Book Review: A Hilarious Guide to Querying Literary Agents

 Fake Query Letters by Dead Authors: A Satirical Craft Guide to Writing Queries That Survive the Slush Pile, by David Brown and Michelle Barker (Darling Axe Publishing)

How-to books for authors abound in today’s market. Not all the advice is worth taking. Indeed, much of it seems to be based on outdated practices, flawed “conventional wisdom,” or is intended for novice self-published authors. Very little is aimed at serious authors interested in traditional publishing or established midlist authors scrambling to keep up with today’s rapidly changing market. Much of it is contradictory and involves a great deal of telling the author how to get an agent instead of showing pitfalls and best practices.

The latest entry in this field is the delightful, highly informative book, Fake Query Letters by Dead Authors: A Satirical Craft Guide to Writing Queries That Survive the Slush Pile, by David Brown and Michelle Barker of Darling Axe. They open with this intriguing premise:

 What if the greatest novels ever written had to survive today's slush pile? No reputation to fall back on—just a cover letter and first page... and an agent who's already read 200 queries before lunch.

Spoiler: most of them wouldn't make it. 

Using five classic novels (Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, The Scarlet Letter, Anne of Green Gables, and Jane Eyre) they first demonstrate the worst possible way the authors could query an agent and how to fix their disastrous mistakes.

 Query guidelines for literary agents vary, but most include a letter, synopsis, and sample pages, which are often the first chapter). We already know (and, hopefully, love) the text, which gives us a foundation to evaluate each horrible, rejection-guaranteed sample letter and synopsis. The authors invite us to imagine ourselves as literary agents at the end of a punishing work week, facing an Inbox jammed with queries. (So much fun!) What would tempt us to read the entire query and then—oh joy!—request the entire manuscript?

Highly recommended for fiction writers at all stages of their careers for whom a literary agent is appropriate. Also highly recommended for indie (self-published) writers for invaluable insights into how to craft a compelling novel and then present it at its best. After all, in today’s overcrowded market, readers will decide to pick up a book on the same basis of a dynamite pitch.

[Reprint] How rhetoric promotes anti‑transgender views

 

How the Trump administration’s rhetoric promotes anti‑transgender views

In the past few years, the Trump administration and state legislatures have restricted trans people’s rights and protections, from access to healthcare to passports. Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Julie D. Nelson, University of Tampa

Whether in an Oval Office proclamation signing about commercial fishing or during a Fox News interview while discussing Iran, President Donald Trump finds opportunities to share his views on transgender people.

During a June 2026 signing event, Trump claimed, in response to a question about proposed legislation regarding election procedures, called the SAVE America Act: “We are talking about saving America, right? No men in women’s sports.” He continued, “And we have no mutilization of your children for transgender purposes … where your child leaves your house, and they take your child from you. … In six states, they take the child and do what they want to do. What they do is, is I don’t even want to talk about it. No transgender mutilization of your children.”

Highlighting Trump’s ongoing use of the made-up word “mutilization,” criticism quickly followed his false claims about states forcibly transitioning children. Misrepresentations like these help fuel the transgender moral panic that Trump has provoked since he started instituting restrictions on trans people in his first term.

As a rhetoric scholar for nearly two decades, I have studied how emotions propel rhetoric that goes viral on public platforms like social media and how politicians use emotions for varying purposes, including to bolster anti-trans legislation.

Throughout the Trump administration’s second term, I’ve followed how its officials have invented threats and used provocative language and repulsive imagery to stimulate anti-trans disgust and paranoia in audiences, contributing to public misconceptions and declining support for trans rights and people.

Changing views of trans people and issues

The Trump administration’s anti-trans agenda has flourished since his first term.

Following Republicans’ US$21 million anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ advertising campaign that helped pave Trump’s way to victory in 2024, the administration and its allies have been busy. The White House has denied the existence of trans identity, and states have introduced a deluge of legislation that restricts trans people’s rights and protections, from access to healthcare to passports.

Presidential rhetoric can have a significant impact on public opinion. Since reaching a peak in the early 2020s, overall support for LGBTQ+ issues has since declined in the U.S. Likewise, surveys have shown a decline in support for trans healthcare for minors, a preference for using birth sex on IDs, and increasing support for restrictions in sports for trans people.

Meanwhile, public approval of Trump’s approach to trans issues is relatively high, as compared with his approval ratings on other issues.

A 2024 report by the Human Rights Campaign decried an “epidemic of violence” against trans and gender-expansive people. A 2025 Pew report found that 70% of trans adults have feared for their personal safety, and only 13% of LGBTQ respondents reported social acceptance of trans people.

