AFN #146: Keep On Keeping On

plus agency agreements and the return of industry news to AFN

Hello and happy Friday. After fighting a weeklong battle with our internet service that culminated in us switching providers altogether, I elected to GTFO of my house today. I’m currently ensconced on a friend’s sofa. There is a fire going. It’s magical.

I’m glad for the magic because it’s been a bit of a demoralizing week—I lost a couple of beauty contests, which was a bit of a bummer. Agents experience rejection, too, ya know! In both cases I know their other options were fabulous, and so I’ve been in my query inbox all week, trying again.

It’s funny how little some things change. When I was agenting before, the Big Comps that I saw most often, that people used because they didn’t actually read widely in the genre, were the big media franchises; Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings. Now it’s all of the big romantasy titles, your Thrones of Glass and your Serpent and the Wings of Night and your Fourth Wings. It’s somehow comforting to know that this is still the case —that people will comp to the thing that’s big, regardless of whether or not it’s appropriate.

There are still one million (approx.) vampire books in the queries, which I’m not mad about. Unsurprisingly, the number of books which feature an AI as the antagonist is also up. I have to say, I am not the person to send these books to. I don’t find AI interesting, not in the way the tech industry desperately wants me to. I think AI’s usefulness can be judged by the query I received which indicated the author had used AI to do agent research, leading them to query me for a query/category I don’t want.

Still, there are gems. Still, there is magic. I’m excited to find it.

PUBLISHING QUESTION OF THE WEEK

When a writer signs with an agent, is there a contract for literary representation? Are there standard terms and/or red flags writers should look for?

There is! It’s called an agency agreement! I wrote about it here, in may of 2024! My advice from that post remains the same. The biggest red flag will always be any kind of up-front payment or fee—money flows to the author, not the other way around. I’d also keep an eye out for anything that restricts your options once you find a new agent—carveouts that would seek to prevent you from going out with a new project, etc.

This ask is a great reminder to to all reading this that this newsletter has been around for five years, and there’s a lot of info on here! And it’s a reminder to me to start working on something I’ve wanted to do for a while, which is something that would make that information a little more findable. Maybe a links page by subject? Or I could do an ebook? Or both? What would y’all find more useful? I miss livejournal style tags—now THAT was a good system.

THE INDUSTRY

I’m going to try out including an industry news section in each newsletter! I used to do more of this, and I miss it. The big news (for me) this week was Bookshop.org’s announcement that they’re now selling ebooks! This is huge for the industry and for authors—it looks like they’re starting out with trad pub books, but they’re working on setting up a platform for indie authors. Anything that counters the influence of the major tech giant stranglehold is good in my book! Elsewhere, Vulture has a profile of the somewhat controversial bookshop mogul Sarah McNally, and in LitHub Maris Kreizman makes a solid case for escapism in these times.

WHAT I’M READING

Submissions, mostly. Last weekednd I finished Bull Moon Rising, which was absolutely tremendous fun. I loved the world building, and the growing attraction between Aspeth and Hawk after their marriage-of-convenience (you KNOW I love a marriage-of-convenience!) was believable and very, very sexy. I’m so excited to see that there will be a sequel, out in September. After Bull Moon Rising I picked up The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsui. I had included this in a What I’m Reading ages ago, despite not having actually opened the book—hubris, on my part. Well I read it in one fell swoop last Saturday and it was extremely fun. A group of mystery-novel enthusiasts goes to a remote island, the site of a recent grisly, bizarre murder. As they are picked off, one by one, back home one of their friends is running a desperate search of his own to find out the source of threatening letters he’s received. It had a twist I genuinely didn’t see coming. Highly, highly recommend.

THIS WEEK IN HOCKEY

A new article in a series I’m calling Washington Capitals: The Island of Misfit Toys dropped this week, profiling center Dylan Strome’s journey through the NHL, from being drafted #2 overall by the Coyotes, to being traded to the Blackhawks, to now being Alex Ovechkin’s new Nicklas Backstrom and the team’s overall top scorer. The Caps are #2 in the league, one point behind the Winnipeg Jets, and six points ahead of the Oilers, who lost Connor McDavid for three games for cross-checking Conor Garland. Talk about superstar calls, eh?

HOUSEKEEPING

Do you have any questions about the publishing industry? Requests for advice? Thoughts on your recent reads? You can leave them as comments, replies to this email, or fill out this Google form to ask anonymously!

For my sins, I have reopened to queries.

My first novel, Marrying In, is available for purchase on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, and is coming soon to iBooks. If you’ve read it, consider leaving a review—that helps me and the book in the long run!

You can find me on social media on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, the A Faster No Discord, and now TikTok. If you buy any of the books linked in this newsletter I receive a small commission at no cost to you.

This newsletter is a personal project, and the sentiments and opinions expressed here are my own and not those of my employer.

