Monday, July 22, 2013

Will My Readers Believe It?

MUSE MONDAY
I've been mulling over, fretting and brainstorming my latest chapter of my current work in progress. I've asked critique partners and family members for advice, and I'm getting differing opinions. Southwest of Love and Murder is the second book in my Love and Murder series. In case you think you missed the first, The Art of Love and Murder, you haven't. I'm waiting to hear back from a publisher.

I don't want to give away the story, but let me say this, someone gets shot. The story necessitates that the shooter think he's killed his victim and the reader thinks he might be dead. I needed a wound to fit the story. After research both online and with a former trauma nurse, I chose a head wound - a gunshot to the head.

Here's my worry: will my readers buy it? Will they think there's no way he can get shot in the head, be dumped at an abandoned site for around twenty-four hours and live? Just because I've done my research and know it can happen doesn't mean a reader knows that. So they have to buy into the way I write it.

A big part of writing fiction is getting readers to believe whatever we write. How a character reacts to a situation might be fantastical in the real world, but if an author has done their job building his personality then a reader accepts it. If a love story is against all odds, it's that much sweeter if the author can present it to the reader so their cheering for the unlikely. But when it comes to a fact based event, I'm not sure what will take the reader to the right conclusion.

I tried rewriting the scene, but I can't. What happens has to happen the way it's supposed to happen. LOL I have to write it the way it feels right. Wish me luck!

By the way, I got a release date for my short, a Rosette, from The Wild Rose Press. Amanda in the Summer will be released in December. But look for it to be available on Kindle Select a couple of months before that. I'll be sure to announce it.


Three generations of women…and the secret that strengthens their love.

A line of women, all named Amanda, stretches back for generations. Each with her hopes, her joys, her pain—each pouring out her heart in correspondence with a dear family friend who shares their lives, understands their loves, and joins in their sorrows.

But within the correspondence lies a secret. And as the youngest of the Amandas retraces the journey through the years—beginning in post-war America and following through to modern day—the letters reveal, layer by layer, the Amandas who came before her. Soon, the truths and lies hidden in the letters lead her down a path of self-discovery that forges a bond between her past and future.

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