Communication Beat

*** The following cover letter is one I would send with a copy of my short story “Hidden Lies” to an agent. Addresses, phone numbers, and names used (except for my name and email address) are not real. Any information between asterisks (**) are not part of the letter but information about what goes in the letter. ***

2912 My Street
My Town, State zipcode
April 13, 2006

John Johns **Use name of correct editor, call company to ask.**
Johns Literary Agency
Mailing address
Sometown, Somestate zip

Dear Mr. Johns: **If person is a woman, use Ms. unless you know differently.**

Life has many conflicts, and relationships aren’t always as the members involved believe. The enclosed short story “Hidden Lies” reveals that members of the same family don’t always know the “skeletons” hidden in the family “closet.” In fact, none ever viewed a freezer in the same way again.

As a teacher of English and composition for twenty-five years, I not only taught writing, but also studied and honed my own skills. From 1974 thorough 1977, I had short stories, articles, and poetry published in Potpourri magazine. Later years, articles and short stories appeared in regional publications, in the Teachers of English anthology Teachers Write, and in Standard magazine. More current information may be found on my web site, http://www.viviangilbertzabel.com.

Thank you for considering my short story. I will await a decision at your earliest convenience. You may also reach me by phone, 405-555-1411, or by email, vzabel@writing.com. Enclosed is a SASE for your use.

Sincerely,

(signature here)

Vivian Gilbert Zabel

2 enclosures:
Manuscript: “Hidden Lies”
SASE

* * * Notes about cover (sent with submission) letter * * *

1. Author’s address and current date goes in upper left hand corner (if using block letter) or upper right hand corner . The author’s email address may go under date.

2. The inside address for the publisher, agent, or publisher goes next, using the name of the person who should get the manuscript according to the type of writing and genre. Call the company or agency and ask for the correct editor or agent if necessary.

3. Address the person by Mr. or Ms. (unless you know the woman prefers Miss or Mrs.) and his or her last name. Do NOT address the person by a first name unless you already know him or her extremely well.

4. The first paragraph should get the attention of the editor or agent as well as informing him of the material you are sending and a bit about the story. Do not go into great depth.

5. The next paragraph should give only a small amount of biographical information and only that which is related to closely to what you are submitting or your expertise. I included that I taught and learned more about writing while teaching, which gives support for me as a writer. Then I gave information about my published work and my website address, so if the agent/editor wants more information, she can find it. Do not falsify anything. If you have clips (news releases or clippings) and have them on a website, be sure to include that information. For example, I am in the process of scanning and adding clips to my website.

6. Do not over praise yourself or your writing, complain about anyone else’s not accepting it, or give your friends’ opinions. At the same time don’t belittle yourself or your work.

7. Finally, thanking the person for taking time to consider submitted material is good manners. Notice that I don’t set a deadline but let the agent know I will be waiting for his decision. I also include other ways he can reach me: phone number and email address. I let him know that I have enclosed a Self Addressed Stamped (with enough postage to return the material to me) Envelope (which is large enough to hold the material) – better known as SASE.

8. Then add a list of enclosures after the signature area.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Even one misspelled word, grammar error, or confusing passage would result in an agent or editor returning the manuscript or throwing the material away if no SASE were enclosed.

If the letter is boring or contains any errors, agents and editors will often not read more than the first paragraph. The submitted material would then never be read.

If the cover letter is written well enough to attract the agent’s or editor’s attention, then the author must keep that attention through the manuscript – with NO errors.

I cannot stress that idea enough: Spelling, grammar, and other errors will destroy chances of an item being accepted by an agent or editor. This idea is not my opinion but is stressed over and over by editors, agents, and other writing experts.

Give your business a chance to be successful: Promote a well-written story, article, novel, or other item with a well-written cover letter.

After years in teaching, Vivian Gilbert Zabel turned her writing into a business. An author on Writing.Com, http://www.Writing.Com/authors/vzabel, she also has books on Amazon.com, Hidden Lies and Other Storied and Walking the Earth. This article has been submitted in affiliation with http://www.Facimile.Com/ which is a site for Fax Machines.

