Ok, I have deliberated. I have selected. I have discovered that the process of judging Twitter fiction is *incredibly* subjective. I made my husband read all of them too, and he proceeded to pick completely different entries for his top 3 than I did. So what you have are the ones that I liked the best, since you know, it's my blog. =)

They tend to be heavier on metaphor and almost like poetry, which I think is what drew me towards them so much. And I wanted ones that felt like they told a coherent story, too. It's pure chance that they all are speculative, by the way.

And without further ado, the winners are....

Third Place!

Her bow is red with Sue's blood. We ghosts can do nothing. The pills - they make her crazy. Smiling, she eats a banana for 400 bonus points.

(140)

by Katrina S. Forest

Second Place!

She built her house in a banana. I, in an orange. She was wild. I was rich. Laughing, we fell in love and were married in a pomegranate.

(136)

by A (or Ad?)

First Place!

In a snow-dusted field under a banana moon they shared whiskey kisses and made promises that were broken with the dawn of a cruel apple sun.

(140)

by Erin

If Katrina S. Forest, A (or Ad?), and Erin can please e-mail me at jenny AT rappaportagency DOT com, we will sort out who gets which prize package! =)

I want to thank everyone for entering. I don't think I've ever gotten so many entries for a blog contest... EVER. They were wonderful and talented and creative. So much so that I'm giving two Honorable Mentions because I loved them too. Both Honorable Mentions will receive a copy of RED by Jordan Summers.

Honorable Mention #1:

While stuck alone on a deserted island, Mary learned to love bananas. And not just as food. The long yellow fruit was a sensuous companion.

(139)

by Karen Duvall

and

Honorable Mention #2 (given for sheer pluck and creativity in breaking the word up!):

I slapped, he stroked. I bit, he kissed. I worried. He wrapped his arms around me and led me in a tender samba. Nana, you were so right!

(136 characters)

by missfiddyment

So Karen Duvall and missfiddyment, you both need to e-mail me too!

(Note: I have corrected the character count, using the Twitter home page, where needed.)

I don't often post book reviews for my client's work, since there's just so much of it out there. But Dave Williams pointed me to this review of his new novel, THE BURNING SKIES, and I think it's fabulous.

So here it is.

And then go order the book! =)

I am happy to announce that I have been accepted into the Odyssey Writing Workshop for 2009.

I will be in Manchester, New Hampshire from June 7, 2009-July 18, 2009.

My clients have already been alerted of this fact via e-mail, and if you are a client and reading this now, please go check your e-mail. =)

The Rappaport Agency will be closed for submissions for the entire month of June and most likely a good portion of the month of July. (ETA: Jodi, who is the one who will be holding down the agency fort for the six weeks I'm gone, thinks we shouldn't close to submissions at all. I'll post more information about that, if we do decide to not close for June. =)

I'll be back to work on July 20, 2009.

And now that the official stuff is gotten over with... woo-hoo!!!! Can I tell you all how utterly pleased and happy and surprised I am by this? Yay!!!! =)

I am putting this in caps and emphasizing, since most of you have disregarded the rules of putting how damn long your entry is, in the ones I've moderated so far.

Go comment again. Tell me your name and how long your entry is! And the rest of you, please put character count in. It makes judging far, far easier. =) Thank you!

To you, dear LIT SOUP!

Happy Birthday, to all the wonderful readers who make you possible, and who have listened to me babble for so long. Thank you all!

You mean the world to me. =)

This is the place to post your Twitter microfiction pieces, following the rules outlined in this post.

The magic word that you must incorporate into your piece is "banana". (You do not need to include the quote marks.)

Contest prize packages are outlined in the prior post about this contest, linked to above.

I'll mail all books Media Mail in the United States, and whatever the cheapest option is for me, internationally. People from all over the world are welcome to enter this contest.

If you are posting anonymously, please either sign your name or give a "handle", so I know who to contact, if you win. I'll be checking the comments periodically throughout the day, so do not worry if your entry does not appear immediately. Submissions are open from 9 am EDT on April 24th until ~9 am EDT on April 25th. After that, I'll close the comments for the post.

Enter away!

ETA: Comments are now closed. We got some simply stunning entries. I have to figure out how to pick winners now! =)

I forgot about it, last year, I think, and it's still the 23rd on the west coast...

I'm tired and have nothing really prepared, but you can have the beginning few paragraphs of a flash story I was writing for a Codex contest this winter. =) It's not finished and may never be... It has no title. (Yes, I number my stories.)

