Sugar hangover

Whoops, was supposed to post yesterday - but I got carried away with the whole Halloween thing and forgot to post.

What did you all get up to for Halloween? Massive sugar inhalation?

I find it interesting how holidays have evolved here in the US - a combo of Samhain and All Hallow's Eve turns into an all out grab for candy and crazy costumes.

Not that I'm complaining. At least it isn't as commercial as Christmas has become. Plus I love me some Snickers.

We dressed our baby up in a couple different costumes, just to take pictures, then watched trick or treaters. California actually got some rain last night, amazingly, so there weren't too many brave enough to make it outside in the terrible weather. :)

So, to sum up, that's why I didn't post... too much sugar and adorableness in monster form.

How did you all celebrate?

Why We Can't Have Nice Things

There's been an article going around the writerly circles of the Intarwebz lately about an author who stalked and confronted the person she felt was her "#1 critic."

Now, fuck knows why the Guardian chose to publish this particular piece (I personally suspect it has to do with attention-whoring on the part of both the outlet and the author in order to increase the sales numbers of both parties, but that's my opinion), but publish it they did, and - as we've discussed multiple times on this blog - THE INTERNET IS FOREVER. There are no take-backs on the Internet. You can't un-ring the bell once you pull that cord, so...yeah. Even if they wanted to take the article down (and there has been outcry for them to do that very thing), it wouldn't be gone. There's Internet archives, screenshots, reblogs...this is now on-record and what did I just say?

THE INTERNET IS FOREVER.

Which brings me to the point of this little rant. Our mission here at the ELEW is to whip inkslingers - both burgeoning and seasoned veterans - into shape. It's right there in black and white: "The Evil League of Evil Writers does not support whining, crying, sniveling, whimpering or bawling about writing, publishing or any aspect thereof. If you're looking for a shoulder to cry on or a sympathetic ear about the rejection letter you've gotten from a literary agent, or a bad review of your work, you will not find it here." So, you can guess how well this latest debacle went over with me.

The mental health of the author in question is not the issue here. (It's been shown through various posts written by the author herself that she has a history since adolescence of behavior/mental/emotional instability. These are facts, not a critique of the author's personality. Thank you to co-founder Bitchstress Dreamkiller for the research links provided.) What is in question here is professionalism and the lack thereof in this particular instance.

It's been discussed here before that you do not respond to reviews of your work, not even to thank the reviewer for reading your work.

YOU DO NOT RESPOND TO REVIEWS OF YOUR WORK.

REPEAT AFTER ME.

YOU DO NOT RESPOND TO REVIEWS OF YOUR WORK.

BOLDED: YOU DO NOT RESPOND TO REVIEWS OF YOUR WORK.

UNDERLINED: YOU DO NOT RESPOND TO REVIEWS OF YOUR WORK.

ITALICIZED: YOU DO NOT RESPOND TO REVIEWS OF YOUR WORK.

ALL THREE: YOU DO NOT RESPOND TO REVIEWS OF YOUR WORK.

Do you fucking get it now?

"But Dina," you say, wringing your hands. "You thanked people when you were a baby writer! You fucking hypocrite!"

Yeah? Well, guess what? I didn't have a website like this one to tell me NOT TO DO THAT. It wasn't until much later in my career that I learned how professionals respond to reviews, and that was from reading the blogs of professionals I admired. And you know what they ALL said? "DON'T FUCKING RESPOND TO REVIEWS NOT EVEN TO SAY THANK YOU!" Once I learned that, I didn't thank anyone else. I knew enough to not respond to criticism, so I was safe there, but once I learned the "DO NOT ENGAGE" tenet, I adhered stringently.

"But Dina," you say, your brow furrowing in annoyance. "Big Author X thanks people/reposts reviews/does stuff you're saying not to here! They're a Big Name Author and they do it, so it must be okay!"

Yeeeeeaaaah, no. Just because they do something doesn't mean it's okay for you do to. Think of it like a professional sportsperson - just because they can perform a certain feat doesn't mean you can do it with the same finesse or skill. You are not them, so don't try to be.

Also, part of the reason you don't reply to any review/criticism, positive or negative, is because you'll be tempted to respond no matter what, and that's a dangerous precedent to set. Best to avoid all contact instead of limiting yourself to only a certain type. Further, it makes you look like a douchebag when you constantly point out positive or negative reviews to your fans/followers. One says, "Whee! Look at me! This person thinks I'm awesome! Go see!" and the other says, "Whee! Look at this douchebag! They think I suck! Go tell them they're wrong!" See what I mean, here? Either way you look like an asshat. So don't do it.

