read even more advice about writing query letters. Rewrote. And rewrote. Read more. Rewrote again.

FINALLY. HAVE. IT.

I think.

I really hope this letter is good. I'm very tired of rewriting it. If anyone would care to read my query letter and judge it for me or help me rewrite it AGAIN, I would be very grateful. I'll pay you in a blog shoutout! Or a Twitter shoutout! Or a Facebook shoutout! Exclaim your awesomeness across the social networking airwaves! :-P

Telegraph's List of Books to Read

Hmmm. I thought I was well read but...maybe not. Or maybe it depends on the list that you look at. This is the list of books from the "Telegraph" that everybody should read. (The ones that I have read are marked in red.)

Telegraph 100 Novels Everyone Should Read

100 The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein

99 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

98 The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore

97 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

96 One Thousand and One Nights Anon

95 The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

94 Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

93 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

92 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

91 The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki

90 Under the Net by Iris Murdoch

89 The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

88 Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

87 On the Road by Jack Kerouac

86 Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

85 The Red and the Black by Stendhal

84 The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

83 Germinal by Emile Zola

82 The Stranger by Albert Camus

81The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

80 Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

79 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

78 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

77 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

76 The Trial by Franz Kafka

75 Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

74 Waiting for the Mahatma by RK Narayan

73 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque

72 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

71 The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin

70 The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

69 If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

68 Crash by JG Ballard

67 A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul

66 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

65 Dr Zhivao by Boris Pasternak

64 The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz

63 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

62 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

61 My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk

60 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

59 London Fields by Martin Amis

58 The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

57 The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse

56 The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

55 Austerlitz by WG Sebald

54 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

53 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

52 The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

51 Underworld by Don DeLillo

50 Beloved by Toni Morrison

49 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

48 Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin

47The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

46 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

45 The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet

44 Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

43 The Rabbit books by John Updike

42 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

41 The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

40 The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

39 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

38The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

37 The Warden by Anthony Trollope

36 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

35 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

34 The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

33 Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

32 A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell

31 Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky

30 Atonement by Ian McEwan

29 Life: a User’s Manual by Georges Perec

28 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

27 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

26 Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

25 The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

24 Ulysses by James Joyce

23 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

22 A Passage to India by EM Forster

21 1984 by George Orwell

20 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

19 The War of the Worlds by HG Wells

18 Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

17 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

16 Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

15 The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse

14 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

13 David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

12 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

11 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

10 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

9 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

8 Disgrace by JM Coetzee

7 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

6 In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

5 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

4 The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

3 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

2 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

1 Middlemarch by George Eliot

I have to say that most of the books that I've read on this list have been assigned reading from professors in the English department. (Thank you to Professor Dalley with the "British Novels" class!)

If I compare this list with the list from the BBC list...I have a few more to add. **Also, there seems to be some controversy if the BBC really did compile this list. If they didn't, that's okay. It's still fun to see how many books you've read compared with other people. :-)

"The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?"

Instructions: Mark the books you've read in red (or bold), the books that you've started in italics.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible -
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullma
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Total:  30

I've read bits and pieces of so many books that it's hard to count them all. Take Winnie-the-Pooh, for example. I've read my kids many Pooh stories. All of them? I don't know. They keep coming out with more! Perhaps this means just the very first Pooh book? I'll use both of these lists to influence some of my reading choices for 2011. 

Happy reading! (And scoring!)

Photo Friday

Something new that I've decided to do: "Photo Friday." It may be something that inspires me to write, something that I just love, or...something that I just want to share with y'all. :-)

Title: "My Little Distractions"

My sister, my kids and I went to the Arboretum near my house and we took these photos. I was really trying to get some writing done while my sister shot photos of my boys nearby. She had the idea to take photos of my "little distractions." :-)  My kids crack me up. Even if they do keep me from writing at times. ;-)

Books Read in 2010

Ahhh, New Year's Eve. Or, as a friend recently said to me, "Old Year's Eve." I think that's rather appropriate, actually. I've completed my list of books that I've read this year and am quite pleased with it. I'm sure that I've missed a few books that I've read but that's okay. :-)  (I'll keep better track in 2011.)

