Jackie Barbosa

Especially, apparently, to those who wait at airports!

Last week, I had to fly to Philadelphia and back for business. And I spent far too much time in airports as a result. I didn’t really expect any reward for my trouble, but when I arrived home on Friday, I found a box from Kensington Publishing containing…

THESE!

I was shocked, as I really didn’t expect to see my author copies until sometime next month. And I have to admit, I have had a wonderful time touching them, smelling them, and opening them up to random pages to read my own words. It’s almost…surreal.

But all of this is good for you, too. In celebration, I’ll be giving away two signed copies to random blog commentators. This means you could be getting a sneak peek of what’s behind the red door a full month before it’s available in bookstores!

I’ll be open for comments for until Friday, when I’ll draw a winner. And on the day I draw that winner, I’ll be opening a NEW contest for a signed copy of Ann Aguirre’s amazing Blue Diablo, which I read on the plane to and from Philly and which I can recommend as one of the best books I’ve read in 2009.

In celebration, I’ve giving away three books (your choice of any of my three Cobblestone releases) over on the Cobblestone Mainstreet Forum. Go on over and check it out! (Lots of other Cobblestone authors are giving stuff away, too!)

I know I said I’d do this post yesterday, but I completely forgot this Monday was a holiday when I said that. Even so, I probably would have done it if it hadn’t been for the fact that we went camping on Friday and Saturday night, and between the cold weather (down into the 30s at night) and my mattress losing air both nights, I was just too tired to think straight!

So, without further ado (although a drumroll would be nice), the winners are:

Query Critique

• Lara Lee
• B.E. Sanderson

Brenda Novak’s Dead Giveaway

• Jane

The winners can contact me by emailing jackie at jackie barbosa dot com.

And now…back to bed!

Cross-posted from the Manuscript Mavens blog

That’s right! Wickedly Ever After hits the shelves (figuratively, at least) at Cobblestone Press today.

If you click on over and it’s not there yet, try again later. The new releases usually get posted before noon Eastern on Fridays, but sometimes, it take a little longer! For an excerpt, hop on over to the Cobblestone Author’s blog.

And if you’re a gambling man or woman, I will be giving away one copy of the book to one lucky person who posts a comment either here or over at the Mavens. I’m also giving away two query critiques and a signed copy of Brenda Novak’s Dead Giveaway in the post below.

My novella, Wickedly Ever After, will be released this Friday by Cobblestone Press and be available for purchase from them for the next six months. (Hurry and buy, lol!) After that, the rights will revert to me, and then I’ll turn them over to Kensington Books, which will publish this novella and two others in a single author anthology to be released in early summer 2009.

I’ve told my “call” story already, but one thing I didn’t talk much about is the query process. I’ve queried other projects in the past and never got past the polite, “Thanks but no thanks” form rejection. I know this is a huge frustration for a lot of writers. You have a book that you just know is worthy of publication, but you can’t get agents or editors to give you the time of day because your query is falling flat.

So, how do you get the people at the other end of your query letter to sit up and pay attention? Again, this is something a lot of agents and editors blog about (Kristen Nelson did just an extensive workshop series on her blog, in fact), so it’s hard for me to claim I have “the answer,” but I will share with you the three things that I think made my query for Wickedly successful where my past queries failed.

1. The opening paragraph provided the agent/editor with the story’s genre (historical), heat level (erotic) and word count, and explained why I thought it would appeal to that agent/editor.
2. My query blurb clearly identified the story’s plot catalyst (see Kristen’s blog for more on that), described the conflict between the characters (what’s going to keep them apart), and left the reader with a hook (something to hint at how the conflict will escalate).
3. I sent my query to the right people and got lucky. You can control the first part of this one to some extent (make sure you’re not sending a genre romance to someone who only represents mysteries and thrillers, etc.), but the second half of it is just plain hitting the right person on the right day at the right time with a letter that has elements 1 and 2.

Okay, so what did my query letter actually look like? Well, I’ll show you the letter I sent to John Scognamiglio at Kensington Books. This query resulted in a request for the full within a few hours of sending it.

I am seeking publication for my erotic historical 27,500 word novella, WICKEDLY EVER AFTER, which I believe would be a perfect fit for Kensington’s Aphrodisia line. Set in the late Regency era, WICKEDLY EVER AFTER is the first in a planned three novella series tied together by characters who appear in this story and by an exclusive London bordello.

Eleanor Palmer is relieved when her fiancé cries off to marry another woman, but horrified when he suggests the dissolute Marquess of Grenville as his replacement. Eleanor may claim descent from the lusty King Charles II, but this proper English lady has no interest in pleasures of the flesh–she’d rather read the Classics.

