What I received would roll you on the floor. The letter contradicted itself several times and used bad form as well as bad grammar. She told me I used too many !!!!, funny in a 91,000 word manuscript I used two—and none in the three chapters she had. In it the said agent rewrote a paragraph for me showing me how much better the work could be.

A joke does not begin to describe her re-write. She used the word filled within three words of each other---used “natural” dialog in a way that was crude and sounded like it came from a bad sitcom. Substituted emergency room(her use) for trauma unit(my use)_ (believe me, they are far different places), In my story I have the tech on duty give the doctor a run down of injuries and vitals---yes they do this when someone comes into the trauma center and the doc arrives, I have first hand experience. This agent said, your dialog is not natural try this----

“What’ve we got?” I asked the head nurse. (ok the doc might say this but it is out of character for my doc)
“It’s bad, Doctor. A truck hit a van load of people. Some of them are critical,” the head nurse answered. (Oh my gosh. Talk about bad dialog.)(and that was the end of it the doc goes on to treat the pacient) (and then she went on to tell me that I needed more details so the reader understood what was going on after she gave me her solution to the “non- natural” dialog I used and cut out any tech info---and in the process any reality to the scene.) (And the head nurse? Good grief, she wouldn’t be a head nurse while offering info like that much less work a trauma unit)

I was told being a writer required that I be smart, dedicated, and to do my research so I understood the way a medical thriller would be told, and to use natural dialog the way people would really talk. Get a grip lady—lets compared emergency tech credentials and then go round about my research.

And low and behold it ends with----If you don’t have an editor in mind go with---blah blah blah, I have worked with them and find them to be blah blah (more speal). Then the clinch if you decide to use bal blah blah I would be interested in a second look.

Ya right honey. Shove your offer where the sun don’t shine. How’s that for natural dialog?

Watch for the scams out there folks----they run aplenty. Do a Google search using the agent's or editor's name. Hits galore, if they are bad or good you will know. And this one did come out of the Writers Market guide to agents.

Shawn (fed up with scam agents)

I've placed a number of resources on my own site, but I figure netiquette here will frown on my posting the URL. In which case, e-mail me and I'll share what links and info I've already collected [it's an appreciable amount].

http://www.sfwa.org

plus a lot of other good stuff, including sample contracts that are fair to writers, and so on.

and thank you Kathleen for sending me the name you did. I have not run across that one but it is on my avoid list.