Now, the above stated, let's get into some specifics regarding the above article. The author in question, for all intents and purposes, STALKED the person online she felt was causing her the most "harm." I'm not going to get into mental health issues/thin skin/personality problems or any other "reason" anyone might come up with to defend this author's CRIMINAL behavior. Just because there's a potential reason does not excuse the behavior. Like that fucknugget douchebag who murdered those women in California not too long ago. Just because he had reasons for his issues doesn't excuse the fact that he committed murder. Yeah, I went there. I made the comparison. I don't want to hear any whining about how the two crimes aren't at all similar, because guess what?

They are. They're both crimes. They were both committed by people who felt wronged in some way. Jim C. Hines has a fantastic article on the difference between victim and perpetrator in regards to this butt-hurt author's wangst, and I agree with his assessment one hundred percent. This author not only broke the unwritten "do not engage" rule, she broke what amounts to the writer's equivalent of the fourth wall - that space kept between writers and critics.

Dear Author has an excellent piece on why some people (bloggers, critics, writers) choose anonymity, and the author in question is one of the reasons.

Writers like her are the reason we can't have nice things. She is part of the problem. DO NOT BE PART OF THE PROBLEM. If you don't want to be criticized, this game is not for you. Because you know what?

There will always be someone out there you're going to annoy, hurt, or piss off. Hell, they might just not like you, your writing, your cat...whatever.

Some people are just assholes, and they glory in it. You know what the secret is?

I'll tell you. Get a pen and write this down on a sticky note and put it above your computer monitor. Ready? Here it is:

DO NOT FUCKING CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK.

I know. It's way easier said than done. Believe me, I know. It took me many, many years to accept, and many more to put into practice, but that's really the secret.

Do not fucking care what other people think.

You are never going to make everyone happy. Someone will always disagree with you, hate you, think you're an idiot, whatever. If you spend your whole life trying to make everyone happy, you're just going to end up a miserable mess. So you write what you want to write, and only give a rat's ass what someone has to say about your shit when it's someone who has an actual effect on the direction you wish to go. (Hint: This is not people on Goodreads.)

Example: a literary agent rejects you with a standard, impersonal, form rejection. Okay. Fine. YOU DO NOT WRITE TO THEM AND TELL THEM WHY THEY ARE WRONG TO DO SO. You accept it and move on. They're not offering a critique, nor do they have time to do so, so just move along. Cry in your beer for a night if you must (I know it hurts, but it's just for a minute, so down a shot of tequila and get back to work), but don't post a whiny screed on your blog about how that agent sucks for rejecting you. DO NOT ENGAGE.

Example: a literary agent rejects you with a personalized rejection listing a few things about your work that could be improved. This is an instance where you may POLITELY THANK them for their time and suggestions. This is NOT a time where you tell them their suggestions suck and so do they for not accepting your genius. See, this is one of those people who has an effect on the direction you wish to go. You can care about what they think. Go ahead. Just don't let how you feel affect how you react.

That's the trick to this whole "not caring" thing. When you do care what someone else thinks, you're still responsible for what your caring makes you do. You are STILL RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR BEHAVIOR.

Don't be the reason we can't have nice things. Don't be a douchebag author.

Fuck, don't be a douchebag, period. The world has enough douchebags without you adding to them.

When do you write?

With the baby, my life schedule has changed quite a bit. The first few weeks, it was weird, living on a 24 hour schedule - it didn't seem to matter if it was day or night, but we were up every couple hours to feed the baby. Then she started sleeping a bit more and it started to normalize back to day and night... But it's all gotten me thinking.

When do you write?

When are you most creative? When do your mental wheels kick into gear and get moving?

Now, I'm not talking about the sitting-down-and-writing-because-it's-a-job-damnit writing, because you have to do that, no matter if inspiration strikes or not, but when do you feel most inspired. It doesn't even have to be when you write, it could be when you come up with your best ideas, the greatest plot twists, the genius title.

For me, I've always been a night owl. I'm at my best late at night, when the world is quiet. But weirdly, I wrote my first book by getting up early and writing first thing in the morning. It seemed like the words just seemed to flow best then. So I think I brainstorm best at night, laying in bed in the dark, but I write best earlier in the day.

