Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 17,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

To answer your question: yes, I was born this cool.

I’m not gonna tell you how to write a query letter.  I’m not qualified to. I know as much as you do about queries. Unless you’re an agent or a published author. In which case: ‘hi’ and ‘sorry for you having to read this rubbish’. Or, y’know, unless you’re an absolutely hopelessly bad writer. Which I am not.

I hope.

I present:

How Not to Write a Query Letter (for better examples see here and here.) Or, How to be a Winner Like Charlie Sheen.

Dear Mistress/Master of the Pen/TypeWriter/iPad/Computer,

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a 78-year-old vampire pensioner, who is disillusioned with life and has a rampant libido? Stephenie Meyer has. (See Day Break, due for publication in 2051.) Margarine Snufflepod has. Once a normal old lady, privy to doing crosswords and knitting, now the Vampire Queen of the Underworld. Stalked by her lost-long son, Buffy Snufflepod, Margarine must stop him from killing her. It’s kill or be killed. Now with a barren uterus, she doesn’t want to kill him. Unfortunate situation, that.

However, shit gets real when she falls in love with a 17-year-old super sexy vampire, and a werewolf with rippling abs and a squishy nose. Buffy Snufflepod, her son, decides he cannot kill his mother, but can kill her young, possibly underage, lovers. And so begins an epic chase to Mordor, where the Ring/Item of Importance, must be destroyed.

SUPERCOOLAWESOMEBOOKOFWONDERS is my partially completed YA/cosy mystery/romance/action novel. It is currently 125,000 words long and is the first of a fifteen part story arc. It is like Harry Potter meets the Bible, with elements of Murder, She Wrote and Shakespeare’s greatest tragi-comedies. I don’t like Romeo and Juliet, so it’s not like that. It’s also a bit like Skins, insofar as there’s an evil therapist who harnesses the power of the baseball bat, and there’s a funny misunderstood ginger. It will appeal to everyone and be a multi million dollar bestseller.

I have known your clients Banksy, the enigmatic street artist, and J.K. Rowling (I think she’s your client. If not, I’m sure you’ve heard of her?) for several years. Please find pasted below photographic proof of said claims. I have written since I was six and have self-published many books as I believe the world cannot be deprived of my literary genius. May I request that my advance be forwarded to me prior to contract signing in the form of a jar full of one cent pennies? I do not trust the banks, especially as I still do not know what a tracker mortgage is.

Yours in good faith and health, etc.

Me.

Photographic proof:

An ironic post-modernist non-cubist era representation of me, as painted by Banksy.

One of Joanne Kathleen's characters that was loosely based on me.

Seriously, Joanne, I'm considering suing. This is uncanny.

Thank you for your time. I’m sure we’ll have a long and beautiful relationship together with frequent visits to the beach, where we will walk hand-in-hand and sing lovely songs together. May I suggest “Fuck You” by Cee-Lo as it’s a favourite of mine. Peace out.

-

Er…yeah. I might be a tad nuts. But there you go: that’s how not to write a query letter. As for how to write a query letter? Don’t ask me. Ask QueryShark or Nathan Bransford or something.

My actual query letter is a bit rubbish and far less entertaining than SUPERCOOLAWESOMEBOOKOFWONDERS.

Dear Agent,

On Christams Day, Lexi Dwyer woke up in a hospital in Canada to find that she is the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed 163 others. Since January 8^th, she has written letters to a dead boy. She thinks that Liam, the boy she writes to, survived. He didn’t.

Faced with instant fame for her status as sole survivor, she has to fend off journalists and religious crazies. Misguided adults ask for prayers while their children stare and ask for autographs as if she’s Justin Bieber. Add a complicated relationship with an older man into the mix, and life is anything but normal. On top of that, Liam’s ‘survival’ is literally driving her mad. Plagued by nightmares and frequent visits from Liam, can she keep her sanity in the most tumultuous year of her life?

A ROCKET TO THE MOON is my edgy YA novel complete at 60,000 words. Thank you for your time.

See, far less exciting. Any suggestions? SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME. I BEG OF YOU. No, for reals, any comments would be appreciated, unless they’re spam. Those will be doubly appreciated because spam is funny.

Peace, Love, and Potter,

Lisa.

