The first book is called The Morgos Incident. It's the beginning of a series (there are 2 books finished so far) about an Empath from Earth who finds herself in the middle of Galaxy-wide events. I've posted the first chapter here http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/3970...
Olivia Smith

I'd appreciate any commentary. Thank you.

I really like the concept for your story. Good job with how you started with an argument. It pulled me right in and made me ask questions so that I had to read on in order to figure everything out.

Watch how much telling you do. You TELL me what your character does for living and what her latest project is. You TELL me she's going to lunch. You TELL me she has a crush on the captain. A little more showing will make the story jump from the page.

One other thing, we have to wait until half way through to find out the main character's name. It's good to get your reader's to know and sympathize with the main character in the first few lines.

Thank you, Rita, for your comments. I appreciate your time! You've given me some things to think about. It's a matter of perspective, I suppose, because I've not gotten those particular comments before.
And regarding the name of the character, I did originally have her sort of introduce herself up front, but was told by several people that that was "too much". Go figure. Now you've got me wondering...
Thanks again.
BTW I had begun reading your Scrolls story the other day and got sidetracked... I plan to finish it in the next couple of days. I am enjoying it very much.

Oh, I am so glad you are enjoying Scrolls!

Many great books start with the character introducing themselves. When you're in first person, the reader can't tell whether the character is female, male, young, old, or named. Readers like to identify with the character.

In my book, Never Forget, I write in first person. The first paragraph is her sneaking up on her brother, an old game that the two of them play. I use dialog to give away her name at the end of the paragraph when her brother says, "You might as well come out, Barra. I know you're there."

http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/3856...

Some books that were helpful to me are

Manuscript Makeover by Elizabeth Lyon
Revision and Self-Editing by James Scott Bell

Another I heard that's good is

On Writing by Stephen King

And my blog talks a lot about how to write and how to market books: http://afantasyfiction.blogspot.com