I was floored to receive so many #Pitchwars entries from writers asking for my help. And while I unfortunately just don’t have the ability to send personalized feedback to everybody, I did see a lot of common issues in many of the entries. Now, first, let me stress: Deciding to pick someone else is not […]
******THIS IS MY WISH LIST FOR LAST YEAR, 2015. PLEASE CHECK BACK IN JULY 2016 FOR THE CURRENT YEAR’S WISH LIST AS THERE ARE SOME CHANGES***** ABOUT ME: (The official bio) Laura Heffernan is a California-born women’s fiction writer, represented by Michelle Richter at Fuse Literary. One Saturday morning when she was four or five, Laura sat […]
This contest was brutal, because we only got four picks for each team. I easily could’ve chosen ten. A lot of it came down to personal taste. Luckily, some of my favorites also made it into the group picks, but this was by no means easy. Congratulations to the four members of Team Women’s Fiction/Romance! […]
Now that Query Kombat is over (and with New Agent coming up on Wednesday), I want to explain some of things that impacted some of my votes. Hopefully, it’ll be useful for future contests and people thinking about submitting to me in Pitch Wars. Yes, I frequently picked the entry with the voice that spoke […]
Here’s a peek at some of the good things that happened during the past week. Grass is growing on our front lawn! It’s not all brown and dead anymore! And there’s no massive hole around where the For Sale sign was (which, for some reason, it was at least 8x the size of the post). […]
One of the hardest things about writing a query is trying to infuse some voice into it. But it’s also really important to make sure your query fits the genre you’re telling me your story fit into. Consider the following (made up) query: Ten-year-old Harry hates living with his aunt and uncle: They make him […]
I’ve been reading a lot of first pages over the past couple of months. A lot, a lot, a lot. (My best guess is around 300, so while I am prone to exaggeration sometimes, when I say “a lot,” I mean it.) And here are some (made-up) examples of problems I see over and over. […]
With QueryKombat right around the corner (and PitchWars coming up soon after that), here’s a glimpse into things I do (and do not) want to see on your first page. Do: Show us your character’s awesome voice. I want it to sound like they’re talking to me directly (without them actually breaking the fourth wall […]
Spring has utterly failed to….er…. sprung in the northeast (that sentence would make sense if it were warm and/or not snowing…). The weather outside may still be frightful, but inside – the writing contests are almost here! #NestPitch submissions open on Wednesday. I’m reading slush for Team OneBasket, headed by the amazing and talented SC […]
With a few pitch contests coming up in the next couple of months, I thought I’d share what it is I’m looking for when I read the slush. I can hear the collective groan now. “We know, we know: You like women’s fiction. Dogs like bones. Fish like water. We get it.” And okay, yes, […]
Today is the agent round for Sun vs. Snow. I’m taking a break from my normal blog to cheer on all the writers, especially my incredibly talented mentees. They put in a lot of hard work to get their entries polished on time, and I’m so, so proud of them. Team Snow My Amazing Mentees […]
Today marks the announcement of which entries were chosen for Sun vs. Snow (see them on http://michelle4laughs.blogspot.com/ and https://chasingthecrazies.wordpress.com/). I’m grateful to have been given the opportunity to mentor three amazing entries for #TeamSnow. With several great contests coming up in March – May, there’s something I though I should address. One thing that comes up a […]