So, there’s this wonderful specimen of humanity called Kenneth Tong who’s creeping trending on Twitter.

You might have heard of him. Skinny guy. Big Brother 9. Gym buff. Provider of a supplement to help you reach size 0. Heard of him? Nah, me neither. Well, not until several minutes ago when I logged onto Twitter. Not that I have a Twitter account.

He’s trending. I clicked on the trend topic. I thought he was satirising the obsessiveness towards weight loss. He isn’t. He’s a one-man managed anorexia champion. Yeah…managed anorexia.

MANAGED ANOREXIA.

Now, that, at first, might not sound so bad. What’s wrong with managing anorexia? But oh no, he sees ‘managed anorexia as a lifestyle, not as a diet.’  His ultimate goal in life is to create a world of skinny bitches.

No, his ultimate goal in life is to create mentally ill, insecure, malnourished teenage girls. Size zero isn’t healthy. It’s a disease that he’s all too eager to spread.

Jutting bones, pronounced rib cages, collar bones that scissor, cheek bones that cave. There’s nothing sexy about it. Anorexia isn’t some easily sustained lifestyle. It’s a mental illness.

It’s no more a sustained lifestyle than self-harming, or bulimia, or depression. It’s not something anyone wants. No one wants to hate themselves, to be so desperately hungry but unwilling to eat, to look at themselves in the mirror and hate what’s reflected. Their bodies are tempered with disease.

There’s nothing glamorous about it.

Let’s look at some of his inspired posts:

Really?

To be thinner, skip dinner. Guy's a genius, right?

I haz no words.

“Had your anorexia been supervised” – it’s probably easier to list the things that are right about this statement than list what’s wrong with it.

Right

• He can punctuate fairly correctly.
• He’s literate.
• He @replies his followers.
• He can read?

Wrong

• Everything

So the right list is actually longer than the wrong list. I’m surprised.

At what point is anorexia considered managed or supervised? At the point wherein the person reaches size 0? When they have a stroke, or a heart attack, or die? That’s pretty well managed, Kenneth. Nothing like death to make a figure look appealing. Yay for dead people.

Or maybe one day they wake up, look themselves in the mirror, think ‘gee whiz, after months/years of starvation, I look super sexy this morning’ and sit down to eat something more than the 300 calories they’ve allowed themselves.  Maybe they don’t excercise until they collapse. Maybe they don’t look in the mirror and be utterly repulsed by what stares back at them.

Anorexia isn’t a lifestyle. It’s a fucking mental illness.

Now, I’m not about to advocate obesity or being over-weight, but there’s nothing wrong with curves. That’s how a body is intended.

The following photo is of Isabelle Caro.

This is what anorexia looks like.

Isabelle was 28 when she died in November. She’d suffered (n. the pain, misery or loss of someone) from anorexia for fifteen years. It killed her. Had she been supervised better, as Tong suggests, would she still be alive? If she’d popped one of his magic pills, would her body still rest in a coffin, rotting underground?

There’s nothing sexy about anorexia. There’s nothing there to aspire to. Mental illness isn’t something to want. There’s nothing perfect about it, or death.

Dear Kenneth Tong: you promote rotting ideals that some poor, unwell person will look up and aspire to. Anorexia is a cancer: not a lifestyle. You, sir, are a bastard. As Stewie Griffon once said: I’d love to stay and chat, but you’re an idiot.

Cheers.

On the plus side, he should write for the Daily Fail. They’d love him over there.

ETA: Tong posted a tweet claiming his pro-anorexia stance was a carefully maintained search for attention and noteriority. He and a friend bet that he couldn’t go from being a nobody to a somebody in a single week.

Who knows if this is the truth or not. Is it his shameful reaction the the backlash? His tweets were too real to be staged, but what do I know? The chilling thing is he retweeted messages from girls claiming he was their thinspiration. So: hoax or not?

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 52,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 6 days for that many people to see it.

