Introducing: Misha and what she'll do for you on Unicorn Bell

Hi. I'm Misha.

I'm one of the new moderators... Meh that sounds horrible. I'm one of the newer awesome peeps making sure that this blog runs smoothly. 

A lot of you probably know me from my other blog. 

For those of you who don't, I'll share five quick facts about myself:

1) I write spec fic, romance, a bit of mystery and a smidge of period stuff. In YA and Adult. 

2) I read a lot wider than I write, but I don't do horror, and I don't do erotica. (Useful to note for crit submissions.) 

3) I own five kittens (seven months old), so I guess I'm well on my way to become a crazy cat lady writer person. 

4) I LOVE helping new writers and seasoned writers alike. 

5) My crit style is bare-knuckles honesty. If I like something, I'll tell you and why. If I don't like something, I'll tell you and why. I do my utmost best to refrain from sarcasm in my comments. BUT. If you're wanting constant praise, I'm not the person to send your book to. Generally though, I crit the way I like to be critiqued, which means you won't have to wade through tons of muck in order to get to the point I'm making. 

Okay? Okay. 

With that done, we can get to the fun part! Basically, I have all week to help writers, and I thought I'd start by critting queries, synopses, and/or first chapters. So feel free to send me one, two or all three of them. I won't post all three, but I will send back a full crit while posting the thing I think will help other writers most. 

For example: If you send me a query. I'll post it. If you send me a query and synopses, I'll post the one that has something new to learn from, or seems more interesting to me. I will, however, send back a critique on both to your e-mail address. Odds are that I won't post first chapters, unless they are short. But I'd like to read them, because it gives me a good feeling for voice, which can make a query letter shine. 

I have five days available this week. For now, I'll work on a first come, first serve basis. After the first five, I'll file the mails away for my next opportunity to critique. And those will be done first. Unless I get a ton. But I'm assuming I won't so no worries. :-P 

To submit: 

Write me a short message, letting me know if there's anything in particular that you struggle with. 

Then, paste in the body of the email your query, synopsis and first chapter to the same WiP. Emails with attachments, or with mismatched submission materials will not be critiqued. 

Please put my name in the email's subject line. 

I'll let you know when the post will go live.

Address to send to: unicornbellsubmissions(at)gmail(dot)com

I really hope you ladies and gents find my help useful!