Tomorrow: Author Jonathan D. Allen

Tomorrow, dark fantasy author Jonathan D. Allen is joining us at www.lynnettelabelle.com. Here’s a little teaser for you.

In a time long before humans walked the Earth, a mysterious being known only as The Lost Aetelia crafted an elaborate series of Watchtowers, along with their resident guardians, the Aetelia, to watch over the operations of the Universe. In time, a rebellious group of these Aetelia came to Earth in an attempt to challenge the established structure of the Universe. A bitter war ensued, and these rebels, who had come to be known as Watchers, disappeared from human history.

The time of the Aetelia - now known as angels - is returning. After a fateful night of violence, Artist Matty DiCamillo finds herself drawn into this world by a mysterious savior, who becomes a driving force in Matty's new life.

Both driven by and fighting the words of prophecy that lay out her destiny, Matty, her lover Kristy, and her best friend Daniel, follow this mysterious savior on a journey from Northern California to Las Vegas on a path that crosses through the boundaries of time and space.

As Matty struggles to understand her new destiny, she discovers that her mysterious savior may not be who she seems to be, and that even the denizens of the twilight world that she has entered have no idea what lurks behind the stage dressing of their reality. Matty finds herself not only racing to rescue the woman she loves, but learning that she herself could be the cause of the Universe's day of reckoning.

Come back tomorrow for an excerpt and an interview with author Jonathan D. Allen. I'll have a link to my other blog to make it easy for you to find.

Lynnette Labelle
www.labelleseditorialservices.com

Author Spotlight: Raine Thomas

I’d like to welcome YA fantasy/romance writer Raine Thomas, author of the Daughters of Saraqael trilogy: Becoming (Book 1), Central (Book 2), and Foretold (Book 3). She has also released a short story, The Prophecy. Plus, her new trilogy, Firstborn, is slated for a spring release.

We’ll learn more about Becoming—including a giveaway—but first, let’s see what Raine has to say…

To read more, go to my writing blog: http://lynnettelabelle.com/uncategorized/author-spotlight-raine-thomas/

Lynnette Labelle
www.labelleseditorialservices.com

Tomorrow: Author Raine Thomas

Tomorrow, author Raine Thomas is joining us at www.lynnettelabelle.com. Here’s a little teaser for you.

Every three years, Amber Hopkins explodes. Okay, not a blown-to-smithereens explosion, but whatever it is always hurts like hell and leaves her life a shambles. She’s already worked her way through five foster placements, and she’s doing whatever she can to avoid getting blasted into a sixth.

As her eighteenth birthday approaches and she feels the strange and powerful energy building, disaster looms. When the inevitable explosion occurs, her life gets its biggest shakeup yet. She’ll not only learn how her fellow foster and best friend, Gabriel, really feels about her, but she’ll discover that she isn’t really without family.

To top it all off, she’ll finally find out why she’s having the power surges: she isn’t entirely human.

Amber must Become, transitioning to another plane of existence and risking the loss of the most important relationship she’s ever had. Her choice will impact the future of an entire race of beings, and will pit her against an enemy that will prey upon her doubt to try and take her very life.

Kind of makes the explosions now seem like a cakewalk.


Come back tomorrow for an excerpt and an interview with author Raine Thomas. I'll have a link to my other blog to make it easy for you to find.

Lynnette Labelle
www.labelleseditorialservices.com

Author Spotlight: Micheal Rivers

I’d like to welcome Micheal Rivers, author of The Black Witch and Ghosts of the North Carolina Shores. His most recent release is Moonlight on the Nantahala. We’ll learn more about that in a little bit, but first, let’s see what Micheal has to say…

To read more, go to my writing blog: http://lynnettelabelle.com/blog/author-spotlight-micheal-rivers/

 

Lynnette Labelle

www.labelleseditorialservices.com

Tomorrow: Author Micheal Rivers

My work schedule is pretty full for the next couple of months, so I have to make some changes. My blog schedule will now be Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’ll try to have one writing related post and one author spotlight or guest post.

Tomorrow, author Micheal Rivers is joining us at www.lynnettelabelle.com. Here’s a little teaser for you.

There are those who believe that true love can never die. It is neither an impossible affair of the heart nor is it just the words of poets wooing your soul. The tale of Edward Caulfield stands as a testament of the love he held in his heart for a woman he was never allowed to grow old with.

Come back tomorrow for an excerpt and an interview with author Micheal Rivers. I'll have a link to my other blog to make it easy for you to find.

I’m still looking to fill some author spotlight slots. If you write romance, thriller, mystery, urban fantasy, paranormal, horror or true crime, and you have a book you’d like to promote, send me an email: lynnette_labelle at yahoo dot com. Make sure to have “Author Spotlight” in the subject line or I won’t open the message. Let me know when your release date will be (if the book isn’t already available) and what genre you write.

Lynnette Labelle
www.labelleseditorialservices.com

Editor's First Aid: CRP for Your Dying Manuscript

Guess what! I’m teaching a new class called Editor’s First Aid: CPR for Your Dying Manuscript. Check out the details below.

Maybe the horror stories about the hard road to publication are keeping you from finishing your novel. Maybe you've had one too many rejections with no explanation. No matter what is killing your writing, it’s time to breathe a little life into your manuscript.