What about you? What part of the day causes you to leap into mental action?

I know a lot of you have jobs that you have to work around - you carve out precious time for writing. Do you pick the time of day that works best for your creativity or your schedule?

Once I go back to work, I'm going to have even more to juggle besides writing, baby, and family life. Guess I'll have to start getting into practice squeezing those words in somehow...

And like Julie says - set an alarm for the kid - it's awkward to get caught up in a scene and forget about them :)

Skye
p.s. I'm thinking about writing a recurring series about lawyering stuff - would anyone have any questions or interest in that? It's a little awkward because of the whole not-wanting-to-offer-real-legal-advice thing, but I could chat about interesting topics...

And I'm back in the game...

I'm back!  I had my baby (although she insisted on arriving 2 weeks late), and she's fabulous. We've managed to keep her alive this long and are pretty proud of that fact. And we're even settling into the routine of being parents (would you believe we actually do pretty well on the sleep front?)

And so, having made it to almost 2 months old, I guess it's time I start returning to my regular duties. So, I'm back. Not just to blogging, although, yes, I am resuming my posts here. I'm back to writing. Or editing, rather.

It's odd to me to take a bunch of time off of a project and then go back to it. I can't just jump in where I left off and remember exactly what I was thinking/doing/etc. I have to re-read the whole project, usually, to remember what it was even about.

For me, that first re-read after some time off is weird. It's almost like reading something from another writer. I'll read a phrase or a paragraph and think, "Wow! That's great!" and then realize I wrote it. It feels so foreign, at first. I guess it's a good thing that I impress myself (sometimes) on re-reads, but it's strange - I would think that even after some time away, these words, these characters, this plot, should be familiar.

One hopes I don't forget all about my baby every time I hand her over to a babysitter  :)

And there's more of this disconnect now that I have to work in smaller chunks of time, i.e. during naps. I don't need a refresher every time I come back to it, after that initial read through, but it takes me a while to orient myself again. I feel a bit like I'm taking two steps forward, one step back each time I sit down with these edits.

But, it'll get done. Editors wait for no man... or baby.

Skye

Naked and Afraid

Fear.

According to Dune, fear is the little death. I maintain that Dune got it wrong.

When we think of fear, most of us conjure up that whole body response to actual danger: heart pounding, rapid breathing, adrenaline pumping.

But fear comes in another form, as an insidious thing that nibbles us away from the inside out. It winds into our dreams at night and our thoughts by day, leaching away enthusiasm and joy and the energy needed to grow and thrive.

Often we don't recognize it at all. The cues are subtle. A slight flutter in the belly, a tightening in the muscles, the sudden desire to go back to bed and take a nap. When we notice, we call it many things: Worry, anxiety, restlessness, wondering, waiting.

Whatever name we choose to give the thing, it's always there in one form or another. We fear for our children or our pets. For the security of our jobs. The loss of health. The coming of some large scale global disaster. Death. Mayhem. Disaster.

As writers the fear can become immobilizing. It begins with trying to get the words on the page in the first place. Sometimes we call this writer's block. Or we procrastinate. Or busy ourselves with all of the other life things that present themselves and say we don't have time.

If we do manage to finish a writing project then the fear cycle starts all over again with queries and submissions and reviews and sales numbers and contracts.

My personal list runs along these lines:

Fear that I'm not good enough, that I will never get the words on the page, that my writing sucks, that I've lost my touch, that nobody will ever want to read what I've written, that I'm like one of those people on American Idol who think they can sing but can't even carry a tune. What if people are laughing at me behind my back? What if the readers who buy my books really only do so to laugh at the train wreck? What if - and this is a big one - what if parts of my inner soul that I try to keep private are revealed in my work? What if I put myself out there, naked and afraid, and it's ME that the readers reject?

Which all boils down, in the end, to fear that I'm just one big steaming pile of fail.

Well, so what? So what if the novel sucks or doesn't sell or gets rejected or has bad reviews?

I mean, if these things happen we will be sad. We've invested a lot of time and energy and a good chunk of ourselves into everything we write. But maybe what really matters is that we have been brave. We put ourselves out there. Wrote the story that came to us and sent it out into the world, instead of hiding it in a drawer.

Courage doesn't mean you were never scared, it means you stood your ground and did the thing you were scared to do. Which, I think, makes writers some of the bravest people on the planet.

