Celebrate our finalist!

Lisa Carroll-Lee, who's been in one of my writing groups for more than two years, has landed another short story as a Finalist in the Austin Chronicle 2009 Short Story Contest. The Chronicle has a really lean word limit, but Lisa has made it to the Top 10 with her story, Monsters of Nature.

We saw Monsters in October at our manuscript group meeting and gave her our responses to her flight of fancy about furry children. Congratulations to Lisa, and best of luck in the finalists' round. As they say at Oscar time, it's an honor just to be nominated.

Lisa has made the finalist cut before on the contest. The Chronicle will publish the top three of this year's 2,500-word gems on Feb. 13.

Free advice from Lukeman on writing the query

Early on in my writing life, I was sure that the synopsis was the key to earning a publishing deal. But a synopsis of 4 to 16 pages is too long for most agents to read. What these gatekeepers of the publishing world start with is a query letter. It's a business pitch, even if it promotes an artistic product.

If you haven't sent off your query yet, here's the best description of every aspect of how to craft a query letter. Noah Lukeman has three fine books for writers, such as "The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile." His latest is "A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation." And as a agent he's read 100,000 query letters. His Amazon Shorts book is a gift back to the writing community, available on Amazon as a free PDF file.

Here's the link to the Amazon page:

<http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Great-Query-Letter/dp/B00122GU86/ref=pd_ys_shvl_1>

Yes, they ask for credit card data, but the charge is $0.00. It's a digital file, so there's no shipping. Get your free copy today.

I was pretty sure that a query letter was single-spaced. Lukeman confirms this. He also calls the letter a marketing task, but perhaps the only piece of writing you will ever get an agent to read. Marketing can be learned, he says. Easier than artistry, I add.