AFN #145: I watched Squid Game 2 to relax

Plus: trad vs self publishing

warning: post contains moving/flashing gifs

Watching a show as violent and soul-crushing as Squid Game for a little bit of relaxation might seem crazy, but in this new season of The Horrors this Korean show about the inescapable vise of capitalism felt like just the thing. Squid Game, in case you’ve been living under a rock, is the smash Netflix hit from creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, which follows a group of people drowning in debt who agree to participate in a series of children’s games in an attempt transcend their dire circumstances. Protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) won the first season, for a given value of winning, and season two follows his attempts to infiltrate and destroy the games after he finally catches up with The Salesman (Gong Yoo, who is SO hot and SO deranged in this role.)

I mean. Hello.

The second season is absolutely tremendous, in large part because the cast of characters is even more compelling than season one. But in addition to exploring all the reasons a person could get to the point where getting voluntarily kidnapped taken to a remote island would be a reasonable choice, Director Hwang also frames the contestant’s participation as a pretty explicit critique of the limits of democracy in a capitalist system.

In the world of The Game, as it’s called in the show, winnings are accumulated as contestants are “eliminated”—i.e. killed—to the tune of 100 million WON per contestant. In season one, contestants could vote to end the games, but they couldn’t take any of the pot of winnings home. In season two, the rules have changed: if you vote to end the games, contestants can divide up what’s accumulated so far, and at least claw back some of what they owe.

Should be simple, right? Play the game, go home with your money and live. But as contestants die (and die, and die, and kill each other, and die) the choice to continue becomes complicated by greed and hope. “The amount in that pot won’t even cover my interests.” “If I play one more game I’ll be set for life.” Heartbreakingly: “I have more debt than you know about.”

In season one, 201 of the 456 contestants survived the first game. But thanks to Gi-Hun’s efforts in season two, 365 make it out—leaving a much smaller pot to divide among the survivors. After each game—each one more nightmarish than the last, from the now-familiar Red Light Green Light race to the nerve-wracking, nail-biting Mingle—contestants are given a chance to vote whether or not to continue playing. And each time the vote is to continue, even as the contestants face that for the pot to increase, more people must die.

Squid Game is basically watching our society play out in minuature. Over and over again we’ve been given the choice to do something different, and over and over again just enough people have voted to continue the grind. (On the show often the votes come down to just a few contestants.) In the show, at the end of the day, what choice do some of them have but to particicpate in their own exploitation and the exploitation of their fellow contestants, if it means emerging with even a scrap of dignity on the other side? One contestant, Hyun-ju, is a pre-op trans woman, who knows that her options in Korea are vanishingly small, further whittled down by society’s refusal to accept her when she came out. She dreams of gender reassignment surgery in Thailand and a small life there—it’s hard to begrudge her continuing participation in the games, knowing she can’t go back to her old job (the military, sob) and her family doesn’t support her.

I don’t know, man. A lot sucks in the world right now. I didn’t watch this and come out on the other side with helpful takeaways—it didn’t help that this is season two of three, and so most of the Big Questions remain unanswered. (Who is the real Front Man behind the games? How did the guy we know as The Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) get so far in the organization? How on earth is this whole operation funded? Please, Director Hwang, I’m begging you. Give us some answers.)

I guess it felt good to have a metaphor: that big piggy bank is filling itself on the pain of others. In season one, Gi-hun went home with it a broken man, after killing his childhood best friend, only to find his elderly mother dead. When I think about all those billionnaires onstage at the inauguration—over a trillion dollars in accumulated, hoarded wealth—it felt useful to say: Okay. These are the VIPs. We are the contestants. Four more years (derogatory.) Let’s go.

PUBLISHING QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Since you have been on both sides of trad/self publishing now, I would love to hear your insights about the pros and cons of the two tracks, particularly the aspects surrounding launch and publishing- the one area where I feel like trad pub still has an edge, even as I hear growing complaints that publishers are pushing more and more onus onto the authors.

I had an MS that got lot of initial interest from agents when I queried but didn't get picked up- query materials were spot on, MS needed more work. Given this interest, I was fairly confident I could have landed an agent and contract after a major overhaul, but for reasons of age, impatience, and stubbornly DIY tendencies, I self-published late last year. For some of those same reasons, as well as some ignorance and a lot of financial concerns, I forewent the ARC and other pre-launch exercises. I think I regret this because it is CRAZY hard to get noticed after launch. SM is capricious and building an email list is slow, arduous work. Many opportunities for marketing are only available pre-launch, and/or are wildly expensive or intimidating (how exactly does one get a sweet editorial blurb without an intro from agent or editor?). I wonder what isn't really available either financially or logistically as an indie that a trad publisher would have provided (and for how many authors the publishers do the marketing).

As both a writer and artist, producing my own book from cover to completion was a learning curve but well within my skillsets, but the marketing aspect has me wondering if I don't want to try the trad route for my WIP. I know other authors are weighing the same issues.