Warts are caused by a virus. It’s name is Papillomavirus and it has many variants.

“Warts” is a very common, easily transmitted disease that can, if not treated, have serious consequences.

In an event that a female is infected with a strain of virus that also infects the cervix of the uterus, it can in some cases cause cancer.

It is thus very important to make sure that in an event that someone is infected and develops warts, he or she should immediately see a doctor and start treating them. Genital warts are the most dangerous as they can easily transmit deeper into vagina and infect the uterus.

But mostly warts don’t become cancerous and sometimes after a few months to a few years disappear on their own. Some people are immune to Papilloma virus, but the cause is still unknown.

There are many types of warts:

* warts * plantar warts * flat warts * filamentous warts (“Papilloma”) * genital warts

They can appear anywhere on the skin, but are usually confined to hands, feet, face, chest, genitals and anus. Sometimes they can appear inside the mouth.

Filamentous warts are most common on the eyelids, neck and chest.

Removal of such infections is usually carried out by freezing the affected areas with liquid nitrogen. This process has to be repeated several times to be successful. Other forms of treatment include abrasives that kill the affected cells thus eliminating the virus. This procedure too has to be repeated several times.

Inn the last five years or so, some major improvements have been made on this matter and many new discoveries have been made. Also some new alternative methods of treatment have been made available to the market.

Many of such “cures” don’t work very well and people have to resort to classical methods that are usually painful and irritating.

One company, however has developed very effective treatments based on natural essential oils. Inn the laboratory testings, they have been proven to counteract with virus replicating mechanisms and thus prevent the virus from spreading and make it possible for the body to naturally defend itself and within three weeks completely heal.

Such oils can be found at http://www.amoils.com/go.cgi?id=healnow and also come with a 100% money back guarantee.

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether you choose classical or alternative methods to heal warts, the most important thing is to start treating them as soon as they are spotted. The problem is that the virus is very easily transmitted among people with direct or indirect contact between infected and healthy individuals.

Also the risk of cancer as a direct consequence of Papillomavirus infection must not be neglected.

For more information on warts and their removal, please visit: http://wart101.blogspot.com

Article marketing is the act of writing articles and publishing them online (usually through an article directory or distribution site) to increase Web exposure, search engine ranking and website traffic.

Here are seven “rules” to help you get the most out of your article marketing program.

Rule #1 – Your articles must be your original work.
Article distribution sites require that any work you submit be your own. In other words, no plagiarism. But that’s just one reason of many to create your own content. Aside from being the right thing to do, creating original articles will help you position yourself as an authority in your field.

Rule #2 – Your articles must be well written.
This does not mean your articles have to be literary masterpieces. It means your articles should be logically structured and easily readable, with proper grammar and spelling.

In truth, article distribution sites will publish your articles as long as they meet some basic criteria for length and formatting. But they won’t check your article for spelling, or to make sure it’s well written. You’ll have to do that, and it’s vital that you do.

Your articles will take on a life of their own after you submit them. They could pop up all over the Web (actually, that’s the idea). And the last thing you want is a poorly written article circulating on the Web for months. That will do you more harm than good.

Rule #3 – Your articles must be helpful.
The articles that do the best for article marketing — the articles that enjoy plenty of reprint and exposure — are the articles that genuinely help readers. The Internet is choked with what I like to call “fluff” articles. Fluff articles are general to a fault. They don’t offer any meat, any specific or helpful content. Avoid fluff articles. You can help your articles rise to the top by making them helpful.

This article is helpful because I’m showing you specific tactics to help you achieve something. I’m not just telling you what article marketing is … I’m showing you, in detail, how to use article marketing for your own purposes. That’s what you should strive to do with your articles.

Rule #4 – Your articles must be relevant to your services.
If your articles adhere to all the other rules but are not related to your product or service, they won’t help you grow your business. You could write a well crafted, helpful article about home stereo systems, and it might get a lot of circulation and republication. But if you sell audio equipment for cars, you’ve given readers no reason to contact you about it. So make sure your articles relate to your product or service in some way.