In 2010, there were 84 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 120 posts. There were 71 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 15mb. That’s about 1 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was May 17th with 693 views. The most popular post that day was Fame Whores.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, thedeadparrot.dreamwidth.org, en.wordpress.com, twitter.com, and critiquecircle.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for spongebob, spongebob squarepants, red carpet, spongebob pictures, and diary of a wimpy kid.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Fame Whores October 2009
9 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

Diary of a Reluctant Debutante October 2009
6 comments

The Jonas Brothers are Dead March 2010
22 comments

Chicken Soup for the Beauty Concious November 2009
6 comments

Justin Bieber is Dead: Bieber Fever, American Idol and why Glee is over-rated. March 2010
20 comments

Hamlet with John Simm at The Crucible, Sheffield
The Dumb Waiter at The Library Theatre, Sheffield
Beautiful Burnout at The Crucible, Sheffield

Gigs

Biffy Clyro at Sheffield Academy
Frightened Rabbit at The Leadmill Sheffield
Turin Brakes at The Memorial Hall, Sheffield
Outroads at The Redhouse, Sheffield
Fightstar at Corporation, Sheffield, supported by The Xcerts and Cars on Fire

Books

Best book I read this year was ‘Grab onto me Tightly as if I Knew the Way’ by Bryan Charles – not a new book, but totally amazing!

Films

Inception
Kick-Ass
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
Shutter Island
Four Lions
The Wolfman
Alice in Wonderland
Cats & Dogs 2 – The Revenge of Kitty Galore
Clash of the Titans

Other amazing stuff – Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery –Free, although probably not anymore, to get in – Pre-Raphaelites, Walter Langley and the beautifully sad ‘The Death of Chatterton’ by Henry Wallis.
Cadbury World – amazing! They hand out free chocolate as you walk round!

I like looking back over my end of year lists. At the end of 2009 I listed loads of gigs and albums, only three films, and complained about the lack of good theatre! Less music, more film and theatre over 2010.

• The movie was amazing. That said, it won’t work as a stand-alone. Seven movies in, the chances of new fans wandering in is highly unlikely, and the production plays on that. Don’t go in expecting the script to hold your hand and explain the plot from the six previous movies.
• I can’t figure out whether it’s wrong to fancy Rupert Grint…but I do.
• The trio acted their socks off. Dan Radcliffe is the weak link. I was particularly impressed with Rupert Grint. Emma Watson, who I have never particularly rated, was one of the stand-outs too. She and Rupert played off each other fantastically.
• Rupert Grint walks like a girl – watch his hips! Because that doesn’t sound strange at all…
• It’s very much a fan’s movie. If you haven’t read the books, you won’t like the movie.
• The animated clips for the Three Brothers’ tale was fantastic, if not slightly out of place.
• The Harry/Hermione kiss verged on soft porn. One wisp of smoke saved their dignity. It was mildly nauseating.
• There’s a lot of semi-nude Daniel Radcliffe. This is not Equus, Dan Rad: please put your clothes back on.
• It’s a dark movie. It’s definitely not for the little ‘uns. Blood, death, torture, the genocide of Muggles, that bizarre kissing scene, and a very scary snake. If I was a child it’d give me nightmares.
• Dumbledore has awful taste in men. Grindelwald was an odd looking dude.
• The cinematography is stunning. That said, Yates’ directing is a little dissatisfying at times.
• R.I.P Dobby. Two of my friends cried when he died. That said, I have weird friends.
• Nothing I or anyone else writes will make a difference. Potter fans will watch and enjoy this movie, regardless.
• I was sceptical when I heard about the two-movie split. It was totally and utterly justifiable.
• Harry Potter and Twilight are in no way comparable. EVER. Harry Potter is on another level. It’s emotive. It’s not about wanting to shag a paedo vampire. It’s a bildungsroman that captured the hearts of children everywhere. We’ve grown up with the franchise, the actors and the subject material. The film was sparse, and grim, often desolate but never too dark. The movements of lightness, in particular George’s dialogue after losing his ear, were hilarious.
• I almost thought Harry and Hermione were gonna kiss during the dancing scene, even though I knew that’d never happen. Both Dan and Emma played the scene with open possibilities. That said, I’m still completely on Team Ron.

Sure, it has flaws, a multitude of them, but it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen lately. My opinion is marred by nostalgia. I grew up with Harry Potter. It could have been worse than Glitter and I’d have still adored it. Objectivity flew out the window the minute the familiar jingle started.

I loved Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Absolutely adored it. It meandered and rambled but it caught the atmosphere beautifully. You can’t help but feel their angst and isolation; the utter despair. For that they should be commended.

