Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Can you post the text? Sure. I suspected that might be necessary for people to see where I'm going. It's UF, by the way. Evan had loved his parents right up until the moment he had lost himself to his true nature, to the lineage he had denied most of his life. They knew that now, Gwen and Connor, t...

Um, yeah, I have one every bit as good as that, but it's too horrid to post. I was trying to get inventive with a verb to replace 'grab' and came up with a turn of phrase that belongs only in hardcore porn, so sayeth a major editor. I'll let everyone imagine what the phrase might have been. It's one...

I'm mortified that I have to ask this question, but my research has been painfully unhelpful. I'm desperate. Help? Question: Is it ever okay to mix past tense with present perfect? I'm working on a project in the first person, past tense. At one point my MC is conveying something that happened befor...

I've held a few different jobs (emergency dispatcher, private security, 7-11 clerk, horse trainer etc...). Now, I just write. It is my day job :) Emergency dispatcher? Like 911? Police, fire, ambulance, or a combination thereof? I spent 3 years as an emergency services dispatcher, answering police ...

But.....it's so dark!!!! Which is just another reason I adored it. I've probably recommended American Gods more times than all the others books I've ever recommended combined. Since you had trouble getting through it in print, I'd suggest the audio version (such a great audio performance). It actua...

I supervise a staff of counselors, and they and I work with heroin addicts. I'm going to grad school so I can do more of that. Iiiiiinteresting. I did my grad school practicum hours in a 6-month inpatient substance abuse program for pregnant women and mothers - mostly meth but also the occasional h...

So, Blondie, would you be doing fiction and non-fiction in all four? And is there one or two that you think you might be writing in more than the others? Or perhaps the better question is which one would your first queryable project be in? Since I am doing agent research (though not in any of those ...

Resource analyst. I help my employer decide how to spend a few million here, a few million there, and keep track of legislation that would change the way they have to do things. Boring but extremely low stress most of the time, which is good because stress makes it harder for me to write. The awful ...

Thanks Margo. ...However, as I look through agents, I don't often find them repping more than one..maybe 2.. of the genres I like to work in... Perhaps I just need to broaden my search? Which "agent search engines" do you suggest? I am still curious about the protocol for querying the sam...

I have two that don't entirely fit the bill (the faux pas were not with agents), but they might make people feel better. 1) I told an author on an online writing group that I thought her work was great and she was thoroughly publishable. At that point (I later learned) she had about 8 books out alre...

Unless you have very specialized genres, you should be able to find at least a handful who handle both of your genres. I have been looking for an agent who reps both my genre and a genre that tends to tinge my work just a little. The readers of the two genres also tend to read across both the genres...

Writing a query prior to finishing the ms and submitting that query before finishing the ms is a fail with every agent I have ever spoken to (and all those I have ever known to address the topic in a blog). Writing a query for the purpose of improving your focus while you write is a great idea. I re...

Oh, good, I'm not the only one to immediately think Firefly and Babylon 5 (especially when watched on DVD in a short period of time). The first series of True Blood also kept me up way too late on work nights. I couldn't get into Battlestar Galactica because I was too busy with grad school right whe...

I can't think of any instances in my reading or writing wherein I thought "suddenly" was the strongest word choice. Weak is pretty much the perfect term. Finding "suddenly" on lists of words editors never want to see again nailed the coffin shut for me. In general, those words an...

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