Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

Yup, I'm back to looking at the first five pages of various stories, for those five pages can make or break the engagement of a reader--or an agent. So, let's scope out others' stories to see how they hook an audience!

David Housewright has a NUMBER of books in his Rushmore McKenzie mystery series--in fact, this seems to be the 25th installment, if I'm skimming the works page correctly. That means I am already going to look at the opening pages with a grain of salt. There shouldn't be a whole lot of backstory that has to get established at this point because readers have been solving crimes with McKenzie for ages now. It's on me for coming very, very late to the party.

So in the initial pages, we see that St. Paul, Minnesota-based McKenzie is on a getaway in the wilderness of northern Wisconsin with his wife and friends. A city detective in a super-rural setting should promise some interesting conflicts and insights, right?

Sadly, I didn't get that far.

Now granted, the first paragraph is fairly solid: we're learning things about a gunman that are not characteristically seen at the crime scene of a mass shooting. Then we backtrack an hour to the scene of the crime, a winery in the middle of nowhere that McKenzie and Co. are visiting. A little bit of backtracking is okay, but then the next page is spent backtracking into McKenzie's childhood. What does the relationship and age difference of his parents have to do with why he's visiting a winery? One could say it's why one member of his company's been like a surrogate mom. Yes, Housewright says that in a single sentence.

And then he goes on and on for another massive paragraph about it.

The pacing here is strange, almost like the prologue bait-and-switch I loathe so much. The first paragraph promised action, but the following paragraphs meander into irrelevant exposition, dialogue that repeats what was already covered in exposition, and confusing dialogue about who's actually talking.

I suppose what really grinds me about this is the fact that we are in a twenty-somethingth installment of this series. Details like this have more than likely been dropped about his family. Why bring it up now, let alone on page 2??? If this information is truly relevant to the story, wouldn't it make more sense to utilize a slowed moment of momentum for a more concentrated dialogue on his life?

Now, I did peek, and the shooter shows up on page 6. That may not seem like much of a wait, but frankly, it could have happened sooner. Sure, a police detective is automatically going to survey his surroundings, and he's going to make connections to the incident report in his head while he's recounting events. But that's what makes those detours into childhood even stranger--they are completely off-task from reflecting on what's happened.

Everyone's got their clunkers. I'll never read certain Poirot novels by Dame Agatha Christie because they weren't even her B-Game (I'm looking at you, Hercule Poirot's Christmas). Maybe this McKenzie installment is the Poirot Christmas of David Housewright's series. There's probably a good mystery in there, but I'm just too annoyed by these opening pages to find it. You might dig it, though, and that's fine, 'cause we're all gonna love what we love. Maybe next month we will find something a little more spooky because fall is almost upon us. It cannot come soon enough.

And what will we discover in the next story's five pages?
We'll have to wait and see. xxxx

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!

Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

Yup, I'm back to looking at the first five pages of various stories, for those five pages can make or break the engagement of a reader--or an agent. So, let's scope out others' stories to see how they hook an audience!

I admit, I do judge a book by its cover now and then. The gorgeous sketch of a top hat and eyeball with thick lashes is accentuated by a red teardrop; plus, a lamppost and dark figure of a man are reflected inside the eyeball. It’s a fitting impression when the book’s set in Victorian London as Jack the Ripper stalks the streets. Truly, mystery’s afoot in A. Ray Dunlap’s The Dreadfuls!

The first paragraph is full of melodramatic details for describing the reform school where narrator Dell must go because she stole books to replace those burned by her uncle. After all the hail, thunder, and lightning in the mildew-infested darkened halls, the next paragraph tells readers the place is sparkling clean and unfathomably cheery. The two paragraphs together provide not only an effective sense of the setting, but of the narrator’s love of the macabre as well. The fact she wraps up her description with the one-sentence paragraph “It was utterly hateful” says it all. 

By the end of five pages, we’ve not gotten much about London (or Jack the Ripper), as the school is the primary setting for the first act of this story. It’s the place Dell needs to learn about, and quickly, if she means to escape.

And she does indeed mean to escape. We learn from her bedraggled aunt that Dell repeatedly escaped her boarding school, and no governess wants to work with Dell for long. Her twin sister had been Dell’s mom, and Dunlap wisely commits just one paragraph to sharing Dell’s introspection. It also helps Dunlap uses the wait-time for the headmaster to arrive, so it makes sense narratively that the protagonist’s mind can wander a little.

