I decided to change my process for getting queries as I prepared for heading from 2022 into 2023.  And here's an updated/revised version of my earlier blog post about querying. THE GUIDELINES: 1.  If you don’t follow the guidelines, your query will be deleted, unread and without a response. 2.  I'm now using Query Manager, a system that's generally been proven helpful to both agents and authors, and all queries should be submitted via https://querymanager.com/JoshuaBilmes. 3.  Once upon a time, I asked only for the query letter, but it's been a long time since queries ..read more

11:55 PM Poor Netflix. Poor, poor Netflix. It can put all the money it wants into movies that are like the Wonder Twins, movies which have the form of Oscar winners but which really aren’t. It can spend its riches and get award nominations aplenty.  But then the actual voting begins, and more and more people come into the process, and then the hollowness of things starts to show. The Irishman isn’t Goodfellas. Roma isn’t The Prisoner of Azkaban. The Power of the Dog isn’t Unforgiven. And when the time comes for the awards to get announced, Netflix doesn’t have the top prize.  Poor po ..read more

 This week I’m  celebrating the publication of WINDERS by Ryan O’Nan, in audio from Recorded Books and and in print and ebook from JAB Books. Ryan’s a screenwriter and actor who’s written for or performed on many of your favorite TV shows.  He’s currently doing both on ABC’s Big Sky, after several seasons with USA’s Queen of the South and a couple in the writer’s room for Hulu’s Wu-Tang: An American Saga.  He was just seen on the big screen in the recently release Copshot, and other TV credits include Skins, Marvel’s Legion, Ray Donovan, and many more. The thing that impre ..read more

11:30 PM Mine not to reason why.  If you read my 3400 words on this blog from before the Oscars, you’ll see that I am mostly happy with the things that won and the things that did not. But it was a weird evening.  The dry section in the middle was extremely dry. The beginning was extremely fresh because it was like no Oscars since I can remember, and I can remember back to things like the years when Chariots of Fire or Raiders were nominees, and I was watching in the TV room of the house I grew up in.  The ending was extremely odd.  But I watch most of all for the actual wi ..read more

The Oscars are happening today.   And I’ve read many an article or analysis, which I think generally true, that the world doesn’t very much care, and that the ratings are going to plummet as they have for other award shows, and even for a lot of sporting events. But, I care!   I’m not sure what I’ll be doing for my live blog.  If all goes well, I am going to have some fully vaccinated family members joining me in my (very large!) hotel room for at least part of the evening, and might not be able to give my full attention to the posting.  So I’m putting a little more effo ..read more

On the occasions of Charlaine Harris being named a 2021 Grand Master honoree by the Mystery Writers of America... It was a Cub game.  The Mets and the Cubs at Shea Stadium in 1989, when you could bring a backpack into the ballpark, and my backpack would have a manuscript to read, when we still read those on paper.  That’s when I remember reading REAL MURDERS by Charlaine Harris, during a rain delay. Charlaine was looking for an agent.  She had successfully placed two books on her own in the early 1980s, SWEET AND DEADLY and A SECRET RAGE, to the legendary Ruth Hapgood at Houghto ..read more

 One of the great joys of Fantasy novels is the opportunity to experience the way characters evolve and grow, and to see that process demonstrated through the choices they make. The characters we love best are those whose sense of personal responsibility expands ever outward as they recognize their own power to effect change in the world – to aid someone in distress, to right wrongs.  We love this journey, in part, because it reflects our best hopes for ourselves. Most of us know that too often we narrow our own sense of responsibility, rationalizing that we are limited in what we ca ..read more

One of the Oscar nominees for International Film, and quite wonderful.  Like, even if I hadn't known Parasite was going to win the actual Best Picture prize, I'd have been rooting for Corpus Christi three weeks ago had I caught up with it before the Oscar ceremony. If you're going to do a melodrama, why not go all in! Start with a lead character who's getting parole from a violet juvie prison to work at a saw mill out in the countryside. Only, the parole thing -- they haven't made any arrangements for room & board, so have the lead character to to a church to hang out after work. H ..read more

The Morning After... If you’ve watched Tootsie, the very long acceptance speech from Renée Zellweger ultimately started to remind me of Michael Dorsey’s when he wants to reveal the truth about his identity and knows where he’s going but is very lost in getting there.  As Renée is the co-star of Jerry Maguire, which is one of my all-time favorite movies, and gave a performance in Judy that shows her in utter command at very moment of a character who is clearly Judy in every moment and maybe Judy Garland in very few of them, and as she has had a career with quite a few bounces to it, some ..read more

I've said this a lot, but it bears repeating: When I was a teenager, the whole chain of events that ultimately led to me becoming JABbermaster started out when I was staying at the Boskone hotel, by chance and serendipity and coincidence.  So I'm happy that I've been able to go to Boskone for near on each of the past fifteen years now, participate on the program, and pay it forward.  And even happier that I have several clients as a direct result of my attendance at Boskone. And a quick thank you to the people on the Program Committee for Boskone.  The final schedule email the ..read more