Author | Joseph L. Selby

  • The Hard Part

    I got a pass on WANTED: CHOSEN ONE, NOW HIRING today. This particular agent has looked at BLACK MAGIC AND BARBECUE SAUCE as well and is very good about giving feedback with rejections. What struck me today is that his comment was very similar to a comment Elizabeth Poole gave me when she beta-read the…

  • QUERY: JEHOVAH’S HITLIST (a draft)

    Jehovah knows a secret. On Sundays when they parachute down the charity box, you can see where they open the sky to make the drop. The first one to the box gets the best charity: food rations, medicine, ammunition. Today all he needs is a new pair of shoes. He nabs himself a pair of…

  • Pre-Ponderance

    This isn’t a fully formed story idea, but something I wanted to write down for later. Today is my birthday (and if I weren’t so tired, I had a completely different post I wanted to make but now I’m just going to go watch “Repo Men” instead). For my birthday, I went up to the…

  • You Gotta Fight for Your Right…to Read?

    I’ve offered tacit support of SPEAK during the flair-up against the comments made in Springfield last week. I didn’t hop on the bandwagon and speak out against it for a couple reasons. First, I’m fat, and doubt I could hop on a bandwagon if I wanted to. Second, I don’t think my message would reach…

  • QUERY: THE TRIAD SOCIETY (a draft)

    Part of the webinar I posted about earlier is a query critique. I’ve already queried out BM&BBQ and WCO, so it’s time to bite the bullet on TTS. Below is a first draft query letter. Your constructive feedback is greatly appreciated. Otwald d’Kilrachen intervenes when Torvald d’Bluefire’s dissolution of an affair turns violent. Otwald delivers…

  • An Incredible Opportunity!

    Kristin Nelson, founder and queen bee of Nelson Literary Agency has just turned it up to 11. Thursday, September 30th, in conjunction with Writer’s Digest, she is hosting a webinar on improving your SF/F queries. It’s as if she’s been reading my journal! (Um…high Kristin!) Yes yes yes! This is totally for me. I’m always…

  • The Impotence of Proofreading of Proofreading

    For those of you who do not know, my day job is in publishing as well. I commute to Boston (writing the majority of my manuscripts on the train in and out of the city) and toil away in a cube for a major publisher. This is not the first publisher I’ve worked for. The…

  • Query Doldrums

    I’ve pretty much known what was wrong with THE TRIAD SOCIETY since I finished the first draft of the manuscript. It’s taken all this time to articulate what’s wrong with it, but there is a reason I did not launch immediately back into revision. There was something seriously wrong. I knew it. And I needed…

  • Have Fun Storming the Castle

    Current, non-syndicated television runs in 30 or 60 minute time slots. Of those slots, the actual program will run 20-22 minutes or 42-44 minutes respectively. Its this constraint that allows a writer–if he or she so wishes to apply herself–to know the plot, the outcome, and the bad guy (if you’re watching one of the…

  • Per Your Request…A LIST!

    The ladies over at Coffey. Tea. And Literary have started a meme. I have 25 minutes to kill at work, and thus will fill that time with this meme rather than being productive. 1. If you could have a superpower, what would you have? Why? I would be a cypher. I would speak every language…

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