If you're looking for my submission guidelines, they're beneath the cut.

( how to query me )

You can find out more about me and what I'm interested in representing at Publishers Marketplace and AgentQuery.

I've finally gotten sick of all the spam on Livejournal, and am moving my blog to http://foxliterary.blogspot.com/.

If you want to keep reading me on LJ--and yes, I will someday write another blog post!--you can subscribe to this feed: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/foxliterary/

I'll also be crossposting any blog updates to my Twitter and Facebook.

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you all around the Internet.

I know I said last week that I would post about contests, and while I must depart for the NEC RWA conference shortly, I leave you with two contests.

1) This contest is to win either Rosemary and Rue or A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire. To enter, all you have to do is buy a copy of either book (or have bought one at any time during the past month), take a picture of your receipt, and email it to Seanan. If you win, she'll send you a free copy of whichever book you didn't buy... which means you get both books for the price of one! Details and other rules are here.

2) I decided I liked this idea, so I will be holding a contest offering a similar reward for purchasing Alcestis by Katharine Beutner.

The prize: Your choice of one book--possibly signed, depending on the book!--by any Fox Literary author (see my Publishers Marketplace page for titles), or a $20 Amazon gift certificate.

To enter: Buy a copy of Alcestis any time between now and April 15th, and email a picture of your receipt to contest at fox literary dot com.

The rules: The receipt must be either a paper receipt from a brick-and-mortar store or the packing slip with order information shipped from Amazon (or whatever other online bookstore you order from) with the book. Your name, the date, and the name and price of the book must be visible, but feel free to black out any other identifying details if you so desire. Unfortunately, the high cost of international shipping means that I cannot mail any books anywhere outside the US or Canada, but the Amazon gift certificate offer is good internationally.

And now Boston awaits, but I hope you're all having a great Friday!

Hourglass by Claudia Gray debuted at #4 on the New York Times YA series list!

A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire, the second book in the Toby Daye series after Rosemary and Rue, is in stores now... if you haven't read Rosemary and Rue yet, Seanan is running a contest which includes signed copies of both Toby Daye books among the prizes. For the less artistically inclined, check back here next week or follow me on Twitter to find out how you can win a free copy. Hint: when you buy books, hang on to your receipts.

Feed by Mira Grant has gotten a starred review in Publishers Weekly! German rights to Feed and the other two books in the Newsflesh trilogy have been sold to Egmont; the three titles will be published in German under the name Seanan McGuire rather than Mira Grant, but they will still be packed with all the same zombie goodness (or scariness, depending on how you look at it).

In other news from Germany, a German edition of The Second Duchess by Elizabeth Loupas will be published by Rowohlt in the spring of 2011.

Both halves of Anna Katherine (Anna Genoese and Katherine Crighton) will be giving a talk about "Writing as an Editor" at the NEC RWA conference on March 27th in Framingham, MA, 10:15 - 11:05 AM. Anna also has a post related to the ongoing debates over e-book pricing here.

And finally, Gwynne Garfinkle has just finished a new novel--on her birthday, no less!--and sent it to me. I can't wait to read it.

Congratulations to all!

I decided to give away not one but two ARCs for Friday's contest, and the winners are Amanda Makepeace on Twitter and ladyfox7oaks on livejournal. Email me with your addresses at submissions at foxliterary dot com!

I also have an addition to my 2010 conference appearances: I'll be at the Backspace writers conference (May 27-29, 2010 in NYC). I don't have my schedule yet so I don't know how many days I'll be appearing, but as I'll post it as soon as I do.

Now, back to reviewing the final draft of AFTERLIFE (I feel a little guilty that the rest of the world will have to wait over a year to read this book, because it's so good and such a satisfying conclusion to the Evernight series... but only a little!).

Congratulations to Katharine Beutner on the release of her debut novel, Alcestis, earlier this week!


Katharine and Alcestis were featured on John Scalzi's The Big Idea a couple of days ago, and the official book launch party is happening this Sunday at BookPeople in Austin, Texas... so if you're going to be in the neighborhood, drop by to meet Katharine and get a copy of the book signed.

I've also decided that because it's Friday and I like Fridays, today I'm going to be giving away an ARC of the second book in the Toby Daye series by Seanan McGuire, A Local Habitation. For a chance to win, you can do one of three things:

1) Become a new Twitter follower of dianafox, and retweet the contest announcement;

2) If you already follow me, you can either list me for Follow Friday today (make sure to use the hashtags #ff or #followfriday) or retweet the contest announcement;

3) Leave a comment on this post on either Dreamwidth or Livejournal mentioning the contest.

The contest is open to anyone in the US or Canada--sorry, but I can't ship internationally right now--and a winner will be selected at random. Entries close at midnight Pacific time or 3AM EST tonight. Good luck!

I just spent the day critiquing query letters at the sold out Backspace Agent-Author Seminar in Manhattan, and had a great time! Hopefully it was equally fun and productive for the authors in attendance. This was my first event with Backspace, but based on my experience today I would definitely recommend their 2010 Backspace Writers Conference, which takes place May 27th-29th in NYC.

The other exciting thing which happened today is that Realm Lovejoy posted an interview with me here on her blog. She's doing an ongoing series of interviews with agents, editors, and authors, with original art to accompany each one! I was thrilled to have the opportunity to participate, because Realm is an amazing artist (plus she didn't kill me for asking her to go back and tweak her drawing of me multiple times, which I really appreciated).

