Please join me as I welcome my friend, T. Michelle Nelson, and her new book to the world! Congrats to her, and the birthday of the second book in her series. I'm so happy for her! I've read the first book (it's amazing) and can't wait to read this one!
With a
doting husband and a new job training a vampire military, Lily Drake was living
up to the prophecies of being the best. Her life was seemingly
perfect, until tragedy strikes bringing her a loss she's not sure she can
endure.
The
hard-working super mom / vampire slayer, Lily Drake, has just learned
problems still exist even after you become immortal.
As everyone
knows, even if you find the perfect guy, you don't always get a
happily-ever-after. Lily may have found temporary happiness being a
newlywed, but the honeymoon is over. When she finds her husband going out
for late night bites with another woman, Lily has to fight to try and
regain what she wants most, love and a happy family.
If Lily thought being a single mom was hard,
she’ll find being married can be a bloody mess.
In her own words: Check this out and get to know T. Michelle...
What
is the Hardest Part of Writing a Book / Getting it published?
There isn’t a set answer that every author will tell you. Many might say writer’s block, marketing
their book, editing or publicity. You
may laugh at my answer. To me the most difficult
part of the process is writing the dreaded query letter.
If you’re a writer, you know what this is. If you aren’t, let me tell you. It’s basically a letter that you polish to a
shine and send out to people who get roughly a bazillion of these same types of
letters every day. Not only does yours
have to stand out, be absolutely perfectly written and sound interesting, but
it also has to sum up your 90,000 word manuscript into a paragraph or two.
That’s right. In a nutshell, you
have what amounts to about twenty seconds of time that it takes for the agent /
publisher who is reading it to grab them and make them ask for more. If it doesn’t sound all that tough yet, then
let me explain further. I’m a
long-winded kind of gal. I like to
really explain things fully. Cutting
90,000 words down to a few sentences is nothing but torture for me. I’d rather have bamboo shoved under my
toenails.
So, to all you aspiring authors, let me give you a bit of advice. A writer friend once told me this, and it
actually helped out a little bit. When
you go to write the dreaded query letter and you’re trying to sum up your
novel, imagine that guy who does all the Hollywood trailers. You know the one I’m talking about - the guy
with the deep voice who starts talking as the commercial fades in. Imagine what he would say if your book was
made into a movie.
“For Lily Drake, slaying vampires is easy. Dating them is the hard part.” You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to
come up with that. As I read over this
article, I don’t even understand how this task is so difficult, but trust me,
it is. And if you need help, don’t look
at me, I totally suck at that.
