Musings Of A New Southern Man

There was a mistake I left in my manuscript through numerous edits. It didn't escape one of my middle-of-the-night review sessions. It concerns a secondary character and his recognition of my main character, Daniel Pace. Early in the book, he sees Pace's name on a list and shows no recognition. Much later, near the end of the book, he informs Pace he knew about him for years. No!!!! Inconsistency!!!! But that's what is great about fiction. I took a few minutes to go back to that first incident and rewrite. Secondary character recognizes Pace's name at first glance. End of mistake. I will have more blog entries later, but this is going to be a busy author's day. AIC, for sure. Fire up Pandora for classical Latin guitar and get into that creative groove. Love it.

Welcome back to The Weekend Blogger. Let's contemplate the query letter. There is only one thing that is more important to an author trying to break into the publishing business, and that's the quality of the novel. But before the novel can have an effect, the query letter has to interest an agent enough that he/she will ask for part or all of that novel for review. That makes the query letter a high-stakes game. In a way, it's the author pushing in all of his/her chips. The problem is that some agents get hundreds of query letters a day, all delivered into what is charmingly called the slush pile. That query of mine has to stand out among all those other queries or else it will be treated like slush in your driveway. The agent will sweep it into a pile and never think about it again. End of a chance to be published, at least with that agent as the guide for that project. The perfect query letter has to have one trait: It has to lead to publication. All the nice verbi

When I launched into this literary world, I couldn't give you a proper definition of "voice" in a novel. I figured it was something akin to the time-honored explanation of "what is pornography?": It is hard to define, but I know it when I see it. That view has changed. Here's the explanation I give today: Voice is your creative side speaking through your characters, setting, pacing, dialogue and detail. Let me accent the part of that definition that needs it. Voice is YOUR creative side. You can't force yourself into creating a character or writing in a genre with which you aren't comfortable. So what if vampires are the big literary hook these days, or zombies? If you don't have Anne Rice's heart and mind and aren't interested in detailing vampires, don't go there. Which brings me to my main character in the novel I just completed. His name is Daniel Pace. Nice, simple name. He has a simple day job, but he has made extraordinary