Where Are We Again?

Well, there is nothing like a blast from the past to remind us, in our tenth year, of our humble origins. How could we forget?

Anyway, I won’t go in great detail to relate what’s been happening the last couple of days except that someone has been bugging us because our mailing address and phone number are not posted on our Web site—yet again. It looks suspicious, says this voice, like we are ashamed of where we’re located.

So, we’d like to take a poll. It’s right over there on the right side. We’re curious as to how many people don’t know where we are. We’ve pretty much become, over the last decade, used to being referred to as “Wylie-Merrick? That’s that agency in________.”

That’s all for now. We have an appointment to get to.

Best,

Sharene

Who needs a needs list?

I’m sure many writers are wondering why they’ve received rejections from me recently, since I’m open to just about anything right now. For those who might be curious, I’ve listed a few reasons why below:

If you’ve sent me a query for a mystery. I only have one editor who is looking for mysteries at the present time and to get her attention the novel must have a woman protagonist and a dog must be integral to the story. If you story has a male lead, I’m sorry, but I have no market for these books.

If you’ve sent me a query in which I cannot discern what the book is about in the first few paragraphs, I’ve stopped reading as I don’t have time to dig that information out. Please study our list of past posts under queries for information on this subject.

If you’ve sent me a children’s picture book. I haven’t ever handled these. My partner does, but she’s really not looking for anything at the moment.

If you’ve sent me a YA novel that isn’t commercially marketable. To find what is commercially viable, look at recent YA best-seller lists (try Amazon or Publisher’s Weekly at your local library) or subscribe to Publisher’s Marketplace.

If you’ve sent me a suspense/ thriller featuring a male protagonist. These are not readily marketable and I already have enough of these. Marketable suspense/thrillers must be primarily writing from a female’s perspective or I cannot do much with them. One exception to this is if you are multi-published (within this decade) and have a good sales record. This may not hold true for other agents, but it does for me and the editors I work with.

If you’ve sent me a romance or a women’s fiction that is written from a man’s perspective, it has been, or will be, rejected. Romances written from a male perspective are “love stories” and fall within the mainstream category. Also, there is no such thing as a women’s fiction that features a guy as the main character. This violates the very definition of women’s fiction. If you don’t know what that definition is, see the list on the left side of this blog, go to Wikipedia, or Google on women’s fiction.

If you’ve sent me a mainstream novel from a male perspective and are not published, then there is nothing I can do to help you, as I already have enough of these.

If you’ve sent me poetry, a western, an action/adventure, a script, a novella (unless it’s erotica), an urban fantasy with a male protagonist, an earth-based science fiction, or a fantasy novel that’s like all the others out there, then you’ve probably been rejected.

Our needs here change constantly, so I’ll remain open to everything rather than updating a needs list that’s outdated almost as soon as it’s posted. Hope this helps.

Robert

New and Improved?

For those of you who have visited our blog in the past, you may notice a difference in its current structure. We’ve updated its look and added a new way to traverse past posts as of yesterday. Yes, we are a little behind as the label feature is already in use on just about everyone else’s blog, but we never said we were right on top of things, blog-wise.

Any-hoo, you can now find old posts by looking in the right-hand column for the list of labels. By just clicking on the label of the subject of interest, you will hopefully be able to find the information you seek. The link will take you to posts that correspond to that burning question you’ve always wanted the answer to...well, our version of the answer anyway. :0

This, hopefully, will eliminate searching blindly and wading through a morass of verbiage, making it easier to find what you need. It’s certainly made it easier on us.

This doesn’t mean that we won’t go into something in more depth if you find that we haven’t, but there’s loads of information that brushes the surface of things to get you started. Good luck in finding some nugget of wisdom—or maybe a lump of coal--here that was heretofore buried. It’ll be like a treasure hunt!

We really hope this makes it easier to navigate our blog, so feel free to comment if it doesn’t. Also, we are continuing to add widgets and elements to the blog as we go along and welcome input on those as well.

Finally, we have integrated the blog into our Web site (and added a link on the blog to return to our main site), so you can get here and back by simply clicking on a navigation button or link, or by doing it the old fashioned way—typing the address into your browser’s address bar. If you find you can't access our blog from the Web site, try clicking the Refresh button on your browser to load the most current version of our page.

Here's to progress, as slow as it sometimes is!