-------Start of Story 70-----

When the apocalypse came, they ate apples. Mary fed them to the children, as she duct-taped the windows with garbage bags and counted her bottled water supply. Crowded around the emergency radio with its tinny voice, she forced Bijay to eat the peels he hated, and spoon-fed applesauce into baby Emma. She didn’t know how long the formula would last, or whether there would be any way of getting more.

While the phone lines lasted, she made calls.

“Hello, Mrs. Cuccini, this is Mary from Mary’s Day Care. I’m calling to let you know that Zach is safe and sound. We’ve got some food and water. Please call back to let me know, if you’ll be able to come and get him.”

Four calls; four voicemails left; four children in her care.

She made a tent for the children under the dining room table, draping sheets she had stripped off of the beds upstairs. They gathered in a pavilion of gold, green, and hot pink, lit by the electric lantern; their personal fort against the gray ash falling outside. Zach and Bijay played with LEGO, while Emma slept in her carrier. The shockwaves had been frightening, but they were young, and their tears soon dried. It was a game they played, for now.

Jessie was the real problem.

---And that's all I ever wrote of it---

Aren't they lovely? =)

Zoe has graciously decided to allow her feline blog space to be used for a small moment.

David J. Williams' cat, the adorable and somewhat foul-mouthed Spartacus, is running a contest on Dave's blog. Dave is the author of THE MIRRORED HEAVENS and the forthcoming THE BURNING SKIES.

Read the details here, and learn how to praise Spartacus and win a free copy of THE MIRRORED HEAVENS... in Spanish! =)

Hello fellow blog readers! As many of you know, LIT SOUP was "born" on April 24, 2006. We're coming up on the blog's third birthday, and as is my custom, we're having a contest! =)

This year, we're going with a microfiction theme, a la Twitter.

The contest for this year is as follows:

I will give you a random word on April 24, 2009, which you must incorporate into a coherent Twitter piece of microfiction. That's 140 characters flat, including all punctuation and spaces. Entries over the limit will be disqualified. I suggest you compose your entry at Twitter, since it gives a more accurate character count than most word processors.

On April 24, 2009, I will open a thread for the microfiction pieces. You will have approximately 24 hours to comment on that thread with your microfiction, and include the character count in parentheses at the end of your entry.

For example:

Jenny is having a Twitter microfiction contest.

(47)

At the end of the twenty-four hours, I will close the comments to the thread, thus not allowing any more entries. Then I and my minion judges will pick the top three microfiction pieces and award prizes!

Remember, the contest thread won't be open until April 24th!

The prizes this year are the following "packages" of books. I will ship them internationally. The first-place winner gets to choose first, the second-place winner gets to choose next, and the third-place winner gets whatever is left. =)

Package #1:
THE MIRRORED HEAVENS by David J. Williams (mass-market paperback)
THE BURNING SKIES by David J. Williams
RED by Jordan Summers

Package #2:
FEDERATIONS edited by John Joseph Adams
OFF LIMITS by Jordan Summers
RED by Jordan Summers

Package #3:
LIBYRINTH by Pearl North
CRIMSON by Gord Rollo
RED by Jordan Summers

Please note that if you pick Packages #1 or #3, I will have to wait to ship you the books, once I get my agent copies of THE BURNING SKIES and LIBYRINTH, respectively.

My client, Ted Kosmatka, has a wonderful new piece of short fiction up at Subterranean Magazine.

I keep telling him that he needs to eventually turn this into a YA novel for me, because it's just *that good*.

Go read it; you'll like it.

I'm off to bed in a bit, but I thought it would be extremely prudent of me to draw your attention to the fabulous Lynne Viehl's royalty statement.

Here is my disclaimer: I have never read anything by Ms. Viehl. I'm sure her books are lovely; I just haven't gotten around to them. But I think she's simply smashing and fabulous because she posted her royalty statement online. I'm not saying that all authors should do this; certainly, you are and should be entitled to your privacy about your income and how many books are sold.

But for the many, many aspiring authors out there, Ms. Viehl has done them a great service by putting this up.

I will now dissect it for you, briefly, since Ms. Viehl did a good job of doing so already on her blog. Follow along in the jpeg. =)

US Regular Sales is 74,893 copies. This number denotes the number of books SHIPPED to booksellers in the United States during the royalty period.