A recent survey showed that most Americans only read ONE book a year. ONE. I find that rather sad. Books are some of my best friends. (Oh, how sad, those of you who are not readers may say.) When it's a good book filled with great characters, something in you changes. I read an awesome quote the other day.

"A book is a living thing, Willa. It soaks into your mind and heart and shapes how you think and feel. Every book you read becomes a part of you." - Coleen Murtagh Paratore

I think this is absolutely true. That's why it's important to read good books.

So. My list of what I read this year. It's heavily influenced by the fact that I had my last semester of university this spring. (Graduated, too! Yay!) Most of the "classics" on the list were required reading. I enjoyed most of them but a few...well, let's just say that I wouldn't recommend them. (I think on another post I'll put up the "Books Everyone Should Read Before They Die" article that came out and mark the books that I've read. I think that list will influence my reading choices next year.) Let me know what books you've read. :-)

**I might be adding to this list as I remember other books that I've read.**

1. The Minor Prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.
2. Epistles: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians
3. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
4. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
5. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
6. All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
7. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry - Mildred Taylor
8. The Slave Dancer - Paula Fox
9. Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
10. The Things They Carried - O-Brien
11. Hard Times - Charles Dickens
12. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
13. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
14. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
15. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
16. Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift
17. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
18. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
19. Middlemarch - George Eliot
20. Dragon Kiss - E.D. Baker
21. The Cupid Connection - Coleen Murtagh Paratore
22. Willa at Heart - Coleen Murtagh Paratore
23. The Princess Plot - Kirsten Boie
24. The Princess Trap - Kirsten Boie
25. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
26. The Lost Hero - Rick Riordan
27. The Red Pyramid - Rick Riordan
28. Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep - Gail Carson Levine
29. The Birthday Ball - Lois Lowry
30. The Thirteenth Princess - Diane Zahler
31. The White Dragon - Anne McCaffrey
32. The Masterharper of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
33. Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey
34. Dragonquest - Anne McCaffrey
35. Dragonsong - Anne McCaffrey
36. Dragonsinger - Anne McCaffrey
37. Dragondrums - Anne McCaffrey
38. All the Weyrs of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
39. The Fairy’s Return - Gail Carson Levine
40. The Extra-Ordinary Princess - Carolyn Q. Ebbitt
41. Wyatt Earp - Stewart Holbrook
42. Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders -
43. Half-Moon Investigations - Eoin Colfer
44. Practicing Hospitality - Patricia A. Ennis, Lisa Tatlock
45. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
46. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
47. Coming Attractions - Robin Jones Gunn
48. Fairest - Gail Carson Levine
49. The Teaberry Strangler - Laura Childs
50. Swan for the Money - Donna Andrews
51. The Atlantis Complex - Eoin Colfer
52. The Christmas Star - Thomas Kinkade 
53. Diary of a Wimpy Kid #1 - Jeff Kinney 
54. Diary of a Wimpy Kid #2 - Jeff Kinney
55. Diary of a Wimpy Kid #3 - Jeff Kinney
56. Diary of a Wimpy Kid #4 - Jeff Kinney
57. Diary of a Wimpy Kid #5 - Jeff Kinney
58. The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss

Twitter...finally!

I've finally joined the ranks of those on Twitter. It's for my author stuff, though. Not so much about my personal life. I don't know how many people want to hear the things my kids say. Maybe I'll throw in a few as freebies once in a while. If you have a Twitter account, do you want to follow me? ;-)

@Melissa_Buell

Rain is good for something...

So, it's been raining for the last SIX days! That is unheard of where I live! As one of my friends said, "I'm solar powered!" I can't take much more of this deluge...BUT! The good thing about rain is that it inspires me to write rather melancholy scenes. I have a scene in my third story that I've been struggling with but I was able to write a bit on it yesterday. (Someone gets seriously injured but doesn't die...) I couldn't get the feelings quite right when it was sunshiney out previously. Thank you, rain, for being a melancholy inspiration. :)


Looking forward to Christmas! I've been a busy shopping and wrapping elf the last few days and I feel very close to being done with getting everything under the tree before the 25th. :)

Happily Ever After

What is "YA" and why do you write it?

