Today, The Iron Bells is out in the world and I hope you all love it as much as I did. You can buy the book on your Kindle now and a print version is in the works.

The year is 64 A.D. — though now A.D. stands for Anno Daemonii.
Demons have crossed a gate into our world, taking the reins of power
from humanity. A new Inquisition has begun, determined to root out any
who stand against the new world order. The holy sites on earth have
been destroyed — Jerasulem first, then the Vatican, then Mecca — and
what resistance remains is ruthlessly crushed. Amaranth is a fighter
in the resistance cell based in London. Dham is a Ringer, one of the
few people left able to ring the remaining sets of blessed hand bells
that have power over demons. When Amaranth discovers that her best
friend has been possessed by a demon and is going to be used in the
Resistance’s final, desperate mission, she asks Dham for his help in
saving her friend. With the Inquisition closing in and betrayal
threatening from inside the Resistance itself, Amaranth, Dham, and the
demon — along with Catriona, a new, highly-skilled, highly-blonde
bell-ringer — decide to head to Rome and the ruins of Vatican City,
hoping to find a way to stem the tide of demonic possessions and close
the gate.

As a lifelong reader and someone who works in the book industry I was feeling pretty depressed about having a child that had no desire whatsoever to read. I’ve spent a year trying to figure out what was wrong. Her teacher says she can read at grade level. Her comprehension was fine. We don’t allow her to have a ton of TV or video games. Why wouldn’t she read?

The answer was me. I was buying her books I read as a child. Or books that are out now that I would have read if I were still a child. I rushed her in the bookstore after a half hour of looking because I was bored.

The reason my daughter wasn’t a reader was me.

I took her to Hicklebee’s this Saturday and I got the eff out of her way. I let the staff there work with her on finding a book. They are the real experts on children and reading. If you have a reluctant reader a trip to your indie bookstore may be the cure!

Addie bought Ivy and Bean book one and two. She’s halfway through book two. Since Saturday! It never occurred to me at all that my daughter may want shorter books with realistic fiction.

If your child isn’t reading, evaluate what you are buying them. And get thee to an indie!

I later sold that book to Liz at Entangled.

Today, that book is out in the world. And I love it dearly.

Amelie Bennett. . . . Ending the world, one prophecy at a time.

I was born to slay Crossworld demons.
Big black flappy ones, little green squirmy ones. Unfortunately, the only thing getting slain these days is my social life. With my high school under attack, combat classes intensifying, and Academy instructors dropping right and left, I can barely get my homework done, let alone score a bondmate before prom.
Then he shows up.
Jackson Smith-Hailey. Unspeakably hot, hopelessly unattainable, and dangerous in all the right ways. Sure, he’s my trainer. And okay, maybe he hates me. Doesn’t mean I’ll ignore the wicked Guardian chemistry between us. It’s crazy! Every time I’m with him, my powers explode. Awesome, right?
Wrong.
Now my teachers think I’m the murderous Graymason destined to bring down our whole race of angelbloods. Everyone in New Orleans is hunting me. The people I trusted want me dead. Jack and I have five days to solve the murders, prevent a vampire uprising, and thwart the pesky prophecy foretelling his death by my hand. Shouldn’t be too difficult.

Getting it done without falling in love. . . that might take a miracle.

To win one of my agent paperbacks please comment below! I’ll pick a winner next week when I’m home from vacation.

On the day we launched Foreword publicly Ann Kingman asked who was going to do the first story on book blogger agents and is that a viable way for bloggers to get into the industry. My immediate response was hell yes! For others it is a black mark on a record, an immediate outcry of assuming began.

They’d like to see a study in five years, if no one’s making any money bloggers as agents must suck, how do you know they are smart enough to do the job…

You don’t. But you also don’t know that the MFA student that just got a job as a new agent is legit either.

Newsflash, no new agent makes money. Not a sustainable income amount of money. You treat it like a startup, in a few years you earn out.

