There are a few people out there who I have helped with writing hooks/pitches/queries who will probably think I got my comeuppance* yesterday. You see, if you ask me for help with your query, I am tactful but ruthless.

After I sent my agent my new manuscript, he sent me an email back saying he was looking forward to reading my pitch for it. WHAT? I mean, isn’t that why I have an agent? So I never have to write a pitch again? Turns out he doesn’t require it of his writers, but he likes it. In other words, I had to suck it up and do it.

So yesterday, after putting it off for five or six days, I sat down and wrote a nice little blurb. You know, like what you might find on the back of a book jacket. I sent it to a writer who said she would help, and then I sent it to a friend who buys more books off the shelf than anyone I’ve ever met (she’s single handedly keeping the publishing industry afloat during these trying times). Alix, who you might know as Marmite and Tea trashed my innocuous little blurb! To be fair, she didn’t know I wrote it. I sort of told her I was helping someone write a blurb so that she wouldn’t sugarcoat it and believe me, she didn’t! Hilarious, if you have a tough skin, which I do.

Alix’s critique started with, “My first reaction was nope wouldn’t read it, might not even make it to the end if I was browsing in a bookstore – sorry.”

OUCH! However, she did go on to take it apart piece by piece and explain her reasoning, which allowed me to totally rewrite it, quite quickly too. The other person helping me hadn’t gotten to it yet, so I sent her the new one to look at. I’m waiting for her response and then I can tidy it up and send it to my agent.

If you read my article, Hook ‘Em With Your Cover then you might remember the part where I said you should have someone who hasn’t read your book critique your hook because they will not know all the background stuff and inadvertently fill in the gaps for you. Now I’m convinced if you can find a way to get someone to read it who doesn’t know it’s yours, you should do that! Alix admitted if she’d known it was mine, she would’ve been nicer. She was counting on me to sugarcoat it for the writer I was “helping”.

I now have an “Alix approved” blurb, so I guess it’s soon time to find out if I have an “agent approved” blurb. Of course, he’s good at sugarcoating, so I expect he’ll be pretty nice either way! After all, he wouldn’t want to make me cry. Ha! Ha!

*Comeuppance – a punishment or fate that someone deserves. I love this word because it is one of the few words I remember exactly where I first heard it. Beverly Cleary uses it in her Henry Huggins books.