I've been asked this question a few times and I've decided to blog about it because I think it's an interesting topic.

"YA" refers to Young Adult literature. So then the question is "What is a young adult?" Unfortunately, there is no concrete answer. Usually books are broken down in the following genres (for age groups): preschool, children, middle grade, young adult, adult. That's quite a span. Young adult books could be read by twelve year olds or for twenty year olds. And that's a problem. What might be appropriate for someone at the far end of the teen spectrum is not appropriate for someone just finishing middle school.

I have read many YA books (even as an adult) because they are (usually) entertaining but do not have extreme violence or scandalous scenes in them. (If you know what I mean.) It really, really bothers me when I find a "YA" book where there are scandalous scenes. I want to scream at the author, "Why did you write this knowing it is going to classified as a young adult book??" I think it is SO important for parents to know what their children are reading, even if it is a YA book. If you are not a reader, ask a friend who is a reader to preview books for you. (Hmmm...I'm getting an idea for a future blog post about age appropriate books...)

Why do I write YA books? One, for moral reasons. I believe that to be honoring to God, I must not write about certain things. Second, I want to write books that my kids can read and I won't be embarrassed that they are reading it. I also want to write books that my younger friends can read and can discuss. I believe that it's possible to write a good story without gratuitous violence or other situations.

Why do I write fantasy novels? I love fairy tales and fantasy novels are just grown up fairy tales. I try to find some fairy tale to root my story in and then let my imagination go from there. I love the idea of another world that is similar to ours but just different enough to support the idea of fairies and magic.

Have I written more stories? Yes, I have! :-)  I've finished my second story in the series and am currently writing the third story. The second book is (SPOILER ALERT!) about Samantha's daughter, Emma. The third book is about Emma's cousin, Holly. Things may change and the story might morph a bit but...I'm quite happy with it right now. I don't know how many books will be in the series. If I get picked up by a big publishing house, maybe they will have a better idea for that.

I must get to "Christmas-ing" my house now. :-)

Happy reading!
-Melissa

A "write in" with other writers

NaNoWrMo has different groups available (check the website) in your local area to get together with other writers and have a "write in." Most of these are held in coffee shops though some might be at someone's house. I went to one at a Starbucks about ten minutes from my house. (Very convenient!) It was cool to meet another writer and her friend who came along to offer moral/reading support. :) 

The write in helped me to not be distracted (as I so often am) by household chores, children, ringing phones, etc. when I'm sitting down for some uninterrupted writing time. I will definitely go again. (I hit my minimum word count that night and have posted 4,223 words of my new story so far!)

The point of "just writing" is to not self-edit as we so often do. I was finding myself constantly trying to think all the scenarios through in my novel rather than just let the words come out. It's a bit freeing to let my imagination take over and see what happens to the characters and the story line. I might hate it when I go back and read it when November is over. Who knows?

Keep writing! (And if you didn't sign up for the National Novel Writer's Month, give yourself a challenge, a goal for writing this month. 100 words a day? 1,000 words a day? If you don't hit it on one day, keep going on the next day. Don't give up for missing a day.)

NaNoWrMo!

NaNoWrMo is here!  That is, National Novel Writing Month! Check it out here. 

What's it all about? Writing, writing, writing as much as you can on your current novel project in just one month! We, as writers, tend to daydream, edit, anguish over scenes, dialogues, descriptions...on and on. Well stop it! Just write! Upload your work (and you can do fancy copyrighting stuff to make sure no one takes it) to the site. If you hit 50,000 words by the end of the month, you get credit for accomplishing a huge goal! And yes, people can cheat and upload rubbish or previously written stuff. But that defeats the whole spirit of the challenge. Real writers won't do that. Right, guys? ;)

Let's have fun and just write! If anyone out there wants to get together and have a "write-in" at a local library, let me know! (Lots of desks and outlets available at the library!)

If you're going to do this, sign up today! You'll get encouraging e-mails to work on your story. Try to writer 1,600 words a day. You can do it! :)