Another good storytelling standby is information through dialogue, and Dunlap equips that well here. By the end of five pages, we are in the midst of Headmaster Graves (great name, by the way) questioning Dell about why she’s there, while Dell’s aunt frequently interrupts with snippets of Dell’s backstory. Sure, we’re not in London or looking at Jack the Ripper yet, but there was foreshadowing of Ripper with the disemboweled rat spotted on their walk from the carriage into the school. It’s enough to have that comparison between the dirty and dangerous London streets with the clean and bright reform school to engage readers in wondering if that school is really that bright and cheery underneath, and if Dell is really as impossible and irredeemable as her aunt declares.

If you're a fan of dark historical fiction (and are especially in the mood for some Summerween reading), this could be the perfect adventure for you. As one who grew up on reading Sherlock Holmes, a chance to go back to Victorian London is always a good time. 

And what will we discover in the next story's five pages?
We'll have to wait and see. xxxx

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!

Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

Yup, I'm back to looking at the first five pages of various stories, for those five pages can make or break the engagement of a reader--or an agent. So, let's scope out the stories of others to see how they hook an audience!

From the get-go, Didomizio has a sass to his voice that oozes personality. You get it from the very first line: "It's been four days since Mikey Hartford's left cheek accidentally caught an errant spritz of SPF 90--otherwise known as Why-Bother-Going-Out-on-the-Yacht-at-All?-spray--and his tan still hasn't evened out." Clearly, we've got a spoiled brat on our hands, and while we readers may roll our eyes at such brattiness, Mikey's demeanor and introspection keep us going. He has a friendly relationship with one of the staff who still serves at the family mansion, and the tense conversation Mikey has with his father reveals Mikey struggles with relationships as well as growing up. It's a unique mix here of traits that would make most folks--me included--ready to tell the guy to "get a real job" and walk away, but then we find out Mikey's father is doing precisely that: work, or lose the inheritance. I had to stop reading before learning more about the job, but the back of the book shows Mikey ends up at a summer camp, where (obviously) murderous hijinks ensue. How could a guy like this solve a mystery?

THAT is a question to keep any mystery lover going. I love a good unconventional protagonist, and we have that here. Gay spoiled brats have shown up in literature before, sure, but how many of them are solving murder mysteries at a summer camp for kids? And the opening chapter gives nothing away about some sort of secret skill set or passion for mysteries--only movie-making. So that's another reveal Didomizio gets to share with readers in the following chapters which, from the style of his voice, promises a fun adventure in and of itself.

Another key takeaway for any writer out of Didomizio's first chapter is prioritizing. The first chapter takes place in the Hartford mansion. The rest of the mystery does not. Didomizio spends only a few sentences describing the mansion, even though Mikey walks through quite a bit of it. Why? Because the mansion doesn't matter. Didomizio only shares enough detail so readers can fill in gaps while Mikey walks to his father's office and the fateful ultimatum. And these details aren't even super specific: "Mikey's voice echoes off the cathedral ceilings as they move deeper into the mansion--a museum-like fusion of marble and brass and velvet." But general details like this are enough for readers to go on. You and I may be picturing very different things, but we're both using those same ingredients, and that's okay. The mansion isn't the priority. Mikey's conversation with his father is.

If you're ready for a killer fun read with an unlikely detective, then grab A Murder Most Camp.And what will we discover in the next story's five pages?
We'll have to wait and see. xxxx

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!

NOTE: In the podcast, I refer to book 1 of this trilogy as The Captive's War, but that is the title of the whole trilogy. Book 1 is called The Mercy of Gods.-------

Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

Yup, I'm back to looking at the first five pages of various stories, for those five pages can make or break the engagement of a reader--or an agent. So, let's scope out the stories of others to see how they hook an audience!

So a huge disclaimer here: I grabbed the second book of a trilogy, which means we are NOT going to see much foundation work in the opening pages. We'll have to hit the ground running, and like it!