Rule #5 – Your articles must point to your website.
One of article marketing’s main objectives is to steer qualified prospects to your website. Another objective is to increase your website’s search engine ranking. To support both of these objectives, you’ll need to include a link to your website at the end of each article. If you don’t have a website or blog, pointing to an email address is the next best thing. But I recommend getting a website before you begin an article marketing program.

Rule #6 – Your articles must give the reader a reason to take further action.
Educating your prospects is important. But the end goal of article marketing is to get them to act. You want them to visit your website, subscribe to your newsletter, download something, or contact you directly. So each article must have a properly constructed call-to-action at the end of it.

Rule #7 – You must submit new articles on a regular basis.
Believe it or not, it’s possible to submit just one article and see an increase in website traffic, and possibly even acquire a new customer. But to capitalize on everything article marketing has to offer, you should make it a regular part of your business.

The point of article marketing is to produce a steady stream of well-written, helpful articles. So create a schedule for yourself. My schedule is to submit one article per week in three different categories. Maybe for starters your goal will be two articles per month (though I advise more). Article marketing is not a one-shot deal … the more articles the better!

* Copyright 2006, Brandon Cornett. You may republish this article if you keep the byline and author’s note, and also leave the hyperlink intact.

About the Author Brandon Cornett is the owner and publisher of MarketingSwap.com, a content exchange for writers and publishers. Submit your own marketing articles, or download a free 18-page article writing guide! Visit http://www.MarketingSwap.com today.

I recently answered a call for submissions to write articles for a newsletter. This was to be an ongoing position, but the advertisement didn’t mention remuneration, article length, or turnaround time. I contacted the person who posted the article and asked questions about these issues. What I got back was an open email telling me – and every other writer who contacted him – what the aim of the publication was (to have articles written for a dating magazine), but apart from saying they would require articles twice a week, my questions were not answered. So I wrote back, again asking specific questions. I received another email, and again my questions were not answered. The person concerned did however say he was taking ‘quotes’ and would take the cheapest one. But I still didn’t know what he wanted. So I wrote again, this time withdrawing my interest. What I received back was a very nasty email from the person saying I was ‘too quick to judge’. In this final email from him, he finally mentioned that he was looking for someone skilled, but wanted the cheapest price he could get. Call me stubborn, even call me stupid, but I wrote back and told him what I thought – in the nicest possible way. I let him know that taking the cheapest quote was not necessarily the best option. That if he needed or wanted an experienced newsletter writer, then lowest price shouldn’t come into the equation. My twelve plus years of experience in this area could have proven more valuable to him than securing someone at the cheapest rate he could lay his hands on.

He wrote back and agreed. By this time it was too late. I’d had several emails back and forth with this ‘editor’ over a period of less than thirty minutes. During that time he had been elusive, arrogant, and downright rude. After the second email with him I’d decided not to pursue this position, even though it was ongoing work. It came through loud and clear that he was not only inexperienced (which is not necessarily a bad thing), but he had no respect whatsoever for the writers he was dealing with. At no time did he disclose the name of the magazine, whether it was a print magazine or for the internet, and how young or old the publication was. These are all important issues for writers, and of course, if the publication was internet based, it makes a huge difference to the length of articles to be produced.

I’ve only once before come across something like this, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. If our first, second, or even third encounter with an editor is not particularly good, then what will your subsequent dealings be like? I’ve worked with loads of editors over the years, but only two have been unprofessional like this. The majority of editors are easy to work with, very trustworthy, and treat writers with respect. If they don’t, then my friend, you have a problem. Writers are the bread and butter of publications. Without us, there would be no magazine, or website, or whatever it is they’re producing. Go with your gut; if things don’t feel right, forget it. Run a mile. And don’t look back.

Cheryl Wright is an award-winning Australian author and freelance journalist. In addition to an array of other projects, she is the owner of the www.Writer2Writer.com website and the Writer to Writer monthly ezine for writers. She is also the author of a series of ebooks for writers. Her romantic suspense novel “Saving Emma” was released January 2005 by Whiskey Creek Press. Check out Cheryl’s website: http://www.cheryl-wright.com

If you are an online article writer you may need to consider that linear thinking can curb your desired results. So many online article writers worry about quality above all else. They want to make sure these articles are perfect in everyway and that what they have to say gets completely conveyed to the reader.

