Links Tent: Must-Read Agents

The links to all of these blogs are found on the right, but I know you probably haven't clicked on even one of them. So here's a bit more information about each of these must-read blogs to hopefully entice you to visit them.

I was disappointed when Miss Snark, anonymous agent and snarky blogger extraordinaire, discontinued her blog. Luckily the archives are still up, and the posts are labeled for easy reference. Informative, with just enough added sarcasm to keep it fun, her blog is a great resource for aspiring novelists.

Janet Reid, aka Query Shark, is just about snarky enough to make me wonder if she might be related to Miss Snark. Her no-nonsense, no BS advice makes her agent blog a must read. Recent posts include questions to ask prospective agents, and her helpful list of links includes a query checklist.

Query Shark, Janet Reid's alter ego, offers biting (groan...I know, bad pun) critiques of query letters. If you are in the process of writing a query letter for your novel, or even just nearing completion of your novel, take the time to go through the posts.

If Shark or Snark are not your thing, literary agent Nathan Bransford's blog is just as informative but with a lot more "nice" thrown in. His list of Essentials are a great starting point, and especially his impressive Writing Advice Database and the FAQs.

Also make sure to stop over at Pub Rants, the blog of literary agent Kristin Nelson of the Nelson Literary Agency. Make sure you check out the terrific links on the right (you'll have to scroll down a bit) including Agent Kristin's Queries: An Inside Scoop (of queries that worked) and Agent Kristin's Query Pitch Workshop on the Blog.

Last, but not least, is the BookEnds, LLC blog. The Must-Read Posts listed on the right of the blog are, well, must-reads. Check them out.

What about you? What's your favourite agent blog?

Welcome to my three-ring circus.

In the centre ring, we have my family--five spirited kids aged 4-14 and my self-employed husband--as well as our wayward cat and the roughly 100-year-old renovation project we all call home. In the ring to my right is my freelance career, where I write articles and essays for a growing number of publications, including The Globe and Mail, Today's Parent Baby & Toddler, New Beginnings and The Writer, and provide editing and proofreading services to businesses and other writers. And in the ring on my left you'll find my fiction writing dreams, where my works-in-progress currently include a novel and several short stories.

Keeping it all together is definitely a bit of a circus act, and making time to do it all sometimes requires feats that defy the laws of science. That's what you'll find here: the tricks I've found to manage time, sanity and the writing process.