When submitting a book or writing a book...

When submitting a manuscript, make sure you've proofread it EXTENSIVELY. Sometimes when you've spent so much time working on a book, it's hard to catch those little mistakes...like writing sever instead of severe and so one and so forth. Never send in a book without having someone reading it who has a good eye for those sorts of things. Another trick is to read your manuscript outloud to yourself. It may sound stupid, but you'd be amazed at what you'll catch that your eyes have skimmed over and missed. When you send something in that has a lot of minor grammatical mistakes, bad punctuation, missing words, wrong tenses or wrong/mispelled words, it looks extremely unprofessional and leads your editor to believe that you may not take your writing as seriously as we take our editing work. You may have a really good story with great elements, but sometimes we just can't overlook those mistakes.

And a writing tip. When writing, be sure you're writing and using all five of the senses. Make sure the reader is completely immersed in what is going on--the smells, the sounds, the way things feel, how something tastes, and of course, what the character sees. Sight tends to be the main sense used, and it's just not enough. To have a great story, the reader needs to feel like they are there and experiencing firsthand what the characters are seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, etc.