I feel like I have had this one hanging around for a while — apologies! The pros and cons are kind of complicated, because as we used to say on Shipping & Handling, It Depends.

Traditional publication pros:

• paid advances

• marketing & publicity support

• editorial feedback and guidance

• professionals lay out your book and make a professional cover

• established sales channels to get your book into brick and mortar stores

• higher chances of coverage from mainstream media outlets like the Times, USA Today, etc

• access to book boxes/book clubs

• does not cost anything for the author

• higher prestige of publication

Self publishing pros:

• complete control over the process of writing, editing, layout, design, and cover design

• higher cut of the per-unit price

• no gatekeepers

• can be fairly low-cost

For the traditional publishing pros, these are things you’ll get most of the time. Every traditionally published author has a horror story about getting editorial notes late, or geting notes that don’t make sense; every author has a story about getting zero to very little marketing & publicity support for their book. (Advances and royalties aren’t what they used to be, either.) That being said, the sales channels to get your book into physical bookstores are there for trad pub authors in a way they aren’t for self-pub authors, and the fact that an author can go from querying to book publication without shelling out a single cent is pretty attractive! Additionally, when things go right for a book—when editor and author are in alignment, when the marketing and publishing teams are cracking a long—it can be a fun, rewarding experiences. Call me Pollyanna but I think this happens more often than not.

As someone who has self-published a novel, I can tell you that the work to promote it did not, ultimately, feel like something I wanted to do. I made one tiktok; I posted on Instagram a handful of times. My writing is a creative pursuit, but especially after rejoining the industry, it’s not my main focus, and successful indie authors are constantly grinding to promote themselves in an absolute tidal wade of independently published content. (And that was even before the wave of AI slop began to flood KU.) If you are a person who is confident and excited to talk about your own work a lot, then the self-publishing route will be a good one for you. I found the idea of talking about my own work on social media personally excruciating.

That being said, you have to talk a lot about your work as a trad pub author, too! These days authors are expected to talk about their books as much as possible—online, in blog posts, in your hometown paper, with your local indies and book clubs and reading groups. Gone are the days of a massive newspaper campaign for a debut writer, and with a TikTok final death on the horizon, the window of booktok promo may be closing, too.

When I self-pubbed, I didn’t do an ARC or a launch or any of the other things you’ve talked about. I think I’ve sold somewhere around 350 copies, which isn’t anything to sneeze at—it’s not gonna get me quitting my day job, either.

WHAT I’M READING

Well, I said I didn’t want to do a lot of rereading, but I also said I had received those beautiful Dorothy L. Sayers editions, so I’ve just finished Whose Body? and Murder Must Advertise. Murder Must Advertise is one-half perfect comedic mystery and one-half bizarre drug-fueled fever dream, so of course it was enjoyable. Once I finished those the shame came upon me, so I picked up a book I’d purchased last year but hadn’t read (many such cases:) Ruby Dixon’s Bull Moon Rising. I’m about a hundred and fifty pages in and it’s tremendous fun so far.

THIS WEEK IN HOCKEY

The Washington Capitals lead the league in points, with 69. The closest teams in the standings are the Jets with 67 and the Leafs with 62. The Caps’ success is largely built on Pierre-Luc Dubois’ scoring prowess and the two crackerjack goaltenders we inexplicably have, so valued that the club is waiting to sign new contracts for both because they don’t want to upset the locker room. Elsewhere, a Ranger has a maple syrup company, and I think that’s very sweet. (heh).

HOUSEKEEPING

Do you have any questions about the publishing industry? Requests for advice? Thoughts on your recent reads? You can leave them as comments, replies to this email, or fill out this Google form to ask anonymously!

For my sins, I have reopened to queries.

My first novel, Marrying In, is available for purchase on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, and is coming soon to iBooks. If you’ve read it, consider leaving a review—that helps me and the book in the long run!

You can find me on social media on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, the A Faster No Discord, and now TikTok. If you buy any of the books linked in this newsletter I receive a small commission at no cost to you.

This newsletter is a personal project, and the sentiments and opinions expressed here are my own and not those of my employer.

AFN #144: Happy New Year, Kinda

once more into the breach

Hi all! Happy new year! I hope your holiday season was as restful and renewing as possible. I hope that you got to spend time with all the friends and family you wanted to. I hope you fulfilled the ancient prophecies, and transmogrified into a couch between Christmas and New Year's. I myself am currently about 70% cheese—this number is expected to decrease.

I’m still in Texas, working remotely this first week back so I can attend a funeral on Sunday. In some ways it feels appropriate to begin the year this way—the old year is dead, the new one is being born, etc. But at the same time it feels like a lot of things are ending (democracy, anyone?) It feels like insanity, watching cultural institutions like the New York Times and enormous corporate entities race to bow to the impending administration, and the outgoing administration throwing up their hands and saying there’s nothing to be done.

