Evil Editor Classics

As some of you are aware, the two volumes of Why You Don't Get Published contain a liberal sprinkling of amusing excerpts from past Face-Lifts. With fewer visitors coming here during the holiday weekend, I thought I'd post a few such items that appeared after those books came out.


Part 1

Elizabeth Milton accepted her mother’s death years ago. [Now if only it would hurry up and happen.]


I hope you will consider representing The Magic and would be happy to send a first fifty. [I'm not happily sending you fifty until we've signed a contract. And I recommend you set your sights a little higher than fifty, even if it is your first novel.]


Hadde finds a golden necklace. Taking it as a sign that she must do more for her people... [Interesting. I would have taken it as a sign that someone lost her necklace.]


A shaman tells her that she must find the right man to give birth to her son’s reincarnation. [Did you say shaman or conman?]


When Matthew attempts to rescue Jenna and is proclaimed the Star Child by the Magus’ enemies, the two find themselves on the brink of a war that could destroy everything and leave them trapped in Auria forever.

[Aurian 1: The long-awaited Star Child has finally appeared to us. She shall bring us peace evermore.

Aurian 2: The Star Child is here, true, and peace is upon us, but it's not a she, it's a he, and he appeared to us.

Aurian 1: Bullshit! Your Star Child is clearly a fraud.

Aurian 2: We shall settle this in the manner of our ancestors: all-out war.]


Hybreed Rising takes this classic back player of monster stories and brings them into the limelight from the direction of soft genetic science, addressing many never-answered questions of werewolf existence. [For instance, Q: Do werewolves exist? A: Yes.]


DRINKERS is a vampire novel that reaches beyond vampires to questions of morality, identity and belonging. It is literary and thought-provoking as well as tense and action-packed. It is gritty, violent at times, and feels more like Chuck Palahniuk than Anne Rice. Though I had not read Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns before writing Drinkers, I feel some similarities with how Miller twists a fantasy story into something deeper, maybe more cynical, and certainly more literary. [I think what you're trying to say is, My novel is literary fiction, like Batman.]


When Nodammo Ebonlocke’s afternoon tea is spoiled by a hero with a very big sword arriving in the Generic Little Village, she reacts as any morally ambiguous sorceress would. [She invites him to play sword in the stone.]


I have always been fascinated by the thought that all around us an unseen war rages over souls. [If it must be included at all, always put evidence that you are mentally unstable at the end of the query.]


In Alex's case, his father is human while his mother is of the Kenlor, magical woodland tribespeople considered savages by the humans (a la the European viewpoint of the Native Americans). [Also the European viewpoint of current Americans.]