First, we’ll gather some information about your project, target audience, publishing goals, and any questions you may have about working with us. Next, our Client Services Director, Ross Browne, will review this information and a portion of your manuscript to assess its readiness and suitability for our process and inform an editor and service […]
Your novel has a lot going for it: a wonderfully rendered rich tapestry of a setting most readers will find fascinating, a dysfunctional but loving family with conflicting aspirations at the center of which is a young man who keeps sacrificing his happiness to fulfill what he sees as his family responsibilities.
You have […]
Part of the problem is your approach to the story, which is heavily weighted in favor of narrative summary. Very often you summarize character attributes, scenes, dialogue, events, all sorts of developments. Narrative summary has its place and makes a fine showcase for that wonderful voice of yours, but readers need to hear characters speak, […]
As I said, a good memoir reads like fiction, with the author in the role of the protagonist. Not that it should be a series of dramatic scenes with the plot of the author’s life, but the events need to be recounted dramatically, and the author—the hero—is necessarily an invention, a character. This […]
Your battles are vividly described with details that put the reader on the scene. But these are cartoon battles, never credible because the level of violence dealt to Cramer is often greater than any human could survive. A middle-aged man who gets thrown with enormous force into wall after wall, or slammed against a marble […]
Although I thoroughly enjoyed your novel, I’m going to begin by setting you straight about its weaknesses, because so much of what I have to say is in the context of today’s ruthless and often dismal marketplace for debut fiction.
That marketplace does exist. Publishers have to bring out first novels or they’ll never […]