But I digress. Fixing whatever the hell is wrong with our national ethos is outside this newsletter’s remit. I’d like to start out the newsletter year by laying out some hopes, goals, and intentions—and I’d love to hear what yours are in the comments!

Read more, and more widely!

I read seventy-seven books last year. (I count rereads, and I’ll count DNFs if I read more than half the book.) I’d like to aim to hit one hundred next year, and to cut down on rereading (this part might be slightly undermined by the beautiful gift I got from my sister for Christmas: the Folio Society editions of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Peter Wimsey novels.)

More and more widely feels big enough that it could go in a lot of directions, and doesn’t feel limiting or like a chore. More books in translation, more books by POC and queer authors, more new-to-me genres and themes. More literary fiction? Sure! More big hits? Sure!

Write/Think more about what I’m reading

I do a certain amount of this in this-here newsletter, but I’d like to spend time jotting down my thoughts about books after I finish readingv them—what works? What doesn’t? I don’t know what this is gonna look like. I don’t see myself doing a second missive a week to specifically discuss what I’m reading—in addition to that being an absolute fuckton of work, I’m still doing this newsletter for free. That level of work would tip it into the “I should be being paid for this” territory, and I seesaw back and forth on the relative appropriateness of my charging for access to my thoughts. (Absolutely no shade to agents who charge for their newsletters—I can’t say that I’ll never do it, but right now it doesn’t feel right.)

Still, I’d like to think more granularly about craft when I’m reading something—especially if I am having a strong feeling about it.

Tackle a larger project

I have thought on and off in the last few years about combining some of the advice I’ve given on the newsletter into an ebook or something, a resource for authors to turn to to help as a guide on their publishing journey. Not sure what this will look like, either, but I’d like to start laying the groundwork!

I’d also like to turn back to my own writing, now that I’ve figured out my own work/life balance for the most part. I have the sequel to Marrying In to work on, as well as the fantasy novel I’ve been noodling on for the better part of a few years, plus fanfiction projects in various stages of completion. (Agents: they’re just like us! Getting hyperfixated on the darndest things!)

Continuing to build the A Faster No community

Since announcing my return to agenting in March of 2024, I’ve gained over 250 subscribers to this newsletter—this has been tremendously heartwarming. I’d love to figure out ways to foster more engagement, whether that’s getting more conversation going in the comments or getting our Discord more active. Some of you have been here since day one—some of you are more recent. All are welcome, and I hope this newsletter continues to be a resource and a friend in your writing journey.

WHAT I’M READING

I rounded out the year with two really fabulous reads—an e-Arc of the third Katherine Addison’s Cemeteries of Amalo novel, The Tomb of Dragons. I am on record as loving The Goblin Emperor, and this sequel series following semi-disgraced cleric and Witness for the Dead vel ama Thara Celehar is an absolute delight. Thara is my favorite literary type, the sad gay monk, and his efforts to find truth and justice on behalf of the dead are always twisty, intricate, and emotionally compelling. I want a Cadfael-style series of approximately one thousand books in this series. (And also a Goblin Emperor sequel, please and thank you.)

I might have read more before ringing out 2024 if not for my final book of the year, James Islington’s doorknocker fantasy The Will of the Many. (Six hundred and eighty-six pages!!) Set in a fantasy!Ancient Rome, it’s not the kind of fantasy I typically turn to, but I tore through it. In many ways, it reminded me of Red Rising, which I did not like and could not finish. The two books have essentially the same plot: a young man who passionately hates the empire that ruined his life must become a respected citizen of said empire in order to get revenge. But Vis, the protagonist of TWOTM, has an extremely compelling voice, and the monstrousness of the bodily autonomy-draining Hierarchy took what could be a very generic magic academy plot to a new level. I’ll definitely be reading the sequel.

2025 started out with a bang, i.e. the Naomi Novik short story collection Buried Deep. The collection contains almost all bangers, except for the one scifi story, which I could not finish. I also read the copy of All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum and Me which had been making its way through my family. It’s a beautifully written, tender memoir about grief and art (and at a brisk 180 pages, an easy read.) And for a book club I attended at my cousin’s local bookstore I read the dark stalker romance Lights Out by Navessa Allen—probably not something I would have picked up otherwise, but tremendous, sexy fun. (Even if it got a little to involved in body-disposal logistics in the second half!)

THIS WEEK IN HOCKEY

rmnb_blog

A post shared by @rmnb_blog

He’s back! He’s back! Well, he’s been back for a while, but the Russian Machine came back to the ice to help lead the Caps to a 5-2 victory against the Sabres on December 28th. As of the time of writing, he’s 23 goals away from beating Wayne Gretzky’s goal record. This should be compensation for Ovi finding out that that he is not his son Sergei’s favorite player—that would be Nicholas Aubé-Kubel, a man I did not know existed before today. Elsewhere, Jaromir Jagr, who is somehow still playing professional hockey at age 52, lost four teeth in a game. Warning, those photos are pretty gross.

