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  • Free Edit of your novel's HOOK

    August 2009 special!

    If you send me (please, one paragraph or no more than 150 words) your novel’s HOOK, I’ll do a free Edit on it and post it on the blog. That way we all get the benefit of learning what works in a HOOK by comparing and contrasting a variety of them.

    Edited HOOKS will go up every Monday.

    Just to remind you, your HOOK, folks, is the beginning of your novel. What you’re using to HOOK your reader. Picture a vaudeville stage, and your reader’s out there in the limelight, and you’re in the wings with a crook cane. What you are using to interrupt them in their finest hour, right when they’re hitting their warbling high C, and yank them willy-nilly into your parallel universe?

    This special ends at midnight August 31st, employees of A. Victoria Mixon not eligible, void where prohibited.

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No Responses to “Free Edit of your novel's HOOK”

  1. Lady Glamis said on August 8th, 2009 at 7:54 pm

    This is a fantastic offer! I’m curious, though, can you be specific by what you mean by hook? I might have missed an earlier post on this, so I’ll go check. Because there’s loglines. I have one of those. Is a “hook” supposed to be longer?

  2. gotheca said on August 8th, 2009 at 8:47 pm

    Lady Glamis, I stuck a little elaboration in the announcement to help clarify it. A hook can be as long as you think your reader will tolerate, but I wouldn’t count on too long. They’ve got notoriously short attention spans.

    For this reason—and because I only have so many hours in the day—I’m asking folks to limit the hook they submit to a paragraph or around 150 words.

    I look forward to reading yours!

    Victoria

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Preditors & Editors

Clients’ Successes

Scott Warrender
Short story author Scott Warrender is a Mentoring Program client. I have done full Copy, Line, & Developmental Editing on a number of short stories for him, the first of which was his poignant fictional memoir of Africa, ''The Boy With the Newsprint Kite,'' now published in the Foundling Review.

Clients’ Books


Bhaichand Patel is the author of two nonfiction books: Chasing the Good Life (Penguin Books India, October, 2006), and Happy Hours (Penguin Books India, October, 2009). I edited Patel's debut novel, When the Streets Were Cold and Dark.

I've edited a number of nonfiction essays for my friend Lucia Orth. (Many years ago, my contribution to Baby Jesus Pawn Shop was simply a peer critique and participation in a standing ovation.)

The poet Chris Ryan is the author of The Bible of Animal Feet (Farfalla Press, 2007). He has recent stories in Pank, Anemone Sidecar, and A Cappella Zoo. I edited Ryan's novel The Ishmael Blade and worked with him on his debut novel Heliophobia and WIP Pogue.