Not sure where to start? As a freelance editor, I'm telling you there’s only one surefire way to avoid the dreaded rejection slip—know your craft. And I mean really learn it. Knowing your craft inside and out is the only way to identify and correct the problems in your writing.

Feeling overwhelmed? Maybe you think editing just isn't your strong suit? Don't worry. You don't have to do it alone. I'll walk you through some of the most common mistakes writers make so you can apply CRP to your dying manuscript.

In Editor’s First Aid, you'll learn about dialogue dilemmas, plotting problems, and bad beginnings, including:

• The 13 most common dialogue mistakes.
• How to avoid dialogue blunders.
• How to correct episodic writing.
• Understanding poor execution of GMCs (goals, motivations, conflicts).
• How to turn up the emotion.
• When (if ever) to add a prologue.
• All about the inciting incident and why it’s the best place to start your story.

Other benefits of Editor’s First Aid include:

• A professional editor to answer your questions.
• Opportunities to have your work professionally edited. (Samples will be randomly selected with a minimum of six critiques.)
• A chance to see real examples of how an editor looks at a manuscript.


About the Instructor: Lynnette Labelle is a freelance copyeditor, proofreader, and manuscript editor with over ten years of experience. She’s the owner of Labelle’s Writing on the Wall, an editing and coaching service for writers. Lynnette specializes in developmental copyediting, including line editing, for romance (all subgenres except historical), mystery, thriller, suspense, horror, YA, middle grade, and children’s fiction. She proofreads non-fiction and all fiction genres, and also helps writers create hooky query letters and strong synopses. Lynnette has a bachelor of education degree from the University of Manitoba, where she specialized in English and French. She excelled in Advanced Creative Writing in university and studied writing for children and teens through the Institute of Children’s Literature. She’s a member of the Editorial Freelancers Association, Romance Writers of America, RWA Online, and Savvy Authors. For more information, visit www.labelleseditorialservices.com

When: February 6 – March 2, 2012
Where: RWA Online (www.rwaonlinechapter.org)

Hope to see you there.  If not, keep an eye on my website.  I'll probably teach this on on my own later in the year.

Lynnette Labelle
www.labelleseditorialservices.com

Editors Passed on Same Book Critique Group Loved: 6 Reasons Why

You have a critique group and the members love, love, love your work. They’ve been nagging at you for months to send it out. You finally got up enough courage to submit and even received requests for partials and fulls, but in the end, nobody liked the manuscript enough to take it on. What gives?

Let’s take a look at six reasons agents and editors may not love your work as much as your critique group does.

1) The Relationship: This can mean different things depending on the group. For some, they’ve developed a friendship with the members of their group and can confuse “she’s a great person” with “she’s a great writer.” Some members may realize you’re not such a hot writer but don’t want to hurt your feelings, so they tell you what you want to hear instead. Others aren’t in the same league as you. Beginners will love stories written by intermediate writers and might even believe the book should be published, when in reality, it still needs a lot of work.

Lesson: Use a combination of your judgment, that of your critique group members, and feedback you get from agents and editors. If the rejections you’re getting are all canned, you really need to take another look at the book or start something fresh. If you’re getting personalized letters with specific notes on what’s wrong with the work or how to improve it, then you’re on the right track. Just remember, it’s your story. Only make changes if they feel right.


2) Super Premise: Your critique group loves your premise and thinks this is the next bestseller. They may be right. However, they don’t have the inside information agents and editors have. In this case, the industry experts may love your premise but if it’s too similar to something they’ve recently bought or something that’s currently on the market, they won’t want to touch it no matter how good it is.

Lesson: It’s not always about the writing or the idea. Sometimes it’s about who gets their idea out first.


3) Wrong Market: Your critique group loves your fresh ideas and maybe agents and editors do, too. However, you have to research which agents and editors to target. They may love your work but if they don’t feel they can sell it to their market, they’ll pass.

Lesson: Do your research before you submit to editors and agents.


4) Tres Rough: Your critique group expects a rough draft or some form of it, so they might overlook certain glaring errors. However, editors and agents won’t. They want polished manuscript on their desk or computer screens.

Lesson: Take the time to polish your work as best you can. If you aren’t good with grammar, hire a freelance editor (like me—shameless plug alert).


5) The Whole Is Filled with Holes: Your critique group might read chapters at a time, which allows them to really get into the scenes. However, it also prevents them from seeing the whole picture in one swoop like an editor or agent would when reading a full manuscript.

Lesson: Have Beta readers go over your full manuscript after you’ve polished it. They should read the book within a reasonable amount of time (usually a month) and should be able to recognize if a character’s eye color changed, if the protagonist did something out of character, or if a scene or chapter really doesn’t fit with the rest of the story.


6) Too Much Info: This is when the critique group is too familiar with your story either because they’ve seen so many versions of it or you’ve shared too many aspects with them to the point where they can no longer be objective. They start to suffer from the same blindness you suffer from, where they no longer see what’s missing because they believe the elements are there. The story and characters are so fresh in their mind that they don’t notice the plot holes, lack of character development, flat dialogue, etc.

Lesson: Have Beta readers read your story once it’s polished. These should be new readers so they’ll have fresh eyes on your work and should be able to spot things the critique group missed.


All in all, critique groups are wonderful tools. However, to rely solely on their input may be costly.

What are other ways a critique group may give you a false sense of security? How can you protect yourself while still benefitting from a critique group?

Lynnette Labelle
www.labelleseditorialservices.com