HOUSEKEEPING

Do you have any questions about the publishing industry? Requests for advice? Thoughts on your recent reads? You can leave them as comments, replies to this email, or fill out this Google form to ask anonymously!

For my sins, I have reopened to queries.

My first novel, Marrying In, is available for purchase on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, and is coming soon to iBooks. If you’ve read it, consider leaving a review—that helps me and the book in the long run!

You can find me on social media on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, the A Faster No Discord, and now TikTok. If you buy any of the books linked in this newsletter I receive a small commission at no cost to you.

This newsletter is a personal project, and the sentiments and opinions expressed here are my own and not those of my employer.

AFN #143: End of Year Reading Roundup + Gift Guide

Yes I know it's not the *actual* end of the year, shhhhh, say nothing

This is going to be a long one, folks, so if you’re reading on email be prepared to click over to Substack when it cuts you off so you can see the whole thing. (If you want to.)

2024 was a good year in reading, all things considered. As of the time of writing (December 20, 2024) I have read 73 books (better than 2023’s 62.) This number is inclusive of books I put down after getting halfway through, though I don’t list those here. You will notice, however, that there is a fair bit of rereading on this list, which I still count, with some caveats (below the list.) This number will probably go up, since the LDLA offices are closed between Christmas and New Year and I have a date with my TBR pile and my parents’ couch.

False Value
The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries (x2)
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (x2)
Thus Was Adonis Murdered
Divine Rivals
Trust
The Subplot: What China is Reading and Why It Matters
The Three Body Problem
The Dark Forest
The Tainted Cup
Equal Rites
Tomorrow, Perhaps the Future: Writers, Outsiders, and the Spanish Civil War
The Goblin Emperor (RR, x2)
The Undertaking of Hart & Mercy
Y/N
A Taste of Gold & Iron (RR, x2)
Throne of Jade (Temeraire #2)
The Familiar
Wyrd Sisters
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Productivity Without Burnout
Gorgeous Lies
Deceived by the Gargoyle
Hoarded by the Dragon
Five Broken Blades
The Hurricane Wars
The Crescent Moon Tearoom
The Takedown
Hannah Tate, Beyond Repair
A Fate Inked in Blood
At First Spite
Serpent & the Wings of Night
Long Live Evil
Witches Abroad
A Gentleman in Moscow (RR)
Strong Poison (RR)
Have His Carcase (RR)
Gaudy Night (RR)
Busman’s Honeymoon (RR)
To Say Nothing of the Dog (RR)
The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo
Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder
Lords & Ladies
There’s Always This Year: On Basketball And Ascension
Crazy Stupid Bromance
Game Changer
Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales
Heated Rivalry
The Perilous Gard
Family Meal
A Memory Called Empire (RR)
Doomsday Book (RR)
Inspector Imanishi Investigates
Bismarck’s War: The Franco-Prussian War and the Birth of Modern Europe
The White Album (RR)
Praise
Give Me More
Highest Bidder
The Fortunate Fall
The Home Wrecker
They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Long
Aunt Dimity’s Death
Aunt Dimity’s Good Deed

RR means it’s a reread; x# is the number of times I reread that book this year. In two cases, the multiple rereads were simply due to “I am in line waiting for something and I know this book is here on my phone and that I liked it;” in the case of the Emily Wilde books it’s because I wanted to reread the first two before I read the final instalment. I think it’s pretty indicative of my overall anxiety levels that there is so much rereading on this list.

There were some real standout reads this year, however:

Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder by Asako Yuzuki was such a pleasurable read. It doubles as both the story of a reporter’s relationship with an accused murderer and a documentation of the reporter’s changing relationship with food and her own body —inextricable from a larger portrait of Japanese society and women’s attempts to navigate it. It’s also delicious—some of the best food writing in fiction since (ahem) A Certain Hunger.

image copyright: vera drmanovski

When I picked up the first Emily Wilde book, I didn’t think I’d enjoy it, but my sister (who has great taste) assured me I would. “Twee Victoriana isn’t my thing,” I said, like a fool. And then I absolutely tore through it and the sequel before realizing I’d played myself, since the third isn’t out until next year. (Luckily this coincided with my return to the world of professional publishing, so I was soon able to cadge an ARC from the series’ editor and read the fabulous concluding volume.) Emily Wilde is a professor of dryadology at Oxford in an England where faeries and all manner of Fae exist. Deeply intelligent and logical, she’s not great with people, unlike her colleague Wendell Bambleby, who she is pretty sure is a Fae prince dabbling as an academic. Emily’s voice is a joy—her quiet exasperation with Bambleby’s charm and ease with people as he inserts himself into her research soon gives way to affection and appreciation. The world building is considered, layered, and compelling, and—just do yourself a favor and read the first two before the third comes out in February.