US Regular Sales--Discount 61% is 11 copies. This number is the number of books that were sold by the publisher at a discount. I don't know what the discount is for, but you can see that Ms. Viehl receives less royalties on them. US Regular Sales have an 8% royalty rate, while US Regular Sales--Discount 61% has a 6% royalty rate. This is standard publishing contract stuff. The discounted copies could have been bought by Ms. Viehl, or been remainders, or been bought through a publisher-discount program.

US Regular Returns is 16,305 copies. This number denotes the number of books that the US booksellers RETURNED to Penguin. Doing rough math, this means that the booksellers returned, for money back from Penguin, a total of 21.77% of the books they ordered. They either overestimated, or the more likely case, is that since the books are mass-market, they simply cleared them off the shelves after a pre-determined period of time (usually three months).

For every book returned, as you can see on the royalty statement, the publisher did not pay Ms. Viehl any money. This makes sense from an accounting standpoint, since the publisher had to pay the booksellers back the money they had purchased the book with, and therefore didn't really "sell" it.

The Export Sales and Returns work in a similar manner to the US Sales and Returns. They should be explanatory to you, using the information in the above paragraphs. Note the different royalty rates for international sales. Also, a standard part of publishing contracts.

Now, we get to the really fun part of the royalty statement, which is Reserve Against Returns. The publisher is not currently paying Ms. Viehl for 21,140 copies of the title. This means they are holding back money earned from 28.23% of the total copies they shipped to booksellers. The reasons for this are many, but the primary one is this: publishers are pessimistic, and they expect those books to eventually be returned by booksellers. They therefore hold money against them (the reserve), and will adjust future royalty statements to reflect any returns made from that pool of books. In the best case scenario, the booksellers won't return any copies, and Ms. Viehl will eventually get that $13,512.69. In the worst case scenario, the booksellers will return all those copies, and Ms. Viehl won't see that particular portion of the money.

Finally, you see the BOOKSPAN subsidiary right sale, which reflects the $1500 that Ms. Viehl and the publisher were paid for sublicensing the novel to a book club. The split for the money is 50% to the publisher and 50% to Ms. Viehl; this is also dictated in her contract.

And that's about it, folks. Ms. Viehl explains how much money she earned in the original blog post.

That was fun, wasn't it? =)

Thank you, everyone, for all your comments. You made me cry just now, unmoderating them.

Zoe still won't eat, although she clearly has an appetite, and wants to play. She just doesn't approve of the slightly moistened dry food she's allowed right now. She wants plain dry food, and the vet say she's not allowed it for a week. I foresee force-feeding in her future again. The good thing though is that she has not thrown up her force-fed food from last night, which is a minor miracle.

I love you all, and so does Zoe. =) (I got fifteen hours of sleep last night; clearly needed it.)

I hesitate to post this on my blog, since people will generally be up-in-arms at me. "Your cat", they will say. "You dared to take care of your cat, instead of do work?!"

But seriously, people? Deal.

I have slept very little this entire week. Zoe has been very ill this whole week. As my husband has the job that takes him outside of the house, it therefore falls to me to be largely the primary caretaker, day and night.

So please, I'm going to very politely say that I am just not going to get much more work done this week, and I am very, very sorry about that. Please hang on for an answer to an e-mail until Monday. If it is pressing, please call.

At this point, Zoe won't eat or drink voluntarily. We just had to force-feed 5mL of wet cat food to her, which she was not pleased about. I have washed my bedding more times than I can imagine, since all sorts of lovely feline bodily fluids have graced it.

I just want my little cat to get better, since the vet says she should (we saw them again today).

And personally, I want a good night's sleep.

For those that do not quite remember, I possess a cat with a delicate stomach.

In October 2007, she had a bout of gastroenteritis that required hospitalization when we tried to switch her from kitten food to adult food. She ended up on prescription cat food for life. We have *just* finished paying off the bills for that visit.

So when we found a delightful trail of cat vomit leading to the litter box yesterday evening, we were not pleased. Obviously, she didn't feel well. She was lethargic and tired, and went to sleep on the bed with Chris, my husband. End vomit round #1.

Vomit round #2 occurred at 1:30am this morning, when she decided to throw up all over my bed. Not on Chris, although I might have taken a subtle pleasure from that. =) But it did require awakening my sleeping husband (he slept through it!), so that I could remove the sheets and wash them. Which I did at 2 am. And Zoe retreated under the bed, which is the safest place for all cats.

Vomit round #3 occurred sometime between 4am-8am this morning, the brief period when I was asleep and Chris was asleep.

And to the vet we went this morning!