Happy Birthday, Mama Bitchstress!

Today is a very special day for the Evil League of Evil Writers.

Besides our founding anniversary, the anniversary of our beloved co-founder's birth is one of the ELEW's High Holy Days.

You think I'm joking, but I'm not. We don't joke here at the ELEW. If we're laughing, you should probably be running.

I looked at last year's post to make sure I didn't repeat myself with this year's acknowledgement, and found that I could pretty much say exactly the same thing, only with a few changes to the amount of money our Bitchstress Dreamkiller has raised for charity this year.

Our anniversary month (April) this year was dedicated to one of our own. Senior Pie Coordinator and Clubhouse Keeper's husband had a serious accident involving a chainsaw fought off a grizzly bear and racked up some absolutely hellacious medical bills (and I'm not talking the fun kind of "hellacious" either). The ELEW stepped in, and, with the help of a metric shit-ton of people, made that bill GTFO.

You know who was the driving force behind that fundraiser? That's right. Skyla Dawn Cameron was the Indiegogo campaign leader. I (Gothic Goddess Dina James) was the co-pilot.

I'm not even going to count the other awesome stuff she does for charity in her total raised this year. It's over $12,000 with the Evil for Julie fundraiser alone. She also does stuff for cats (because she's a Crazy Cat Lady) and takes her beautiful dog Sophie to the hospital to visit inpatients, as Sophie is an official Trent Hill Therapy Dog. I'm pretty sure when things are totaled up, Skyla has raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000 this year, and guess what?

This year ain't over yet.

Who knows what no-goodness she'll get up to the remaining three months? She'll probably invent time travel or cure cancer or get that "world domination" thing off the ground. Oops...did I say that out loud? Whatever she does, it will be awesome. And I don't mean that in the mundane way. I mean that in the evil way.

Our Bitchstress Dreamkiller isn't just an evil writer...she's a person whose awesome you should aspire to.

Happy birthday, Skyla!

The Best-Seller Label

One of my books was the Kindle Romance Daily Deal last week. (Oh yeah, for those of you who didn't know, I'm also Julie Particka. Surprise?) It was one of those awesome but really stressful things. You see, when you're a KDD, that means Amazon is promoting you--they're sending your title out to all their readers and saying "look what's on sale!"

What if it still doesn't sell?

That was literally my thought when I woke up that morning and looked at my 7:30 am ranking. I was stuck in this void of "OMG, I totally suck."

The universe must have liked me that day because the rankings kept climbing and climbing. (Bear with me here. I'm only showing evidence for the discussion to come.) Eventually I had this:

#19 overall in Canada!

And this:

#93 overall in the US

And this:

#1 in NA/College! WOOT!

Which...is pretty fucking cool. I mean, between this and hitting something like #7 on the Australia iTunes with the book, I can technically call myself an international best seller.

But I don't.

You see, I know what kind of numbers people have to hit to make the NYT and USA Today lists. For most people, those are kind of life-altering sums of money. This? Not so much.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy as a clam about doing as well as I did. However, I've been paying a lot of attention to how people use the best-seller label, and it makes me a little squicky.

There is an author I know who gave away one of her self-pub books on amazon for several days. Lowered the price to FREE! and then advertised the hell out of it. I don't remember exactly how high her book got on the free list, but she proceeded to start calling herself a best-selling author.

*blink*

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm happy for her that she grabbed so many new readers. But I kind of have this thought that to be a best-seller you have to actually sell the books. I mean, if she'd lowered the price to $0.01, technically that would have been selling, but all those people who click on all the freebies might not have grabbed it. I don't know, but I don't count that.

I know another author who joked because their book hit #1 on some small, obscure sub-category that they were now a best-selling author. (Thankfully in that case, it was a joke, because I would have lost some respect for this particular person who legitimately deserves to sell enough to be a bonafide best seller.)

Now, in my case, the NA/College list isn't obscure. That's a pretty tough list (Colleen Hoover, Jamie Maguire, Jennifer L. Armentrout...the list could go on for a while), but until someone "in power" slaps a title on me, I'm not going to use one because it kind of feels like crowning myself mother-of-the-year or something.

