The Jury Is In...Critiques Are Back!

"Take Each Day With a Grain of Salt"

"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

- Stephen King

One might deduce from this quote that I have a lot of work ahead of me, and one might be right!

First of all, I would like to say thank you to Kat Brauer for all she does organizing critsforwater. Hat's off to her and all of the authors that have donated their time to participate in this project! http://critsforwater.katbrauer.com/guest-critiques/

Also, thanks to K.A. Barson and Elle Cosimano for reading through my query and opening pages. Both authors gave me a lot of advice, suggestions and encouragement. There were some things that I had been wondering about, and other notes/ideas/suggestions/problems that were new to me.

Overall, it was a very encouraging, and definitely eye opening experience.

Let's start with the query. It's too long!! I knew that but, it was hard to leave anything out because I'm so excited about the characters and the plot! SHAME ON ME! The good news...both authors agreed that the hook is there. I just need to shorten, tighten and hone in on the meat of the query. I CAN DO THAT! I will do that.

As for the opening pages, I'll start by saying I have some work to do. Both authors said that most agents don't particularly care for the preface, especially when its really an event that happens later in the book. Something I didn't know... It's probably in my best interest to drop it. I'm considering and leaning towards that.

I made another no-no, which is starting chapter one with a lot of back-story. One of the authors asked me where does  my story really begin? It's a question that I've been contemplating for the last couple of days. There could be multiple answers to that question. There is so much that goes on in the MS, but, I got the point. Now I have a lot of thinking to do.

Do I want to do a complete re-write of the first several chapters, or do I want to make some edits and see if it's attention grabbing enough? I'm still debating.

I'm not going to give up on this series. NO WAY! The second book is written and I'm already outlining the third. There's no turning back, maybe just a short pause to really contemplate and decide what I want to do to make it so phenomenal and irresistible that it gets published.

Like I said, I have my work cut out for me!!

Thanks again to K.A. Barson (http://www.kabarson.com/) and Elle Cosimano (http://ellecosimano.com/ for all of their help, I REALLY appreciate your time and comments. You both are wonderful!!