Zoe has mild pancreatitis, brought upon by being fed too much protein. She was given tiny bits of boiled chicken and turkey last week. Then, Chris in his infinite wisdom, fed her tuna on Sunday night. For the first time in her life. Tuna is not good for my cat.

So now she's resting, and has even more special prescription cat food, and strict diet orders. And they've sent us home with powdered pancreatic enzyme to mix in her wet food, although she refuses to eat any yet. She's had water, and the vet gave her fluids, plus a shot to bring down her fever. (I learned today that a cat runs a fever at 103 degrees F.)

And that has been the day of much cat trauma.

(As an addendum: Yes, I did work today. I contacted eleven editors and got a book out the door to them. I answered e-mail. I have earned my American Idol tonight, after a night of laundry and sleeplessness. At least babies will cry when they're sick, right? =)

Yes, I'm a totally bad person, and don't actually subscribe to the magazine. Yet. It's ~$200 a year, and I can't quite justify that for a magazine.

But there is a lot of good content available online from Publisher's Weekly, and I call your attention this article by Rose Fox.

It has a nice interview with Jeremy Lassen at Night Shade Books, as well as talking about a lot of other interesting stuff happening in the field.
-----------
This also means I don't have to rack my brain for something to blog about, as I've spent the morning doing tedious paperwork, and ignoring Zoe. She meows. She meows some more. She meows even more. I may be insane by the end of the day.
-----------
Finally, #amazonfail is totally heinous. That said, I am of the opinion that some moron manager at Amazon ok-ed this proposal, and then let it be implemented by underlings. I'm waiting for his or her head to roll. =)

Posting will remain a bit sporadic for the next few days, as I must catch up on work.

I thought I would leave you with two things to listen to though. The first is my dear, dear friend, Ms. Holly McDowell. Holly has had classical piano training, and every few months she does a new piece and puts it on Youtube. She claims there's a mistake in here, but I can't tell.

Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" played by Holly McDowell



And this has been running wild on everyone's blogs, but if you haven't seen it yet, it's truly a great video to watch, as well as listen too.

"Stand By Me" played by various musicians around the world


Stand By Me from David Johnson on Vimeo.

Passover was good. I am tired. This happens after two Seders and wine.

Happy Easter to everyone who's celebrating it, and Happy Passover to the rest of you who are eating Passover food with me until Thursday. =) Aah, wonderful eight day Jewish holidays!

Anyway, Neil Gaiman linked to this trailer on Twitter this morning, and I liked it so much that I have copied the code from the website and embedded it here. It comes out June 12th, apparently. It looks GOOD.

ETA: I cannot copy the code from the website because it looks funny in the blog when I do that.... here is the link to it. Go forth and watch.

This is one of those contracts that took a lot of effort from all the parties involved, so many extra kudos goes out to Marc Gascoigne at Angry Robot, and both John Parker and John Berlyne at the Zeno Agency who were my co-agents on the deal. And of course, Colin, who wrote the books. =)

April 7, 2009
		Fiction: Sci-Fi/Fantasy		Colin Harvey's WINTER SONG, about a highly-evolved human who crash lands on a forgotten colony planet and his desperate struggle to get off it; and DAMAGE TIME, about a detective in NYC hunting stolen memories that are posted on the net for entertainment, to Marc Gascoigne at Angry Robot Books, in a nice deal, by Jenny Rappaport of The Rappaport Agency, in association with the Zeno Agency (World English). jenny@rappaportagency.com

While we're chatting about Colin, I'd like to point out that his anthology KILLERS has made the British Fantasy Awards Longlist.

And here's another one; the last one comes out in June. Direct link below.

Twitter Story #4 by Jenny Rae Rappaport

I'm particularly fond of this one, and I think you may be able to figure out why. =)

Because I'm attempting to keep better track of these... 18, how pitiful is that? I will never get to 142 this way, which was my total in 2005.

18. MAGIC TO THE BONE by Devon Monk
I took this home with me from John Joseph Adams' house, since he is the repository of all things book. It looked interesting, and home it went. And it turned out to be quite good, especially the worldbuilding. The only thing I found mildly unbelievable was the first one or two sex scenes, because I kept thinking, "Ok, you're running for your life. Now is NOT the time to make out and pant at each other."

And you thought after all the drama, I wasn't going to post a cat picture? =)

This is Zoe after getting a shower in mid-March. I couldn't get her face, as she was much too concerned with what we had done to her, and the fact that she was wet.

You.

Writers.

The nameless, the faceless.

The people who are rejected, day in and day out. The ones who come close. The ones who get the form rejections.

