Agent Monday: The “Your book’s too quiet” Rejection

Happy hot and steamy Agent Monday, everyone! Ever received the following rejection and wonder what it might mean?: “I have to pass because I found your book too quiet.” Too quiet? What’s that mean? And how do you get it to make some noise? Let’s take a look… (Thanks again to client Caroline Noonan and her writer’s group for this great post idea!)

To me, too quiet means that while the book may be written in a lovely manner and the manuscript clean and the plot interesting, overall the book lacks characteristics that would make it stand out in the commercial marketplace.

Remember, an agent’s job is to sell your book to commercial publishers, and an editor’s job is to purchase books that will become stand outs on the shelf and sell.

So what can you do if your book is consistently rejected as “too quiet?” Well, first of all look hard at the type of book you are writing – what distinguishes that sort of book? Have you elevated those elements in your manuscript?

For example, if you are writing a literary novel, is your language and imagery more than adequate? Does it stand out? Are the observations and revelations unique and transforming?

If you are writing for the YA market, is your book different from what’s already out there? Can you come up with a one-liner about the book that’ll get everyone’s attention because your story has a unique approach? Is there a hook that’ll make it stand out – and if so, have you put that unique part of your story front and center in your plotting?

If you are writing for the thriller audience, is your story truly gripping, your plotting original and does your character command the page?

And if you are writing romance, does your hero truly break your heart and does the passion sizzle?

In the historical realm, are the characters riveting and are we fully caught up not only in the lovely and accurate details of the time but also the true drama and personalities and stakes you present?

What are your strengths as a writer? Characterization? Scenery? Plotting? Imagery?  Have you heightened these so they are truly stand out?

Another thing to look at is how you are labeling and targeting your manuscript submissions. If you are calling your book a thriller but it’s really a cerebral mystery, you’ll be missing the mark. If you are directing your submissions to a commercial press, when your book is really a lovely lyrical literary novel, then your piece won’t be judged within the context that you want it to.

So next time you get a “too quiet” comment in a rejection, give your manuscript a hard look. Make sure you’ve really made its most important elements unique and stand out fab, and that you are labeling it correctly.  Then send it back out there and go make some noise!

*Marie is an Associate Agent at The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency in New York City. To keep up with all her Agent Monday posts, subscribe to her site by clicking on the Follow link located on her page on the upper left margin.

DRAWN is a “Top Picks” Novel!

Happy spring, everyone!  Flowers are bursting out everywhere (and weeds too), and nothing beats being able to take a walk AFTER dinner and have it still be light out.  Love this.

SO busy here, what with all the writing, and visiting conferences, plus doing literary agent stuff like reading queries, pitching books to editors, etc.  All is SO exciting, but most exciting are some of the recent reviews I’ve been getting for my novels.  Before too much time sweeps by too quickly, I wanted to take a moment to share them with you all…

I’m seriously thrilled that my new paranormal novel DRAWN has been selected as a Night Owl Top Pick!  The reviewer said such amazing things, things I only thought my parents would say (if you know what I mean).  The review raved, “This is a thoroughly enchanting novel. The characters are beautifully written, and the story is witty, charming, and an utter delight to read. I could not put it down. This is a fantastic romantic and tender story that will continue to enchant readers for years to come.”  Okay, I admit I’m blushing a little… For the complete review, you can go here.

Nearly all reviews for DRAWN have been positive, which is so gratifying.  When you spend over 2 years writing a book, hearing readers say it was all worth it means more than I can say.  I was pretty disappointed to receive an only 3 star review, therefore, from Romantic Times Magazine this past week.  Blah. Why am I sharing this with you? Because I think it’s important for folks to know that writer’s lives have ups and downs and that it’s okay. We understand that one book isn’t for everyone.  Still, it does sting a little when it feels like you’ve gotten the reviewer who doesn’t “get” what you’re doing.  And when you’ve paid big bucks (well, big bucks for me) to have an ad in that magazine when the review pops up. Double blah.  Still (I note with a raise of an eyebrow), that review site also allows for readers to post their own review of DRAWN right there on the page.  So if you could add your own perspective on that site by visiting here, it would mean a ton.

