Tag Archives: The Funeral Singer

Queries That Work: My Own!

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fs_cover_smallFor this edition of Queries That Work, I thought I would share the query I wrote for THE FUNERAL SINGER. I’ve talked a bit about my path to publication on this blog, but I haven’t yet shared the “pitch” I made for the book.

I wrote a few versions of my query–all somewhat similar–but the one I’m going to share is the one I wrote for an online contest called Pitch Wars. The point of that query was not to woo an agent or publisher, but to convince one of the contest’s mentors that they would want to work with me and my manuscript.

There are a couple of reasons I picked this query to share. First, it contains the fewest spoilers. Second, it was successful in attracting the interest of not just one, but all three of the potential mentors I “queried.” And third, it ultimately succeeded in hooking one of the mentors–Erica Chapman, whose mentorship proved critical in improving the book–and led to my connection with my agent, Andrea Somberg.

QUERY: The Funeral Singer by Linda Budzinski (Swoon Romance YA, 2013)

Dear Erica:

Singing part-time at her father’s funeral home, seventeen-year-old Melanie Martin has witnessed her share of lame eulogies and uninspired epitaphs. She knows one thing for sure: She’s going to make her mark on the world. She’ll be remembered as more than someone’s “loving mother” or “devoted wife.”

When Mel’s impromptu rendition of “Amazing Grace” at a local rock star’s graveside service goes viral on YouTube, she realizes her aspirations, and then some. Overnight she’s transformed from the Freaky Funeral Girl into an Internet phenom.

In her rise to celebrity, Mel turns her back on the things that once mattered most to her — chorus, family, even one of her best friends. But fame can be a fleeting fantasy, and when Mel makes a very public (and of course videotaped) fool of herself at her high school prom, she discovers that creating splashy headlines as the pop star du jour is not at all the same as creating real, lasting memories.

Mixing humor, romance and a slight dash of the macabre, my 53,000-word contemporary YA novel THE FUNERAL SINGER takes AUDREY, WAIT! and drops it onto the set of SIX FEET UNDER.

I have worked for nearly twenty-five years in non-profit communications and marketing, including eighteen years at the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association — an experience I’ve drawn upon to add realistic detail to the novel’s setting.

In writing this manuscript, I worked closely with former Dial editor Alisha Niehaus Berger, who called the story “commercial with a good heart and some serious core messages.” My queries to date have resulted in many “positive rejections,” and so I am excited about the possibility of working with you to take the manuscript from “almost there” to “yes, please.”

Thank you for your consideration.

Best wishes,

Linda Acorn Budzinski

I lucked out with this query in that Erica loves rock bands, AUDREY, WAIT! and Six Feet Under. What a perfect match! And the rest, as they say, was history….

It’s a FUNERAL SINGER Book Trailer!

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Last weekend at a get together for the Mid-Atlantic SCBWI, a wonderful speaker by the name of Tina Nichols Coury talked about author promotion, and one of the things she said was that every book should have a trailer.

In all honesty, I’m not 100 percent sure why books should have trailers, or what authors are supposed to do with trailers once they have them, but Tina made it sound easy to create one, so I figured, what the heck? I’d try it. I found an awesome site called Animoto that lets you create one pretty easily. I also found a great site called ShutterStock that lets you buy images fairly cheaply.

The result? Voila!

Book Club Bingo

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books_0I’m always slightly terrified when I find out someone I know is reading my book. How will they react? Will they like it? Hate it? Or worst case, feel nothing?

So when I found out that the Joy of Reading Book Club at my church had chosen THE FUNERAL SINGER as its March pick, I was torn. Part of me felt so grateful and humbled that they would take the time to read and discuss it. Part of me was psyched to have an opportunity to sit in a room full of book lovers and listen to them discuss the characters and scenes I’d spent five years writing and revising. And, yes, part of me was quite nervous.

Well, last night was The Big Night … and I haven’t quite come down from it yet. It was more fun and boosted my confidence as a writer more than I could have imagined.

Eight women braved the icy Northern Virginia roads to get together for almost two hours to talk about MY BOOK. Crazy, right? And so cool!

Everyone seemed to really like it–or if they didn’t, they were gracious enough to pick out the things they did like and talk about those. But I could tell, at least a few of the women loved it. Like, really, truly loved it. They talked about how close they felt to Mel, how various themes in the book spoke to them, and how they were recommending it to their family and friends. I couldn’t stop smiling. They GOT IT!

Now before I go all Sally Field on you, let me say: I tell you this not because I want to pat myself on the back (well, OK, maybe a little … I am forever telling writers to celebrate even the smallest victories in this tough, rejection-laden profession, and I need to remember to do that as well) but because I want to make a point about why writers write.

We write for the people who get it.

There will be people who don’t get it, and that’s OK. Not everyone likes every book. Any time I get a less-than-glowing review or a one- or two-star rating on Goodreads, I go look at the ratings for THE HUNGER GAMES. See, I LOVED that book. Loved the whole trilogy. Got all my friends to read it long before the movies came out. But at this moment, on Goodreads, THE HUNGER GAMES has 7,629 one-star ratings. Granted, this is less than 1 percent of its 2.3 million ratings, but still. More than 7,000 people hated it. THE HUNGER GAMES! Crazy but true. So not everyone is going to love my book, and I am learning to be OK with that.

But, there are people out there who do love it. Maybe even people I’ve never met and never will. And I’m writing for them.

As writers, we tend to measure success in sales. Well, the number of people who buy my book may never even reach the number of people who hated THE HUNGER GAMES, but you know what? That’s okay. If even one person loves my book, gets it, grows to care about my characters … what more can a writer ask for?

