Pub Rants

Category: Query Letters

Nelson Literary Agency Has No Prob With LGBTQ

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: I’m feeling a tad riled up.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? MY HEART BELONGS TO ME by Barbara Streisand

Holy cow! Can’t believe I missed this article yesterday. I’m so glad an agent friend forwarded to me. Take a moment to read it and tweet it on but in short, it’s an appeal to support literature with gay and lesbian characters and the fact that there are some appalling agents and editors out there who are making requests that the writers make a gay character straight.

Seriously? What year are we in?

I cannot tell you how delighted I was to see a link to a list of YA literature that features gay/lesbian characters and my author Sarah Rees Brennan’s THE DEMON’S LEXICON series was on it.

This author of mine is brilliant. It’s a wonderful series and her new trilogy that I just sold to Random House also has an absolute kick-a** gay/lesbian main character. The first book UNSPOKEN publishes in fall 2012.

Not to mention, I have a Monica Trasandes’ debut adult literary novel coming out in spring 2012 from Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press. It’s called BROKEN LIKE THIS and features three main protagonists: a bisexual character, a gay/lesbian character and a straight male character (had to throw that last one in there-LOL).

A multicultural author to boot. I’ll tell you right now it was a tough sell but I loved the novel and I sold it.

So add these to your wish lists if you want to show support via your buying dollars. If I had cover art or anything yet for these two titles, I’d post it here but we are in the middle of the cover design and the buy links aren’t available online yet.

And let’s not forget the incredibly brilliant, witty, impeccably dressed and extremely powerful Lord Akeldama from Gail Carriger’s The Parasol Protectorate series.

I must admit it never occurred to me to add to my agency’s submission page that we are open to accepting material with LGBTQ characters because I kind of thought it went without saying but I’m rethinking it now.

Feel free to link to this blog post that it’s a-okay with us and I have NEVER asked an author to change a character’s ethnic background or orientation.

And because we are talking about multicultural too, check out my author Kimberly Reid’s debut YA novel MY OWN WORST FRENEMY. It’s an African-American urban Nancy Drew series. I mean, just how cool is that?


Note: LGBTQ stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning.

Additional Note: As there seems to be some question about the legitimacy of the original article cited and the agent/agency named, in fairness I’m also including a link to the agent/agency rebuttal to the accusation.

An Actual No Means No–For Us Anyway

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Chutney is asleep. I need to follow that example.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? COULD YOU BE LOVED? by Bob Marley and the Wailers

Today I took fellow literary agent, Kate Testerman, out to lunch. We even had a pint of beer (Kate) and a glass of wine (Kristin) to celebrate.

Why? Because her author Ransom Riggs has a novel that’s been slowly climbing up to the #2 spot on the NYT list for the past 12 weeks. #1 spot is within spitting distance.

I would be talking about Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children.


Darn right we need to celebrate that. After all, we agents are notoriously bad at actually doing celebratory moments to acknowledge our achievements but can cite every book we passed on that then became successful. LOL.

So it was an enforced celebration because hitting the NYT list is an achievement. Staying on for 12 straight weeks is an achievement. Have sales increase rather than decrease over that 12 weeks is huge and last but not least, hello! The #1 spot is not out of reach.

If you haven’t, you might want to buy this book this week is all I’m saying.

So Sara and I are out with Kate celebrating this amazing debut when Kate mentions there is a brouhaha going on about an agent’s policy to respond to every query or simply say “no response is a No” and authors should move on.

I gotta get myself on twitter. I’m always missing the hoopla.

Actually it was more of a discussion than a brouhaha but it was causing comments aplenty.

Our stance? We respond but that’s mainly because I have the amazing Anita who screens all queries and pulls out the ones I actually need to look at. Without that, trust me, I’d probably seriously consider the “no response means a No.”

We can get upwards to 200 queries a day.

That’s crazy people!

This day alone we received 4 calls from nonfiction writers with deals on the table looking for an agent.

We don’t even rep nonfiction and none of them were memoir. How on earth do people find us is what I want to know.

Now if Sara and I read a partial or a full manuscript, we do offer a line or two on why we are passing but trust me, when I’ve read 12 submissions and I know it’s going to take me at least 40 minutes to type in my one or two lines of feedback, I seriously consider whether it’s worth the time.