How to describe Y/N? It’s a novel about K-Pop. It’s about identity. It’s about translation. It’s about assimilation and relationships and the blurry, messy interplay between celebrities—particularly idols— and their fans. It has one of the weirdest, most unlikable protagonists I’ve ever encountered, and by the end of the book I would die for her.

This and They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us were such joys to read through, though Hanif Abdurraqib’s deft inclusion of all the cultural and political contexts surrounding his two subjects (basketball and music) means wrangling with tough questions by necessity. But his lyrical writing is able to wrestle with these questions in clear ways: what does it mean to be in community? What does it mean to love something—a city, a musical artist, a sport? There’s Always This Year made a million end of year best-of lists (and was longlisted for the National Book Award, rightly so.)

This was just fucking fun. It’s basically a Sherlock Holmes pastiche set in a fantasy Thailand, with lots of yummy political intrigue and also giant kaiju-like creatures which threaten the land. This is a satisfying standalone, but I just learned that Robert Jackson Bennett intends for this to be the first of a long-running, Miss Marple-style series of novels, each with their own mystery. What luck!

Honorable Mentions:

Tomorrow, Perhaps the Future was an informative, moving portrait of several artists who were inspired to travel to Spain and join the rebellion in the Spanish Civil War. It also deftly laid out the sources of the conflict and the various cultural forces working against the artist/rebels as they tried to make their case for a Spain free of Franco. I loved At First Spite, which is a sadder romance than I normally go for. The protagonist, Athena Graydon, has stagnated in her life, and when her engagement ends, she ends up in a spiraling depression that was so well written it made me cry. The romance between Athena and her neighbor/enemy Matthew was raw and tender and lovely. I was also delighted to have a late-in-the-year discovery of Sara Cate, whose steamy romances I am devouring at the rate of one a day.

PRESENTING THE FIRST (AND LIKELY LAST) AFN GIFT GUIDE

I find the poliferation of gift guides to be a bit perplexing, and yet I consume them with delight. I can’t afford to buy every item on Amy Sedaris’ gift guide—but boy howdy, do I want to! I thought it might be funny to present to you an Extremely Specific Gift Guide for the Reader or Publishing Professional In Your Life.

A Hulken bag
Last week, as I made countless trips to the post office to drop off books to ship, this bag was an absolute godsend. It’s just reinforced canvas with plastic coated straps, an elevated granny cart, if you will, albeit one that inexplicably has a partnership with the New York City Ballet. There’s something so pleasing about it, though—it rolls smoothly over cracked NYC pavrmeent, and the handles are at the right dragging height. Ten out of ten.

A Scotch 2” Packing Tape Dispenser
Nothing says romance like the ability to apply packing tape quickly and accurately without accidentally cutting yourself in the process. A true book connoisseur’s gift.

A Platinum Preppy fountain pen
What better gift to give than a cheap writing utensil that can spark an expensive hobby? One minute your giftee will be appreciating the smooth ink flow of this deceptively inexpensive pen. Six months later you will find that their home has been colonized by ink samples, hoarded packages of Tomoegawa Tomoe River Paper, and more pens than fingers on their hand. You’re welcome.

A subscription to the London Review of Books
You know they can quote the iconic Patricia Lockwood Miette tweets, so why not get them access to more of her writing? Whether it’s meeting the pope or reckoning with the work of David Foster Wallace, or Joan Didion, Lockwood is always erudite and funny, and I just know in my heart of heart that the free tote bag they’ll inevitably receive as part of the subscription will be street-cred-cool.

Membership in the Rancho Gordo Bean Club
Despite what the incoming administration promised, prices aren’t going down at the grocery store, so give them something they’ll need and really be able to use—beans! No, seriously—the Bean Club means four shipments of beans a year, of varieties you’ve never even heard of.

PSA: AFN WILL BE MOVING PLATFORMS

I should have done this a while back, but I’ll be moving newsletter platforms early in the new year. You won’t need to do anything on your end—I’ll be able to export the list and your AFN experience should continue as before. If you only get AFN through the Substack app, you may need to re-subscribe via email, but you’ll have plenty of heads up before the change happens.

HOUSEKEEPING

This is the final AFN for 2024. The newsletter will return the first week in January! Happy holidays to you and our loved ones.

Do you have any questions about the publishing industry? Requests for advice? Thoughts on your recent reads? You can leave them as comments, replies to this email, or fill out this Google form to ask anonymously!

For my sins, I have reopened to queries.

My first novel, Marrying In, is available for purchase on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, and is coming soon to iBooks. If you’ve read it, consider leaving a review—that helps me and the book in the long run!

You can find me on social media on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, the A Faster No Discord, and now TikTok. If you buy any of the books linked in this newsletter I receive a small commission at no cost to you.

This newsletter is a personal project, and the sentiments and opinions expressed here are my own and not those of my employer.