Finally, here's my schedule of appearances for the first half of 2010:

2010 RWA New England Chapter Conference
March 26-27, 2010, Framingham, MA.

DFW Writers Conference
April 10-11, 2010, Dallas, Texas

Las Vegas Writers Conference
April 15-17, 2010, Las Vegas, Nevada

Chicago-North RWA Spring Fling 2010
April 23-24, 2010, Deerfield, IL

BEA
May 25-27, 2010, New York, NY

My current plan is to spend the first week of May sleeping.

On that note, I now go to collapse into bed and sleep the sleep of the exhausted. There may be some watching of Supernatural first.

I haven't updated in five months, and every time I go to make a post it seems more and more daunting after so much time has passed--such are the dangers of procrastination! I spent a lot of time this summer traveling, had a bout of really nasty flu which took what felt like forever to recover from, and I've been working on some agency-related projects (including, finally, a real website) that I hope will be done by the new year. I'm also looking forward to attending more conferences in 2010, and will be updating my list of confirmed appearances soon.

The other big change that 2010 may bring is that I'm considering taking on an intern for the first time. My submissions have increased significantly and continue to do so, and the colleagues I've spoken with about it confirm that this is true across the board. One reason I've heard put forth is the economy; with more people unemployed, the amount of writers with time to finish books and query agents has grown. However, the very same economy is forcing agents to be more selective than ever in taking on new clients, which results in a lot more slush to read for fewer positive results... and more work for less profit for the agents. (Of course we're not alone in that, given how financially tough things are for so many people right now.)

Whatever the reason, it's both more important and more difficult than ever to keep up with new submissions, and interns can be an invaluable resource. I know this because like so many other publishing professionals, I started my career as one! I'm not sure if I'll look for online interns or someone local or both, but I'll announce it here when I'm ready to begin actively recruiting.

Next, I have some client news:

The Second Duchess by Elizabeth Loupas has sold to NAL/Penguin! Based on Robert Browning's classic poem "To My Last Duchess", Elizabeth's historical debut is the story of the Duke of Ferrara's second bride Barbara of Austria, who sets out to learn the truth about her new husband’s murdered first wife. It's got elements of mystery, romance, palace intrigue, and all the opulence and danger of an Italian Renaissance court--I like to describe it as Philippa Gregory meets The Lovely Bones.

This next deal happened earlier in the summer and you may have already seen it mentioned in GalleyCat and Io9 as well as on her blog, but Seanan McGuire has a new trilogy and a new pseudonym! Her Newsflesh books will be published by Orbit US and Orbit UK under the name Mira Grant, beginning with Feed in May 2010. Part science fiction political thriller, part late-night movie gorefest, and part satire, Feed is an epic tale of blogging, politics, and, of course, zombies. I can't wait for this book to come out.

One other exciting piece of news from Seanan: her debut novel, Rosemary and Rue has been chosen as the first selection for the new book club at Genreville, the Publishers Weekly science fiction and fantasy blog. The book is in stores now, and there's still time to pick up a copy before the discussion begins on October 19th.

October also sees the release of Immortal: Love Stories With Bite, an anthology of vampire romance from some of today's most popular YA fantasy authors, including a story by Claudia Gray set in the Evernight universe. Technically this is a re-release since the book was first published as a Borders exclusive last summer, but Ben Bella has repackaged it with a new cover and wider distribution, so if you like sexy, scary young adult vampire stories--and as I think we've seen conclusively of late, who doesn't?--you might want to check it out.

Finally, Nadia Lee will be doing a free ebook giveaway of her novella, A Happily Ever After of Her Own, in serialized form with updates every Monday. She also has some interesting posts on her decision to release this story online for free and on working with the cover artist here, here, and here.

That's all for now! And to everyone getting a day off because this is a national holiday, I hope you've been enjoying the mini-vacation.

Seanan McGuire's debut novel, Rosemary and Rue, officially comes out today!


If you live in the San Francisco area, there will be not one but two parties happening this weekend--the details are on Seanan's blog here. One lucky person can also win what will perhaps be the last ARC to be released into the wild (now that the book is available in stores) by commenting on this post at The Swivet with your urban fantasy recommendations.

Finally, if you fall in love with Toby Daye and her world the way I did, you'll be happy to know that the next book, A Local Habitation, is available for pre-order now... and March isn't that far away!

I will be attending several conventions over the next few months, so I wanted to post a list of where I'll be and when:

May 22-25, Wiscon (Madison, WI)

May 29-31, Book Expo America (New York, NY)

June 12-14, DucKon (Naperville, IL), with Seanan McGuire

June 25-28, Writing Popular Fiction Retreat at Seton Hill University (Greensburg, PA)

I had been hoping to make it to RWA National this year, but as of now I am not registered. See you next year in NYC!

I'll be updating and adding to my schedule as I confirm more events, and maybe someday will even graduate to putting things in the sidebar like a real blogger. (One of my goals for 2009 is to finally embed this blog within my website and add some content to it to replace the placeholder splash page that has been there for way too long, so isn't it wonderful that Dreamwidth makes crossposting so easy?)

Next, two contests:

ARCs for Rosemary and Rue have arrived! To win one, comment at Seanan McGuire's blog before Friday, May 8th... and trust me when I say you want to enter so you can get to read this book.

Anna Katherine has a new blog and a guest post up at Darque Reviews here, where she is giving away a copy of the just-released Salt and Silver. (I already talked about how much I like Salt and Silver in my last post, so I think everyone should enter this contest too.)

Happy Thursday!