Nathaniel St. Claire is infamous for his wicked ways–drinking, gambling, and fornicating-but he’s willing to give up all but one of his vices to initiate the lovely Miss Palmer into the joys of lust. Maybe a little dirty Latin poetry will aid his cause…

I am a member of RWA and my erotic short story, CARNALLY EVER AFTER, was released by Cobblestone Press in August of 2007 under the pseudonym Jackie Barbosa. In addition, several of my manuscripts have finaled in or won RWA Chapter contests.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

In my experience, the hardest thing about getting the query letter right is the blurb. Especially if you’re writing your blurb after you’ve finished writing the whole book, it can be tough to distill all the plot elements into 250 words or less that all connect to each other. I’ve read (and written!) a lot of blurbs that were a series of disjointed sentences hitting on multiple plot points but that failed to make it clear how those points related to each other, and worse, didn’t explain how those points would cause conflict between the hero and heroine.

One trick I’ve started to employ is to write my query blurb before I actually write the whole book. Sometimes, I don’t write it before I write ANYTHING of the book, but I rarely get as far as the first 50 pages before I write the blurb. And that works in part because the hook (as opposed to the synopsis) usually doesn’t need to reveal any plot elements or conflict that occurs in the story past about the first hundred pages. What you want to do is hook the reader of your query to want to find out the answer to the question, “What happens next.” And if you reveal too much of the story in your blurb, you reduce the reader’s interest in getting the answer to that question.

In honor of my successful query and release this week, I’m giving away query critiques to two lucky blog commenters. I’ll draw the winners at random from all interested commenters next Monday. And as a bonus, I’m throwing in a free, signed copy of Brenda Novak’s Dead Giveaway to one random commenter who posts but doesn’t want a critique.

Hop on board!

Well, first, I should tell you that the eligible contestants are:

• B.E. Sanderson
• Darcy Burke
• Kelly Jack
• brownone
• tammi
• Erica Ridley
• Isabel Sotelo

And now, the hat please (or, more accurately, an online randomizer) says the winners are:

1. Prize package 1 (Amazon.com gift certification and copy of The Gospel of Love: According to Luke):

   tammi

2. Prize package 2 (a pound of See’s Candy and copy of According to Luke):

   Isabel Sotelo

3. Prize package 3 (three listed books and a copy of According to Luke):

   Kelly Jack

Winners, please email me at jackie@jackiebarbosa.com to claim your prizes! And congratulations!

I’ll be back tomorrow with another post, as my dear friend Emma Petersen appears to have tagged me for some meme or other.

Welcome to 2008 and to my blog. (Some of you may be visiting for the first time, I know!)

If you’ve come from Jacqueline Barbour’s blog, then you already know that I’m in the process of shutting down that blog in favor of this one. If you just happened by for other reasons, the scoop is that I used to have two pseudonyms, but I’m in the process of whittling that down to one: this one! But enough about that.

First, the news.

I am pleased and excited to announce that I’ve sold another novella to Cobblestone Press. This one, titled The Gospel of Love: According to Luke, is a first-person contemporary (yes, I know I need to work on that tagline, drat it!) erotic romance, which I expect to be released in June. It is the first in a quartet of novellas (and I’ll bet you can guess what the other three are called) that I hope will be finished and released in short succession after Luke. Here’s the blurb, which I hope entices you to want to read the rest:

Luke Finley, the eldest of four brothers, is a committed serial monogamist.He’s all for one woman at a time, but not one woman forever. He knows a lifetime of fidelity just isn’t in his genes. But when his latest girlfriend kicks him out–of his condo–the woman he’s always thought of as “one of the guys” turns
out to be the one woman who can rock his world and make him see the light.

Second, the Manuscript Mavens blog is a nominee in the Preditors and Editors Readers’ Poll. We’re hugely honored to have been nominated, but we’d love to win even more. So please, hop on over and vote!

And finally, I am scheduled to appear as an author-guest on The Spiced Tea Party blog tomorrow. I’m very excited about this opportunity and hope you’ll come visit me there. But even more, I want to give you an incentive to swing by the Tea Party as well as celebrate my sale and the Mavens’ nomination, so I have a little contest in store for you.

Here’s how the contest will work:

1. Comment on this post.

2. Visit us at the Manuscript Mavens blog any day this week and post a comment on any of our posts. (We are blogging our writing tips, so it’s a great week to drop by if you haven’t before.)

3. Visit me at The Spiced Tea Party and comment on my post there.

Anyone who manages to make comments in all three places between today and next Tuesday, January 15th, will be entered in a drawing to win one of the following three fabulous prize packages:

1. A $20 gift certificate to Amazon.com and a free copy of The Gospel of Love: According to Luke (which will be sent to you on release day, whenever that turns out to be).

2. A one-pound box of See’s Candy (chocolate…yum!) and a free copy of According to Luke.

3. Any three of the following books (some are signed by the authors, some are not) and a free copy of According to Luke.
Books:

• The Duke in Disguise, by Gayle Callen
• A Study in Scandal, by Robyn deHart
• The Rest Falls Away, by Colleen Gleason
• The Secret Passion of Simon Blackwell, by Samantha James
• Spell of the Highlander, by Karen Marie Moning
• On the Way to the Wedding, by Julia Quinn
• From London with Love, by Jenna Petersen
• Bite Me If You Can, by Lynsay Sands

Now, how can you resist an offer like that? Go forth and comment. I’ll draw and announce the winners next Tuesday

And happy 2008 to everyone!