Frankly, though, that's okay. It was nice to get into some science fiction for a change, and Corey's got a lovely style to his voice. The first couple of pages aren't a prologue per se--more like an historical tidbit akin to all the histories of Paul Moadib that begin the chapters of Dune. That historical bit is only a few paragraphs, but it's almost lyrical in its sadness about a dying world, how it's seen in the crops, fish, and lost voices of the elders. It's a relatable moment: any reader could sense what this would feel like in their culture. Any culture has its feelings about end-times. And this book begins with that bit of foreboding. It doesn't outstay its welcome, either--after a few paragraphs, we move on to the proper first chapter.

Now the first couple of pages are all these snippets of librarian records. I was amused by just how many librarians there are--my kind of alien society, I guess. :) I gather that these records allude to things from the first book, so I can't really judge their merits. To Corey's credit, though, the next few pages bring readers up to speed on important past events, such as the failed human rebellion against their alien overlords--and that our human protagonist, Dafyd, was on the side of the aliens.

Why? That I can't glean from these opening pages, but I have a feeling Book 1 (The Mercy of Gods) or subsequent pages of Book 2 will tell us.

Overall, Corey's got an accessible style, one that balances relatable detail with the unrelatable alien world. If you're looking to jump off Earth for a while, Corey's trilogy is sure to lose you among the stars.

And what will we discover in the next story's five pages?
We'll have to wait and see. xxxx

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!

Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

Yup, I'm back to looking at the first five pages of various stories, for those five pages can make or break the engagement of a reader--or an agent. So, let's scope out the stories of others to see how they hook an audience!

Could my prologue curse be broken at last! Here's another book that shows an author understands the power of a prologue done right.

The prologue sets the time period of the story: 1910, the days of Halley's Comet's chaos among folks all over. The historical exposition is balanced well with what's going on with one Stephen Pike, a former convict ready to turn a new leaf--if only he could get a job so that turning could start. The prologue ends with May 18th: the day folks could take pictures of Halley's Comet because it was only 12 hours from Earth, and the day Pike receives a mysterious letter offering him a job at the grand estate World's End. The prologue is only two pages long, but it provides a solid foundation of the world's collective craziness alongside Stephen Pike's desperation.

I always worry that Chapter 1 will pull a bait-and-switch on readers after such solid prologues. We've seen that happen here often enough. Thankfully, Montgomery continues the momentum in Chapter 1, picking right up where the prologue leaves off with one major change: we're experiencing the story through Stephen's point of view. There are slight changes in cadence and word choice, slight changes in grammar, and these little changes add up to a clear, working-class voice modern readers can follow easily. The first chapter focuses strictly on Stephen's interview with the head butler of Tithe Hall, who insists that "there's been some sort of mistake" and that Pike is not going to be hired.

Now as readers, we know differently because there wouldn't be a story if Pike weren't hired. But that's not the point. This scene tactfully previews the kinds of situations ex-con Stephen will likely face when dealing with the "honest" working class in the Downstairs of Tithe Hall, not to mention the nobility class of the Upstairs. The scene is propelled along by dialogue with touches of Stephen's thoughts; the pacing isn't bogged down once, not even when Stephen's trying to figure out how he could possibly get back to London if the butler turns him out.

I had never heard of Montgomery before this book, and it could be due to his writing children's books before entering the adult fiction market. He's clearly got a passion and flair for the mystery genre, and I'm excited to see how history and fiction come together in the chapters ahead.

And what will we discover in the next story's five pages?
We'll have to wait and see. xxxx

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!

Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

Yup, I'm back to looking at the first five pages of various stories, for those five pages can make or break the engagement of a reader--or an agent. So, let's scope out the stories of others to see how they hook an audience!

There's a lot to dig for the suspense/mystery lovers here. Prologues ALWAYS put me on my guard, but Dove utilizes the prologue to establish reader investment in a character who's about to disappear--and that disappearance is the catalyst for our protagonist's involvement in the mystery.

The first page and a half of the prologue already provide a solid narrative twist; we go from a girl wandering the dark on her own to learning she's an ambitious student determined to locate beetles the Western world assumes are extinct. We also see some effective prose work with sharp, short sentences, often framed in their own paragraphs. "She was going home" sounds relatable, welcoming, something folks often do to deal with tough school days...unless one goes home to find her way out, which is exactly what Chenoa thinks when she finds her precious beetles: "It was her way out."

But then another sharp sentence cuts in: "The night sounds close in." And in a rapid supply of small paragraphs and even smaller sentence fragments, Chenoa is no longer alone. Or safe.

