Your first query worked just fine.
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It's the PAGES that aren't working.

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ORIGINAL QUERY
Question:

After a handful of rejections, I decided to commit myself to the Query Shark archives and I'm so glad I did. I killed my darlings, waited, then killed some more. But, the question is still the same. Is it my letter or my pages that get me rejected? I need the Query Shark.

Dear Query Shark,

When the earth starts collapsing around her, Lauren Sand considers herself lucky to stumble through the steel hatch she finds in a mine shaft—until she reads the notice on the bomb shelter door telling her it won’t open for two years, when the radioactivity outside has safely decayed. But, thanks to the final radio broadcast of a conspiracy theorist named Mick Parks, the young woman knows it was an errant asteroid that shook the world, not nuclear war. What she has two years to wonder about is why no one knew the end was coming.

Now, standing on the new shore of the sea, breaking six-thousand-feet high into the Rocky Mountains, Lauren understands she will never see her Shoshone grandmother Jean and sister Ava again. They, and her hometown of Shadow Grass, Wyoming are covered by salt water. She has survived the end of the world, but to what end? As she begins her treacherous search for other survivors, Lauren is driven by the need to know how there was no warning that the end was near, except for the disregarded claims of a radio talk show host.

Hostile vagrants with saccharine promises haunt the desolate landscape and threaten her resolve. But when she meets Jay, nothing seems impossible. Lauren will learn that one person willing to ask why, and not flinch at the truth, can begin to reconstruct the broken world. Along the way, she will shed the doubts and guilt of adolescence and accept the most unexpected gift of all at the end of the world—love.

CAPTURE THE TIDE is a 66,000-word post-apocalyptic survival epic and love story. It is my debut novel.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

It's your pages.
This isn't the most compelling query I've ever seen but I like the concept a lot. I'd read pages if  I repped YA. (You know this is YA, right?)

I'm not sure finding out why the world ended is a strong enough plot; the world after all did end. No amount of knowing why is going to change that.

"Hostile vagrants" is the wrong phrase here. I'm not sure you can be a vagrant in a post apocalyptic world since it means "without visible means of support" and no one has a job in this new world, or money, most likely.

You might mean vagabond, as in traveller. 

You're also missing the obvious: why are they hostile? If I was traipsing around at the end of the world, I'd probably be glad to find someone else.

All that said, I'd read pages.

So, what's wrong with your pages?  My guess (and I haven't seen them of course) is you start at the wrong place.  Start with the door opening, not the door closing.  And you might think about the plot too.

I broke the rules...unapologetically so.

I rhymed, alliterated, lyricized, used big words, topped it off with an adult narrative. And yes, my word count runneth over. Admittedly, I did it all wrong. Moreover--and perhaps to my own detriment--I firmly maintain that these supposed literary crimes were committed for all the right reasons. The story is better because of these so-called 'flaws', not in spite of them. Now comes the dilemma:

Can even 'the best query letter ever' not only overcome, but actually upsell the very characteristics that have been deemed genre pitfalls?

Dear QueryShark:

Life as I knew it forever changed the day I 'borrowed' that gnome.

So, you're a character in the book?
Using I in a query for anything other than the biography section is confusing.

What started as a harmless prank, soon backfired into a frenzied search for the missing muffin pan. Three pie servers, a rolling pizza cutter, and countless other 'displacements' later...my tightrope toddle along the brink of madness spiraled into the tongue-twisted tale you are about to read.

At this point, I have no idea what kind of book this is.

Some call it 'crazy'. Others call it 'cuckoo'. I prefer to call it: 'clarity'.

I call it confusing.

The lost socks, the misplaced keys, when the 'displaced' are 're-placed' in those spots you searched thrice...

I'm losing my mind here, does that count?

Based on a true story, THE GREAT GNOME COLLECTIVE is a transitional picture storybook of 1250 words. Entertaining meets educational in this lyrical work of modern folklore: a fun read woven through an intricate maze of elevated vocabulary, emphatic punctuation, and eloquent wordplay, all set to complex rhythmic rhyme with a splash of Seussian flair.