Though the causes for changing trans views are complex, research suggests Trump’s rhetoric and policies have powerful influence, the ramifications of which are clear. Anti-LGBTQ+ laws and debates negatively affect young queer people, according to the Trevor Project’s 2025 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People, and are associated with increased stress, discrimination and suicide attempts.

Trans people and their allies have pushed back against a recent wave of restrictions. Here, supporters rally for the Transgender Day of Visibility in March 2025. Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Moral panic as political strategy

From the Salem witch trials in the 17th century to the war on drugs in the 20th century, moral panics have emerged across history to stoke fear against a perceived threat to a society’s values or well-being.

Moral panics, coined by sociologist Stanley Cohen in 1972, follow a similar pattern: a threat is defined, media exaggerates the threat, public concern increases, authorities respond with laws and policies, and society is transformed.

Research on anti-trans moral panics illustrates their success in propelling anti-trans lawmaking in the U.S. and suggests they are often initiated by people with power, who use their platforms to shape public discourse.

Moral panics elicit a range of negative emotions, but disgust and paranoia are especially potent. Originally a response meant to protect us from disease and spoiled food, disgust has evolved to also express social inappropriateness. Disgust asserts that its object is inherently bad. Since disgust is culturally dependent, it can also be used to marginalize groups of people.

Meanwhile, paranoia focuses on visualizing and preparing for future threats. When experienced as an emotion – outside of psychiatric disorders – paranoia has a righteous undertone, as it seeks to uncover perceived enemies.

Disgust and paranoia are a powerful combination for sustaining moral panics. While disgust produces an intense, immediate physical feeling, paranoia is long-lasting, stewing and existential.

Stimulating disgust and paranoia

Trump’s offhand remarks often invoke disgust and paranoia against perceived enemies – for example, toward immigrants, whom he has repeatedly described as dangerous criminals. These same patterns emerge in the Trump administration’s formal communication regarding trans issues.

The March 31, 2026, White House press release “President Trump Ended Democrats’ ‘Transgender for Everybody’ Insanity,” which touts the administration’s reversal of protections for trans people, offers several examples.

The release asserts that former President Joe Biden’s 2024 Proclamation of Transgender Day of Visibility “desecrated Easter Sunday with a ‘transgender’ message that elevated radical leftist ideology over faith, family, and biological truth.” Rousing paranoia, “radical leftist ideology” (and later in the release, “gender ideology”) is portrayed as an existential threat that puts Americans and their beliefs in danger.

The release also claimed that “the Trump Administration is celebrating a decisive victory: the swift and unrelenting dismantling of subversive, woke policies that endangered children, eroded women’s rights, assaulted common sense, and dragged America toward moral and cultural decline.”

As a rhetoric scholar, I read these allusions to religion and war – using words like “desecrate” and “victory,” respectively – as implications that the U.S. is in a battle between good and evil. Schools, hospitals, bathrooms, locker rooms, sports facilities and military bases are spaces declared under attack.

The release also condemns “the chemical and surgical mutilation of minors” and “child mutilation programs” – revolting imagery that misleadingly depicts gender-affirming care and incites shock, concern and disgust.

Similarly, invoking images of nonconsenting, victimized children and women, the release denounces “the un-American indoctrination of schoolchildren” and “the unfair, demeaning practice of forcing women to compete against biological men in sports.” Stimulating anger and moral panic, these descriptions encourage anti-trans views and discrimination.

Recognizing these rhetorical patterns is key to understanding how politicians use inflammatory language to denigrate trans people and other marginalized groups, including women, Black people and immigrants.

Julie D. Nelson, Associate Professor of English and Writing, University of Tampa

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Self-Care for Writers (and Everyone!)

 Like everyone else, we writers benefit from good self-care. Here are some suggestions.

5-10 minutes or less

• sip a glass of water or your favorite tea
• write one sentence on your manuscript
• journal about things you’re grateful for
• ask for help with something on your to-do list
• do a few jumping jacks or gentle stretches
• eat a piece of fruit
• make a medical appointment you’ve been putting off
• close your eyes and visualize the world as a better place for everyone
• snuggle your pet (plushies count!)
• watch a video of a baby laughing uncontrollably
• listen to a favorite song

15-30 minutes

[Reprint} How Dobbs Increased Support for Abortion Rights

 

Public opinion on abortion has shifted 4 years after Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade

People gather in front of the Supreme Court building following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling on June 24, 2022, in Washington, D.C. Nathan Howard/Getty Images

Laurel Elder, Hartwick College; Mary-Kate Lizotte, Augusta University, and Steven Greene, North Carolina State University

It’s been four years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the federal constitutional right to abortion.

