Those of you who found me back when I owned WritersCrossing probably already know this, those of you who are relatively new here, likely don’t. In January 2005, I released an e-book on writing query letters that sell. It did well for about two years, after which I took it off the market. The reasons for this were many: I felt it was outdated, I had learned more lessons and it felt incomplete, I wanted to share it with more people. Mostly though, while $12.95 doesn’t seem like much to pay for a book to an American audience, for struggling writers in my own country, it wasn’t affordable. I had once been one of these struggling writers, and rather than make it cheaper or think up some scheme to make me richer by a few dollars, I decided instead to put it up on this blog for free.

That didn’t happen either.

The reason for this was one: I had lost all confidence as a writer. 2006 was a lean year for me. Most of the writing I did was personal, much of it was never published. And feeling as I did then about my writing abilities, teaching other writers wasn’t exactly high on my list of priorities.

I had made the biggest mistake a writer can make: Someone I loved told me my blog and personal writing were worthless, and despite having achieved considerable success, I believed them.

But writing is all I know. It is all I have ever done. At every job that has lasted for more than a month, writing has been my primary responsibility. And I have reason to believe this blog and my personal writing are not worthless.

On Christmas, I made an announcement that I’d be helping one writer achieve her goal of getting published in Writer’s Digest. That writer has since accepted my offer, and we’ll start working on that in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I have received several e-mails that have, in essence, said, “Think you have place for one more?”

I don’t. I can come up with a dozen excuses, but I don’t need to and you probably don’t want to hear them anyway. The bottom line is this: I want to help, but I can’t help on an individual basis (not even for pay).

What I will do, however, is finally put that e-book up bit by bit right here on this blog. Take it or leave it. Love it or hate it. It’s yours for the taking.

I will be updating it as I post, so hopefully nothing will be outdated. Comments will remain open, so post your feedback, more links and resources, and have discussions about the content. And if you have any suggestions on how to weave the e-book posts with my regular posts, I will appreciate it highly! (How to organize the posting of this thing is giving me nightmares already!)

I will be available to answer specific questions you have about what I say (please post questions in the comments section). I am open to reasons why my methods may not be correct. I would like to have intelligent discussions. I learn something new every day, and I appreciate being corrected when I falter. So let’s do this together. I will, along the way, share some actual query letters, e-mails and notes. I would like it very much if some of you did the same.

A few things to note:

-> I recommend working with the exercises as I post them.
-> Subscribe to the comments feed. Sometimes, if I have additional information, I will post that through comments rather than creating a new entry. You can find the feeds for both blog entries and comments at the bottom of this page.
-> I get many e-mails, and a lot of people add me on IM to ask me questions about writing  and getting published. I’m afraid I can’t respond to such requests. I will certainly reply to comments posted here however.