From this side of the fence

So I was reading BookEnds post on what NOT to put in a query letter. My first thought in reading these was "Well, duh. Obviously you shouldn't do that stuff."



Then my second thought was, "Wait. Wait. I almost did do some of that stuff. What was I thinking?!"



And I remembered then, what it was like to write a query letter cold. I had no--absolutely zero--things going for me in the query department. I had no great recommendations, referrals, conference connections or other "ins" that would ma...