Re: fantasy without magic?

"Constantinople" <constantinopoli@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1124324412.253920.280870@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<snip>
> I suspect that little bit of dialog gives a good idea of what the book
> is going to be like. A much better idea than the blurb. A better idea
> even than the summary.

For marketing a book to readers, yes. But marketing departments have a
touching faith in Things As They Are Always Done, and it's Always Done to
have either a blurb or a bunch of quotes from other authors on the back of
the book, so that's what they put there. Half the time, you have to
arm-twist them six ways from next Sunday in order to keep them from putting
in major spoilers, and even then it doesn't always work.

For putting in a query letter, no. What goes in the query letter is the
summary, because the summary is what the editor wants (and there usually
isn't *room* for that *plus* an intriguing dialog bit, and the summary is
more important *to the editor*). And that was, after all, where this whole
thing started.

Patricia C. Wrede




.

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