In doing this their online articles often get very long or at least over 500 words. It is great to see longer articles with more relevant content on the Internet, as maybe this can increase literacy? But is that really the job of an online write? Additionally most people’s attention span is rounding out about 2-minutes or less on the Internet and thus it hardly makes sense to go against the average mean of the Internet users and their preferences.

That is to say that the average Internet reader, reads a little and clicks out and so a long article does not serve them or the author in the online article submission category. Further concentrating on quality is indeed a noble endeavor however an online article writer should also concentrate on quantity, because online article writing is a numbers game you see.

The more articles you write the better you’ll do. In fact I liken online article writer to the balance of nature and nurture in that you are born with certain genes and abilities and weaknesses and it is how you use those to your advantage to determine your sex. So, it is not about quality VS. quantity; it is about both. Choose both and you will win, trust me on this in 2006.

“Lance Winslow” – Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

Everyone knows an expert is just a drip under pressure. I want to share a little story, rather innocent on the part of one person that made a difference in the life of a rather well known preacher.

A dear friend of mine spent her years working for the Lord, and this took her places she might never have gone. For most of her children’s early adult lives, long enough to put them through college, she spent her years cooking at a small private college, in order to obtain reduced college tuition for her children. She was an excellent cook, personable and talented, loved by all who knew her.

It was not unusual that the pastor of the church would join the students for meals, since he was also the Dean of the College. He was usually asked to pray over the meal. This pastor was long winded. He had a tendency to drone on and on, his tone changing slightly, often dropping just below the point where he could be heard by my friend who was nearly tone deaf. However, the constant drip from the faucet in the kitchen could be heard miles away, and she was quite tuned into its incessant communications.

On one particularly grueling and hot Kansas day, they sat down to board, and he began to pray. Words of praise thundered forth eventually droning to lower toned requests for blessings, pleasures, and health for his parishioners, until the cook could no longer hear him pray. She thought he was finished.

As she looked up from her bowed position to join the rest of the congregation of students, administration, faculty, and guests she saw her associate wasn’t sitting beside her and assumed he was still in the kitchen. She called out loudly, amid the silence (knowing the chatter of table talk would soon override her option to do so), “Would somebody please turn that drip off?”

Too late, she realized the pastor had still been praying, when he rather loudly proclaimed, “In the name of Jesus, Amen.”

His sermons after that, as well as his prayers, became more concise and deliberate. He became an EXPERT.

The choice is yours. You can continue to drone into tedium, or you can grow and become a better person with more knowledge and focus your interests into a recognizable skill and be known as an “expert”.

Crisp copy writing packs a punch, with a story that touches your audience, marketing becomes a cinch. Jan Verhoeff has 22 years experience in marketing and packs a punch that will make your website ZING with sales. Visit her site at eBiz Brand Performance.

Critical essays are usually review essays that look in detail at some literary work. Critical essays may be positive or negative in tone, depending on the attitude of the writer towards the work analyzed. It is necessary to have in-depth knowledge about the author studied, his works and the corpus of criticism that has already appeared.

Critical essays should have the same structure as that of any other essay. The introduction of the critical essay should introduce the title, author and the nature of the work under analysis. The introduction should also codify the strengths and weaknesses of the work, with focus on one or two major features.

The second section of the critical essay should carry a brief summary of the work analyzed. The summary section will also touch upon the author’s presentation of the theme and his viewpoints. The next important thing to remember is to highlight the aspects one will touch upon.

The third section of the critical essay should contain the main argument – one can agree with or differ from the author’s or other critics’ viewpoints. This section should contain detailed analysis of the topic discussed. Care is to be taken to quote relevant material from the text to support one’s argument. One can also borrow supporting evidence from other writers, acknowledging them. Citations must be included in the prescribed style format.

The last section is the conclusion, which briefly summarizes the main points raised. The conclusion should be written clearly so that it crisply highlights the essay writer’s views on the subject. Critical essays gain an impressive look if the last sentence is one that can capture the reader’s attention, provoking him to think further on another angle of the subject.