Never compare yourself or your work to Dr. Seuss. Let other people do that.

I am best known as (nom du plume): mama to one, auntie to seven, and 'grammar nutsy' to the core. This is my authorial debut, though it is my hope and intent to grow THE..COLLECTIVE into a series of gnome adventures.

Authorial debut sets my teeth on edge.
I'm not sure if that's just me.

This is your first book. Just say so.

Fancy pants writing is best left for dialogue to illustrate hoity toity characters.

Miss Bickerstaff perhaps who refers to her serviettes, and would sooner go without food than sit at a table without flowers. She is someone who might use authorial debut.

One minor concession, if I may: THE GREAT GNOME COLLECTIVE must be--and is found most enjoyable when--read aloud...preferably, *with gusto*. Please do not dismiss this request. The gnomes will know.

I know you're trying to be whimsical and light hearted here.
But please do not dismiss this request isn't something agents find funny. Ever.

Thank you for your time & consideration.


Form rejection.
Why?
Because picture book queries include the entire text of the story.

You can break all the rules that you want, but if you do not give me what I need to evaluate your work, I'm not going to write back and tell you what you did wrong.  I'm going to pass with a form rejection.


Your question:

Can even 'the best query letter ever' not only overcome, but actually upsell the very characteristics that have been deemed genre pitfalls?

You're breaking the wrong rules.

SETI@home will stop distributing tasks soon, but we encourage you to continue donate computing power to science research - in particular, research on the COVID-19 virus. The best way to do this is to join Science United and check the "Biology and Medicine" box.

The utter chaos in America’s response to the pandemic – shortages of equipment to protect hospital...

The pandemic is putting America’s deepening class divide into stark relief. Four classes are...

I have been extremely neglectful about posting! Probert turned 6 on Halloween and everyone else is doing great! Here's a picture of Probert in his new crate that Dan magically found in the garbage on the exact same day that I was going to buy Probert a new crate! Look how much he loves it! :)

Vroom.

After Ken Anderson

All these things can be clicked for bigger-er, by the way.

This was an attempt to use fewer lines. With, I would say, mixed results.

Live at Dragonmeet, Ken and Robin talk Hindu mythology's secret role in the Norman Invasion, crisis on infinite podcasts, drinks to write by, and the real reason Ken had to make Trump president.

Рассылка сайта < Уроки Фотошоп > > Новые уроки Убираем людей с фотографии улицы. Видео. Съемку на улицах нередко затрудняют случайно попадающие в кадр прохожие и в этом видео мы расскажем, как очень просто избавиться от движущихся через изображение людей. Раздел : фотообработка, простые Создаём плавучий остров. Видео. Раздел : коллажирование, средние Создаём монеты с портретом. Видео. Раздел : спецэффекты, простые Создаем коллаж цветочного портрета Как создать коллаж цветочного портрета с цветами, листьями...

The Badminton World Federation said the 2021 world championships will run from Nov. 29-Dec. 5 to avoid a schedule conflict with the Tokyo Olympics.

The Swiss hockey federation says it won't seek to host the 2021 men's world championship after losing this year's event because of the coronavirus pandemic.

ESPN highlights the stories of athletes, coaches and other sports figures managing their mental health and well-being.

Hafthor Bjornsson set a world record in the deadlift on Saturday, hoisting 1,104.52 pounds (501 kilograms).

Mondo Duplantis of Sweden and Renaud Lavillenie of France tied for the gold medal Sunday during a men's pole vault competition held in their own backyards.

Professional and high-performance athletes in Spain were allowed to return to practice, but some were jeered for doing so during the coronavirus pandemic.

Posted by: icon_uk

As John Constantine proves in the new "Apokalips war" animated movie

( Do I LOOK mad? )

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Posted by: icon_uk

It used to be the tradition around these here parts to post fan art on Thursday, comic themed, but not comic published, art by fans or professionals.

So share your commissions or interesting art you've seen. (If in doubt, check with the artist it's okay to post it and if they say no, then it's a no!)

