Introducing the newest LTWF contributor…Susan Dennard!

So, in case you missed the chat last night, we have a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!

After many weeks of deliberating, we’re beyond thrilled to welcome Susan Dennard to our ranks! We were blown away by Susan from the moment we read her application–she’s funny, smart, and all-around awesome. From her first email, she gelled with us so well that it actually was a bit of a shock! Not to mention she lives in Germany and can see a freaking CASTLE from her window (we all died of jealousy when we heard that). Susan also recently signed with Sara Kendall at Nancy Coffey Literary & Media (after only querying for two weeks)!

We don’t want to hog her intro post, so we’ll end this here, but we just wanted to extend a HUGE welcome to Susan! We can’t wait for you guys to get to know her, too!

-The LTWF Team

 

 

 

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by Susan Dennard

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I am so excited to be writing this intro I have to force myself to avoid all-caps, italics, and clapping with giddy joy.

My hands tremble as I type.

I’m Susan. I’m a 26-year-old American living in Germany. I have the luxury of writing full-time, eating wiener schnitzel to my heart’s content, and listening to alpine yodeling on the radio (no joke).

I’ve been writing since I was a kid, and though I went to college to study creative writing, I foolishly dove into marine biology and statistics as majors. Then I went to the Arctic to do my M.Sc. research. Yeah, I lived in a tent on the sea ice while catching sharks and halibut (there’s actually a Dirty Jobs episode about our research!).  Then I even more foolishly fell in love with a Frenchman, got married, and moved to Germany last year. That move prompted me to hunker down and learn to Write For Real.

Many nibbled-nails, revised drafts, and beta readers later, I finalized my young adult steampunk novel, The Spirit-Hunters. I sent it out to agents’ inboxes a few weeks ago, and I was lucky enough to garner a lot of interest in a short amount of time. Two weeks later, I had several offers of representation, and just last weekend, I SIGNED WITH NANCY COFFEY LITERARY! (Sorry about the all-caps – the excitement just couldn’t be contained.)

The Spirit-Hunters is about Eleanor, a high-society 16-year-old in 1876 Philadelphia, who — to save her brother from a necromancer — must join forces with a rag-tag spirit-hunting team.  Now, Eleanor has to kick undead butt and deal with her growing attraction to the team’s exasperating but gorgeous inventor.  You can learn more about it here.

While I’m polishing Eleanor’s story for submissions, I’ll also be NaNoWriMo-ing (don’t you love how I just created a verb?) with a YA sci-fi.  Screechers tells the tale of Echo, a 17-year-old on death row who is the only survivor after “screechers” — government created monsters — attack her outpost.  But when Echo sets out to warn the other outposts of impending doom, the government and the screechers set out to kill her.

I look forward to getting to know the other ladies of LTWF, and more importantly, all the readers! It’s a pleasure to “meet” you, and if you ever have questions about writing, living in Germany, or fish (I am still a marine biologist, after all), don’t hesitate to ask.  I’ve been following LTWF for a while — absorbing their words of wisdom, words of comfort, and words of AWESOME.  I can’t wait to give back in the same way.

One final thing before I go: I’m having a Giant Giveaway Extravaganza on my blog! This entire week, I’m giving out free stuff for readers and writers alike. It’s to celebrate signing with NCLit, to celebrate my introduction to LTWF, and to help everyone prepare for NaNoWriMo.

As we say here in Deutschland, auf Wiedersehen!

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Susan Dennard is a writer, reader, lover of animals, and eater of cookies. She recently signed with Sara Kendall of NCLit. You can learn more about her writing process, crazy life-thoughts, and crippling cookie-addiction on her blog or twitter.

Introducing the Newest LTWF Contributor, Vee

                                                    

Hey everyone!

I’m super excited to be here! Hopefully I can contribute something worthwhile to this already wonderful community.

My name is Vahini Naidoo, but everyone calls me Vee. I’m seventeen years old and I’m from Sydney, Australia. I’m currently in my final year of high school – only a month to go till graduation, woot! – and after that I plan to pursue something at University, hopefully somewhat writing related. My ultimate goal for life beyond University is to live in a castle. I also have some plans for world domination. Standard stuff, you know.