The people who have their hearts crushed and their dreams burned.

The people who are angry.

The people who are hurt.

The people who are bitter.
--------
One of the reasons I didn't like #agentfail was because I felt that there was so much hatred being spewed out. I felt that if you had a complaint about an agent, you shouldn't have to hide behind anonymity. That you should be able to own up to your own words, which is an offshoot of my general internet philosophy. Don't write something, if you're unwilling to attach your name to it.

I understand anger. I understand hurt. I know all too well the feeling of having your hopes and dreams being crushed out of you. Hello, I applied to Clarion West this year, and missed the freaking waitlist by one spot. Out of hundreds of people, I was #21. Don't tell me that doesn't sting. It does.

And it stings when you get rejected by an agent.

It stings when an agent behaves badly. It stings when they don't answer your e-mail. It stings when it takes them months or years to reply to partials (I am guilty of this). It stings when they never reply.

And it stings because you feel that you cannot attach your name to it, since we live in a public Internet and a public society. You feel that you can't say, "Agent X was a bitch. She never got back to me." or "Agent Y, what an asshole, he read half my book and never finished it."

And the sad truth, is that you shouldn't say those things in public. Agents shouldn't talk about writers except vaguely, and writers shouldn't talk about agents except vaguely. This is part of the careful dance we do in publishing, where we try not to step on other people's toes. It's a small industry, and the internet just makes it a hell of a lot smaller.

To Agent X or Agent Y, you are not a person. You are a nameless, faceless writer. You feel that you have no recourse. That you have tried so hard, and there is nothing left. That they don't care about you.

I cannot change the behavior of my fellow agents. I cannot change the behavior of my fellow writers. I fall firmly into both camps.

But I can change my own behavior as an agent, which is one of the reasons I hired Jodi so many months ago. I had a problem with giving fast feedback, and I wanted to change that. Jodi offered me that opportunity. I am forever grateful for that.

The problem is that we all care too much about what we do. Agents care about the books they represent, and writers care about the books they write. Rejection is not personal, but it often comes across as that, especially when people don't get back to you. The very hard thing is detaching yourself from your book, and the thing that you care about so much.

There is no easy solution to this.

There will never be any easy solution to the anger and hurt that writers feel, and the way that makes agents feel. There will never be an easy solution to agents seeing writers as the nameless, the faceless.

But I think we are slowly getting to a point of equilibrium, where writers are able to connect with agents. I love Twitter because I get to talk to so many writers on a daily basis, people around the globe that I would never speak to. I love this blog because so many of you comment on my posts. I love talking to people, and this is an often isolating job. I think that by connecting with agents on a personal level, even if you like cats, or I think you have a great recipe blog... that we are slowly starting to overcome this divide.

That writers are starting to be less nameless and less faceless.

And agents are becoming the same to writers.
--------
My lovely assistant, Jodi Meadows, has written a post about this too: Jodi's post

John Joseph Adams' blog informs me that the FEDERATIONS website is now live, and that there are three free short stories and the acknowledgments available to read online. I get to be Admiral Ackbar in the acknowledgments, which I absolutely love. Go forth and read them!

You'll be pleased to know that John has my iPhone picture set to Admiral Ackbar too. =) I am immortalized forever...

Also, the book is now available for pre-order on Amazonand all good retailers near you.

I've done a bunch of posts about being rejected by agents in the last few years, but I thought it was time for another one.

When you get rejected by an agent, it's not because you're a bad person. You're probably a lovely person. Many times, it's not because your writing is that bad either--Jodi and I really try to point out to people where their writing is good and the rest of the novel needs work. A lot of the time, especially in this economy, your novel is rejected because it's not the right book for the current market.

But I think what a lot of people lose sight of is that even if your novel is rejected, that doesn't mean you should stop writing. It doesn't mean the agent who rejected you is a bad person. It doesn't mean that you won't connect with that agent another time. It's just because your writing was not the right book that they were looking for at that time.

To use an example from my life:

Many of you know that in my limited spare time, I write too. Mostly short stories, although there is that mythical novel which may get finished before I die.

And while I'm good at submitting my client's work, I am notoriously bad at sending out my own stuff. My hard drive sees all the good stuff. =) It's a very well read hard drive.

Part of this is the same fear of failure and rejection that many of you experience when you send your novels to agents. Part of this is because I *always* assume that my work will be rejected; I am a student of years of careful pessimism about that.

But on occasion, I do make myself get off my butt and submit work.