I could just hit the NO button and be done. Trust me, it’s tempting. Very very tempting.

But for now, we still add the line. If I were a writer, which I’m not, I’d so appreciate that personal note. So we keep that in mind but we aren’t inured to the day when that might not be a possibility.

Riding the Cultural Zeitgeist?

by Kristin Nelson

Status: I only own an umbrella for when I’m in New York. So ready for the perpetually sunny skies of Denver.

What’s Playing on the XM or iPod right now? MYSTERY by Anita Baker

Even though we agents and editors have seen this phenomenon repeat itself for years, it still strangely takes us by surprise.

Sometimes a theme or a type of story will hit the cultural zeitgeist and suddenly we will see a slew of submissions that have very similar story ideas.

And I’m not talking about obvious trends. For example, in Young Adult, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that paranormal romance has been “hot” for a while (thank you Twilight). Then the Hunger Games took off and dystopia became the new trend. As titles released in that, the latest is now SF or speculative fiction.

These are popular trends.

This is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about storylines that suddenly start popping up that are potentially outside of these trends but for some reason, the stories all hit our submission inboxes around the same time.

For example, over the last 6 months, there have been a lot of queries and sample pages for fairy tale retellings (and this started happening before Little Red Riding Hood and Beastly hit the screen).

I was out to lunch with a children’s editor yesterday and for him, he had suddenly started seeing a ton of submissions that were what he called “man vs machine a la Terminator-style.”

The submissions came from different agents/agencies and yet all had very similar settings and main storylines. And this isn’t actually a rare occurrence. As an agent, I’ve seen this happen any number of times in my career.

So, there is something percolating in the cultural zeitgeist where any number of totally different authors who don’t know each other will have eerily similar story ideas for their novels.

Riding the Cultural Zeitgeist?

by Kristin Nelson

Status: I only own an umbrella for when I’m in New York. So ready for the perpetually sunny skies of Denver.


What’s Playing on the XM or iPod right now? MYSTERY by Anita Baker


Even though we agents and editors have seen this phenomenon repeat itself for years, it still strangely takes us by surprise.


Sometimes a theme or a type of story will hit the cultural zeitgeist and suddenly we will see a slew of submissions that have very similar story ideas.


And I’m not talking about obvious trends. For example, in Young Adult, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that paranormal romance has been “hot” for a while (thank you Twilight). Then the Hunger Games took off and dystopia became the new trend. As titles released in that, the latest is now SF or speculative fiction.


These are popular trends.


This is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about storylines that suddenly start popping up that are potentially outside of these trends but for some reason, the stories all hit our submission inboxes around the same time.


For example, over the last 6 months, there have been a lot of queries and sample pages for fairy tale retellings (and this started happening before Little Red Riding Hood and Beastly hit the screen).

I was out to lunch with a children’s editor yesterday and for him, he had suddenly started seeing a ton of submissions that were what he called “man vs machine a la Terminator-style.”


The submissions came from different agents/agencies and yet all had very similar settings and main storylines. And this isn’t actually a rare occurrence. As an agent, I’ve seen this happen any number of times in my career.


So, there is something percolating in the cultural zeitgeist where any number of totally different authors who don’t know each other will have eerily similar story ideas for their novels.

Query While The Querying Is Hot!

by Kristin Nelson

Status: Chutney is enjoying our new couch—as am I. What a nice chaise section on the left side of the couch! Perfect for reading.

What’s Playing on the XM or iPod right now? SUPERSTITION by Stevie Wonder

And this is definitely good for authors. Last year I have to admit, Sara and I didn’t take on that many new clients.

This week, Sara signed 3 new authors with terrific projects.

On top of that, the queries are just rocking right now. In the last 2 weeks, we’ve requested 9 full manuscripts. Yep, you read that right. 9!

I guess query while the querying is hot!

What Not To Bring To A Pitch Session?

by Kristin Nelson

Status: Have glass in wine in hand, am good.


What’s Playing on the XM or iPod right now? LONELY NO MORE by Rob Thomas (acoustic version)


This might qualify as my oddest blog entry yet but I had something happen on Saturday that I’ve never run into before.


A writer sat down for her pitch session and not a minute later, I started sneezing.


From what I can gather, I must have been having a reaction to her perfume (which by the way was not overly strong or anything).


