Showing posts with label #LaramieAwards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #LaramieAwards. Show all posts

Saturday, May 13, 2023

Awards Season

 


It's spring and that means awards season! I'm pleased to report that Ursula's Inheritance has achieved a first place status in the Laramie Awards for Americana fiction.

My whole American Civil War Brides series was a finalist, and my YA mystery Missing at Harmony Festival was a finalist in the YA Dante Rossetti Award.




And....bonus news, The #3 Linda Tassel Mystery, will be available soon!  Here's our Art Director Michelle Lee's great cover design...






Friday, January 13, 2023

Beginnings

 


My novel Ursula's Inheritance was just short-listed for  Laramie Award
honoring Americana fiction.




My novel Missing At Harmony Festival was just short-listed for an MM Mystery Award.

                                                   find my BWL books here!

        Bring all your intelligence to bear on your beginning. --Elizabeth Bowen


January is a month for new beginnings. For writers, it may mean the start of a new novel. Here are some thoughts on beginnings...

Beginnings hold the promise of what's to come in the rest of the novel: the promise of being worth a reader's time and the engagement of her attention and imagination.

I advise my writing students to not worry too much about where a novel begins.  Find a point that interests you and plunge in. But after the first draft is complete, take another look at the beginning, and ask:

1. Does your beginning introduce the story, characters and establish a dramatic premise (what the major conflicts are)?

2. Does your beginning establish what kind of story this is (science fiction, mystery, romance, YA)?

3. Does it plant the reader firmly in time and place?

4. Does it contain conflict?

5. Does it set your tone and style?

6. Does it show your choice of viewpoint?

7. And always, always, always: is it essential?


Based on the answers to these questions, it may be wiser to start the book in another place, or perhaps work on that first chapter until it answers all seven questions, and of course...sings!


Remember dear writers: In literature as in life, no one gets a second chance to make a good first impression!


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