For that matter, if you enjoyed DRAWN, you can really make a huge difference in supporting this title by simply posting your review of it on its Goodreads page here, or adding your review on its Amazon page here (did you know that DRAWN is currently ranked #87 in its category? Huzzah!) or on its Barnes and Noble page here.  Even clicking “like” on the Amazon page and agreeing with the book’s tags helps other possible book buyers to see it. (Don’t ask me how it does…it’s all very mysterious.)  You can do this sort of thing for any book you fall in love with, and truly help that author.  (Why do I feel like saying “Clap if you believe in fairies”?  Not sure!) My heartfelt thanks to anyone who goes the extra mile.  You are an author’s rock star!

Okay, back to the positive stuff now…  Also just a few days ago, I got this phenomenal review for DRAWN from Clean Romance Reviews: “The characters are all wonderful, filling in two worlds with real people and making you feel like you’re there. The main romance is heartrendingly sweet and will curl your toes.”  

There.  I’m feeling better now.

By mentioning this review, I’m jumping the gun a little here, since the review won’t officially post until 3/28, but consider this a heads up, and check out this great romance review site in the meantime!  After the site reviewer contacted me with the contents of the review, she wanted to know if I’d run a giveaway on her site…my response? HECK YEAH!  There will be a DRAWN giveaway on Clean Romance Reviews which will run April 19-27th, so check back there for a chance to win.

And to wrap this up on another cheery note… My other novel, the contemporary YA Over My Head, has some great news of its own.  This book recently cracked the top 10 in its category on Amazon twice in the past few weeks!  I’m over the moon about this (or, perhaps, over my head?).  And it may have something to do with a really insightful review posted by highly respected book blogger Stephanie Su.  On her site StephSuReads, she says: “The YA world very clearly needs more books like OVER MY HEAD, where the main character is of mixed race, culture is an important part of the story, but the story itself is not about accepting one’s culture or battling people’s ignorance of your culturally different family…Marie Lamba gets numerous kudos for portraying the Jumnal family in such an empathic and rich way…younger readers will most likely find a bit of themselves, their frustrations and their desires, in Sang, and cheer this promising young lady on.”  She’s a discerning reader and a serious critic, and I appreciate her thoughtful comments and perspective about Over My Head.  To see the full review, and add your own thoughts to the conversation, you can go here.

That’s it for now on the book front.  Now get outside everyone and enjoy the flowers, deeply inhale that springtime air, and get some sunshine on your face!

Happy reads,

Marie

Book Review: A Human Element by Donna Galanti

I just finished reading a great paranormal suspense novel, A Human Element by Donna Galanti (Echelon Press), and found it to be a page-turner filled with fascinating twists and turns!

Galanti’s debut novel features Laura Armstrong, an endearing heroine with a mysterious past, a big heart and a future filled with dread and peril.  Although gifted with unusual skills, including mind-reading and healing ability, she is forced to endure having dear friends and her adoptive family members murdered one by one. Galanti’s skill at building character and making us care about Laura and those she loves, makes these deaths particularly painful. When we discover the killings aren’t random, and that a savage killer haunts Laura’s dreams, tormenting her with the promise that she is next, the reader becomes completely invested in this fight to the death.

There is much more going on in this clever novel than death and destruction and evil.  And a crashed meteorite, a government science experiment gone wrong, combined with a dying planet blend together to really amp up the stakes.

Add to the mix the wonderful character of Ben Fieldstone.  Here’s a boy who lost his family the night the meteorite struck, a boy who grows into a troubled and lonely man, and whose own personal demons lead him to Laura, and emotional salvation and love.  But first they must face the monster who hunts Laura. The last third of the novel is a race to the finish, and I was glued to the pages, hoping the characters I’d grown to love would finally find the peace they deserved.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.  Galanti’s debut is a thrilling ride full of believable characters, a terrifying villain, an epic battle for survival, and a love worth killing for.  Highly recommended!

*Want to know more about this book and author?  I’m happy to be part of  Donna Galanti’s A Human Element Blog Tour which will be making a stop here March 27!  So keep your eyes peeled for her guest post.