Words have power, and people have used "best-seller" so deceptively (I won't say they are out-and-out lying, but making the best seller list at a specific publisher for a day or week is not the same as making an amazon list, is not the same as making the NYT or USA today.) that it's almost ceased to have meaning. If the time comes that my publisher decides they can legitimately put it on my books, I will probably start using it, but until then, this post is as close as it's going to get.

So my advice to all you aspiring authors, indie authors, new authors--choose to use the best-selling label with care. In order for it to have meaning to readers (which it's starting not to), it has to have meaning to us as authors.

Recycled Post: Another Post on Queries - Basic Etiquette

So I'm being lazy today (as I'm still playing catch-up offline, so you're lucky I'm even here right now and found this lovely gem in the archives for your reading pleasure) and offering you a timely recycled post on "how to write a query letter." This is something of a follow-up to our wonderful Senior Pie Coordinator's bit on Three Stupid Things Writers Do. Where she is deadly calm and concise, I'm going to go into massive detail with screaming and cursing. Because that's how I roll, people.

This was originally written in 2011, right around this week, coincidentally. Again, awesome timing! Here we go:

In order to understand what prompted this rant week's blog post, go give this post a quick read. Go on, I'll wait.

http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/2011/09/lol.html

You see the part down at the bottom there, where some douchebag is fighting with the autoresponder to his query?

Yeah, that.

It shouldn't need to be said, but apparently it does: DO NOT FIGHT WITH THE AUTORESPONDER.

Honestly, if you bothered to research enough to find out where to send your query via e-mail, you should be smart enough to recognize an autoresponse when you get one. In addition to that, you should be GRATEFUL that you received an autoresponse – it means the email address you used was not only working, but correct. Writers are a paranoid, impatient bunch and we like to know things just haven't disappeared. Autoresponders give that sort of psychological reassurance. It's nice of an agency or business to have an autoresponder set up for that very reason.

Now that the "what set Dina off" portion is out of the way, let's get to the real subject of today's post.

Today we're going to talk about queries.

No, we're not going to talk about writing a query. You should already know how to do that, and if you don't, there are some great, free, reliable sources out there online that you can follow. This is more a list of do's and don'ts.

DO:

- INCLUDE YOUR NAME AND CONTACT INFO right at the top of the letter, just like professional letterhead. You're trying to be a professional, this is how it works. For e-queries, make sure again that your (correct!) contact information is there, but only once. If you have your contact info in your signature line, don't junk up the email with it everywhere. If it's an e-query, they're going to reply to the address you sent it from, so if you want your reply (autoresponse or not!) to go to a certain email address, send your query FROM that email address. Agents don't have time to compare email addresses, so don't send your query from your work email then wonder why you didn't get a response to your home email. Again, this shouldn't need to be said, but…yeah.

- KEEP IT TO ONE PAGE. A query letter is just that – a letter. The synopsis or first five chapters or whatever the submission guidelines ask for will tell the story for you, so you don't need to put it in your letter. Narrow your pitch down to a paragraph or two. You get 30 seconds max to make an impression. Don't waste time by telling an agent how you were inspired to write this. They don't care. Get to the good shit.

- FOLLOW THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES. They might not make sense to you, and you might not agree with them, but they're written the way they are for a reason and it's not your place to question it.

Here's the deal: You're asking an agent for the one thing that they don't have a great deal of – their time. DO NOT WASTE THEIR TIME. I hear you over there. You're saying, "Well, I put so much time and effort into my query and they didn't bother to give me the same." SO THE FUCK WHAT. Cope. Deal. Stop crying. They aren't your babysitters. Also, a QUERY letter is just that. A query.

QUERY – question, inquiry.

Your query letter is basically a formal way of asking this agent if they will represent you/take you on as a client, but really, you're asking for much, much more than that, so show a little fucking respect.

- INCLUDE THE WORD "QUERY" OR "SUBMISSION" IN THE SUBJECT LINE OF YOUR EMAIL unless the agency wants you to put something specific there. If you're sending a query via e-mail, this helps the agent. Remember, helping the agent save time is a good thing.

