The Queue on Wikipedia!

The Queue has a couple of terrific new interns, Robyn and Beth, helping us get the word out to writers who believe they are ready to seek out agents for their manuscripts. The word is: take a reality check! Okay, that's four words, but you get what I mean.

Reality Check:
We know, all too well, that we get one shot, and one shot only, with an agent for our manuscript--agents do not like to see the same manuscript come through the pipeline multiple times as they have hundreds of manuscripts vying for their attention. So, we have to make our one shot count with a great query letter. But great query letters abound. What is more important is the manuscript--it has to sparkle from the very first words of the very first chapter, that we send along with the query letter as a sample, to the very last word of the very last chapter.

How to make sure our manuscripts sparkle:
No one wants to hear this but, to get an honest and "objective" appraisal of a completed manuscript means paying a fist full of cold hard cash to someone who will tell us what we have and what we have to do to make our manuscript stand out from those hundreds of manuscripts that are our direct competition. I would suggest using the terrific editors at The Queue! But use someone other than friends who will probably tell you your book is great because they are so impressed that you wrote a book, or your writing group who can't give you the "fresh eyes" your completed manuscript needs. Just be sure to get a thorough--we say rigorous! at The Queue--diagnostic critique from someone with credentials. This isn't cheap but in the long run it is an investment that will save time, a good deal of frustration and ultimately money.

So that is the word (300 words +/-) that our interns at The Queue are helping us get out. Robyn Correll is working the all important Internet angle.

The Queue now has a Wikipedia article with Face Book, My Space and You Tube exposure to follow! Ah, the brave new world of publishing and promotion. The article on Wikipedia has links to The Queue, of course, but also to two of the manuscripts that Scarletta Press, our parent company, acquired off The Queue: Greater Trouble in the Lesser Antilles and Willow in a Storm. (Did I mention that if you have a dynamite manuscript that goes through The Queue and wows the editorial board we will feature it On Queue while you look for an agent?) These two fantastic books were finalists in the MIPA 2007 Midwest Book Awards.

Greater Trouble in the Lesser Antilles, a hilarious excursion through the lives and lore of the denizens of Flamingo Bay, St. Judas, USVI, won in the commercial fiction category (if you are consulting an atlas, St. Judas does not exist except in the mind of author Charles Locks and on the pages of GTLA). I think of GTLA as a "guy book" but women tell me they are in love with Captain Brian. He is a SNAG after all, a sensitive new age guy!! A sequel, Low Jinks on the High Seas, is in the works.

Willow in a Storm is a memoir of survival. Inspirational and profoundly powerful in a very low-key way, this prison story is told in layers, each layer revealing more of the author's experience and the epiphanies and milestones that allowed him to emerge, in the end, a hopeful and fully realized human being. I do not read prison stories, as a rule, but I couldn't put this one down (as The Queue's general manager I had to read it and I'm glad I did). It is raw and frank and told without sentimentality. It still takes my breath away when I think about it.

Check out The Queue on Wikipedia and check out Scarletta Press on Wikipedia as well!