Whether your manuscript is in the early stages and you’d like significant developmental input, you’re almost ready to query and are looking for someone to do a final copyedit, or anywhere in-between, I can help. For testimonials from authors with whom I have worked, as well as more detailed information about my editing services, please click here.
Cause and Effect
My first novel, Done in One (co-written with Grant Jerkins), was recently published. In the wake of publication there have been interviews, reviews, guest blog appearances and other opportunities to talk about the book.
I soon found myself here, on Elizabeth’s website, reading a guest blog by another writer. The writer had written a first person account of a trip his novel’s main character had made to Ferguson to see what the civil unrest had wrought. He wanted to see what this battle between civilians and cops was all about.
As I read, I recognized that I am in a very unique position to speak on this issue. And it’s not because I’m married to a SWAT Sniper and therefor biased beyond reason. But because of where my perspective is rooted.
The rampant media coverage, stirring the cauldron of animosity with alleged acts of police brutality, even prompted one highly-rated daytime TV host to say, “I don’t know what kind of training these cops are getting, but they clearly need MORE TRAINING.” Well, I DO know what kind of training these cops are getting. At least within the State of California. I’ve spent the last few decades working at a police academy, helping to train new recruits in any and all situations they might encounter as a patrol officer working a beat.
My work involves taking on many roles: suicidal suspect, sexual assault victim, armed robber, ruthless killer, horrified parent of an abused child, domestic violence victim. The job requires verbal sparring of the highest order and the ability to adapt as situations pivot and change, flowing fluidly from one scenario to the next while balancing the fine lines of the law, personal rights and level of compliance and interaction. At its simplest form, it is an issue of “cause and effect.” If you do “A”, it causes me to do “B” and the effect will not be what you are hoping for.
The Wolves Are At The Door
If David Fincher directed Bogie and Bacall in a Hitchcock romance, you would have Shotglass Memories. It’s a mixed drink explained in different ways, through different genres, but I’ll let you come to realize that I’ve eviscerated you emotionally by the time you get to the coda.
Before that happens, I need to earn your emotional attachment. I need to earn your trust, before I throw it through the plate glass and onto the pavement.
You don’t know Joe Sinclair or Kelsey Halliday. You don’t know Deargood, or Norah, or Gabriel. You’re on the outside looking in. You’re not inside my head, or theirs. From the gate, you don’t know the intimate details of what makes them tick; what keeps them up at night or what arouses their souls. You’re a voyeur who has a condition. An urge. I’m here to feed that urge.
But why should you care what happens to any of them at the start, let alone at all?
When I put them through Hell, or have them fall in love, I want you to feel it. I don’t want to tell you to feel it. I want you to feel the dark embrace of the page.
When I break Joe I want you to feel it at the back of your throat.
I want you to feel the chill off the ocean when Norah stands half-naked, covered in blood, crying out for somebody to open the door. I’ll paint the broad strokes and you fill in the rest. Hitchcock didn’t have to show everything.
“Finding Elizabeth was a wonderful discovery! Her insights into issues of structure, language, and context were equally matched by her professionalism, timeliness, and friendliness. Her suggestions consistently improved my book, and her concern for making the manuscript the best it could be was genuine and heartfelt. I recommend Elizabeth without reservation.” — Mark Gummere
Whether your manuscript is in the early stages and you’d like significant developmental input, you’re almost ready to query and are looking for someone to do a final copyedit, or anywhere in-between, I can help. For testimonials from authors with whom I have worked, as well as more detailed information about my editing services, please click here.
During the early days of the Cold War, a man battles combat fatigue haunted by a past of murder and romance he doesn’t remember. — Shotglass Memories
I first started reading author Anthony Schiavino through his comic book work and short stories. In fact, in what was a departure for me at the time, I reviewed his comic Sergeant Zero: Reigning Fire back in 2011. And while he has continued to work on various comics and short stories, he’s been working away diligently on longer works as well.
Anthony now has a couple of novels working their way through the traditional publishing route, but decided he wanted to go ahead and release one of the novels he’s been working on, Shotglass Memories, himself.
An excerpt of the first few chapters are available to preview on his website, and the novel itself is now up for preorder on Amazon.
I saw an early draft of Shotglass Memories, and without even having read the final version yet I can certainly recommend you go ahead and get your preorder in. I know I have, and I’m looking forward to seeing how things turned out in the end.
“Elizabeth helped push my manuscript to the next level. Not only did she find the grammatical and spelling mistakes, but she helped me with the developmental edit as well. It all paid off for me because Roundfire Books picked up my manuscript and published it.” — Roderick Vincent
Whether your manuscript is in the early stages and you’d like significant developmental input, you’re almost ready to query and are looking for someone to do a final copyedit, or anywhere in-between, I can help. For testimonials from authors with whom I have worked, as well as more detailed information about my editing services, please click here.
Thanks to Elizabeth for letting me guest blog. I’d like to reflect upon what sounds like a simple question – one I ask myself with every novel: just whose story is it?
When I started my first series, I had a character and setting – Barry Clayton, funeral director in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. Since my father had been a funeral director, I used some of his stories and my own imaginings of what it would be like to be in that profession to blend the “what was” and “what might have been” into a family story.
But as the writing process evolved and fictional events unfolded, the characters’ paths diverged from my original intentions and characters became whom they needed to become, distinct and individual entities. A friend of mine, writer Robert Inman, remarks that he knows he’s in his most productive zone when his characters start talking to him. I need to take it a step farther. I know my story has grown beyond me when my characters start talking to each other. It is no longer my story; it is my characters’ story.
Sometimes a story creates a new cast because the premise isn’t right for the ensemble of characters who have already come into being. My first experience with this change of “ownership” occurred when an elderly friend told me about his journey through the Jim Crow South transporting a body from Asheville to North Georgia. When he was ten, he and his father, both white, aided an African-American funeral director who had only a horse and wagon.
It’s no secret that I love the hell out of anything and everything Andrez Bergen is involved with—his novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat (TSMG) is one of my all-time favorite reads. Now, following the smashing success of his Kickstarter campaign for Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat: The Graphic Novel, the amazingly creative Andrez is back with another killer graphic novel Kickstarter.
This time, Andrez is doing something very cool with his serialized, twelve-part comic, Bullet Gal. I’ll let him explain more:
Doing the Bullet Gal comic book was surprisingly liberating after four back-to-back novels, and it gave me a better chance to really hone in on the hardboiled, crime and film noir influences that shaped my brain as a kid. Being able to tweak these visually as well as through the story arc and rapid-fire dialogue was a joy.
Of course, things never turn out simple. These influences were then folded and shoved into a dirty sock drawer with mischief-makers like sci-fi, slapstick and superhero derring-do.
I didn’t expect the combination to work so well, or for it to get such positive feedback from people outside my own head space. And once I wrapped issue 12, finalizing a story around 280 pages in total length, I felt kind of sad. I’m going to miss this place. A sizable part of me is itching to get back in there! — AB
December 24th - Berkley