Now Chapter 1 goes back in time a little bit, which is a pretty common storytelling move in film, television, and novels. I'm not a fan of it, but I can also appreciate the time jump takes us to the protagonist, Carrie Starr. And here's where I goofed in my podcast regarding character names: I thought Odeina was a different name for the protagonist Carrie Starr, but that was a different character introducing herself.

That's what I get for cutting off after five pages, lol.

That said, the first part of Chapter 1 also packs a lot about Carrie into a tight space: her unhappiness being back on the rez, her unhappiness with her job, and her propensity to drink. Here's a character who needs to rise to the challenge, and it sounds like the mystery of MASK OF THE DEER WOMAN will give her the chance to do just that.

And what will we discover in the next story's five pages?
We'll have to wait and see. xxxx

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!

Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

Yup, I'm back to looking at the first five pages of various stories, for those five pages can make or break the engagement of a reader--or an agent. So, let's scope out the stories of others to see how they hook an audience!

Now I admit that I was hesitant at first when I opened the book and saw a prologue. But thankfully, this prologue did its job. In its single page, we meet Helena as she struggles to keep her memories while in "stasis," a sensory deprivation container where she is jolted with electricity every few hours until "someone" comes to get her. Only that someone does not come. Helena loses her sense of time, but she knows her purpose: "She had to stay ready."

Not that she tells readers what that means. And that's okay. I don't want an exposition dump in the prologue.

Chapter 1 starts with two men discovering Helena, who was "stored wrong," and she lashes out to try and escape even though her senses are completely overwhelmed. They knock her out, and she wakes to hear a woman speak of carrying her to "Central" because there are no prisoner records of Helena, and yet she has two numbers. She's also alive and literally kicking, unlike most of the other statis residents.

I tip my hat to SenLinYu for using Helena's lack of senses for storytelling purposes. Helena can't see or move around much, so the only input Helena--and therefore readers--can get in these early pages is through dialogue. And SenLinYu uses that dialogue to accomplish some quick worldbuilding without overwhelming the readers. There's a High Necromancer mentioned, and the woman orders that any corpses in stasis chambers should be reanimated for labor.

WHAAAAAT?

But the dust jacket did mention necromancy, and here we are on the third page of the book hearing about the necromancy. There's also a degree of science involved in this world, too, for Helena was in some sort of special gel and often jolted with electricity. And on top of all that, there is also magic besides necromancy, for the woman alters Helena's senses to make it easier for her to use her eyes.

The prose style here is solid, too. SenLinYu reminds me a little of Lee Child, putting a mix of short and long sentences to use so that the narrative pacing is fast without the prose feeling choppy. A good example comes when Helena is first awoken by the men going through all the stasis chambers.

"Light was stabbing her. A spike driven through her eyes, burrowing into her skull. Gods, her eyes.
She writhed. The brightness blurred, careening. The burn of fluid rushed down her throat. A roar in her ears."

If the first five pages are any indication, SenLinYu's got a lovely debut on their hands.

And what will we discover in the next story's five pages?
We'll have to wait and see. xxxx

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!

Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

Yup, I'm back to looking at the first five pages of various stories, for those five pages can make or break the engagement of a reader--or an agent. So, let's scope out the stories of others to see how they hook an audience!

The prologue focuses on an elderly woman who should not bedriving in a rainstorm. She constantly puts herself down through all the prayers and panic in the weather. While this emotional/environmental pacing works fine, the prose here gets...odd. For example:

Brake now! A cluster of panicky neurons bellowed.
Waiting until you can safely pull off! a more rational gaggle countermanded.

Bellowing neurons countermanded by a gaggle of neurons....

Come again?

Awkward bits like this made it very difficult to care whatwas going on with this woman, and considering this book is a thriller, I should care about what happens to this vulnerable old woman. But this is a prologue, and with such awkward prose I'm just powering through to see what Chapter 1 islike.

And sure enough, Chapter 1 is different. It's first-personnarration from Temperance the protagonist, bemused by a frog she hears outside her office. She's supposed to be annotating reports from all her cases that year, and she lists some major categories of those cases involving skeletalremains, how they're found, etc. Typically, exposition like this could turn readers off, but after that awkward prologue, I found this approach refreshing. I'm a first-timer with this series, and within a page and a half I got a good senseof this character, her personality, and her field of expertise. Plus, by page 3 of the first chapter, Temperance is called to visit an old lady who crashed her car in a storm because she was shocked by an animal mutilation. Why on earth did we need the prologue when the first chapter was going to warp us over to the scene of the crime anyway?

