Comments on Bloodleggers: Will We Be Embarrassed?

No embarrassment for us. Critiques came out this ...

2010-06-08T07:05:45.104-06:00

No embarrassment for us. Critiques came out this morning and we weren't in the post. Oh well. We get nothing. ;-)

LOL on the 90,000 word pitch! You bring up a go...

2010-06-08T05:38:04.617-06:00

LOL on the 90,000 word pitch!

You bring up a good point about the 1st chapter. Lately I've picked up quite a few novels that didn't peak my interest at all in the first couple chapters. Angelology is a good example. The most existing thing to happen in the first chapter is a description of the identical black and white clothes in a nuns closet.

Don't feel too bad about the one sentence pitc...

2010-06-08T00:11:11.568-06:00

Don't feel too bad about the one sentence pitch. I've sold millions of novels under my pen name and never even had to come up with a pitch of any kind. I was lucky, though. Probably, I would suck at a pitch that's shorter than 90,000 words. Actually, that's a stretch. If you can't hook them in the first paragraph: it's over. I always go by the actual novel. It might not say anything about what's eventually going to happen by the novel's outcome, but it'll have action and grab you. If I were an agent, I would ask for the first paragraph of the novel. If I liked that, I would request the first chapter. If my socks were knocked off by now, I would ask for the middle and final chapters to make certain of the continuity. Then, bring on the whole thing! Think nobody does this? My probable publisher for my six novel series did just that. Unusual? Certainly. But then again, we horror writers have a flair for the unusual, don't we?