It isn’t just a great Potter film, but a great film in its own right.

RIP Dobby. We hardly knew ye.

Peace, love and Potter,

Lisa.

It’s not my turn to blog. I haven’t blogged in quite a while. Neither has anyone else.

First, let me preface this by saying I have nothing against the Gardai and that the students were not blameless. Now that’s outta the way, let me direct you to two rather interesting videos.

I wasn’t at the protest – I’d meant to go, but hadn’t, because I’d been sure trouble would break out, and I didn’t want to be near it. Trouble did break out, but of a different kind. I’d been aware of students planning on drinking on the way up, drinking when they got there, and drinking afterwards. A right piss-up was planned. I was wary. Booze and massive crowds are not a good combination. However, that never happened. But trouble very much did.

Some background: Irish reg. fees are currently 1,500 euro. The grant ranges from 3,000 to 6,700 euro, approx. The government, to save money and dig themselves out of the shithole they’ve created, want to raise the reg. fees to 3,000 and slash the grant by 10%. I don’t fancy the idea of paying the reg. fee. As I’m a grant holder, I’ll have to pay 1,500, instead of the full 3,000. It’s still a lot of money that I don’t necessarily have.

That said, while I don’t like the idea, I’ll accept it. I’m not a tax payer. I don’t work. I go to college. It’s not exactly the hardest life style in the world. Fundamentally, the government put me through college, so I would be willing to pay the extra costs. I get the full grant though, so I can afford it, just about. Others cannot.

Which is why they took to the streets.

A brick, singular, and bottles were thrown at the Department of Finance. (Could have been the Dep. of Education.) A bunch of about forty protesters broke from the main group and peacefully occupied the building. None of the Dep. workers were hurt or injured in any way. It was stupid, sure, and mildly radical, but it’s no excuse for what happened next.

It started when the riot police arrived. Riot police suggest a riot must have ensued. When I first saw the report on the news, my thought was “fucking idiots”, especially when I heard USI President Gary Redmond had condemned their actions. I reckoned the students must have got violent. Some of them did. One police officer had his nose broken. Two more were treated for minor injuries. These students should be condemned. These students have been condemned.

The police have not.

We’re in  a society wherein if you scratch your arse or fall over, ten minutes later it could be on YouTube. Naturally, there are several dozen videos of the protest floating about. The two I’ve linked to are the most popular.

From two minutes in of the ten minute one, you can see the students sitting on the ground. It’s their prerogative. It’s their right. A tiny minority were aggressive. They insulted the gardai and kicked at them. They’re idiots. Absolute knobs. But the riot police are worse. They lashed out with their batons.

They’re ready for a fight. Their stance is aggressive, batons held above their shoulders.

Several students have bloody heads, their skulls cracked open. In the video, they’re literally sitting on the ground, chanting “shame on you” towards the police. Shame on them, indeed.

Fast forward to 3:01 in the shorter video. A girl is knocked unconscious and tossed aside. Her friend rushes to her aid. Had her friend not been present, you have to wonder would anyone have helped the girl out?

Protesters are cracked in the face and legs. Protocol suggests that gardai strike the legs of violent or aggressive trouble-makers. These people aren’t violent. A bit loud, maybe even rowdy, but they stand no great threat. Mary Harney having a bit of red pant chucked on her doesn’t excuse their behaviour.

We have a right to free speech. We have a right to protest. Is it because we are young that the police presumed we are trouble – that we are deserving of this level of violence? These are several photos taken on the day. It is the gardai’s job to restore peace, and protect the innocent. These people are innocent. A small group threw a brick and bottles. They sat in the Dep. of Finace. No one in the building was hurt or under threat.

Sure, the students aren’t blameless but the Gardai need to take responsibility for their level of violence. Beating sitting students over the head with a baton is not keeping the peace – it’s stirring hostility.

Taxi drivers went on protest a while ago. I’m too lazy to google the details. They occupied a department building. They were not forced out, but monitored. Had there been 20,000 taxi drivers or doctors or nurses on the streets, would they have been treated the same? Would a group of sitting nurses, chanting slogans at the gardai, been cracked in the head; charged at by mounted horses; beaten? I very much doubt it.