( Just for fun )

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Říká se, že po krizi spojené s onemocnění covid-19 se probudíme do jiného světa. Otázka je, zda to bude platit i pro realitní trh. Podle odborníků s největší pravděpodobností ano. Což platí jak pro prodejní ceny nemovitostí, tak pro ceny nájemního bydlení.

V době koronavirové pandemie nás bombardují ze všech stran nejrůznější informace. Informační přetížení je tak značné, že v mnohých lidech vyvolává strach a stres. Jak tomu čelit, komu věřit a jaké informace ignorovat, se v komentáři zamýšlí psycholog Jan Urban.

Do pracovních i osobních životů vstoupila pandemie, jakou nikdo nepamatuje. Krize, která nastává, se dotkne všech. Nad aktuální situací a tím, co nás letos čeká a co je klíčové pro rozhýbání ekonomiky, se v komentáři zamýšlí personalista Tomáš Surka.

Как меняется политическая повестка во время эпидемии? Сколько денег нужно на поддержку граждан и бизнеса? Какие активы падают, а какие, наоборот, растут? Ольга Орлова обсудила эти животрепещущие вопросы с экономистом Александром Аузаном в программе «Гамбургский счет» на Общественном телевидении России. Публикуем отредактированную расшифровку беседы.

Олимпиадам в Японии мистически не везет — токийскую из-за пандемии коронавируса перенесли на июль 2021 года. В ХХ веке Токио дважды подавал заявки на проведение летних олимпиад. Первая из них (1940 года) не состоялась, вторая (1964 года) была успешно проведена. Процесс выдвижения токийской кандидатуры и ход подготовки к Играм позволяют понять особенности политической и культурной ситуации в довоенном и послевоенном мире, а также оценить тот огромный путь, который проделала Япония за это время.

Накануне 9 Мая вышло в свет дополненное и обновленное издание книги писательницы и военного переводчика Елены Ржевской «Берлин, май 1945». Переводчик Любовь Сумм, внучка Елены, рассказала ТрВ-Наука, как шла работа над книгой. Беседовала Наталия Демина.

Каким образом вирус SARS-CoV-2 корректирует ошибки при транскрипции своего генома? Как эта способность связана с безуспешностью клинических испытаний ремдесивира? И можно ли считать эти испытания окончательно проваленными? На вопросы Юлии Черной отвечает Дмитрий Жарков, член-корр. РАН, директор Центра перспективных биомедицинских исследований НГУ, зав. лабораторией геномной и белковой инженерии Института химической биологии и фундаментальной медицины СО РАН.

Разгадать «формулу» света. В списках не значится. Вузы на удаленке. Машина времени. «Не выдумывайте Швецию». «Даже Жуков не знал». Популяризация науки. Личность.

Весь номер газеты «Троицкий вариант — Наука» № 303 от 5 мая 2020 года в PDF

Материалы номера в HTML

To the women from all over the world I'm privileged to know, and everybody who loves international women.

I have been saving up some articles for the occasion: here are two marvellous bios of trans lesbian elders.

Jan Morris. [Content note: the article is in the Guardian which takes a somewhat transphobic editorial stance, though this article is very positive towards trans women. However it does deadname Morris and includes a picture of her from back when she was presenting as male.]

Sandy Stone, a couple of years old from Vice but it came to my attention recently.

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Day 3 (Wednesday): successful social distancing, yay. I worked from home, I came into contact with no humans except jack.

Work tried to establish ways to keep in touch, socially as well as for specific work concerns. We have just moved to a new system, Cisco Webex, for conference calls, and it's really not holding up to the volume of everybody suddenly moving to WFH. So we had a slightly hilarious team coffee chat, when half the participants had no audio and we ended up playing charades.

Mood-wise, I felt slightly manic all day. Every time I had to communicate with someone at work I used way too many words, and I got plenty done but everything felt like it was in a massive rush and slightly out of control.