AFN # 142 So Runs The Year Away

This year's penultimate A Faster No is gonna be a long one folks

I cannot for the life of me believe that it is December already. The weather in New York is finally properly cold, though not as cold as it ought to be this time of year. We’ve all pretty much given up on getting any new projects out before the end of the year. Instead we’re closing out old submissions and wrapping up projects and cleaning out our inboxes and settling in for the holiday season. I personally feel as though my brain has liquefied, turned to goo, and leaked out my ears, so that should give you a sense of Where I’m At for this newsletter.

Complicating my headspace is that over the weekend I finally (after five years) cleaned out the storage unit I’d rented to house my agent copies of my old clients’ books when I left BGL. It was bittersweet to be faced with boxes enough to fill the back of a 2010 Ford Explorer—I’d somehow forgotten, or allowed myself to forget, that I had sold so many, that so many books had been translated or made into separate audiobooks or or or. It was an oddly incomplete collection, too. I had copies of Ren Warom’s Virology, for example, but not Escapology, the first in the series. I had approximately a hundred copies of Emma Newman’s Planetfall books (all four in the series) but am missing at least two of the Split Worlds books, both the Angry Robot and Diversion versions. Still, to see them all piled up in my new office warmed my heart. It was nice to see old friends, ready to be nestled in among the new.

This has been such a hard and challenging year, but also worthwhile and exciting—people keep asking me how it feels to be back as an agent and my answer has always been “it feels great.” It does feel great, but it’s a complicated kind of greatness—there’s always going to be that sense of wondering what might have been, mingled with happiness and invigorating excitement at getting a second chance to do this work.

Last week I attended the meeting of a new-to-me book club, where we’re reading Joyful Militancy: Building Resistance in Toxic Times. This book is heavily engaged with the Spinozan idea of joy: “…not an emotion at all, but an increase in one’s power to affect and be affected. It is the capacity to do and feel more…it is connected to creativity and the embrace of uncertainty.” This is the kind of joy I feel these days—like it’s a muscle I’m learning to flex, badly, a mindset with which to approach what I’m doing.

We live in uncertain times. I work in an uncertain industry. There is no endeavor with a smaller chance of a return than writing a book and sending it out in the hopes it will find its place in the world. My hope for this newsletter has always been that it should be informative and a little entertaining, and make it a little easier to be wherever you are in the publishing journey. I hope I can continue to do that in the year and years to come, and that this space remains a space of joy for you in all your endeavors.

PUBLISHING QUESTION(s) OF THE WEEK

I had a few hanging around the ol’ Google forms that didn’t merit long enough answers to be their own newsletters, so here’s a trifecta:

I have just completed a novel, now out to beta readers, and it's time (it just can't ever be avoided, arrgh--thanks for listening) to, you guessed it, write a query. I used Janet Reid to edit my last two queries. I learned so much from her. (Sigh. Big deep breath.) She was awesome.

Here's my question: Are you aware of anyone out there, obviously an agent, who critiques queries like Janet did? Janet charged a reasonable amount and, to her lasting credit, she would stick to the query past two looks until we both agreed it was ready. I don't mind paying for the service as long as it's a reasonable amount.

I know QueryManager offers the service to have people critique a query, but that's too public for me. As a screenwriter I've got personal stories and heard of others of stolen material, not getting credit due, etc., all when you're taking every precaution, following the rules, etc. It just seems so easy to have content stolen these days that I need to know the person is the real deal.

The place you are looking for is Reedsy! Reedsy is a marketplace with a lot of current and former publishing professionals who offer their expertise. Back when I freelanced I used to offer submission package or query critiques as a service. Many editors on there still offer that or something similar. It will probably look different depending on who you go to, but ideally you’d want to have at least a couple of rounds of feedback—so that you can send the initial query, they can tell you what they think works/doesn’t, and then you can get a chance to make changes and get feedback again. I think I used to charge $75 for the submissions package critique. That included in-line and global feedback on the first 25-50 (I can’t remember) pages of the book, feedback if needed on the synopsis, and three rounds of detailed query critiques. (A bargain, IMO.) Good luck!

Does the gender of a young YA protagonist (aged 14 or 15) mean a book is mostly going to be readers of the same gender? Or can you say the book is meant for anyone ages 12+?

Broadly speaking, yes: The gender of the protagonist is generally considered to be the gender of the target audience. Saying that the book is meant for anyone ages 12+ is so broad as to be unhelpful—though the idea of binary gender is reductive and outdated, it is still the go-to marketing axis that a publisher will take into account. You don’t have to say “for girls” or “for boys” in your query, though—this is probably where comp titles and comp authors will be far more helpful. Good luck!

