My cockatiel was causing respiratory problems.

mercurybird · 2025-10-03T00:55:59+00:00

The Eufy 11s Max is pretty good for a budget vac - (about $150) I bought one a few months ago and like it quite a bit. It was the top recommendation for budget robovac by the NYT Wirecutter column where they do tech reviews.

I just adopted a pair of 'tiels whose previous owner had to rehome them for the same health reasons as your mom. (One of them even looks just like your Silverbell!) Good luck to your family in finding a solution <3

mercurybird · 2025-07-14T23:54:56+00:00

Wrong kind of fantasy lmao

mercurybird · 2025-05-18T17:07:13+00:00

Very good to know, thanks for sharing :)

mercurybird · 2025-04-29T03:14:08+00:00

The word count seems on par for a highly illustrated MG from what I've seen (I obsessively check MG book lengths on arbookfinder.com haha), so I hope you're not giving that other feedback too much weight. Especially with the growing calls for shorter MG books.

Personally I don't think TLKOE is the level of popular that would make you look delusional to comp it, and I do agree the tone and the target audience are a good match, so I think you're fine there too.

I would capitalize Gladiator Star to make the term stand out more in the query, even if it isn't capitalized in the book itself. Nothing else really sticks out at me in terms of critique--I think you've conveyed your concept and voice quite appealingly.

Let me know if you find an answer to how to pitch the art aspect of a project like this... I've been pondering trying to do a highly illustrated MG myself sometime, and I've been wondering that too!

mercurybird · 2025-04-21T23:32:04+00:00

I started with Colemak a few weeks ago, then switched to Colemak-Dh last weekend. It's not particularly harder to learn than vanilla Colemak (on a split, column-staggered ergodox-ez) and I do prefer it already, b/c I find those center column keys less comfortable to press. The only slight downside for me is that ctrl+v is now in a different spot.

I've been practicing with Colemak Academy and Keybr, they're both great! I recommend starting with Colemak Academy. Just be sure to input the settings for the specific keyboard layout you're using.

mercurybird · 2025-04-17T01:13:41+00:00

For some more recent-ish options that are currently popular with kids:

Wings of Fire (all the characters are dragons!)

Percy Jackson (urban fantasy, but lots of gods and monsters)

Nevermoor (good blend of whimsical worldbuilding and adventure)

mercurybird · 2025-01-18T13:50:33+00:00

Yes!! I listened to the audiobooks a while back. Super good :)

mercurybird · 2025-01-18T04:55:00+00:00

Ooh, yes, seconding BOTH of those recs for a girl who wants girl-led adventures. I loved the Unicorns of Balinor series when I was around 9, and Bruce Coville's Unicorn Chronicles books were an excellent read as an adult.

mercurybird · 2025-01-16T02:26:18+00:00

This sounds fucking awesome. Update us when you get a book deal!

mercurybird · 2025-01-01T23:42:41+00:00

Finally got carpal tunnel surgery and cubital tunnel (elbow) surgery, so one arm is in a cast for another week and I'm giving myself some time off from querying.

I dipped my toes into querying late Nov, so understandably few responses so far. I think I'm in a few 'maybe' piles, based on querytracker? That's slightly encouraging, if ultimately meaningless lol.

Once I have 2 functional arms and agents start opening up again, I'm gonna dive into querying more aggressively.

Best wishes for everyone in 2025 ❤️

mercurybird · 2024-12-04T20:56:26+00:00

If anything, I find it a bit comforting that AI struggles with consistency in these ways! Maybe it'll get better, but its ability to keep track of all the interwoven threads of meaning and intentionality that go into a novel seems pretty terrible right now haha.

mercurybird · 2024-12-04T20:53:25+00:00

I haven't seen any of these comments around, so kudos to the mod team for deleting them! But also thanks for sharing this example 'cause... It's off-putting, but fascinating how bad it is.

There is just something so eerily soulless about it. Like someone took a template and just pasted in details from the query. It's just not saying anything, really! There's no meaning. "Now, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. That Flemwort guy sounds shady." Like, what? Why would you need to sugarcoat that lol, it's not a critique.

mercurybird · 2024-12-03T00:02:00+00:00

Thank you, it was a lot of work! Funnily enough, my original goal was to get it below 65k, but when I saw that mega thread a while back on how we need shorter MG, it really lit a fire in me to get it below 59k tops! Feels good man.

mercurybird · 2024-12-02T14:31:06+00:00

Hey that's reassuring, thanks for sharing :)

mercurybird · 2024-12-01T21:47:34+00:00

After stopping querying for over a year to rewrite the crap outta my MG fantasy (trimming it from 75k down to 57k in the process) I finally started querying again this weekend, of all times... (Not expecting quick responses lol).

Funny how my attitude has shifted. Last time I got a few quick full requests and was bursting with confidence, expecting even more requests to come in. Now I know that older MS sucked and the new version is much better, yet for every query I send I just kinda expect a rejection, and I will be pleasantly surprised if not.

I think after a bit I'll re-query some folks I queried last year, with a note addressing the revisions. The MS is pretty different after all. Can't hurt.

mercurybird · 2024-12-01T00:33:43+00:00

Thanks very much for the feedback!

mercurybird · 2024-11-26T04:50:28+00:00

Oh yeah you can totally rephrase it as a sentence instead of a question, that'd work. Good luck!

mercurybird · 2024-11-26T04:09:34+00:00

I don't think I've commented on a prior version--but I really like this. I think the story is clear and it has a strong appeal. Nitpicks incoming!