I also successfully persuaded my mother, and my Stoke community, not to hold big Passover seders with crowds of vulnerable people travelling from all over to gather in a small room and share meals. It is going to be really awful to miss a big seder with my family of origin for the first time in my 41 years of life. But better than infecting my over-70 parents or my paralysed brother. And the Stoke community are breaking a streak of even more decades, and they grumped that I (along with the Chief Rabbi of their movement, the United Synagogue) am overreacting, but they're not risking the health of their various elderly and frail members, so that's good.

Today I mostly worked from home, but I had to go out for, of all things, dental surgery. I'd assumed it just wouldn't happen in the middle of a pandemic, but a tooth extraction is sufficiently urgent that it went ahead. The poor receptionist was absolutely frantically sanitizing every surface continuously.

I had never had a tooth taken out before today. Really rubbish first, I must say! The dentist was super lovely, kind without being patronizing, but I found myself very close to panic. The actual operation lasted only a couple of minutes and the local anaesthetic was the (not very bad) worst part of it, but anyway. I decided to walk home in order to calm myself down, though jack did offer me a lift. Then I met up with ghoti_mhic_uait and we went for another walk together, which did a lot for my general mood and happiness.

Town was quieter than usual, but not completely dead; there were enough walkers, cyclists and joggers out and about that it wasn't entirely easy to maintain the prescribed 2 metre separation from everybody. Also businesses, including pubs and other social gathering spots, are still open (because the government are trying to make individual businesses rather than insurers or the state assume the risk of telling individuals not to go to bars, but not telling bars to actually close), and were quiet but had some customers.

Personal status: If I had the beginning of a mild cold before, I now feel I have the end of a mild cold. Sore throat which I can't tell if it's an infection or a reaction to having my mouth poked about.
Social circle tally: One case, four with suspicious symptoms. All online acquaintances so far.

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I was really sad to learn of the death of Mel Baggs. I have been following Mel's writing for many years and learned a great deal about disability and activist communities.

In particular, Mel disabused me of the view of autism that says, autism is all very well if you're also highly intelligent, but it's a terrible tragedy to be autistic as well as intellectually disabled, or autistic and non-speaking, or "low-functioning". And in general lots of concrete ways of being a respectful fellow citizen towards the the kinds of disabled people who don't get much activism airtime.

It seems that Mel didn't die "of" Coronavirus in the strict sense of the word, but of complications of a number of other illnesses and conditions. Mel had posted a fair bit recently about not getting access to needed personal care as an indirect result of the pandemic and the dangerously inadequate official response to it. I don't know whether inadequate care was a contributory factor in Mel's death but it did cause a lot of suffering, and I have seen way too many reports of people not getting the care they need, and I'm not even that plugged in to the disability community.

Anyway. Mel was someone I admired greatly, and a huge influence on me, and the world is poorer.

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Well, nothing major to report this month, except at least we have some content: The conference I first showed my Reverse Emulation project at in 2018 (Deconstruct) finally posted the video of my talk, which was called "Improper Hierarchy." The talk is of course similar to the living room CRT video I put on youtube, but it might be interesting even if you've already seen that (watching it a year later, there are at least some funny ad-libbed parts IMO!). The video production is very high quality (in general the conference was very well run and the speaker experience in particular I heartily endorse) but also quite serious-seeming, so I like how it comes across as some bizarro-world TED talk.

This month I've made some progress on another video, which maybe I can wrap up this weekend. Nothing too grandeur, though. Sometimes hard to keep that under control!

Also: I played through Minit, which was a really excellent and creative little game (can finish it in an evening) that I super recommend. I just started The Messenger which definitely has some charms and surprises; I need to finish it before I can decide between "good" and "great" but I think I can at least recommend it if you like exploration-style platformers.

Hi,

Not too much to add this month. A new direct flight to Montreal this summer popped up, so we took a trip there last weekend. I had never been, and it is a fun city, with good food, beer, music, geodesic domes, and other things. I always try to participate in a local running race if I can, and there was a small 10k fundraiser near the Olympic stadium. I managed a 43m39s (about 7 min/mile), which is not bad for an old guy, finishing in 11th place. It's not like I was just out for a jog, but I certainly didn't put maximum effort here, because I also wanted to enjoy the rest of my vacation day and anyway I retired from the 10k distance in post 990. I used to think that I was never going to be able to beat the times that I recorded in my late 20s when I felt young. But the decade+ of regularly running hard must have some long-term effects, because I'm pretty sure I could have run 6m30s miles here without dying, and perhaps with a death effort (not to mention losing 10 pounds or so) I could have set a personal record. This also happened with a 5k I did a couple years ago. Good to not feel washed up, but of course this is just talk unless I prove it!