But during the whole session, my eyes started watering and I got the sniffles. Luckily I had a break right after and was able to pop outside to clear my head. When I returned, I was just fine for the rest of the afternoon.


So this probably wasn’t something you had thought of but you might want to forgo the perfume or strong fragrance on the day of your pitch!

Kristin As A Talking Head

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: I work way too late.

What’s playing on the iPod or the XM radio right now? PYRO by Kings of Leon

When I was at the San Miguel de Allende conference in Mexico, Publishing strategist Janet Goldstein grabbed me and ask if I would do a 2 minute video for her flipcam on 2 quick tips for writing query letters.
It was such a lovely day, I couldn’t resist. If you can keep up with the fact that I seem to be talking a mile a minute (hey, TV personality I am not), there might be a nugget of good info embedded in this talking head video. Enjoy!

Best Query EVER!

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: An illusion of spring time here in Denver. It’s going to be in the 60s several days in a row. Oh, here comes spring fever.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? NOWHERE FAST by Smiths

As you folks know, recently we did a big computer conversion here at the office. As part of the conversion, we’ve been migrating to a new email/CRM program that we are quite excited about. As part of the process, we’ve been cleaning out old saved email folders from our query inbox.

Well, Anita had a folder where she saved some of the best email queries NLA has ever received. And I’m sure you guys realize that I’m using the word “best” euphemistically here.

We unearthed one that is just too good not to share.

This query was for a memoir about the author’s life long relationship with his um… his um… his Johnson, summer sausage, ding dong, one-eyed monster.

Folks, I can’t make this stuff up.

His had a separate personality and was the cause of his interesting career (and no, it wasn’t in THAT business).

Best yet? It was time to let him out of the closet and present him to the world in the first book of a trilogy. Yes, you read that right–a trilogy.

The only question that remained, according to the query letter, was whether the world was ready for it.

Only you, dear blog readers, can answer that question!

5000+ Queries In One Day

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Things are getting back to normal.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? WHAT A LITTLE MOONLIGHT CAN DO by Billie Holiday

A week and one day. Felt like an eternity! In this short span of time, we completely upgraded our entire office computer system with a brand spankin’ new server.

With any major overhaul, there are always a few kinks.

For example: with the migration, something went wonky with our query email. For some reason, the server wasn’t recognizing when emails had been downloaded into the program. One morning, Anita opened the query program to find 5000+ queries in the inbox. That was a shock. The server had downloaded each query 5 to 10 times and then kept repeating it.

I’m happy to report that the problem is finally solved. I don’t think we lost any queries in the process but if you don’t hear from us in the next 2 to 3 weeks, you might want to resend. But you only need to send it once… I don’t think Anita ever wants to open that program and find an eye-popping 5000 queries in the inbox again.

Every day we keep finding a few more things that need to be tweaked. Like this morning. I found one whole folder to be missing. Poof. Just gone. Have no idea where or how. Luckily, we back everything up to the cloud so it was a matter of 15 minutes for me to locate it and repopulate it on the server. But it makes me wonder what other little discoveries are going to occur.

Our tech person was even here this afternoon for a few hours. And I do think we’ll see him a few more times before the week is out.

And if this stress of a computer conversion wasn’t enough, our new employee started last week.

Call me a glutton for punishment.

Fun Facts On NLA Clients—Take 4

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: I have an auction unfolding later this week so busy busy.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? DOG DAYS ARE OVER by Florence and The Machine

Kristina Riggle—literally lives on the street one block over from where my husband grew up in Michigan. Talk about a small world…

Sherry Thomas—English is Sherry’s second language. She didn’t start learning English until she was thirteen years old. If you’ve read her, you’ll know she has a beautiful way with language that’s really stunning.

Linnea Sinclair—came to me via a referral from the amazing Deidre Knight. How cool is that for a fellow agent to recommend an author to then to have that author have such a great career? Deidre and I toast it every time we get together.

Helen Stringer—has a gorgeous British accent and a little known fact is that she has a background in film/tv. This doesn’t happen often but she auditioned for and landed the narrator job to read her own novel SPELLBINDER for the audio book version. She’ll be doing THE MIDNIGHT GATE as well. So if you’ve listened to the books, you are actually hearing her. If you haven’t picked up the audio version, I highly recommend it.