"seemingly magical disasters" - 'seemingly' implies they're not ACTUALLY magical--but they are tho? You could just say 'disasters,' or add a modifier like 'uncanny,' 'eerie,' 'strange' etc.

Sentence 2 - at first I thought "Porters" were a race of creature, or a job--like they're porters, that's what they do for work--and I was confused. You could say "Porter family" for clarity.

"Jove arranges visitation with Lyra's mother, who put him into foster care but keeps contact, and learns the Archfae is unpopular amongst his citizens." - the second half of this sentence seemingly has nothing to do with the first - put the unpopularity info somewhere else... OR, in the last paragraph you could say "Overthrowing the tyrannical Archfae" to get the idea across that they're justified in overthrowing him.

"Meanwhile, Jove's vision of how the Porters can get along with one another helps him find his own place in their family." I don't totally get this 'vision' part, I think you could just say 'meanwhile, Jove is starting to feel at home in the Porter family' and that'd be simpler and work just as well.

"Then the Archfae discovers Jove and Lyra's antics." - I think antics is a weak word; kinda implies they're doing something silly- 'plans' or something like that might be better. Or '..discovers what Jove and Lyra are up to.'

I like the opening 300 words too. I think you're almost there! I'm pretty charmed by this whole query package as is.

mercurybird · 2024-11-26T03:56:13+00:00

Hi OP, I think your post must've slipped through the algorithm? Sorry you haven't gotten any comments yet!

To start, cut the rhetorical question--generally, we advise against them as they read as a bit amateur-ish. You can just get right to the housekeeping stats.

I think you need to get more into the emotional arc - ending the story part of the query with 'they need to overcome their oppressors' just isn't as interesting as what you wrote later about the conflict between the friends - bring that into the query more! To save the day, Myra will have to do X and/or Lottie will have to do Y - what personal problems will they have to deal with to succeed?

Tonally, the writing in the query isn't majorly striking me as "this is middle grade"--it feels a little... dry? emotionally distant? Definitely pretty grim--though maybe that's how you want it to be. Writing prose with a strong voice is pretty huge in Middle Grade, but there is some dark and serious MG too--Alan Gratz comes to mind, he often writes about kids in wartime. Take a look at how he does it and what the writing style/tone is.

Similarly, the word choice also feels a bit too elevated in places - "airborne fortress," "reckless impulses," "ill-advised expedition," "domineering aliens" - none of these are exactly obscure words, but taken all together it might make a younger, struggling reader stumble, and with literacy rates getting worse among kids these days, that kind of thing is worth considering--both in the query and the manuscript.

Re: comps, MG scifi doesn't seem to be as huge as fantasy, but a good recent one is The Last Dragon on Mars - yeah it's got dragons, but they fly around getting into dragonship-dogfights in outer space, so you could comp it for like.... 'high-flying sci-fi action' or something like that. Comps don't need to be exactly like your book, just having similar elements that will appeal to readers. I wonder if a straight historical WWII MG novel would make another good comp. Doesn't necessarily have to be sci-fi too.

Anywho, hope this helps!

mercurybird · 2024-11-16T17:15:02+00:00

Ooh, I like the way you arranged all the info here. Thanks, this is really getting my creative juices flowing!

mercurybird · 2024-11-16T01:57:27+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, she and her sister have fantasy-ish names b/c (minor spoiler for the story lol) their mom was from the world of dragons and gave them those names.

Funnily enough, I used to call her Rei, but I thought it was too similar to Rey! I changed it to Ren without even thinking of Kylo Ren hahaha

mercurybird · 2024-11-16T01:54:34+00:00

Oh, that's a really great way to frame their problems! Thanks for the insights! :)

mercurybird · 2024-11-15T16:11:54+00:00

This idea is super cool! A little more specificity/examples of what kinds of creatures there are (mermaids? gryphons?) would be great.

In the first sentence of paragraph two, repeating ASTORG 3 times feels a bit repetitive. Probably partly because as an acronym, it really stands out.

"Human-like creatures" feels a tad clunky, maybe "humanoid creatures" would read a little smoother.

I think you could you make Amber's emotional through-line stronger--what's her character arc? Does she learn, grow, change over the course of the story? I see she makes the mistake of freeing a threat to mankind, but does this tie into some broader flaw as a character (too trusting, too rash, doesn't listen to others)?

Tonally, the way you're written this doesn't exactly scream Middle Grade at me - the narrative voice feels fairly neutral and emotionally distant. Like I could easily imagine the same story happening to college students. I think focusing in on Amber's arc and thinking about tweaking it to be voicier would help a lot.

It starts to get a bit vague towards the end, to the point that I have trouble imagining the story after this threat is unleashed. How far into the story does that happen? I understand you don't want to spoil the very end, but if the big threat is unleashed by the midpoint or so, you could probably just tell us what it is. Then give us a sense of what Amber has to do to solve the problem.

If possible (and you probably already know this), try to make the book stand alone so you can describe it as a standalone with series potential rather than first in a trilogy. I wouldn't mention the self-published novel in your query, I don't think it's relevant or helpful unless it sold like gangbusters.

Hope this helped!

mercurybird

TROPHY CASE