Somedays....

Not that judging by the number of naked queries I get, or the people who can't seem to follow any of the existing ones, but I occasionally feel like adding a few things to my submission guidelines:

• All submitters must have read at least 50 different SF/F authors who published more than one book before submitting. (Okay, so I'd take 25, with all shared world novels counting as one author.)
• Story must have a plot.
• You agree to be mocked for all the inane things you put in your cover letter, and submission requirements you fail to follow.
• You acknowledge and understand that my first rule of accepting a submission is "would i go buy the sequel".

Oh and davefreer and his readers are doing a great job poking holes in one of the things many some writers fail to notice.

Authors i have read in the SF/F spectrum

I did point out I was delusional in my last post, i think not so bad as I suspected, but still noticeably. Fifty is probably a bit of reach. My point was that I strongly doubt anyone could write a SF/F novel that I'd pick up and want to represent if they haven't read a signifigant number of in genre books, of some variety. Much as i love the works of Lois Bujold and Steven Brust, if those are only two authors you've ever read, and you send me something I'm probably going to gag and say "no thanks" after about ten pages.

These are some of the people I have read, some I liked, some I did not, they are inserted in the order that I can think of them and no other. Apologies in advance for the butchered names.

Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, C.E. Murphy, Mercedes Lackey, Robin Hobb, David Coe, David Drake, Lois Bujold, Dave Freer, Aldous Huxley, Michael Z Williamson, David Weber, Rob Thurman, Ray Bradbury, Orson Scott Card, Raymond Feist, Eric Flint, William Tenn, Piers Anthony, Terry Brooks,

Terry Pratchett, Laura Resnick, Holly Lisle, Kate Elliot, Rosemarie Edgehill, Frank Herbert, Christopher Paolini, Christopher Rowley, Robert Asprin, Lynn Abbey, William Sleator, Brian Jaques, J.K. Rowling, Sarah A Hoyt, Ellen Goun, George R. R. Martin, Steve White, Jane Lindskold, K. D. Wentworth, Lars Walker,

Robert Jordan, Diana Wynne Jones, J. V. Jones, Joanne Bertin, Elizabeth Haydon, Gayle Greeno, L.E. Modesitt, Janny Wurts, Dan Simmons, Madeline L'Engle, David Eddings, Kristain Britton, Leigh Eddings, R. A. Salvatore, Irene Radford, Fred Saberhagen, P.N. Elrod, Aaron Alston, Ellen Kushner, Steven Brust,

Justina Robson, Spider Robinson, Asimov, Hal Clement, Heinlein, Elizabeth Moon, Steve Stirling, Harry Turtledove, Guy Gavriel Kay, Katherine Kurtz, Susan Cooper, Roland Green, James Hogan, Jack L. Chalker, Greg Bear, C. J. Cherryh, Alan Dean Foster, Charles Sheffield, John Norman, Gordon R. Dickson,

Mark Shepherd, Charles de Lint, Jody Lynn Nye, Ursula Le Guin, Douglas Adams, T. H. White, Poul Anderson, Kelley Armstrong, Melanie Rawn, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Robert Silverberg, Alice Borchardt,  Dennis L. McKiernan, Nigel Bennet. Sheri S. Tepper, Doranna Durgin, Linda Evans, Morgan Llywelyn, H.G. Wells...

...that's the list of names I could come up with before I started having trouble counting to ten. There's probably at least twice as many people who I've read in SF/F who either only had one novel out, or who bored me enough that i don't even recall their names. And probably another ninety to a hundred who I read short fiction by.