Clean Romance Reviews Loves OVER MY HEAD

Okay, I know its cold outside right now.  But for a moment, let’s go back to summertime. Glittering swimming pools. Steamy summer love…

Today over at the great book site Clean Romance Reviews, they’ve just posted a steamy hot review of my summery YA novel OVER MY HEAD.  This is the novel about Sang who falls for college-aged lifeguard who is either the love of her life or a player out to break her heart.

The reveiwer over at Clean Romance Reviews said, “Rarely have I encountered an author skilled enough to really get inside and sixteen-year-old mind and pull the reader along with them.”  And she went on to call my novel, “full of fun characters and twists.”

Doing the happy dance over this review (and maybe even the twist?).  For the full review, click here, and be sure to check out Clean Romance Reviews. It’s a cool site.

Stay warm, all!

Marie

 

New Year – And First Review!

Happy New Year to everyone!  I hope 2012 is filled with laughter and love and triumph for each of you.

It’s been an exciting start here, what with the flurry of getting ready to launch my new paranormal Drawn.  And last night I found out that this novel just got its very first review.  As the little girl in the picture says, WOOOOOOT!

At the Stories. Read’em. Write’em. blog, author Stephanie Theban said (among other really REALLY nice things): “I really enjoyed this story. It has everything. Mystery, romance, adventure, and just enough of the paranormal…The pacing is terrific, and kept me turning the page…Readers should look forward to the arrival of Drawn.”

Yes!

You can check out the full review by clicking here.

And you can visit Stephanie’s blog on January 18th when it’s stop #2 on my Drawn Blog Ghost Tour. On that date, Stephanie will be running an interview with me, asking me some great questions about the future and about the past too.

I’m so looking forward to the blog tour, and to the VERY SOON release of Drawn.  I’ll have all the gory details for you soon.  I promise!

Until then, keep warm, eat chocolate, and don’t forget to laugh.

Enjoy the New Year!

 

OVER MY HEAD’s Latest Review!

I just got back home from a four-day visit to Florida for a family wedding, feeling a little tired and a bit overfed, when I opened an email that really perked me up…

Seems that Australian book blogger Agrippina Legit has just posted a review of my YA novel Over My Head. As with any review posting, I found myself holding my breath when I first gave it a read. But I quickly found myself grinning!

The review starts with this:

“Although Over My Head is really a sequel to Marie Lamba’s What I Meant (Random House), it reads perfectly as a stand alone novel… It’s an entertaining contemporary YA offering, which has a generally light tone but nonetheless manages to deal with some very big issues in a particularly sensitive manner.”

And the blogger’s review ends with this:

“Over My Head is a strong contemporary offering, with an interesting, multi-layered plot and a likeable cast of characters. Marie Lamba deals with cultural conflicts with warmth and sympathy, while accurately representing young love, with all its accompanying mistakes and embarrassments. A solid read.”

So great!

If you want to read her complete in-depth review, you can visit the book blog review by clicking here.

Hope you’ll check out this review, share it with others, and, of course, check out Over My Head.

Happy reading,
Marie

Book Review: Navajos Wear Nikes

I just finished Navajos Wear Nikes  by Jim Kistofic (University of New Mexico Press) and I have the urge to start it again, it was that good. This is a memoir of a young boy who is transplanted from an ordinary life in Pittsburgh to an extraordinary life in the heart of a Navajo reservation.

You know a book is something special when you think about getting back to reading the next chapter during most of your busy day, and when you stay up late into the night to read just one more word. Kristofic takes you into a world that feels unvarnished.

He’s an outsider, a newcomer to the reservation as a young child, as are we who know nothing of this world. With the author, we are initiated into the foreign and the familiar. We wince with the pain of brutality, ache with his sorrows, and always throughout it all there is laughter. This is a place where the land shapes life, where bullying is all a part of making you a “Tough Noodle” and where an ancient culture blends in surprising ways with the modern world.  It’s revealing, enlightening and at times downright hysterical.

As we laugh at the narrator’s keen observations and at the original pranks that only kids on the reservation could possibly think of, we feel ourselves starting to fit in and understand.

Kristofic is a wise and witty narrator and I recommend this amazing memoir to anyone who is looking for a great read, for entertainment, and for words that will take them where they have never gone before. Read it for fun, include it in classrooms and libraries, and share it like a gift with others.

