You'll find Donald Maass' books on his agency website as well as Amazon.com.

Here's his book link: http://www.maassagency.com/books.html

Here's the link to the Fiction Writer's Virtual Toolbox: http://www.jrvogt.com/writerresources.htm

At the bottom of the page, you'll find Amazon links to all these books we've been talking about.

As for a website/blog, I don't have a central link for that (though I think I should track some down for the Toolbox, thanks for the idea!). But if you look up some of your favorite authors, you'll likely find the majority of them have websites--some more professionally designed than others. A friend helped set mine up years ago, and I've fleshed it out a little since, adding the blog and all. You'll commonly see things like a welcome/home page, a blog page, a bio page, maybe some writing samples or free chapter reads from published authors.

Meg: I'd rather folks didn't want to kill me, if I have a choice in the matter. Donald Maass is a great guy, and it's easy to feel comfortable around him. The one good thing was, I'd practiced the pitch enough times, it wasn't too hard to slip in the natural course of a conversation. The funny thing was, once I'd pitched, the rest of the writers at the table all piped up as well, encouraged by Maass' positive response. He asked for a couple other manuscripts as well.

Kali: The Maass Agency is excellent, yes. Maass' books on writing have also been some of the most formative in my writing. If you haven't read them already, I highly recommend them. Most are listed at the bottom of the Fiction Writer's Virtual Toolbox on my site, along with other writing books I've enjoyed.

Liz: Thanks!

At meg_evonne's suggestion, I figured I could provide a bit more detail and background to my signing on with an agent this summer.

So it all started long ago...back in February of this year, that is. It seems a while back, though in the perspective of the publishing industry in general, it wasn't that bad a turnaround time.

Anyways, I attended one of my favorite writing conferences in the area, the Pike's Pike Writer's Conference (my other favorite is the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writer's Conference). My goal this year was to network hard, and I had a list of agents and editors who all represented speculative fiction. I wanted a chance to talk to each one and give a 30-second pitch, at the very least. It started off well with the chance to sit at a dinner table with agent Donald Maass the first night, who heard my pitch, gave me his card and asked me to send the manuscript his way. So that helped put me in a good mood for the rest of the conference, to say the least.

The next morning, I had a pitch session with Scott Hoffman, of Folio Literary Management. I took a few pages of my manuscript along with me, though I didn't plan on showing them to him. While pitching the story concept, though, he pointed at the pages and asked to see them. Then he speed-read them, handed them back and told me to send the manuscript to him, saying he liked what he saw so far. By the end of the conference, I had managed to talk to every agent and editor on my list, with several more materials requests, and left the conference exhausted but exhilarated.

So I sent the manuscripts and partials out to the various folks. Two months went by. At that point, I'd heard back from a few with the usual "Thanks but not quite right for us..." After another week, I decided to drop a line to Scott, just to make sure he'd received the manuscript and it hadn't gotten lost in a spam folder somewhere. He replied almost immediately, saying he had it and enjoyed it, and had also passed it to another agent he worked with (Rachel Vater) to get her opinion on it as well. As soon as she finished reading, they'd be in touch. Another week passed, during which I did everything possible to distract myself. At last, Scott emailed to setup a time he could call, and when the call came, he offered representation--which I gladly accepted.

Here's the basic way I pitched my story, and a generalization of what I told the agents and editors at the conference. "The working title is Enter the Janitor. It's an urban fantasy about a janitor employed by a supernatural sanitation company called the Cleaners, which works to keep reality safe and clean from things like dust devils, toilet snakes and other forces of Corruption. The main plot revolves around the janitor training up a new recruit, whose recently discovered powers could burn down an entire city."

In fact, Scott asked me some questions like, "What's the audience for this, and what other series would you compare it to?" I did draw a quick reference to the Dresden Files, saying, "Well, what if Harry Dresden had decided to become a janitor rather than a P.I.?" I think that comparison helped show some market appeal while also sticking to the original idea.

A few questions from meg_evonne:
Did you write the dreaded synopsis? - Yup. Synopses are almost harder than queries for me, but I try to do one for each manuscript. Also, Scott asked me to draft up a synopsis for a sequel to be sent along to publishers with the proposal for the first one, and at this point, I'm 3/4s through a first draft of the sequel manuscript, tentatively titled The Maids of Wrath.

Had you met the agent previously? - No. This was my first time meeting Scott, but he is a great guy with a good sense of humor. At the same time, he's blunt in his opinion and will let you know what he really thinks, which I find to be great, as I'd rather be told the direct truth about my work than be led along to eventual disappointment.

Just how many manuscripts did you write before this successful one? - Let's see. I've got about six trunk novels which I consider my "apprenticeship" manuscripts. Ones that are extremely flawed and will never be published unless I rewrite the concepts from scratch. I've got a couple other fantasy novels that I believe have potential, and Scott and I have discussed which ones might be worth working with down the line.

And JUST how many revisions did you agonize through before being accepted- I'd say two major redrafts, mostly focusing on the first third of the novel, and then smoothing out consistencies with the rest based on those. Feedback came from several beta readers I've worked with, as well as a community of writers from the Online Writing Workshop (which I highly recommend).

-and then what about that 'revisions the agent requested' go? - Rachel and Scott gave me a first round of overarching revisions, yes. Nothing serious, like changing a character's gender or turning the urban fantasy into a historical romance. Just things like making a scene more tense, making a character more consistent, etc. Scott is now working on a line edit to help punch up the text, and then the plan is to send it out to publishers.

Whew. Hope this isn't information overload. I'm happy to answer any other questions if folks have 'em!

If anyone is interested, I've updated the writer's resources section of my site to be a Fiction Writer's Virtual Toolbox: http://www.jrvogt.com/writerresources.htm. It's got 150+ links to writing craft and business resources, covering everything from developing novel plots to querying literary agents and more. My hope is it can be a decent hub for writers in various stages of their careers.

If anyone has suggestions for links to add to the mix, please let me know. Thanks!

If you have characters in some form, ask yourself this: "What is the worst thing that could happen to this person/these people?"

Then make it happen and force them to deal with it.

Then, just as they're climbing out from under that boiling waterfall of tar, hit them with something worse.
Interview them, figure out what they'd absolutely hate and abhor dealing with, whether physically, emotionally, etc. and then slap it in their face. Sometimes the character motivations will be a great thread to snag on and draw a plotline out of.

Funny thing, Craz. My mother also managed to get published this last year, also nonfiction. There's that advice saying to never show your work to family members, especially the mother, because they won't give good editing advice, right? Wrong. Any page sent to her comes back streaked with red.

I've got a six gig usb drive that I use to backup all my documents weekly. I started doing this after a similar situation struck my computer out of the blue and wiped out several weeks worth of writing. It always wrenches the gut when that happens. The only thing one can do though is hope that stuff is stuck in the subconscious, and that when you produce it the second time around, it'll be improved...maybe a little refined.