Introducing Team Krista 2013! (Plus a Few Thoughts on the Entries)

And here's my awesome team (in alphabetical order)!

Alexa D. and FUTURESHOCK (#19)
Catherine Lo and THIS IS HOW IT ENDS (#136)
Heidi Lang, Kati Bartkowski, and MYSTIC COOKING (#35)
Jenny Kaczorowski and THE EXTRAORDINARY ART OF FALLING (#41)
Jerilyn Patterson and WISHING (#94)
Jessie Oliveros and A PRETTY PIRATE PICKLE (#14)
Laura J. Moss and WATER LILY (#127)
Mackenzi Lee Van Engelenhoven and DEATH AND THE GLASSMAKER'S DAUGHTER (#124)

with Ashley Turcotte and LUMINARY (#3) as my alternate

That gives me two MG projects and six YA projects, with a YA alternate. Interestingly, that breakdown matches last year's breakdown almost exactly (though I did have a few adult projects on my team last year as well).

To be honest, I found redeeming qualities in a lot of entries (though I did spot problems, too). In the end, it came down to my personal tastes, which is what it's always going to come down to. Hopefully, you'll find an agent--and especially an editor--whose tastes will match your own, but if you don't, there's always the next manuscript. That was my mantra for so many years: "There's always the next manuscript" (assuming, of course, you really want to go traditional, which, admittedly, not everyone does, and that's okay).

Before I go any further, a disclaimer: I am in NO WAY an expert on queries, the market, or publishing in general, so please take all these thoughts for what they are--my thoughts. These are just a few of the things I noticed as I whittled down my list, and they say a lot more about me than they do about any of the entries.

A few things that stuck out to me as I was reading through the entries (in the order that I wrote them down):

1. There was a lot of fantasy in this group, and the queries didn't always match the first pages. A lot of the summaries seemed to describe high fantasies, but when I got to the pages, they were obviously set on our world, in our time. That disconnect was jarring and made me worry that the writer didn't really know what they were writing.

2. The plot points in a query need to build on each other. This is especially true for contemporaries. Real life is something we can all relate to, but contemporary stories still need to have an inciting incident, rising action, a climax, and a denouement. Of course, you don't need to summarize all of these plots points in your query, but you do need to show a strong cause-and-effect relationship between the events you do mention.

3. It was weird when a query would summarize the whole plot in a few sentences at the beginning, then go back and summarize it again in another two or three paragraphs. I know some agents and industry sites encourage writers to develop loglines, but I don't think you're really supposed to squish loglines and queries together. (Some queries do start off with taglines, one-sentence (or less) hooks of the sort you might see on book covers. I'm not a huge fan of these, either, but at least they flow a little better with the query itself.)

4. Several of the entries suffered from what I call the bait-and-switch. The queries described one project, and then the first pages seemed to start another. This is related to point one above, but it's not restricted to fantasies. You want your query and first scene to flow together. Readers should be able to immediately see how they relate.

5. Some concepts blended fantastical and normal elements for no apparent reason, and I had a hard time getting excited about those. That's mostly just my own personal preference, though I do think everything in a query--and a manuscript--should serve a specific purpose. If you can't show how the pieces fit together in the query, then it makes me think you haven't put them together in the manuscript very well, either.

6. I noticed a lot of ghosts and a surprising number of werewolves in this batch of entries. That's not necessarily good or bad; it just means you're going to have to compete directly against all the other people writing about ghosts and werewolves, so your project has to be that much better.

7. I came across several well-written projects that I actually loved; the only problem was that they were several years too late. In one case, the premise was too similar to a recently popular book (and movie), and in several others, the genre was off. It's all but impossible to sell a dystopian right now, but then, you wouldn't want to launch a dystopian series at the moment, as it would look kind of derivative and probably not sell many copies.

That's it from me! What stood out to you as you perused the entries?