Truly an outstanding experience!

Book Review: The Art of Saying Goodbye

“Odd, how in the afterglow of someone else’s life, your own looks so much brighter.”

This line from Ellyn Bache’s new novel The Art of Saying Goodbye (William Morrow, 2011), gives you a sense of the glowing feel you will gather from this artful novel.

In the novel, golden girl Paisley suddenly learns she has a late stage cancer. It is unthinkable, and throughout the course of the novel, we see the women who know Paisley re-examining their own lives, revealing secrets and shames, and finding new footing in this redefined world. Instead of a book of darkness and mourning, the author has created a book that is at once real and luminescent, where the characters look beyond sadness to a fuller view of their interlinked worlds.

Bache (whose short story collection The Value of Kindness won the Willa Cather Fiction Prize) has built this novel with a series of chapters that each feel like a perfect little short story all their own. Her writing craft shines, and I found myself eager to pick up the book again and again, feeling that each chapter was a gift I gave to myself to savor.  Give this book to yourself and others, and enjoy!  Highly recommended.

Snippets, Reviews and News

Hey everyone!

Been a busy week here…Something about September that always whips me into action.  I wanted to share some updates with you…

First of all, my new YA novel Over My Head is featured over at a cool blog called Indie Snippets!  The blog features 200 word max excerpts of indie published books.  It’s a great way to glimpse inside a bunch of cool new reads, and you should definitely check it out.  It’s not easy pulling a mere 200 words from a novel in the hopes that it’ll capture a feel for the story, but I’m hoping this excerpt did the trick. Please pop over by clicking here, give it a read (hey, 200 words won’t take long!) and leave a comment there if you can about what you think.

Also, just a few days ago, the book blogging review site All Consuming Books posted a great review of Over My Head. Yeah!  Here’s a bit of what the reviewer there said:

“There’s a lot to enjoy about Over My Head. I truly appreciate how Sang’s heritage is Indian. Ethnic diversity and multiculturalism in YA is something we can definitely use more of. Also, after reading so many books about beautiful paranormal girls falling in love with even more beautiful paranormal boys, it’s just wonderful to read about a totally normal girl. Because normal, average girls are worth knowing and worth reading about.”

The reviewer also posted this on Amazon, giving Over My Head 5 stars there.  YEAH!!!!  To read the whole in-depth review at All Consuming Books, you can click here.

Great reviews have also been popping up on Amazon, and on Goodreads too! Here’s a glimpse at some Goodreads reviews:

– i thought this book was great. I mean it had some sad parts, but it was also funny. i couldn’t put the book down. You gotta love it.

– this is a good beach read (or poolside read since many scenes take place at a pool!) Enjoy!

– I thought this book was great! The parts that were supposed to be funny were absolutely hilarious!

Phew.  When you write stuff, you hope readers will connect with it, but until you actually get some feedback from people? Well, it’s a whole lotta nailbiting going on.

I’ve got a bunch of appearances and talks coming up in the next 2 months, so, if you live in New Jersey, PA or DE, check out where I’ll be, and come visit!  Info is over on my Appearances page.

And, for info on how to pick up your own copy of Over My Head ($2.99 ebook, $12.99 print), you can click here.

Happy reading!

Book Review: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

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The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman sucked me in from the moment I opened the first page and saw those amazing illustrations.  I sorely miss the illustrations that used to pepper mid-grade novels. I remember as a kid eagerly reading to the next picture, and then the next…then publishers cut these, and we were mostly left with novels that were solid words. But the illustrations in Gaiman’s book pull you in, wrap around the pages, and add to the wonderful mood. Bravo!

The story, though, is what completely entranced me. Gaiman does an amazing job of saying just enough to creep the reader out. For instance, saying a knife was “wet” instead of describing blood. That really engages your mind.  Starting with the most gruesome and terrifying of beginnings ripped from our own nightmares, the author quickly captures our sympathy for Bod, the baby that escaped, and embraces the reader in an almost charming world of ghosts who raise the boy separate from the dangers of the world, until the world intrudes again.

This book feels like an instant classic. Not too scary, but shivery enough for kids. And well-crafted for readers of any age to fall in love with.

Highly recommended!