Alan Rain

Also while keeping an open mind to the feedback you receive, don’t forget you’re in charge and you can ‘Accept, adapt, reject’. You don’t have to take on board all advice you’re given and the best way to decide what is and isn’t useful is to read feedback and then give yourself time to think about it, coming back to it after a little break with a…[Read more]

Ah! Now I understand. Welcome Elle/L, good to see you

Fascinating stuff Richard. Not an author I recall coming across, though the title quotation is familar. It soulds as though he had throughly subverted many of the common tropes of fantasy before that genre really got going.

Yes. It’s one of the little snarls to be untangled – that sticky topics show in a sub forum even though they are located in a separate forum.

Yes. Excellent point, Squidge. When monkeying around with someone else’s work, it’s important to always remember that your ideas and the author’s ideas may not mesh. Any rewriting should be done sparingly, strictly as an example (unless the author requests otherwise) and the power should always be returned to the author when you’ve finished.

My agent experience is sh!te, so I can’t help much except to say that, so long as you don’t utterly muck up the cover letter, it shouldn’t matter hugely. I honestly believe that any agent who likes your work will like it regardless of the cover letter, and any agent who dislikes you because of your cover letter regardless of the quality of the…[Read more]

There’s this topic and a sticky FAQ page which is closed to comments, Barny. Otherwise it looks fine in my browser.

I feel like ýou’re talking from personal experience here, Ath 😁

Hahahaha! I got that, don’t worry 😀

Oops! But the good thing is that making mistakes isn’t the end of the world – which you have proved! And I’ve had plenty of mistakes along the way too…

Yes, agree with that Philippa. I’ve not got anything else to add yet, except to agree with comments already made – and thank you for setting this up!

Edit: and like the edit button!

Really interesting reading, Richard. The name was familiar but I haven’t read anything by him. It’ unusal for me not to have at least sampled something by a historic fantasy writer. I can see what you mean about his writing being a bit Marmite. It was making me wince and laugh at the same time.

Everything Philippa said! Though re the faux pas, do you mean in terms of naming the agent specifically or not saying that it’s being read at all? Because I’ve always been told it’s good to let other agents know that you’re sending it to other people, that other people are reading the full etc. and this is what I did when more than one person was…[Read more]