Writerly Links

I haven't been snooping at all my usual publishing industry blogs in a couple of weeks, so today I spent some time hitting the intarwebs and have some links for the rest of you who also haven't had the time.

• Lit Agent Nathan Bransford had a whole slew of links on Friday's post, so I'm just copying and pasting here on a few that might help aspiring writers.

In agent advice news, Janet Reid has an awesome checklist of things you need before you query, divided between fiction/memoir/nonfiction, Jessica Faust at BookEnds writes that unless each book can really truly stand alone, it's probably not a good idea to write a sequel to an unpublihsed first book in a trilogy, and Rachelle Gardner surveys ten query mistakes.

• Kristin Nelson had lots of good advice as usual, but this one about prologues was a great breakdown and one topic that I haven't seen discussed to bits already.
• This is one by Paperback Writer that's from the end of Jan, but I've thought back on it almost daily since I read it a couple of weeks ago - it's about coining new words for your fictional worlds and how you might go about doing that.
• Also from Paperback Writer, some submission opportunities.

As a side note, I'm really glad I decided to catch up today, because I saw that the February Secret Agent contest was getting ready to start over at Miss Snark's First Victim and one of my genres was being represented. The contest opened at noon, I hit Send on my submission at 12:03 and I was one of the last entrants to sneak through before she hit the 50 entrants mark. Yippee! I'm looking forward to the input. The last time I entered a writing contest at MSFV, the feedback was painful but helpful. Here's hoping for less pain and more "you're on the right track" this time. :)