I’ve been writing since forever. I think I wrote my first novel at ten, and I wrote really weird songs about the correlation between Wingdings and the meaning of life for my never-got-off-the-ground band when I was thirteen. However, I’ve only been writing seriously for the past two years after being kick started by the brilliant thing that is NaNoWriMo (anyone out there doing it this year?). At first, I posted my unrevised NaNo attempts on Fictionpress without any intent of getting them published, however as time went on I found that I wanted to seek publication.

I queried for a long time before receiving three offers of representation this April. I decided to sign with my awesomesauce agent Ammi-Joan Paquette of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency. Two of my books – THE COLORS OF SKY, a contemporary YA about one girl’s mission to find Heaven on Earth and THE GNOME IS WATCHING, about a girl who repeatedly re-enacts her best friend’s suicide in order to find out why her friend did it, with tragic results (and yes there actually is a garden gnome in it!) – are on submission to editors. I’m currently working on an untitled manuscript about locker wars and etch-a-sketch mysteries, which is pretty fun.

I look forward to contributing to the blog and getting to know you readers!

~~~~

Vahini Naidoo is a high schooler who eats instant noodles like she’s already in college. She writes contemporary YA novels and is represented by Ammi-Joan Paquette at the Erin Murphy Literary Agency. You can find her over at her blog.

The Latest in LTWF Contributors!

Hola, compadres! I’ve been so excited to write this post that I may or may not have started (and restarted) it about five times. I’m over-the-moon excited to be the latest LTWF contributor! I’ve been talking to the ladies here for a while, and really respect what they do on this blog. Not to mention, they’re all incredible people. So getting to join them (and you!) here is kind of surreal. And awesome.

Since I’m supposed to be introducing myself, I guess I should probably do that. So! In case you didn’t already know, my name is Sammy Bina, I’m 22, and a fifth year senior majoring in Creative Writing. I grew up in Wisconsin, but I’ve also lived in Minnesota, Washington D.C., and Ireland. I’ll hopefully be moving to New York next fall!

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’ve been writing since… Well, probably since I could pick up a pen. I’m proud to admit that my first full-length story was a Harry Potter fanfic (which I’ve sadly lost), closely followed by a string of La Femme Nikita fanfic (if you remember that show, you get brownie points). It wasn’t until high school that I really started to come up with my own ideas. Oddly enough, it was my favorite math teacher who encouraged me to write (probably because I was doing so poorly in his class). And the rest is history.

I finished my first full-length novel my freshman year of college. I’ve finished a few other novels since then, but the one I’m currently querying is my senior thesis, an adult dystopian romance called THE AGE OF NEVER GROWING OLD. I’m also really excited about my most recent project, a YA paranormal romance entitled SCARRED.

Right now I’m currently living in D.C. and interning at the Elaine P. English literary agency. I’m also the co-founder of the livejournal group Plagiarism Haven, which came about after a bunch of fellow FP writers had their work stolen. Back in Wisconsin, I’m a member of our university’s literary journal, The Madison Review, and a local magazine we put out called Souvenirs. I’ve also interned at the University of Wisconsin Press. As a writer, it’s been really great to see the other side of things, and my current internship has really solidified my goal to one day become an agent. There’s just something about publishing that I love! I can’t put my finger on it, probably because there are too many things I could say.

But I can say that I’m SO excited to be here!

Love,
Sammy

Introducing Kat, the Newest LTWF Contributor

Hello everyone! Isn’t it funny? I’ve been so fired up about introducing myself as the newest member of Let The Words Flow, but as the countdown of days dwindled to three, two, one, I suddenly started putting off writing this. I guess I’m just so excited I don’t know what to say!

My name is Kat Zhang, and I’m a nineteen-year-old English major with a concentration in Creative Writing. I also write for my college newspaper and perform as a Spoken Word poet both on and off campus. I love to draw (especially my vision of characters in books!) and am a staunch supporter of the Oxford comma.

As far as professional writing goes, I’m gearing up to query HYBRID, a YA novel about a world where everyone is born with two souls, both with control of the body. One of these souls (the recessive) is supposed to fade by the age of four or five. HYBRID is the story of Eva, a recessive who, at fifteen, discovers she may have the chance to move her body once more.

I’m also about 10,000 words into THE FINEST OF LINES, which I have excerpts of on my blog. Unfortunately, I no longer post on Fictionpress, though I still browse through from time to time in search of good stories.

Let The Words Flow has been such a wonderful resource for me—not only because of the articles, but also because of the community. I can’t stress enough how much I love discussing stories, writing, and craft. So please, feel free to contact me through Livejournal, Twitter, Blogspot—anything. I can’t wait to begin contributing!