The three bloggers at Foreword have put an amazing amount of time into learning the business. I myself interned for four years. The first rule of lit agency interning (you sign an NDA) is not to talk about interning. I didn’t take the first agent job offered to me. I wanted to understand way more than I did.

Because being an advocate for an author is a big fucking deal. They need you for way more than to just sell your book. Almost anyone with discriminating taste can make a sale somewhere.

But can they negotiate, read contract language, have a mentor they can go to for help? Do they understand option clause and advance money vs. royalties and escalators? Can they love their author and that book like their own child?

Being a blogger is not the end all of my life. I’m a mom, a wife, a writer, and I’ve help various positions in professional fields. I have a resume, I have skills, and none of those skills have anything to do with me being an upstart blogger.

Blogging prepared me for so much in this industry and this job:
-Knowing imprints and houses.
-Knowing editors of imprints and houses.
-A strong understanding of the market in the fields I would go on to represent.
-A connection to bloggers who will help me promote my books if I love them.
-Complete understanding of a marketing plan.

I don’t think that blogging alone can prepare you for being an agent. I don’t think every blogger is a right fit. But I’m not going to judge someone based on their blog when I have no idea what they do outside of their blog and their in professional life. And I am a firm believer that a certain kind of savvy blogger gets an informal education in publishing whether they mean to or not.

I can’t answer whether I’m a good agent. That’s up to my clients and their works. What I know is that I try my damnedest to be, and that I understand the importance of what I am doing and spend 12 hours a day or more doing it.

When I took my position at Larsen Pomada they sat me down and explained I probably wouldn’t sell a book my first year, and that is totally acceptable and ok.

My one year anniversary is coming up. I made 9 deals for a total of 21 books. I have books coming out in April, June, July, and November of this year.

I’m damn proud of my record and I’m proud that blogging gave me an edge with the knowledge it brought. So I’m hoping we can lay to rest the judging of people based solely on their online presence. And that’s something I’ll have to work on personally as well. It makes you a giant ass.

Anyway, I’ve always been on team book blogger world domination.

In case you missed the news I have left Larsen Pomada and am starting my own literary agency with the help of a few awesome agents and partners.

I’ve known about this for a while, but I had to keep it secret from you. Keeping secrets is hard on the soul. I’m forever grateful to Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada for starting me on my career and for blessing this new career choice. They are amazing people.

Now that the cat is out of the bag a few housekeeping things:

Your queries, partials, fulls are all safe and have been transfered over to Foreword. But I won’t be reading anything this week. My job was to help my husband build the website and add all the content and start all the social media. This week I’m going to bask in the glory of my news and take a nap or two. Next week I’m back at work for you.

My intern John Hansen has been named my assistant. Congrats to John.

This is a scary, wonderful, amazing thing that is happening and if you want to live in wonder with me you can find Foreword at these places: website, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Pinterest.

Thank you all for the congrats.

Olivia

He tilts my chin up so my eyes meet his, his thumb brushing lightly across my lips. I close my eyes. I know Z is trouble. I know that being with him is going to get me into trouble. I don’t care.

At least at this moment, I don’t care.

Tossed from foster home to foster home, Olivia’s seen a lot in her sixteen years. She’s hardened, sure, though mostly just wants to fly under the radar until graduation. But her natural ability with computers catches the eye of Z, a mysterious guy at her new school. Soon, Z has brought Liv into his team of hacker elite—break into a few bank accounts, and voila, he drives a motorcycle. Follow his lead, and Olivia might even be able to escape from her oppressive foster parents. As Olivia and Z grow closer, though, so does the watchful eye of Bill Sykes, Z’s boss. And he’s got bigger plans for Liv…

Z
I can picture Liv’s face: wide-eyed, trusting. Her smooth lips that taste like strawberry Fanta.
It was just a kiss. That’s all. She’s just like any other girl.
Except that she’s not.

Thanks to Z, Olivia’s about to get twisted.