The Gardai were out of line. They should issue an apology, at the very least. But they won’t. Perhaps it’s a training ground for the tactics they intend to implement in the months coming, when the country starts to shake with the effects of 6 billion euros of cut-backs.

Mary Harney may have been red with paint, but the students, and some of the streets, were red with blood.

That’s not OK.

The Gardai should be called into line for the way they acted: be forced to publicly admit they did wrong. But they won’t. The Government has their back. The politicians have their back. USI president Gary Redmond has their back.

There’s a Facebook group with over 2,000 members calling for action to be taken against the violent gardai. It’s just a Facebook group. It will likely come to naught, but there’s no harm in joining. Maybe someone will listen? Group is here.

P.S. visit here for more info. Pictures featured belong to Mindful Youth and G Fox.

This piece is disjointed and doesn’t make me care about the character.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Weak beginning…I´m not hooked by her inner dialogue and lack of action.She´s in bed, thinking. And then after that, we get some backstory. This needs to change.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There is so little that happens here, no real character-defining conflict. No hook. It´s a lot of introspection.
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Funny typo – “The enemy were soft sheets.” So these soldiers were shooting linen with their machine guns?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What exactly about Barney was so horrifying to Kelly’s mother? Go into more details on why this union was so frowned upon
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The timeline seems odd. Barney could not have joined the army before the age of 18. However, Kelly would have been 18 when she married Mark and first became pregnant- but it says that she ran off and tried to live her own life. Unless she immediately met Mark and got pregnant immediately and moved back to her home town, there doesn’t seem to be enough time for her to have done all of this.

All this might have been totally crushing… if I hadn’t already sold this story twice before, once to a magazine and once into an anthology. It was also short listed in the Sid Chaplin prize. I’m actually really proud of this story, and the editors who did choose it had only good things to say. So, while these readers obviously had problems with it and it wasn’t right for their magazine, that doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with the story. Usually I would say when you get feedback you should listen to what is said and act upon it, however, this situation seems to prove that’s not always the way. There are some pretty specific comments in this feedback ‘weak beginning…some backstory. This needs to change’ normally I would run back to my story and change the thing that ‘needs to be changed’ but, obviously, in this case I won’t be doing that. I would still say, though, that if an editor, and I stress AN EDITOR gives you advice or feedback and says something needs to change, you should act on it and change it. But if the advice comes from members of the public, friends, family, or a reading panel made up of god knows who, perhaps you don’t.

… also, and I don’t want this to turn into a rant really, but… well, I had limited contact with an editor whose magazine I was writing an article for last week. When I politely asked him for his writer’s guidelines he emailed me with a short and abrupt ‘we expect our contributors to look at the magazine and work out want we want’ …

ok then.

I have noticed that most UK magazines like to make it really difficult for writers. I don’t know if this is to cut down on the submissions and give them less to wade through. But when you look at US magazines in comparison it is a bit odd. Most US mags publish guidelines on their websites, and I’m talking about details like formatting, word counts and, god forbid, payment rates, not style and content. If this editor is not particular about formatting and word counts then fine, he could have just said so, but some editors are fussy about those things.

..urgh, I’m going to go and take some deep breaths now…

Paul, just like the rest of us, has personal commitments that he needs to give his full attention to. As such, he’s suspending all of his online activity for the near future so he can do this. Life happens, and it demands attention.

So, we need a stand-in blogger until he returns!

We need fresh ideas and a small amount of commitment for these two exciting blogger positions.

If you’re interested in either of our open vacancies, please email me at doc@terrierandy7.com, or leave me a note below.

Andy

Going to see plays, The Dumb Waiter and Hamlet – shameless link to my other, nonsensical blog www.sampriestley.blogspot.com

Listening to Mariachi El Bronx which makes me want to stamp my feet, shake some maracas, eat fajitas and go back to Mexico

Watching True Blood

Having chats with, cuddling and feeding small, severed finger like treats to Stitch the dog.

Lying in bed

Reading Jean Rhys and Dorothy Parker (again, although it’s now so long since I read either of these women’s works, it’s almost like reading them for the first time)

Eating pasta

Wondering why all editors can’t be as nice as some.

Writing new short stories and really short prose, and staring at novel 3 in bewilderment.

Beginning and planning (yes, actually planning!) novel 4

Getting paid…thank god.

Drinking wine.