GIRL ON FIRE, October 21, 2012

“This girl is on fire.”

On Saturday, at the RWASD meeting, I pitched to Emily O. of HQN. Since I'm a guy, Emily was unsure whether I should send 3 chapters and a synopsis to HQN or Mira. Mira had a higher percentage of guy authors. I felt, by being careful, she loved her HQN readers.

I made the hilarious mistake of asking Chris Green whether I write like a guy* or a gal. She stumbled (not literally) and said I wrote like a guy, but the emotional content was well done (she had read my 1^st chapter). My faulty question is called the alternate of choice in sales. There is always at least a third option, like “I write like a successful author.” *I have the good fortune of being ambidextrous and artistic, which means I use both sides of my brain when solving problems.

Emily asked for 3 chapters and a synopsis when the manuscript was ready. She’d decide on Mira or HQN (or a pass – alternate of choice again). I pictured a mother duck taking her ducklings across a street.

Later Chris and I talked about emotional content. I said I’d never compare to Linda Thomas-Sundstrom for depth and length of thought. This is okay, because the degree of internal monologue is a style thing and depends on the genre.

Linda writes of a recurring character named Wanda who causes quite an in depth interior monologue because of her amorphous personality. I felt she stole the show in Linda's first book, Café Heaven. Wanda is physically impossible to resist. She’s a bad demon with a good streak. She’s a

GIRL ON FIRE (by Alicia Keys)

BTW, Linda, I pictured Wanda as Alicia in this video (even though her hair color and lipstick is wrong, for me the effect is the same, no stunning).