Open book

How do you make money? For years people have said you should write what you know. I don’t know how to murder someone. I have never used a gun, where you stab someone with a knife to kill them eludes me. Poisons are messy chemicals. Though I have met many people who have murdered others. Years ago growing up in Birmingham England there was a very famous murder. A young girl staying at the YWCA was killed. Her body cut up and displayed as though it was in butchers shop. The city went into panic mode until the murderer was caught. I was a friend of the pathologist son and heard all the gory details. The father of a school friend was arrested, tried and convicted of murdering four people. We were both twelve years old. When told he began to shake then bust into tears. His stern, uncompassionate grandfather gave him a backhanded slap. Then told him to grow up he wasn’t a child anymore. He never recovered from that ordeal and became a hermit in the Welsh mountains. Dying a f...

The book is finished and has even been edited by a professional editor. Those who have read it, and some are English academics tell me it is very good. So why hasn’t it sold? Do I need to revisit and re-edit? I took several books off the shelf on ‘editing your work’. They all seem so broad in suggestions as to what I might need to do. Of course there is always the reader critic who also happens to be an editor. The problem like so many today is my lack of cash. This is my dilemma and like all problems I sit and mull over looking for the best solution. I will read again Michael Seidman book “The Complete Guide to Editing Your Fiction.” If my memory serves me well I didn’t really find it helpful the first time because I had already had the book edited and there seem nothing wrong with it. Maybe I should look for over long sentences. My protagonist is a very likable young man; he does have extra baggage with his very large family. The sub plot carries the story along ...