Essays provides detailed information on Essays, College Essays, Essay Writing, Critical Essays and more. Essays is affiliated with Download Free eBooks.

Certain genres are renowned for being more suspenseful than others: horror, crime fiction and romantic suspense, but each and every book, no matter whether it’s an Historical Romance or a Paranormal Fantasy, HAS to have a level of suspense interwoven between the pages!

All stories need to have this element, otherwise the reader isn’t going to want to turn the page, it’s as simple as that. So if you’re interested in what makes a suspenseful page turner, then please read on…

Creating conflict in your novel is a given, otherwise there would be no story. If all went smoothly it would be as dull-as-dishwater, wouldn’t it? They all lived happily throughout the story and ever after, yawn…

I’ve listed seven ways you can inject suspense into your novel:

1. Introduce your characters to their worst nightmare!

Find out about your characters beforehand. If possible, write up their likes and dislikes etc, and most importantly of all, find out what it is they fear most? What is it that causes their hearts to thump loudly, beads of perspiration to form on their upper lips, and the hairs on the back of their necks to stand on end? Find out what that thing or things are, and then give it to them, both barrels. For example, if your heroine is petrified of flying because her parents died in a plane crash, create a story where she HAS to take a journey on an airplane. If your hero fears water because he almost drowned as a young child, put him in a position where he HAS to get back in the water to rescue someone.

Introduce them to their worst nightmare and watch how they react!

2. Lull them into a false sense of security

When your character is really frightened of something, throw in a red herring. For example, if your heroine thinks she hears a noise outside, allow the plot to let her fears grow and grow. Let it be something quite innocuous, like the dustbin blowing over in the wind. Then, when she has reassured herself, breathing a sigh of relief, petrify her to death by placing a prowler outside her back door!

3. Throw the spotlight on at least two people

This might sound a little obvious, but for goodness sake, don’t make the villain of the piece stand out a mile. Instead, have suspicion fall on at least two, possibly three characters. This will have the effect of your reader not really being sure until the end, when the other shoe falls! But, by all means, leave some clues and some red herrings along the way!

4. Pacing

Pacing is important to create suspense. In general, short, snappy sentences will enable the reader to race ahead so they feel their heart is beating in time with the frightened protagonist. Longer sentences tend to slow things down. You might want to speed things up for a car chase or slow it down for a love making scene. Imagine your novel as if you were watching it on the big screen. How would it be filmed? What would that particular scene look like to the audience?

5. The calm before the storm

Make use of the weather to good effect. Thunderclouds brewing overhead, often give the reader the feeling that something is about to happen [prophetic fallacy]. A bolt of lightening hitting the night sky, power lines down, a stranger at the door, etc. Think of the last time you watched a horror film; didn’t the weather come into somewhere?

6. When all goes well, throw in a dead body!

When you hit a sagging middle of a novel, and you find there’s no where to go, try throwing in a dead body. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a character has to be killed off, although you might want to do just that, it can mean that something unexpected happens, such as the birth of a baby, etc. Something that injects a little more oomph into the plot!

7. Setting

Setting is very important as a tool to create suspense. What about that dark stone staircase covered in cobwebs? Or the elevator that suddenly stops in between floors? Choosing the right sort of setting can make or break a novel. And sometimes, placing the object or person the protagonist fears in an innocuous setting can make the story all the more horrifying.

Be cruel to your characters and watch them run for their lives!

Lynette Rees has written many short stories and articles. Her first romantic suspense novel, IT HAPPENED ONE SUMMER, will published at Wings Press Inc from May 1st, 2006.

Her second romantic suspense, RETURN TO WINTER, is due for publication at the same site in December 2006.

http://www.wings-press.com/

Visit Lynette’s website here:

http://silverlady00.tripod.com/

Are you intrigued or surprised by the way I titled this article? It probably seems like writing obituaries would be filled with anything other than joy. I agree, or at least I would have agreed up until a few months ago when I had the privilege of helping two friends write the obituaries for their grandmothers.