By the way, my favorite comment last night came from a woman who was talking about Mick–a character who actually is dead throughout the entire book and whose funeral kicks off the book. She talked about how she had developed some misconceptions about him but as she got to know him on the page throughout the course of the novel, she realized he was more than just a druggie rock star.

Her comment: “I said to myself, ‘You shouldn’t be so judgmental.’ It made me want to be a better person.”

It made her want to be a better person.

My book did that? Wow. That’s why I write.

5 Things I Learned as a Pitch Wars Mentee

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fs_cover_smallA year ago I entered THE FUNERAL SINGER in a contest called Pitch Wars. The experience was simultaneously terrifying, exciting, and rewarding. It also proved to be the most important step I would take in my five-year path to publication.

If you are already obsessed familiar with Pitch Wars, you can skip this bulleted list while I explain how the annual contest works:

  • Contestants send in a query letter and the first few pages of their manuscripts to mentors–authors and agent/editor interns or assistants who volunteer to participate and who specify on the Pitch Wars website what genres they’re most interested in. Last year’s rules stated we could submit to three mentors of our choosing.
  • The mentors then review their submissions and select one writer and two alternates they wish to work with.
  • The selected contestants send their full manuscripts to their mentors for critique and, if they agree with the mentors’ suggestions, they have about five weeks to make revisions.
  • With a new and improved manuscript ready to roll, contestants post a pitch and the first 250 words of their manuscript on the Pitch Wars site.
  • A group of amazing editors and agents review the pitches and first pages and make requests to see more if interested. The contestant with the most requests wins!

I entered the contest in December 2012 and was thrilled to be selected by one of my targeted mentors–the generous, talented, and incredibly supportive Erica Chapman. Getting accepted (from among about 2,000 total entries) was a thrill, but it was just the start of my Pitch Wars rollercoaster ride. So, what happened, and what did I learn? Here are the top five lessons I took away from my Pitch Wars experience:

1. Prep, prep, prep.
I’d spent four years writing and revising this manuscript and another year exploring publication options, so my query letter and pages were definitely as strong as I could make them. At last, all those critique partners, workshops, and hours of hard work would pay off.

Also, I researched my selected mentors carefully. All three were people I wanted to work with, and all three were people who seemed like they would be great fits for my manuscript. This targeting–much like the targeting writers need to do when seeking agents and publishers–made a huge difference in my response rate, as all three of the mentors expressed an interest and requested to see more pages.

Finally, I did tons of research on the market. I knew where my story would fit in the young adult world and what types of readers might like it. In my query letter, I said THE FUNERAL SINGER “took AUDREY, WAIT! and dropped it onto the set of SIX FEET UNDER.” Turned out, Erica was a huge SFU fan and had also read and loved AUDREY, WAIT! Talk about a perfect match!

2. Sometimes your manuscript needs tough love.
As I freaked out about waited patiently to see Erica’s critique, I had some hopes and fears about what she might suggest. Were there sections that moved too slowly? characters who needed more fleshing out? word choices that didn’t quite work?

Hahahahaha! If only. No, Erica came back with one main comment: I needed to change my main character’s ultimate love interest. Yes, you read that correctly. SHE WANTED ME TO MAKE A DIFFERENT CHARACTER THE MC’S LOVE INTEREST! That is not a tweak, people. That is not a light revision. That is a REWRITE of most of the novel. And I had five weeks to do it. Keeping in mind, it took me FOUR YEARS to write it.

My immediate reaction: I’m done. I’m quitting. I cannnot deal for one more minute with this novel. I told my husband this. Then I made the mistake of through the grace of God read him Erica’s email. “Can you believe that?” I asked. “She wants me to make HIM the love interest!” At which point, Joe, who by the way is SUPPOSED TO BE ON MY SIDE, DAMMIT, said, “I think she might be right.”

This did not make me feel better. This made me want to go to bed and cry for fourteen hours. But it also made me go back, review my novel with Erica’s critique in mind, and decide to try. And you know what? She was right.

3. Sometimes you need to go with your gut.
In addition to the whole love-interest thing, Erica made a number of smaller suggestions. Some of them I followed, but a couple I didn’t. While I of course respected her expertise and her opinions, in the end, THE FUNERAL SINGER was my story. Certain elements meant a lot to me, and I wanted to stick with them.

I did, however, take a look at her comments and consider other ways to address them. Sometimes when an agent, editor, or critique partner suggests a change, what they are really saying is, “What you did here isn’t quite working.” As they say, there is always more than one way to skin a cat.

For example, Erica wanted me to make a major change to my climactic scene because she worried that my main character’s actions in that scene made her too unlikeable. Without giving any spoilers, I did not make that change, but I massaged it enough that, while her actions remained the same, the context around them changed enough that (I hope) the reader is able to at least understand them.

4. With enough motivation, incentive (and a hard deadline!), anything is possible.
As someone who works full-time and writes at a snail’s pace even on the weekends, the thought of revising my novel in time for the agents/editors round was more than a little intimidating. Did I mention I had five weeks? And needed to change the LOVE INTEREST?!? So, yeah.

But I knew Pitch Wars offered a great opportunity, I knew there were hundreds of writers out there who had competed for that opportunity, and by now I knew that Erica’s revision suggestion was just what my novel needed to take it to the next level. So, I did it. And even if this list of lessons ended right there, it would have been worth it.

5. Contests can work!
But, the list doesn’t end there! I received seven requests from agents/editors (which was not enough to win … the winner got eight … but I wasn’t complaining!). I ultimately did sign with one of the agents, Andrea Somberg from Harvey Klinger Inc., and even ultimately (outside of the contest) found a home for my novel.

Had it not been for Pitch Wars, THE FUNERAL SINGER would not be a book today! It was released on September 24 by Swoon Romance, a longtime dream come true.

Don’t you just love happy endings?