~~~

Kat Zhang is an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing. She spends most of her free time either getting HYBRID in shape for querying or pounding out the first draft of THE FINEST OF LINES. Both are YA novels. You can read about her writing process and thoughts at her blog.

Introducing Cristina, the Newest LTWF Contributor

by Cristina Rose

~~~

Hi everyone!

I’m so thrilled to be introducing myself to you all as the new LTWF member. My name is Cristina Rose Guarino (you’ll mostly see me going by just “Cristina Rose”), and I’m currently finishing up my second year of college as an English major. I’ve lived in NYC all my life and plan on staying here indefinitely, though I hope to get quite a bit of traveling done.

I guess you can say I’ve been writing my entire life, from short “picture books” as a child to anime fanfiction as a teen to short stories and poems as a young adult. Finally, in 2008, I wrote my first and currently only novel JADE for NaNoWriMo, which may or may not be renamed as I continue to edit it. It’s an adult fantasy novel set in Manhattan about a young woman named Jade who is struggling with a sex addiction that’s taking over her life. While scrambling to conquer her problem, she discovers her roots in a fantastical history of the human race that most are unaware of, and must deal with the possibility that the addiction is in her blood. The novel follows her struggles as she learns about her ancestor and the elusive cure for her addiction, which eventually becomes a fight for her life against her ancestor’s enemies. There isn’t any graphic sex in the novel, believe it or not, so the main character’s age (24) is the main factor separating it from YA.

The novel needs a LOT of work before I start querying agents (and so does the summary, I’m not happy with it at all!), but I am serious about getting it published. I will be working on it this summer, as well as researching material for my next novel, which will be set in Colonial America.

I am currently interning at the Queens Gazette newspaper here in Queens, NY, as a reporter. I am also trying to help a friend of mine revive our school’s Literary Journal to give the creative writers a voice on campus. In the future, I hope to make my way into the publishing industry, preferably as a Literary Agent.

I look forward to getting to know all of you!

~~~

Cristina is interning at a local newspaper, where she hopes to earn a fixed position soon. She is working her way through her second semester as a college sophomore and plans to revise her novel JADE this summer. You can read her blog here and follow her twitter.

Introducing Julie, the Newest LTWF Contributor

Hello!

I’m honored to introduce myself as the newest member of Let the Words Flow, and I hope my presence here will add to what is already an awesome community of writers.

My name is Julie Eshbaugh, and I’m forty (something) years old.  Having grown up outside of Philadelphia, I spent my first few years after high school traveling widely and living in places as varied as Provo, Utah; Paris, France; and New York City.  When I finally settled down back home in Philadelphia, I graduated summa cum laude from Rider University.

I’ve written two-and-a-half novels.  The first was written when I was thirty and is an unpublished legal thriller.  I came close to landing representation for that manuscript, but I just didn’t love it the way an author needs to love their work in order to take it all the way.  After that first novel, I focused my artistic energies on filmmaking and eventually online video.  I made two short films (the second of which showed at film festivals around the country) and then spent several years producing an online video series about a teenage boy.  That series, “Dylan’s Couch,” achieved a respectable amount of success and received several honors from the Webbie Awards.

A few chapters of my unfinished second novel RUNNING TO STAND STILL are posted on Fiction Press.  It’s an ‘edgy’ YA about a young woman’s descent into drug addiction in NYC’s East Village of the 1980s.  I began that novel in 2008 but found it too emotionally draining to finish at the time, although it’s close to complete.  I hope to return to that novel in the future.

My third novel is the one that got me my agent.  Currently untitled, the manuscript managed to get me two offers of representation, and I ultimately decided to sign with Natalie Fischer of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.  Natalie is fantastic; she has offered me tremendous support and advice in revising the manuscript.