- HAVE THE CORRECT INFORMATION AND A COMPLETE QUERY PACKET. Again, you might not understand why they want a synopsis and a letter and the first five pages, but that's not for you to question. It's for you to follow. And honestly, if you can't follow simple directions and put together a proper query packet, what is there to make them think you could follow the directions for anything else? An editorial letter or a deadline? If you can't manage a simple request when they've gone to the trouble to outline what you're supposed to do for them, that doesn't exactly bode well for any future relationship with you.  A little research goes a long way, and you've spent all this time getting your book ready to fly. Don't fuck up the landing. And speaking of research-

- RESEARCH THE AGENT/AGENCY. They have all the information out there you need. If you found an agent in the Writer's Market, make sure it's a current edition. Go online and make sure that person is still with that company and is still looking for what you're querying with. If they have a blog, go read it and make sure you don't have any of their pet peeves or red flags going on. Like this: http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/2011/07/red-flags.html

- FOLLOW DIRECTIONS. Make sure you send what they ask for AND NO MORE. Do not "save them time" by sending the whole manuscript when all they want is the first five pages. Remember learning about that in elementary school? There's a reason. Querying isn't like cooking – you can't just improvise the recipe and hope you make something edible. Do your homework and follow the guidelines and you'll stand out, I promise.

DON'TS:

- DO NOT REPLY TO A REJECTION. Just don't. (See the part about fighting with the autoresponder.) Agents get hundreds if not thousands of emails a day, and as you can see from the link above, a lot of those emails are rude responses to rejection. You don't need to add to their plethora of mail to wade through. If you simply MUST reply, be sure to include "Thank You For Your Consideration" or something in the subject line.

• EXCEPTION – If the agent you're querying has been corresponding with you or has met you at a convention or something and you have some kind of less-formal relationship, go ahead and send them a POLITE thank you in response to a rejection. Keep it short and sweet. Just say, "thanks for your time, I'm disappointed we won't be working together on this project, I appreciate your consideration" or something and leave it at that.

- DO NOT BEG THEM TO RECONSIDER. This is extremely bad form, and they won't remember you. If they do, it won't be in the "good way." Once an agent sends you a rejection, you've been removed from their consideration. They've moved on to the next query letter and you've been forgotten because they've already decided which "pile" you're in. You're dealt with and done and pitching a fit about it isn't going to help you. They rejected you for a reason, and unless you've changed something dramatically, they're not going to reconsider the same query, either immediately or in the future. Rewrite the book or the query or something. If they said no, there's a reason for it, even if it's not given. Also,

- DON'T ASK FOR CRITICAL FEEDBACK/THE REASON YOU WERE REJECTED. If it's not given in the rejection, don't pester them about it. They don't have time to go back and look up why they rejected you (if they even have that information - many agencies don't keep old queries on file for long, if at all), and if a specific reason wasn't given, suck it up and move on. It could be something as simple as the genre not being right for their agency at the time to an overabundance of that particular storyline. If you're lucky enough to be rejected with a reason, learn from it, fix your issue and go on.

- DO NOT ASK CONSTANTLY FOR STATUS UPDATES, ESPECIALLY THROUGH TWITTER OR FACEBOOK. Just. Don't. Do. This. Just don't. If you see an agent anywhere online or out at a restaurant or whatever, they're on their own time. They're not at work, so you shouldn't ask them about it. They don't have their work in front of them, and it's not fair of you to ask them to recall something on the spot. Also, they don't know. Okay? They just don't know. Again, see the part about hundreds or thousands of messages a day. You honestly expect them to remember your name out of all that? Can you? Name every person who has sent you an email in the last 8 weeks off the top of your head. Go on. If you can do that, you shouldn't be a writer. You should be working as some kind of smarty for a government organization somewhere. If you're NOT a superhero like most of us and can't name every person who has sent you an email in the last 8 weeks, why would you expect an agent to do that? Also, why would you expect them to take time (remember the "time" thing we've been talking about?) to find your note out of all those? I know you want special attention and are impatient and all that, but don't. Just sit and wait. Why? Because if you make a pest of yourself, chances are you're not the kind of person that agent wants to work with. Just sayin'.

• EXCEPTION: If you haven't heard back from an agent within their stated response time, a POLITE follow-up mail is acceptable. NOT a Facebook or Twitter message!

- DO NOT SAY ANYTHING LIKE ANY OF THESE LETTERS: http://slushpilehell.tumblr.com/

So there you have it. Basic query etiquette. Be nice, be polite, do your homework, and read up on things.

For more information on How Not To Be A Douchebag Author, please visit Skyla's blog [ETA: The archives on Skyla's blog aren't updated with her Shiny New Site yet, so just] click the HNTBADBA tag here on the ELEW blog and see what's there. There's a whole slew of posts on the subject.