Any tips for querying a verse novel with agents who use QueryTracker? I just had a rejection from someone who said their reason was that 44,000 words was too short for a YA book. It’s actually kind of long for a verse novel, but it seems like they didn’t get past the Word Count field on the QT form to know it’s in verse. 🤦 Now I’m wondering whether some of the other agents who passed might also have autorejected due to word count. Of course, many agents don’t want to work with verse novels at all, but all of my requests for fulls (and one really lovely personalized rejection) have come from agents I queried via email, where word count is better contextualized. What can I do? “Verse Novel” isn’t a drop-down-menu genre category, so it’s hard to signal it in QT. Should I use “A Verse Novel” as a subtitle after the title? Should I just always query agents via alternate methods if available? (That would help with formatting too. The QT form is terrible for verse formatting.) Any suggestions?

Possibly the most niche question I’ve received to date! Well done! First of all, I’d definitely add “A Novel in Verse” or something like that to the title field because, as you say there’s no way to indicate “verse novel” on a dropdown menu. (And I’d like to acknowledge that even though I use and love QueryManager for my own queries, I know that it can make an already difficult and fraught process feel reductive, so, sorry about that.) If an agent allows queries both through QueryTracker and through email, and you’ve had a better track record with email, definitely go that route—but don’t send it to them via email if they request queries through QT. That’s a quick route to getting the email deleted without being read.

I have the feeling that the relative rarity of verse novels in general is what’s working against you here, but definitely add the detail about it being a verse novel into the title form and see if that moves the needle. Good luck!

WHAT I’M READING

I’ve been on a real binge—feels as though it’s feast or famine these days, reading-wise. Since Thanksgiving I’ve finished eight books and am nearly done with one more. Bismarck’s War was fabulous, if you like that sort of thing (which I do.) On an editor’s recommendation I picked up Praise by Sarah Cate, who writes darker romance with “forbidden” tropes (that all seem to end with the female MC getting pregnant, which I don’t love.) Still, after Praise I read four more (Give Me More, Highest Bidder, The Anti-Hero, and The Homewrecker.) Cate’s writing is compulsively readable, and even if I wasn’t 100% into the tropes, the characters were so engaging that I didn’t mind.

Somewhere in the middle of that smut binge I re-read The White Album by Joan Didion, because the way she writes about the national id in the sixties feels like an analogue to the way being alive in America feels today. On the recommendation of a different editor I picked up The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Read, recently re-issued with a foreword from Jo Walton. It’s a late-breaking cyberpunk novel originally published in 2010, about a woman who works as a “camera”: a journalist who has been digitally implanted and enhanced to allow the audience to plug directly into her mind and emotions. She becomes emotionally entangled with her “scanner,” the person who serves as her digital manager, and over the course a tangled romance develops as Maya (the protagonist) tries to uncover the truth behind a long-over genocide. It’s a tremendous novel, about the limits of personhood and the ability (or not) to love and connect with someone else. How do you love when the person you love is literally inside your mind? The writing is also just beautiful, clever, and moving. Highly, highly recommend.

Finally, I’m nearly done with my second Hanif Abdurraqib collection, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. Where There’s Always Next Year focused on basketball, Abdurraqib’s arena here is music, which he writes about just as evocatively. From Ice Cube to My Chemical Romance to Nina Simone, he nimbly connects musical styles, race, class, and place in an accessible way (even if you’re not a fan or even a knower of the artist in question.) My phone is full of pictures taken of passages that moved me or made me feel as though I’d been struck by lightning, but this newsletter is already long enough. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. (Actually, do that, and then send some to me so I can buy more books.)

THIS WEEK IN HOCKEY

capitals

A post shared by @capitals

You thought I’d leave this part out, didn’t you! Haha, suckers, this is my newsletter, and I am the captain now! Alex Ovechkin is two to three weeks away from returning to the lineup, according to Capitals owner Ted Leonsis. Truly, the Russian Machine never breaks. In a shocking development, the team has continued to play well in his absence. Truly trying to make Mom proud. The Capitals are currently in a three way tie with the Minessota Wild and the Winnipeg Jets for most points in the league! And in a bid to outdo Ovi for grit in the (heh) face of injury, Tom Wilson was back in the lineup almost immediately after taking a full-strength puck to the cheek courtesy of teammate Jakob Chychrun. (What do you send as an apology gift in this situation, I wonder?)

HOUSEKEEPING

Next week will be the final issue of AFN for the year, as I take the last two weeks off for the holidays. Thank you all for your continued interest!

Do you have any questions about the publishing industry? Requests for advice? Thoughts on your recent reads? You can leave them as comments, replies to this email, or fill out this Google form to ask anonymously!

For my sins, I have reopened to queries.

My first novel, Marrying In, is available for purchase on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, and is coming soon to iBooks. If you’ve read it, consider leaving a review—that helps me and the book in the long run!

You can find me on social media on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, the A Faster No Discord, and now TikTok. If you buy any of the books linked in this newsletter I receive a small commission at no cost to you.

This newsletter is a personal project, and the sentiments and opinions expressed here are my own and not those of my employer.