Vivi Barnes was raised on a farm in East Texas where her theater-loving mom and cowboy dad gave her a unique perspective on life. Now living in the magic and sunshine of Orlando, Florida, she divides her time writing, working, goofing off with her husband and three kids, and avoiding dirty dishes.

Find her on her blog: 4chicks.wordpress.com
Find her on twitter: @ViviBarnes
Find her on facebook: Facebook.ViviBarnes.Author

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1. The sheer amount of email
I’m a newer agent. Let us say I get ten queries a say. That’s seventy queries a week. Two-hundred and eighty or so queries a month, and thirty-four hundred emails a year. It isn’t that hard for me to send a form rejection or ask for a full in that amount of email. But immediately multiply all of this by three for an agent who’s been around longer and is more well known. (I know math sucks.) It becomes incredibly hard to answer, even with form. You need to just move on down the line. If I get to a point where I’m reading 10,000 emails a year I can’t promise I’ll still respond to every query.

2. Feedback
It is kind of hard to continue to answer every email when 4% of those emails come back (yes I make up percentages, just roll with me) with a rejection of your rejection, a YOU ARE SO STUPID MY BOOK IS AMAZING (and it may be this is sometimes simply subjective), threats of being ‘slapped around’, questions about how the author can improve the query, and a myriad of other things that keep you from reading new email.

3. They have no soul
I just made that part up because I wanted to have a list of three things. I’m sure all agents have a soul.

I’ve often wondered why authors submit to presses and agents simultaneously. It seems to be two career paths. Having a vibrant small/medium press career is nothing to scoff at, but I think the author has to choose what they want for each MS.

I get behind in my box trying to keep up with all of these. I try to read each MS in the order they are received. Yeah, stuff happens! Other agents offer and one has to be bumped up and other things like that, but adding in the I have an offer for publication makes it more complicated. Because as I stated before the author generally wants you to negotiate this contract for them instead of subbing the MS.

From this point forward I will bow out of any race that would require me to drop everything only to be the negotiator of a contract. If you are submitting to presses while querying I am probably not the agent for you. I have to think of my time management and how I want to sign authors and racing against a contract on short submissions or no submission at all is not for me.

But authors who had these stories and couldn’t get representation took to self publishing and made amazing leaps and bounds with their sales numbers. They proved that there is definitely a market for these books. They made it possible for me, as an agent, to ask for these books to consider for representation.

When your kids are nine you buy them books about twelve year olds. Your twelve year olds read books about sixteen year olds. The kids want to know what happens next. I’m in grade school, what happens in middle school. I’m in middle school, what happens in high school?

Why is ‘I’m in high school, what happens in college?’ not a natural progression?

I think this category is going to thrive, with or without there being a special shelves or sections at bookstores.

I was an intern. For four years I interned at two Bay Area agencies. I answered mail, e-mail, sent form rejections, read manuscripts, wrote pitches, and even sent some clients out on submission. You probably don’t remember any of that, and that is because I never talked about it. The first rule of interning has always been that you never talk about interning. It goes on your resume, not social media.

I have my own awesome intern. A lot of agencies keep their intern identities secret but I (and I was allowed at Kimberly Cameron) allow John to say that he does things for me. What John and I don’t do is say exactly what he does for me (besides making me coffee, which he can’t do but I would totally dig that).

Recently I’ve been seeing interns crop up on Twitter doing #askagent, #pubtips, and #tenqueries. I would have been fired for doing this and rightly so. Even while I was an assistant agent I didn’t dare. I didn’t know enough about what I was talking about to give really well thought out answers. I still at times refer to other agents before answering a question.

Writers, interns are not gatekeepers to get to the agent. Most agents, regardless of whether their interns know or not, check in on their own stuff. Most agents do not want their interns giving you advice. And interns are not cooler than anyone else, nor do they need to be put up on a pedestal.

As Lady Grantham would say, these youngsters should stop giving themselves airs.

The point of this entire ramble is this: make sure you are getting advice from a reputable source who has spent time in the trenches and has moved up to work as an agent.