In the last week, I got rejections from Clarkesworld Magazine and Fantasy Magazine on the same short story (they are damn quick). It's now at Strange Horizons, where it will most likely be rejected, as I do not have great luck at Strange Horizons. I have a second short story at Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, which they've been sitting on for 60 some days.

I'm expecting rejections on both stories.

But that doesn't mean I think it's because the editors hate me and are rejecting me personally.

I know Neil Clarke who runs Clarkesworld, and I enjoy talking to him at conferences; he's a good guy and lives in NJ too. I'm friends with Cat Rambo and Sean Wallace, who edit Fantasy Magazine. I know some of the editors at Strange Horizons. And I'm also friends with Edmund Schubert, who edits IGMS.

When any of those magazines reject me, I don't assume that Neil, Cat, Sean, Edmund, or the Strange Horizons folks hate me. They just don't like the story that I've sent them. Sometimes they send encouraging rejections; sometimes I get form rejections, like everyone else in the world. It doesn't mean that I'm not going to talk to them the next day, even if occasionally I want to kick at something for a few minutes after getting the rejection.

I have become fairly decent at dividing the professional out of personal in terms of rejection. That doesn't mean that I like getting rejected; that's quite the contrary.

But I've learned that it's not me. And that I have to get back up and send that story out again, or my computer is the only one who's going to read it.

Do the same with your novels. Send them out. Brace yourself for the rejections. And while you're doing that, write another novel. =)

I have received worried murmurings about the continued existence of LIT SOUP, given my last post.

The blog is going nowhere. Don't worry. I may be annoyed at #agentfail, but not at the world at large. =)

Also, I am informed the search function bar does not work, which may be an unfixable issue because of it being ported from Wordpress.

And now I'm back to work.

I'm not going to get involved in this, as I've read the first five to ten comments and found them so aching with vitriol that I couldn't stand them.

If you have a complaint about me, you may take it up with me privately in an e-mail.

If you have a complaint about another agent, I suggest you do the same.

I have no idea, if any of the writer backlash is directed at myself.

But I will say the following:

I do not tell you how to do your job, and I ask that you do not tell me how to do mine. I work seven days a week, often on weekend or nights, if emergencies arise. I spent a good part of Saturday e-mailing all my foreign agents, when I had a bit of a crisis to deal with. I have the wonderful opportunity to work from home, and one of the advantages of doing that is so I can dictate my own hours and deal with my life. So if I post something to Twitter at say 11pm: that's because I haven't had time earlier in the day to do whatever I'm posting I'm doing. I have a private life, and if you would prefer I don't share even tiny pieces of it (and that's all you're really getting), I can easily lock the Twitter stream.

I imagine a lot of other agents feel the same.

Comments are locked.

Yes, really, a video game where plants fight zombies. It sounds slightly unbelievable, but it's adorable-looking.

Watch the trailer here

Go here for a preview of the upcoming game.

This is hilarious. I have no idea who wrote it.

And yes, it's Passover soon!

Official announcement time: I will be taking the day off for part of April 8, 2009 and all of April 9, 2009 due to the Passover Seders. Carry on without me. =)

Well, this is the official notice that I have moved the blog over to my private e-mail address, which will follow the same policy as before--if you query me there, and I don't know you, I delete it.

If you would like to query or send me e-mail, you can find my public contact information at http://www.rappaportagency.com.

And while we're on the subject of inappropriate places to query, I'd like to remind people that LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are all inappropriate ways to query an agent. =) I delete queries that come those ways too.

I am testing to see if this works, since I have switched Gmail accounts and am consolidating...

I knew that I had missed a book I read in February/March....

15. THE NAME OF THE WIND by Patrick Rothfuss
Excellent, excellent fantasy novel. The narrative structure is brilliant; I really like how it's stories within stories within stories. This is *good* epic fantasy.

16. WHAT WOULD EMMA DO? by Eileen Cook
Strangely, for a novel that consists of a lot of talking about God and Jesus... I really liked it. Granted, there were some strange parts about being born-again that I still can't grok, but I really loved the character of Emma and the situations she found herself in. She was very real.

17. THEN COMES SEDUCTION by Mary Balogh
Another Huxtable novel, as they're blitzing them out with four books this year and one next year. I liked it, but I didn't truly love it until I got most of the way through. I think part of the problem is that the Huxtable family is *so good*, and I like Mary Balogh's romances the most when she's writing about characters that have fundamental flaws. I'm waiting for Con Huxtable's book next year though.