In the immediate aftermath of the decision, national attention centered on implementation of state bans and a rapidly shifting legal landscape.

But four years later, one of the most impactful developments has been less visible: a significant, sustained and politically consequential shift in public opinion. In the wake of Dobbs, the debate over abortion rights did not simply return to the states. It fundamentally altered how many Americans think about the issue and how they vote.

In our recently published book, “Not Going Back: Public Opinion on Abortion in Post-Dobbs America,” we examined how and why these changes have occurred, and what they mean for U.S. politics. We believe the shift could have real consequences for the November 2026 midterms.

Post-Roe stability

Drawing on several nationally representative surveys conducted before and after Dobbs, we examined how Americans’ abortion attitudes, political priorities and voting behavior have changed in response to the most significant shift in abortion policy in half a century.

For nearly 50 years after Roe, public opinion on abortion was remarkably stable. In 1975, Gallup found support for legal abortion in certain circumstances at 54% and support for a ban in all circumstances at 22%. In 2021 – the year before the Dobbs decision – these figures were virtually the same: 48% and 19%, respectively.

Despite heated political rhetoric, most Americans held nuanced views. They were neither fully anti-abortion nor fully pro-abortion. Instead, they supported legal abortion in some circumstances and not in others.

That underlying stability shaped both policy and politics for decades. Republicans were able to rally a committed core of supporters around opposition to Roe, while the underlying constitutional right to access abortion remained unchanged.

As states moved quickly after the Dobbs decision to enact abortion bans and strict gestational limits, public opinion moved in the opposite direction.

Today, more Americans identify as pro-choice than they did before Dobbs. And, as we document in our book, more Americans are now taking absolutist positions. They support legal access to abortion in all or most cases and oppose government regulation altogether.

How Dobbs shattered the equilibrium

One of the most striking changes in the post-Dobbs era concerns who cares most about abortion. For decades, abortion was a higher priority for Republicans and those identifying as pro-life.

That dynamic has now flipped. In both 2022 and 2024, Democrats and pro-choice Americans were more likely than Republicans to say abortion was a top political issue shaping their vote. In our book, we document how in both 2022 and 2024, pro-choice Democrats were especially motivated to vote and remained highly loyal to Democratic candidates.

At the same time, the considerable minority of Republicans who support legal abortion found themselves politically cross-pressured, meaning they experienced conflicting political influences.

#BookReview: Murder mystery in a haunted castle

 The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle, by T. L. Huchu (Tor)

This is the third volume of T. L. Huchu’s wonderful “Edinburgh Nights” series. I love the protagonist, a feisty, resourceful slum kid, Ropa Moyo. In magic-imbued, dystopic post-apocalyptic Scotland, Ropa and her sister live with their grandmother, who is steeped in the ancient ritual magic of her African ancestors. Ropa’s magic is of a different sort: she can talk to ghosts. Ropa’s path out of abject poverty lies through the formal academy of Scottish magic. At the beginning of The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle, Ropa is struggling with an unpaid internship, doing scut work for an international magical conference at Dunvegan Castle on the Isle of Skye. It’s the perfect opportunity for her to make connections and further her career. That is, until a vital magical scroll goes missing, a librarian is murdered, and her mentor casts a force-field spell over the castle to prevent the culprit’s escape.

On one level, this is a classic Agatha Christie style murder mystery, with suspects galore confined in a castle. Political and personal frictions abound, everyone has an ax to grind—including the resident ghosts—and the characters and plot twists kept me turning the pages. On another, it’s a story about difficult choices, about whether Ropa will be being valued or manipulated as a pawn. One of the things I look for in a compelling protagonist, particularly a young one, is agency: how much resourcefulness does this person have, and how will they determine their own fate? Ropa may not have material wealth or status, but her other qualities, including her unerring sense of justice, more than compensate.

Middle books present challenges, as exemplified by the dreaded second book of a trilogy that falls flat. Lots of things happen but the dramatic shape doesn’t match the dynamic beginning or the climactic end. In this case, the book is a bridge between Ropa finding her place at the academy and the choices she makes at the end. We don’t know where those choices will lead; that’s for the next book. Seen as a bridge with a significant amount of lack of conclusion, Mystery works well. These shortcomings are less significant than they would be for a stand-alone book or even the second book in a series because readers who have been following Ropa’s journey have already fallen in love with her over the previous two books. I know that I did!

Not a stand-alone, but readers of the series will want to gobble up the next volume!