Wordcraft -- Spot the scams, no fooling!

Two weeks ago I wrote about one of my favorite free websites for writers, QueryTracker (“Tracking the right agent for your work,” March 18, 2013). It offers a wealth of information about potential agents. But before you actually hit “send” on that query letter, there’s at least one more site you should check -- Preditors & Editors. Conveniently, QueryTracker provides a link. Or look at it directly, http://pre-ed.com/.

The first think you’ll notice about the site, aside from its quirky spelling, is a notice that it’s being sued and asking for donations for legal fees. As best I can determine, this is part of an ongoing battle with PublishAmerica, a company notably peeved by the site’s “strongly not recommended” assessment. Agents, attorneys, and publishers don’t always like it, but we as writers need to know upfront before wasting our time -- and sometimes our money -- on scam artists.

P&E lists its criteria for dis-recommending agents and companies. The first sin on its list is charging fees up front. Has an agent used an author’s material without permission? Been found guilty of fraud or other crimes relevant to writers and publishing? P&E tells all. (It also notes that threats of physical violence automatically result in a “not recommended” listing. I don’t want to know where that came from.)

Want to know whether an agent you’re looking at belongs to a professional organization that can impose standards of conduct? Or whether the agent used to belong to such an organization but was booted out? Preditors & Editors will tell.

Of course, there’s stuff besides dirty business we want to know. Such as the all-important one -- has this agent actually sold her authors’ works to legitimate, paying publishers?

Among other good to know stuff -- suggested etiquette for contacting agents, and sample query letters. Just don’t copy the samples verbatim. Your intended agent no doubt has seen them often enough. You don’t want to tempt her to do any of that physical violence stuff.

Preditors & Editors itself lists other potentially helpful sites. I’d love to hear some of your best -- or worst -- examples of sites for writers!

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For Dallas-area readers -- the city’s Big Read program aims to start a month-long conversation about Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Starting today, April 1, from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. for commuters at DART’s Union Station. So I’m getting up extra early to publish this and catch the train. See you there! For more Big Read events, see
http://bigreaddallas.org/.

Update -- I halfway expected Dallas Big Read's promised surprise for commuters to be an April Fool hoax.  It wasn't!  Friends of the Dallas Public Library handed out 1,000 free copies of Fahrenheit 451 this morning.  Last one was gone by about 5 minutes till 8.  This Thursday, the Perot Museum hosts a discussion of technology's influence.  Next Tuesday, April 9, Half Price Books, 5803 E. Northwest Highway in Dallas, hosts a discussion of the role of science fiction.

Wordcraft -- Tough times, tough secrets

I’m a Detective!

Elizabeth Marie Hutchinson -- When I Dream

by Regina Stone Matthews

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It’s in the news all too often -- families next door or down the block outwardly living normal lives while inwardly torn apart by addictions, tough economic times, even violence. They’re part of our communities -- except they aren’t.

That’s why the latest book in Dallas area writer Regina Matthews’ middle grade series, I’m a Detective: Elizabeth Marie Hutchinson -- When I Dream, is about the “importance of communities.”

Previous books dealt with Elizabeth Marie’s discovery of the nature of friendship and the problems of bullying. But the older Elizabeth Marie gets, the bigger the problems she encounters. And, “now there’s middle school to deal with,” Ms. Matthews told an audience recently at the Woman’s Center in Richardson, Texas.

Or, as Elizabeth Marie says, “Middle school was weird enough, but not as weird as the house across the street. . . . the Hendrix family had lived in that house for as long as I could remember. And in all that time I had never been inside their house.”

Elizabeth Marie enlists her friends (including former bully Margaret Callahan) to solve the lunchroom thefts plaguing Wilson Middle School. But as the thefts escalate, she learns that to catch the thief, she’ll have to enter the house of the reclusive Hendrixes and uncover secrets it will take a whole neighborhood to solve.

The dilemma of the Hendrixes, Ms. Matthews said, is based on a family she babysat for when she was a teenager. And similar problems have only increased as neighbors become more isolated from each other, as children become more invested in protecting the family’s secrets against the adolescent push toward conformity and in the face of potential bullying.

“If one kid gets that,” Ms. Matthews said, “I will consider myself a successful writer.”

The Hendrixes aren’t the only characters based on real life, she told her audience. The original Elizabeth Marie characters were based on her own daughters, and first story in the series, Elizabeth Marie Hutchinson -- When I Dream, had its origins in tales she told them as children. Thinking “this would be something I could read to them and that they could read to themselves,” she wrote her first manuscript, put it in a filing cabinet, and lost track of it for years.

After uncovering it following her family’s move to Dallas, she researched self-publishing avenues but found the costs of the do-it-yourself method beyond her means. In 2008, she found her present publisher, print-on-demand PublishAmerica, which accepted her unsolicited manuscript, “and I was hooked,” she said.

She is currently at work on an adult book of memoir and essays, Anyone Seen My Rose-Colored Glasses.

But will there be more Elizabeth Marie books? Maybe, she admitted. After all, her middle school heroine is almost old enough to be interested in boys. . . .

(Print and Kindle versions of all the Elizabeth Marie Hutchinson books are available through www.amazon.com/.  For more about Ms. Matthews, see
www.reginamatthews.com/.)