Speaking of old, I'll probably turn 40 before the next post (September 27)!

I have been getting deep into this project described in the previous post, but which remains confidential, as they do. But it finally gave me a reason to get an oscilloscope! I have a lot of traveling to do in September so I'm unlikely to finish it (and video, etc.), but the project is still very much in the fun state, so maybe that's good news for me.

Almost out of time to even finish this post before the month expires. But brief recommendations: I've been playing and liking Dicey Dungeons. It is good and has a very wholesome and pleasant style. Sometimes you need that. I also really like the new album called Anak Ko by Jay Som. Great production, songwriting, vocals, everything.

Happy Thanksgiving!

One interesting thing that happened this month: A few weekends ago it was feeling cold in my office, so I thought about turning on a space heater, but why do that when I've got a 850W power supply hooked up under my desk that can provide a "useful" resistive load? My current projects don't have any long-running computations, so I fired up PrimeGrid, which is a distributed computing project that lets you hunt for prime numbers (etc.) using your stupidly overpowered home computer. Amazingly, the next day, I had discovered this prime:

It's a Proth prime, one of the several special forms of numbers that have efficient primality tests. This particular one is 466,320 decimal digits long, in fact big enough that when I discovered it, it was the 3461^st largest prime number known to mankind (see its entry in the list of Top 5000 Primes). As you know, computers are pretty fast these days, and there exist many nerds, so this number has already slipped 62 places to #3523.

Finding this on my second day was pretty lucky, although not really beginner's luck since in college I ran Prime95 ("Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search") on any computer I could get my hands on. You can see my historic page exhorting internet strangers to join the Tom7 prime team for example. Apparently we were once in the top 100 teams in the world, so I think I deserve a prime 20 years later, right?


I finally assembled my current project and it is kind of working! There are several things I can do to improve it, which I am trying, but at this point it at least does something interesting/funny enough to make into a video. Next the trick will be finding the right stopping point. I was hoping to get a lot done over Thanksgiving break (mercifully, not traveling this year), but (not mercifully) I immediately got sick and have spent most of my time playing Pokémon in bed or warming my toes on the prime-powered heat sink. So sad to finally have some free time but not have the energy. Oh, well!

Hello again! I got a little bit stuck on my most recent project because I don't have the right tools to do it the best way, which has created a sort of analysis-paralysis, but I like to think that one is wrapping up. Of course I still need to make a video which will take 9999 hours. Winter's computational space heater made a decent discovery, which is an Arithmetic Progression of Primes. An AP is some starting number x, and some positive stride s, where a progression of numbers in this sequence are all prime:

For example with x=3 and s=2, we have 3, 3+2, 3+2+2 prime (and then 3+2+2+2=9 is not prime), yielding an Arithmetic Progression of length 3, or "AP3". The longest such progression known is an AP27, the only one yet known found last year: for 27 consecutive primes! Only twelve AP26s are known,^* and my computer found an AP25: only 133 AP25s are known^* so it's a pretty lucky find, although of course people care a lot less about finding these than about finding huge primes (AP1s, if you will.)

^* Technically an AP27 contains two AP26s, and three AP25s (etc.) so these numbers undercount a little.


Aside from the secret projects and winter hibernation, I played a slightly-old puzzle game called Closure which was pretty good. Definitely an interesting mechanic that they get plenty out of, if perhaps with slightly sluggish controls. I also just started Luigi's Mansion 3 for the cozy-factor, but you probably don't need me to tell you about AAA franchise Nintendo titles. I rarely recommend TV on here, but the second season of Castle Rock was unexpectedly good, if you like that sort of thing (first season is fine but there's no reason to watch them in any particular order). OK byeeee