Curiouser & Curiouser: Twentyish Questions with the Executive Editor — Part Three

Hello again, Beardies!

As you may recall, I've been attempting to interview our esteemed Executive Editor for several posts now, and my last attempt ended with a bit of a dust-up wherein he accused me of drinking his coffee (the scoundrel!) and nearly wised up to my use of truth serum.  Maybe that long-winded confession about how he ended up at the same college as me was needed, though, because after that, he became much more relaxed and more concise with his answers, and I wasn't forced to use the serum again.  (Thank heavens.  Interrogating my best friend felt a bit invasive, but I kept at it.  I am, I admit, quite shameless.)  This interview still isn't complete, but here's another part.


Elizabeth: How, if at all, does your rural New England background influence your writing?

Joshua: You could say that it had—still has—a lot to do with my writing. New England is saturated in Native American folklore and, of course, famous for its witch trials. The landscape, too, lends itself to great stories, whether they be set in the mountains, forests, swamps, or around the water—even deserts—Maine has it all. The ocean alone has its own mysticism, Maine's coastline dotted with spooky lighthouses and fog-drenched outcroppings of treacherous rock and cliff. And shipwrecks galore. The rivers and lakes even have stories of their own, swimming with life and curses both.

Query Letter Submissions -- Round Two

Unless you're a new reader to my blog, you probably know that I finally completed my first manuscript The Assassin of Aldarhaij (back in  the beginning of September, actually), but most of you may not know that right before I started this blog sometime in February, I sent out my first batch of Query Letters to potential agents--about twenty total, a mixture of snail-mail Queries (call me old fashioned, but I prefer this) and eQueries (which, because of the lack of a formal format, it lends itself to misinterpretation by the recipients).

Sadly, all of them came back as "Form Rejections."  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the process, a "Form Rejection" isn't quite so much a "No" as a "Not right now."  To be honest: even though I knew deep down that my chances of getting a "Yes" my first go-a-round was very unlikely, the series of rejections appearing in both my mailbox and inbox was disheartening.

I was in the process of plotting out my new endeavor, Valkyrie, when the rejections were starting to come back.  It gave me a horrible case of insecurity mixed together with a heavy dose of the dreaded  Writer's Block.  I began to re-think my career as a writer altogether.

Lo and behold, however, it was my case of  Writer's Block  that birthed the idea of The Bearded Scribe, and as they say, the rest is history.

On Thursday I compiled yet another list of Twenty Agents to which I will send another round of Query Letters, so I am currently tweaking my Query a bit, hoping to catch the eye of an unsuspecting agent long enough to get one of these:

Wish me luck, Y'all!