I’m looking forward to getting to know all of the wonderful LTWF readers!

~~~

Julie is currently working on revisions with her agent and brainstorming ideas for future projects.

New LTWF Contributor

Hello!

They’re actually letting me post so I guess this means the secret initiation rituals are over. I’m honored to be joining the lovely and accomplished group of ladies here at Let the Words Flow. I am Jenn Fitzgerald and I’m twenty-two years old. I grew up in suburban Maryland and went to college in Virginia where I majored in anthropology. Nobody ever knows what anthropology means but that’s okay because I’m actually an archaeologist. I’m planning on entering a Ph.D program in archaeology in Boston this fall. Hopefully it won’t consume so much of my life that it interferes with my writing. I’m hoping there’s a way I can balance both. We’ll see how that goes.

Writing is my hobby and my addiction when it’s not part of my job. I’ve been writing in my spare time since I was in middle school, in snatched instants when an idea struck or late into the night when scenes wove together and demanded to be recorded. The first story I ever finished had vampires and was written in second person. Yes, it is as cringe worthy as you think. I spent several years writing mostly fanfiction and improving as a writer before I went back to working on original projects.

I started posting on fictionpress during college because I wanted to share my stories and because I wanted feedback on my writing ability. I also needed the feedback to motivate me to finish one thing instead of jumping from beginning to beginning and story to story. I can almost never work on only one thing at a time but I’ve been handling this by writing short stories attached to my main WIP on Fictionpress. I am also still updating and posting new stories there.

PRISCILLA THE EVIL is the reason I’m here. It’s the first book-length project I’ve finished since those silly vampires and I thought it was worth a shot trying to get it published. It’s about a girl named Priscilla who gets fed up with her life and decides that she’s going to be powerful and respected. Naturally, the only way to do this is by being evil. So, she declares herself an evil queen and sets out to acquire all the standard things evil people need, like a barbarian army, an evil dragon and dark castle. I’ve received a request for a full from one agent. Now I’m waiting to hear back from her and working on a synopsis for other agencies’ submissions.

~~~

Currently Reading: The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky

Making It Official: New LTWF Contributor!

Hi everyone!

As if it wasn’t obvious enough, what with my picture and bio already having been in the contributor page for a couple of weeks now, we just wanted to make it official: I’m Vanessa Di Gregorio, the new LTWF contributor! I am super excited to be a part of this group of amazing and talented writers, and I hope my experiences on the other side of publishing prove to be useful!

So, I suppose I should tell you a little bit about myself. I apologize in advance if you already know most of this, but bear with me!

I’m twenty-three years old, and the third member of LTWF living in Toronto, Canada. Currently, I have an English Literature degree, and am now enrolled in a Publishing Program. I worked for 5 years at a book wholesaler, selling books to schools and libraries; and it was there that I realized I wanted a career in this industry. Children’s and YA books are my favorites, be they graphic novels, picture books, non-fiction, fiction – I love it all. While I’m not completely sure what I want to be, I do know that I am loving my current intern position at a literary agency called The Rights Factory; where I edit manuscripts, write proposals, read queries/partials/full manuscripts, write rejections, and do some design work (create party invitations, a revised logo, email signatures, etc). I love editing manuscripts, so a career as an editor or agent is something I will probably pursue in the near-future.

I started out writing when I was 12, scribbling over pieces of lined paper. To my great dismay, I still have pages and pages of this as proof, sitting in the bottom of a drawer somewhere in my room (collecting dust, of course). I later moved to fanfiction.net, where I began writing; and after a few years, I then moved onto Fiction Press, although by this point in time, I was writing rather sporadically. Eventually, I decided to leave; so I took my FP account down.

It wasn’t until a year ago that I began to write again (and then, I only wrote a prologue and a couple of chapters). The files were somehow deleted, and it took me quite a few months before I could get over my heartbreak and attempt a rewrite. Currently untitled, it is a YA fantasy set in another world revolving around a young woman named Danae, and her journey into a realm she has only ever read about. A lover of stories and curious by nature, Danae takes a path most of her people do not; she ends up leaving her sheltered life amongst her people to explore new lands, find a lost friend, and discover the truth.

Now, with an internship, a part-time job, and school, I have very little time for writing (let alone for any of my other numerous hobbies, such as drawing, painting, or playing excessive amounts of video games). But at least I write when I can! At this point in time, though, I am happy with editing other people’s manuscripts and helping their work get published. Though I would one day like to be published myself, my main priority is helping other writers with their work. Oh, and trying to land myself a real job. While planning my wedding.

Nice to (officially) be a part of the group!

Vanessa

~

Currently reading: Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Currently playing: Starcraft 2 beta

And the new LTWF contributor is…

Why, hello there!

I’m Biljana Likic, the brand-new LTWF contributor! I’m extremely excited to be part of this great group of writers for both the learning experience and the community. This is an awesome place for both the readers and writers to become more familiar with the ropes of publishing and seek writing advice. Look out for my first official article coming out on Wednesday, February 24^th, on the topic of “Finding Love”.