Yet another case of the prologue doing no favors. The firstchapter could have hooked us and reeled us in for the inciting incident without a problem. Readers do not have to see preludes to The Incident, especially when that prelude is prioritizing elements barely tangential to the storyline. Letreaders imagine the prelude on their own terms, or allow unreliable character narrators to share their perspectives. It's just another way to throw fresh layers of mystery over the plot to keep readers moving forward, ever curious about what hides in the storm.

And what will we discover in the next story's five pages?
We'll have to wait and see. xxxx

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!

Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

Yup, I'm back to looking at the first five pages of various
stories, for those five pages can make or break the engagement of a reader--or an agent. So, let's scope out the stories of others to see how they hook an
audience!

Honestly, I've a few gripes here. For one, I really don't like second-person for a pov. Just because one can do a thing doesn't mean one should. It's also jarring because the book doesn't stay in second-person; only the prologue talks to readers like they are the protagonist Holland finding the mysterious theater with the mysterious college class about folklore. Don't get me wrong: the theater's beautifully described, and Garber knows how to build up tension by using the present tense for Holland — well, the reader — waiting for that class to start. But it's a weird shift putting readers into Holland's shoes for three pages before yanking them out for a more traditional third-person in the first chapter. The true first chapter starts with a date and some exposition about this too-perfect guy that Holland is seeing, aaaaand I was already getting a bit bored when my reading ended with her discovering a poster mentioned in her mysterious folklore class.

There's a lot of promise here with the magical underworld of L.A., and fans of Garber are likely accustomed to her writing quirks to be ready for pov shifts and meet-cute exposition. But the magic of that theater in the prologue felt like a bait-and-switch. It can be tough to know when a story truly begins. It feels like Garber considers Holland's date and search for something she heard about in the folklore class to be the start of the story...but if readers don't know about the magic of the class, then they won't understand Holland's determination to do that search. The prologue feels like a cheat to cover this, and I'm just not a fan.

I'm taking December off from blogging and podcasting, so we'll have to see what stories await us in the new year! Stay tuned!

And what will we discover in the next story's five pages?
We'll have to wait and see. xxxx

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!

Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

Yup, I'm back to looking at the first five pages of various stories, for those five pages can make or break the engagement of a reader--or an agent. So, let's scope out the stories of others to see how they hook an audience!

I admit that I wasn't sure what to expect from this one. I knew it to be some sort of suspense thriller, but the blurb on my hardcover from the library says, "Still waters run deadly." I was hoping for some sort of lake monster! Alas, I have no idea if such a monster awaits or not.

Day starts this book with two little, um, blocks of text. They're not prologues per se; one is a newspaper excerpt about a dead body found near the lake, and one is about the lake waking up in spring, and danger lurks there. These two "mini-beginnings" before the actual beginning felt a bit awkward, but I gave the author a pass. They're establishing a sense of menace and foreshadowing, right? They want to make sure the reader catches this important information so they don't miss it in the regular storytelling. Fine.Chapter 1 officially begins with protagonist Julia infuriated because her lifelong friend had the audacity to build a new lake house that obstructs the view of the lake from her lake house. There's extra emphasis on how she and her husband are broke, yet they got a fancy new car and, well, have a lake house on top of wherever else they live. She cannot believe she'll have to take a different kind of walk down to the lake. She cannot believe her friend installed art in the yard. She cannot believe some trees were cleared. And surely their other friend and fellow lake house owner will be just as mad.

I had to stop after three pages of this. Stories need characters readers can connect with. Yes, some stories can star assholes. Plenty of classics contain such characters. Heavens, I've written such characters. But there has to be an ability to connect SOMEWHERE, and listening to someone complain about how their friend changed up their house and ruined their lake view got very tiring very fast. Sure, maybe this pettiness speaks to the protagonist's character and possible character arc. But the first five pages need to compel readers to read on, at least to chapter 2. A writer shouldn't assume that a brief news report of discovered skeletal remains will be enough to keep regular readers engaged while a protagonist complains nonstop about a privileged kind of problem.

Let’s see what next month’s find will teach us, shall we?

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!