Authors Electric

  The hard part, at last, was over: the years spent researching and writing the book; revising and editing; concocting a 1-sentence and then a 1-paragraph elevator pitch; and then, Lord help me, coming up with an outline that won a thumbs up from a trusted reader. I was ready to go with a ms. formatted according to industry standards. And I had a plan I liked: to submit my work to three agents before putting the book up on Kindle.  I've written queries in the past and several won me big agents. But times and query styles have changed, along with my circumstances. So here was where I found myself beginning to clear my throat, tempted to justify my book's 60K word length; to apologize for past mistakes; to make a case for my experience and age.  But no, no. The hell with that. When it's showtime, just man up and belt out the blues. If I've only got 300 words, there's no time for lard or blubber. Stick the landing with line one: a razzle dazzle hook that dares an agent...

I am just coming to the end of the editing marathon for my next crime novel In Her Defence , and nervously awaiting final corrections and comments. As always the section that has been poured over and fretted upon is that first chapter. Yes, the end matters almost as much, but I am very aware, to the point of near paranoia, of the need to start with a hook. Those opening few pages are all important, and increasingly so when so many potential readers will be using the ‘look inside’ feature on Amazon to sample your wares.   So what constitutes the opening hook? The first page? Two pages? Three? Taking a quick glance at Kindle books the Amazon Look Inside function varies on how much of a taster you are allowed and depends on the quantity of prelims, but three to five pages of story available to read seems to be the average. When a page is around 300 words on average it’s a scary prospect to realise that the decision to read my many months of work will be judged by the firs...

Now, there's no room for potty humor on a dignified site such as this. But the real subject I'm tackling does not stray at all from my headline--or, at least, not far enough for me to have stepped into 'doody'. Life is short, art is long...so here comes some serious shop talk about our common quandary. In any art or line of work, we're all bedeviled daily by the superabundance of signs. Specifically, the signs of money-grubbing bastards selling the same thing that we are. The fact that our product is better--we think--means nothing if nobody sees it. So the first essential step is this: to compel the paying public, by whatever magic, to give our 'stuff' a try. The key word there is: Real Magic. Not a game of smoke and mirrors involving discount prices and/or swaggering titles for bandy-legged work. If the work lacks Real Magic, the best signs will fail; it's only a matter of time. But the best work may sink if betrayed by our signs. Whatev...