I used to think that writing obituaries would be a thing of dread, filled with nothing but morbid thoughts of how a loved one would no longer be around to share life with you. I was sure that writing obituaries was never a healthy, healing thing for a person to do. My two friends changed my views of all of this. I sat with my two friends at our favorite coffee shop as they determined to write appropriate obituaries for their grandmothers who had ironically died within a week of each other. I ordered everyone lattes and joined my friends with a bit of reservation about what the next hours would hold. I think I was there for moral support, to grab a Kleenex if I saw a tear or to order another drink if more caffeine was needed. I sat quietly and watched as they began to write the obituaries that many people would read to grieve and remember the women who had passed on.

Minutes passed quickly until we had been in the coffee shop for three hours. I was nearly in shock over all I had observed and learned during that time. Rather than being filled with an endless stream of tears, our hours were filled with tons of laughter. My two friends were looking at the task of writing the obituaries with joy and gratefulness. They were glad to have been the ones in their families chosen for the task and they threw themselves in to the work fully.

For both of them, writing obituaries for their grandmothers was a privilege. They enjoyed the opportunity to wander back through years of memories and special moments shared with their grandmas. Their grieving was overshadowed only by the joy of remembering. This was a lesson that I needed to learn. I never thought about writing obituaries as an opportunity to honor a loved one and find joy, peace and healing in the process, but that is exactly what my two friends did that afternoon.

So now, as I sit down to write obituaries for my own loved ones who have passed, I do it with joy. I do it to remember the best parts of who they were and the many ways that they influenced my life for the better. It may sound a little silly, but writing obituaries isn’t something I mind doing at all.

Hallidae Thomason has learned to love authoring obituaries. Get help learning to honor the lives of people you love by visiting www.obituariesgroup.info

Anyone reading this will most likely now know the power of article marketing in increasing the link popularity, traffic, and sales through your website, but one of the most important parts of the article, the resource box, is often overlooked and rushed to finish the article off. This is a big error as this is the area where you should be enticing the reader to click on your link to visit your website.

A resource box is what you usually find at the very end of the article, and may contain information such as the name of the author with a brief description of what he/she does, and a brief description of the site being promoted with a working link to it. With the article of course being in relation to the site that you would like to promote, you would want the visitor to finish reading your article, and visit your site for more information on the topic. So let’s say if the article is about learning to drive, the resource box may lead to a link to a site that offers driving tuition.

You may have concentrated very hard in making your article interesting, informative, and eye-catching to the reader, and you should also do this for the resource box. Although the resource box covers only a small space, ensure that you include the right keywords and content for the reader to obtain a good descriptive idea about your site.

Now that we have cleared up what resource boxes are for those that did not already know, we also need to ascertain the benefits of having a good resource box. In short, the main benefit is to drive traffic to your site. A well-written article can be picked up by several sites looking for content to fill their pages, and these will often be from sites that are targeted towards your topic. As a consequence, the potential for a traffic surge of targeted visitors, that you would hope to turn into customers, is great. However, even though this provides a good opportunity for the link popularity of your website to grow, it is still important that your resource box is optimized so that any visitor reading your article on a site that has picked it up will want to click on your link in the resource box to discover what you have to offer.

So you may now be wondering what makes good content for a resource box? Including good keywords is very important and there are many tools that you can use to find out popular search terms. Make the most of the small space provided for your resource box by using a bit of creativity to make the reader look twice and be intrigued by what your website has to offer. You may only get one chance to capture the reader so make a lasting impression. Do not try to fool the reader by providing irrelevant keywords, but instead build the credibility of your website and you as an author, with relevant keywords.

Many underestimate the importance of a good resource box, but make sure you do not make the same mistake. Although the space provided is only small, be creative and fun, whilst showing that you have a great deal to offer and use the resource box to aid in driving traffic to your site, rather than just a paragraph to finish off your article.

The power of articles as a promotional tool is tremendous, and a great place to become an author is at the new free article submission resource; http://www.articleblotter.com. Justin Brown runs the site and aims to continuously improve the benefits of submitting and publishing articles their. Take a look at this free article resource and we hope to be able to have you as a valued customer in the very near future.