Monday, May 24, 2010

Secret Agent Unveiled: KATHLEEN ORTIZ

A huge amount of thanks to the delightful and dedicated Kathleen Ortiz of Lowenstein Associates.

Kathleen's Bio:

Kathleen Ortiz began her career in publishing at Ballinger Publishing as an editorial assistant and interactive media designer for the young adult section, working to boost the magazine’s online presence through social networking. She then moved on to uwirepr.com as online editor for the features, art & entertainment sections. She has also taught high school classes as a visual media instructor.

Kathleen is currently Associate Agent and Foreign Rights Manager at Lowenstein Associates. She is seeking children's books (chapter, middle grade, and young adult) and young adult non-fiction. While Kathleen enjoys everything from light-hearted and humorous to dark and edgy, she'd love to find an amazing romance from a male point of view or a steampunk with fantastic world building.

Lowenstein Associates believes with the continued demand for online marketing in publishing, a strong online platform is essential for today's authors. Kathleen uses her background in interactive media design to assist Lowenstein Associates’ clients with branding themselves. She maintains a blog on tips for querying and publishing at Neverending Page Turner and may also be found on Twitter.

What she's looking for right now:

For MG I'm big on coming of age stories, funny or adventure. For YA I tend to lean toward dark or edgy or topics that push the limits of everyday YA. I'd really love a good steampunk, YA or MG. Most of all, I'd REALLY love a good YA romance from a male POV. I also kind of have a thing for tragic love stories (think Othello, Tristan and Isolde, and Romeo and Juliet). I don't really want remakes of those stories but something along that vein would be great. I have a variety of tastes, but if I were to sit here and list them all, I wouldn't be able to get to my list of fabulous partials that need to be read :) In a nutshell, if it's YA, MG or a chapter book and it's polished and a plot that's unique and not overdone, shoot me a query. I'll be happy to let you know if it's something I'd be interested in reading.

Yay, Kathleen!

I was particularly excited for the opportunity to work with this month's Secret Agent. She's passionate, big-hearted, and awfully funny. If you're not following her on Twitter, you should be!

Winners coming up.

16 comments:

  1. Following. She's amazingly knowledgeable.

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  2. Thanks for doing Secret Agent! And, as always, big thanks to the lovely Authoress!

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  3. This was great for me. Thanks so much! I learned a lot.
    Thanks Authoress for letting me in.

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  4. Thanks Kathleen for participating and giving feedback on all these entries! Greatly appreciated! And authoress, this contest has been a great experience:)

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  5. Thank you Kathleen for such an amazing experience and for your thoughtful responses. And Authoress, my book thanks you because it's already so much better due to all the fantastic feedback I got. Yeah!

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  6. Thanks so much, Kathleen. Love following you on Twitter and your blog--you give so much time to helping authors. (Not to mention you're hilarious!)

    Thanks for judging and taking time to comment on ALL these entries.

    Authoress, thanks again for this great opportunity.

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  7. Thank you Kathleen and Authoress for the time you spent on this contest and for the excellent feedback. Much appreciated!

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  8. Thanks for such an awesome Secret Agent this month. And thanks to Kathleen (rrroarrr - check out her twitter avi!) for the wonderful feedback and the time to look over every entry. And thank you Authoress for hosting these.

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  9. I posted a comment, but it's not here.

    So once again, thank you so much, Kathleen, for all the wonderful feedback. I know you stayed up way into the early hours to get to this, and your dedication is phenomenal.

    Authoress, thank you for another amazing SA contest. There were many awesome entries this time around.

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  10. Oh wow, it's KOrtizzle! How awesome!

    Thank you, Kathleen and Authoress for an exciting contest. There are so many great entries, I know it must be hard to pick.

    Good luck, everyone!

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  11. Thanks, Authoress & thanks, Kathleen! It was an honor. Great feedback all around.
    You ladies rock!

    "MuseInks"

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  12. Let me add to the chorus of gratitude and thank Kathleen for doing this. I really appreciate the time you took to read and comment on my post and everyone else's. This is such a great learning experiece.

    Thank you, Kathleen!

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  13. Thank you very much Kathleen for taking the time to do this. I follow you on twitter and I follow your blog. The help you give aspiring authors is amazing. I feel funny because I queried you while the contest was running! Needless to say, I was surprised to see you were the secret agent.
    And of course thanks Authoress for organizing this great contest. The feedback was amazing!

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  14. Also following. Thanks to everybody for everything. This was a lot of fun!

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  15. Thanks, Kathleen and Authoress. What a fun contest. Thanks everybody for the great feedback.

    Kathleen, your comments made my day. Thank you so much.

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