And now for some more about myself!

I live in Toronto, Canada, I’m 18 years old at the moment, and I’m finishing up my last year of high school. After that, I’m planning on going to university for English and Medieval Studies. And after that, I’m totally going to rock the nation with novels. Hopefully.

The novel I’m working on right now is called Time is a Funny Thing, creatively named after the original first sentence when I started it in 2007. I never even dreamed that I would finish it, let alone be on revisions. I only just became comfortable with calling it a “novel” in the past few months. Before that, it was just a “story.” Now, my goal is to get it published.

I’ve always been interested in writing, and I still have the handwritten drafts of stories I wrote for English class in elementary school. They’re embarrassingly childish now, but they’re a testament to how much time it took me to realize this as my dream. Writing wasn’t always my first choice. Since being in a fun little production of Snow White in Grade 1 (I played the wicked witch, when she was pretty, of course,) I’d always wanted to be an actress. It was last year that I realized that while I’d always love the stage, I didn’t like the politics. I would rather be judged on my intellect through a query letter than my looks through an audition. Another part of my reasoning was that if acting was essentially just my lying about who I am, and if I was good at it, then writing should be a breeze. After all, where do lies come from but from the imagination? The final kick came from the epiphany that my writing is the only thing that I’ve never needed any kind of outside motivation for. It’s always for myself. I hope I never lose that.

And…that’s pretty much all I have to say! You can find Time is a Funny Thing under B. Likic on FictionPress. It’s about how the lives of three girls get completely entangled, while two opposing sides battle it out for the discovery of eternal life. You will hopefully find it quite humorous. Also, you can visit my blog here.

Thanks for reading!

Biljana Likic

Hey Everyone!

Hi everyone!

I’m Sarah J. Maas, or S. J. Maas (creative, I know), if you want to go by my FictionPress name. First of all, let me just say how EXCITED I am to get Let the Words Flow off the ground! This site has been in the works for some time now, and I’m absolutely thrilled to be writing my very first post to you all!

Since I removed Queen of Glass from FictionPress, I’ve been super busy writing all sorts of new projects. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I took QoG off FictionPress in December of 2008, after six years of posting its (very) rough draft for an audience of thousands. Prior to that, I’d spent a year and a half rewriting and polishing the QoG series in anticipation of querying agents. After many rounds of revisions and countless hours of worrying, I researched agents, wrote my query letter (which itself was a huge ordeal), and queried sixteen agents in December of 2008.

Of the sixteen agents I queried, I received a lot of requests for partials and fulls. Even though agents were interested, just one agent offered representation. To my delight, she was one of my top choices! I practically hit the ceiling when she called to offer representation! I signed with her in January of 2009, but for the complete story of what happened next, check out my bio on the “Contributors” page!

Since completing Queen of Glass, I’ve written several other series. A Faraway Land, a novel that retells the legends surrounding the Fairy Godmother figure, started off as my senior thesis in college, and I continued (and completed) it after graduation (Side note, I queried AFL before QoG and received a lot of requests for the full—but no offers).

After AFL, I wrote Hades, a YA fantasy duology set in an alternate, ancient Graeco-Roman world. From October of 2008 to March of 2009, I wrote the two books that make up the Hades series. It was my first attempt at writing in first person, and remains one of my favorite projects. For more information, check out the synopsis I posted on my blog.

Once I finished Hades, I jumped into writing A Court of Thorns and Roses, a YA fantasy trilogy that retells and combines the legends of “Beauty and the Beast,” “Tam-Lin,” and “East of the Sun, West of the Moon.” I wrote the entire trilogy from April 2009 to September 2009—and plan to begin revising it sometime in the near future.

To keep the anxiety of submissions off my mind, three weeks ago, I began writing my current WIP. Info about it is top-secret right now, but I’m 39k words into the novel, and loving it so far! I look forward to sharing more updates with you all!

So, that’s about it—I try to write at least 1,000 words every day (Monday-Friday, that is!), and when I’m not writing, I’m usually swapping manuscripts with my incredible critique partners. Though I grew up in NYC, I currently live with my fiance in Los Angeles, California, where I take full advantage of the perfect weather and awesome beaches.

Great to meet you guys!

Sarah J. Maas

Currently Reading: The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip