Hi all!  Quick note.  I am hosting a short story contest on my blog.  Come see!

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Anica Lewis

And here is the winning query:

Dear Mr. or Mrs. Agent,

I’m writing to you about my novel, THE GLOBAL WARMING NIGHTMARE.  In this story, global warming makes it too hot for ice to stay frozen, so the polar bears can’t live up north anymore and they come down and start eating people.  (I know that if all the ice really melted, there would probably be floods and stuff, but the book is for kids, and they don’t know stuff like that.  I babysit a lot so I think I know something about kids LOL.)  The main character of THE GLOBAL WARMING NIGHTMARE is a kid, like maybe 11 or 12, so kids should be able to relate to her.  She lives in Canada, and that’s where the polar bears go first because it’s still kind of cold.  So people are fighting the polar bears, and this girl, who’s name is Sarah, rescues this one polar bear cub and names it Snowy.  Then Sarah figures out about the whole global warming thing, and she takes Snowy down to Washington D.C. and calls a conference to tell all the world leaders how they have to be more careful of the environment.

THE GLOBAL WARMING NIGHTMARE is probably going to be at least a hundred pages when I finish it.  I’m about halfway through now.  If it needs to be longer, I can put more stuff in.  Maybe there could be snow leopards too or something.

Here are the first 6 chapters, plus the 11th chapter which I skipped ahead to write because I was really excited about the scene where Snowy runs away in the Pentagon.  Isn’t it awesome?  This book would probably make a great movie, too, especially if it used that girl who was in INKHEART.  Anyway, I did spell check but there might still be some mistakes.  But that’s what editors are for, right?

Can’t wait to hear what you think!

- Nicole (but everybody calls me Nikki) Smith

P.S.  Snowy is my cat’s name.  I think he would like to be a polar bear!!!

Thanks to everyone who participated! I had fun reading them.

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Sarah is writer looking for an agent. She is currently working on novel # 4, editing novels 2 and 3, and querying novel # 1. For more insight to her work, visit: http://legendoftheprotectors.wordpress.com/ or http://legendoftheprotectors.blogspot.com/

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Solve this problem:

I gripped the wheel hard, my widened eyes taking in as much of the awful scene as possible. The trees approached too quickly, my headlights flashing over the endless sea of them on the side of the road.

No way a car can fit through there.

Squeals from the tires filled the cab somehow. All I could think was…

Enter to win a pack of Uniball pens. Winner will be chosen at random Saturday July 11th. At this time, we are only permitted to ship prizes within the Continental US.

Good luck and get creative!!

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Get me your BAD QUERIES!

Email me your bad queries, or post them in the comment box here. I will post my favorites and announce the winner on the 11th of July.

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Sarah is writer looking for an agent. She is currently working on novel # 4, editing novels 2 and 3, and querying novel # 1. For more insight to her work, visit: http://legendoftheprotectors.wordpress.com/ or http://legendoftheprotectors.blogspot.com/

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On the Querytracker.net forum, they had a section for bad queries. I wrote this a year ago.

Dear Bob,

ZARA, PRINCESS OF THE SHORE PEOPLE is a middle grade, juvenal, teenager style book about a sixteen year old girl who must rule her people to keep them from drowning. (See they live by the ocean, but they can’t swim on account of “The Curse of the Sea Serpent Hazar.” (That’s the name of book two, but I won’t go into that because I read somewhere that agents don’t want you to list other books in a series.) Anyway, the Shore People can’t swim and with the oceans rising because of the melting icebergs, (see my book is politically correct) she must get them to higher ground so that they don’t die.

ZARA, PRINCESS OF THE SHORE PEOPLE is completed at 40,238 words. At least I think. I lost track and had to start over like fifty times.

I will be happy to send you my MS as soon as possible. (Oh yeah, my boyfriend, Hunter, drew this really hot picture of me in my Halloween costume and I was like OMG! that’s what Zara looks like! So I’m enclosing it so you can see what she looks like. He can do the cover for the book if you want.

Thanks, Zara Lane

Email me at,  sexsellsbooks@hotmail.com

This is my mom’s email address. She won’t let me have one because she says there’s too much sex on the Internet.

*****

So here’s what we’re going to do. Write a bad query. My favorite will win a leather desk set.

Contest open to US residents only.

Ends July 10th @ midnight. I’ll announce the winner Sat. July 11th.

***First Five Sentence Critique starts tomorrow so email your entry in today!***

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Sarah is writer looking for an agent. She is currently working on novel # 4, editing novels 2 and 3, and querying novel # 1. For more insight to her work, visit: http://legendoftheprotectors.wordpress.com/ or http://legendoftheprotectors.blogspot.com/

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Scott!

Congratulations on winning the set of pins from our Sunday’s Problem Solving Random Contest!

Please email us with your address and we will get those out to you asap!

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