Query Package Special Offer
Being a massive horror fan, and with my birthday and Christmas coming up in the next couple of months, October heralds the beginning of my favourite time of year. What better way to celebrate than with a special offer on query packages all through October?
A query package provides a content edit on the first 10,000 words of your manuscript, your synopsis, and your template query letter. This is the usual package agents and publishers ask for, so this package is perfect for those wanting to publish traditionally or starting to approach independent publishers with the novel or novella manuscripts. — and in October only you can get this for just £60!
This package is particularly useful for:
Receiving an industry specialist’s perspective on the opening of your story, and anything you might be able to tweak in that opening to make it more appealing to agents
If you’re having difficulty cutting down your synopsis to one page. There’s nothing I love better than making a concise synopsis!
Making sure you’ve covered all your bases and sold yourself well in your query letter
Having a quick and cheap perspective on whether your package is ready to send out into the world
Query packages can usually be returned within the week, so even if you’re on the verge of submitting, you can still fit one in quick for a check-over before entering the trenches. Querying is rarely a fun process, but it’s always better when you have extra cheerleaders behind you. Email info@vickybrewstereditor.com to book in today!
Where is Vicky this month?
In October, you can find me at two events.
11-13 October: FantasyCon, Chester
I’ll be moderating and speaking on panels on a variety of topics from The Mummy’s 25 year anniversary to the representation of women in horror, and also giving writing tips on using all of the senses. You can still pick up tickets for FantasyCon here.
28 October: Reproduction and Speculative Cultures Conference, Online
This is an online conference with an academic leaning but open to anyone. I’ll be giving a paper introducing my research project on asexuality in horror fiction. You can register for the conference here.
October Editing Tip: Nonbinary Characters
It’s great to see authors wanting to introduce nonbinary characters into their work, but it can sometimes be difficult to know how to introduce a new gender into your fiction. It can be tempting, especially in a first-person narrative, to go through the thought process of attributing someone as nonbinary, either by describing their androgyny or maybe uncertainty on the part of the narrator. If this is part of your story, or part of you narrating character’s development, that’s fine. But think about whether you would go through these narrative thought processes to attribute a cis male or female character. Chances are, you would simply start referring to the character as ‘he’ or ‘she’ — and you can do the same for nonbinary characters! It’s fine to just start using ‘they’ and move on. This approach is used by excellent authors such as emily m. danforth and Julia Armfield.
If you want to show your characters going through a process of being introduced to a nonbinary character, or want to make it clear to a reader who may not be familiar with nonbinary characters in books that this is what’s happening, it works better to address this in dialogue than in narrative. This allows nonbinary characters to speak for themselves about their gender, rather than centring the thought process and categorisation on a cis narrator. You could have the nonbinary character state their pronoun preferences as part of their introduction, as often happens in real life, have the character wearing a pronoun pin, or have it be part of common knowledge that the character is nonbinary. This technique has been used by authors such as Alice Bell and Naomi Alderman.
The golden rule is not to treat a nonbinary (or any queer person) like a puzzle to be solved. Remember that these characters, like any other, are just people living their lives.