What First Page sessions are like

Kristin Nelson posted about a first pages session she did with Kate Testerman (both are agents, and Kate even came to one of our conferences).

If you're considering a First Pages session at our upcoming conference, read this so you know what to expect.

An excerpt:

-out of the 20 we read, Kate and I would have asked for sample pages from just 1 of the projects read. That’s actually pretty good! I have done this workshop where I wouldn’t have asked for any. And what was really interesting is that everyone in the room knew it while it was being read. The audience’s attention was caught and engaged. You could tell by the reaction. People leaned forward in their chairs a little while listening. They reacted when it was funny. People just paid closer attention. So the workshop attendees sensed it just as we did. Fascinating. You folks know more than you think you do.

I've been to a bunch of first-pages sessions, and think some of these would go better for writers if we were sure to read our pages aloud to a critique group. Not to friends. Not to family. But to people who are telling us whether we're ready yet to submit. You really can hear when the writing rises off the page (just as you can hear the unintended comedy of over-written sentences and misplaced modifiers, which is super-painful).

What's a Mary Sue?

Kate Testerman at KT Literary has the scoop:

I had several questions on my live blog yesterday about Mary Sues. Karen asked, “What lets you know a character is a Mary Sue from the query or the sample pages?” And Allreb added, “I’d also be really curious to know what you consider a Mary Sue character, or how a character gets to be so Mary Sue you’re turned off by her.” (And for Stina, a photo of a Mary Jane shoe, just for comparison!)

According to Wikipedia,

A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers. Perhaps the single underlying feature of all characters described as “Mary Sues” is that they are too ostentatious for the audience’s taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly. The author may seem to push how exceptional and wonderful the “Mary Sue” character is on his or her audience, sometimes leading the audience to dislike or even resent the character fairly quickly; such a character could be described as an “author’s pet”.

Read the rest.

Good news for Karen Hamilton

Here's the power of persistence in action. Karen Hamilton has some good news to announce:

I’ve been a member of SCBWI for several years and I’m thrilled to announce that I just sold my debut novel! Here’s the Publisher's Marketplace blurb:

Kiki Hamilton's THE FAERIE RING, an urban fantasy set in Victorian London, in which a streetwise pickpocket steals a ring from Buckingham Palace, then has to try to return it in order to keep a peace treaty between the British and Faerie courts, to Susan Chang at Tor, in a nice deal, by Kate Schafer Testerman at kt literary (World English). kate@ktliterary.com

I belong to SCBWI as Karen Hamilton, but I’m publishing under Kiki Hamilton.