I know a lot of folks are here because they’re querying or liked MTBMW, but if you’re here because you liked NO BETTER THAN BEASTS or SILK FIRE, and want updates on my SFF writing, please do comment and let me know!

LOS ANGELES - URGENT! I'm heartbroken that my friend and neighbor has only a few days to live. We must find a loving forever home for her 2 kitties, Kit (F/grey/white) & Caboodle (M/black). Both 3-4yrs old, total sweethearts. Please ask around and send anyone interested my way, thank you ❤️

[alt text from NASA] Earth sets at 6:41 p.m. EDT, April 6, 2026, over the Moon’s curved limb in this photo captured by the Artemis II crew during their journey around the far side of the Moon. Orientale basin is perched on the edge of the visible lunar surface. Hertzsprung Basin appears as two subtle concentric rings, which are interrupted by Vavilov, a younger crater superimposed over the older structure. The lines of indentations are secondary crater chains formed by ejecta from the massive impact that created Orientale. The dark portion of Earth is experiencing nighttime. On Earth’s day side, swirling clouds are visible over the Australia and Oceania region.

Because the Moon is tidally locked to the Earth, if you build your habitat on some plot of near-side regolith you can put the little Earth anywhere in the sky you want & it’ll stay there, lazily meandering around just a little as the Moon wobbles in its orbit.

A view of Earthset from #Artemis II.

👍🏻

This sounds really cool! I’d love to see it

FWIW, I don’t use AI to read submissions and never will.

yes

bad card, cutting it from my decks.

With all due respect, if you’re going to make a list of YA fantasy authors who support trans people, please make a list of *trans authors who write YA fantasy.* Times are tough for us RN, between book bans and the shrinking midlist. I love Pierce and Pratchett, but they don’t need your support RN

💙💙💙

Cover of the book NO BETTER THAN BEASTS

Reminder that I wrote a YA fantasy novel about a boy wizard who hooks up with a puppet boy while slowly transforming into an anthropomorphic fox (it’s also about labor unions and how cycles of abuse manifest in politics)

We don’t get the FULL plot in that first chapter, but we don’t need it. We get a snippet of story that gets us to trust the author’s skill and chops, and that leads into the bigger plot nicely.

The first chapter of Gideon the Ninth is a masterclass in how to get an agent to request your MS. It immediately gives you a witty, irreverent voice, a character, a dilemma, and a sense of plot

When I read queries these days, I’ve started reading the pages before the query letter. My first impression is always of the author’s craft. Not the workshops. Not the prior publications. The craft. That’s all you can control and it is still worth developing

Publishing is not fair. It can be incredibly unfair. But your skill as an author still matters.

And I get why it isn’t. Because there is low-quality work that is published and high-quality work that isn’t. And that sucks. There are agents and editors who reject work by marginalized authors and who sometimes lack the perspective to evaluate the merits of a work. And that sucks!

He appears to believe all books have an equal chance of getting published and the only way to improve your odds is to bribe industry folk to support you. The idea that writers need skills is mentioned nowhere.

This author goes on to attempt to calculate the odds of an agent reading a book as a function of money spent on conferences. But the odds of a book getting rep are linked to author skill and the market at the time of querying. You cannot apply any conclusions here to another book at another time

There is very much a pay to play aspect of writing. Money buys you time to develop your skills. But spending $4000 on a conference does not impress me. I do not care one way or another. What matters is the book.

Breadloaf sees more authors sign because the application process is very stringent. Your local conference sees fewer signings because it is easier to get in. You might find more math experts at MIT than a community college. That does not mean you must go to MIT to learn math.

“Cheaper conferences do exist, but it should surprise no one that they have worse odds—the view of acquisitions editors and literary agents is that writers unwilling to shell out for the most expensive venues are not serious enough about their work to merit real attention.”

This is not true.

A conference is a good chance to TALK with agents and professionals about how to improve your skills. This is helpful. But you should not go into one thinking that paying $600 to chat with an agent for a bit will up your odds of representation. It’s career development.

Conferences do not up your chances. Now, the writers who go to conferences tend to have more time and resources to devote to writing, which does up your chances. But it’s a correlation, not causation. I have signed many more clients from my inbox than from a conference.

As for MFAs guaranteeing you an agent—my sophomore year creative writing teacher was an MFA student who got referrals to big name agents from all his professors. To the best of my knowledge, he has never published with a major publisher. A referral is NOT a guarantee of representation.

It’s a reality of the business that having an established platform helps. BUT. There are a limited number of these authors looking for agents, especially in SFF. Agents NEED clients from the inbox.

I rarely sign clients off referrals. Most of my clients come from the query inbox. A few of them are authors I’ve reached out to directly who have established platforms.

Most resources on writing SFF focus on worldbuilding and character development. Unfortunately, these skills alone do not create publishable work. The best way to improve your odds is to develop your technical skills. This will put you in the category of authors who get a high request rate.

The vast majority of writers query before they are ready. Which is fine, I don’t hold it against anyone! But even in genre fiction, there is a level of technical mastery required to write professionally. And I see so many writers who have great ideas but lack the skill level to bring them to life.

Now, I get thousands of queries a year and sign 3-4 clients. Odds-wise, that’s grim. But the vast majority of books I reject are simply not good enough, on a technical level, to be published. I get maybe 80-100 queries a year that are truly *there*

Oh it’s THIS guy again. Let’s break down some of the false claims.

“Literary agents receive thousands of query letters per month, sign less than a dozen clients per year, and fill 90 percent of their slots through referrals, so we’re talking about sub-0.01% chances here.”