Agent Joyce Holland offers 5 first page critiques.
Sept. 7th 2011
Today is the day I said I would comment on the first page submissions readers sent me. I had hoped to have more, but alas, only five people responded. So, I decided to put them all here and let you decide which ones you liked best. I made my comments in red after each one. Please share your opinions.
Joyce
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Wanda Argersinger
Lessons
"Oh, honey. That's not so bad. Once when I had congestive heart failure, some expert doctor told me all I needed was to lose weight and buy a new bra. Now, I want to ask you. What does a bra have to do with congestive heart failure? And even worse, getting that appointment had taken five months and cost two fortunes. And what did I get? Advice on underwear from a guy who had probably never touched a woman's tit in his life."
"Stop it Lil," Corrine said, the sparkle in her eyes betraying the lines on her face. "You know it hurts me when I laugh."
"Not nearly as much as never laughing at all would hurt."
"Well Lil. I guess you're right about that."
"Besides," Lil insisted, "You should always have fun, even in the doctor's office. I'll tell you a little secret. One time a doctor was doing a procedure on me that hurt like hell. He started to tell me how it didn't hurt. It was a feminine procedure so I was sure he couldn't know about the pain. I told him let me snip the top of his penis off, tell him it didn't hurt, and then we would talk. He learned real fast not to tell me what I feel and don't feel."
"You didn't really, did you Lil?"
"I sure did honey. No one knows how we feel except us and I don't tolerate stupidity from some doctor who thinks he knows my body better than I do."
"God love ya, Lil. Cause I know I sure do."
****
I really liked the humor in this one, and I immediately connected with the characters. What I found distracting was the constant use of Lil's name. The first one was enough. There are only two people in the room, so it's not necessary to use her name every time something is said. Also, a comma is required before a name when you address someone. Still, it left me thinking I've met these women. Nicely done.
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Dee Jordan
Untitled
"Yes, this is Jordan Hurst. I think I killed my ex-wife. I need an ambulance fast!"
I flipped my long hair out of my eyes and with trembling hands, I lit a cigarette. After looking around at the crappy house, I saw her laid out cold in the kitchen. I walked in and turned on the overhead light, painting her a garish white.
"Amber, Amber! Wake up. I didn't mean to hurt you! I only wanted to protect myself. You make me so damn mad. My God, what have I done?"
"Sir, stay on the phone. An ambulance will be there shortly. Is she breathing?"
"I don't know, I'll have to check."
"Does she have a pulse?"
"Not sure of that either."
"How did she hurt you?"
"She didn't."
Do you need any medical care?"
"No, I'm fine."
"Sir, is she alive?"
"I told you I didn't know. Wait a minute. Let me check." Afraid to touch her, I was about to panic. Laying my head on her chest, I listened for a heartbeat, sat up and watched to see if her rib cage moved.
Her glazed blue eyes stared at the ceiling. I looked up, curious to see what she was looking at before she went down. Just a bunch of spider webs that had dust bunnies in them. I felt my heart pounding and an ache because I realized I might not ever see her again. I wiped my hands on my slacks, leaving wet marks on them.
"Yes, she's alive. I saw her breathing. Hurry up." I shouldered the cell phone and started cracking my knuckles.
"Please, Honey, don't die. I just wanted to stop you. You hurt me with all of your cheating. Then you blabbed to everyone I was the cheater."
The sound of an ambulance siren blared and lights flashed. I sat down and rested her head in my lap. I rubbed her face as tears formed in my eyes. We couldn't live together, but I still loved her.
****
This is a great beginning because something happens. The pacing is well done, but I was confused when he entered the room and turned on the light. Did he kill her, leave the room and turn off the light? That struck me as odd. Then when he looked into her dead eyes staring at the ceiling, I liked how he described the cobwebs because it's the sort of inane thing one would do in a shocking situation. But is she really dead or not? It became confusing here. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gene Henson
Untitled
The humidity hung like a curtain, and sweat popped from the effort just to lift the two five-gallon pails of bait I was delivering to my friend Ray into the back of the pick up. Ray is a fisherman, who fishes for lobsters, but if you call him a lobsterman, he gets all bent out of shape saying, "People who call themselves lobstermen are wannabes."
It was early July and our weather for the past few weeks resembled Louisiana a lot more than Southern New England. But this being Southern New England, I knew that the weather could change at the snap of a finger. I was gonna meet Ray at Marie's diner, where a bunch of us *macerates* usually meet for breakfast several days a week.
It was quarter to seven on a Saturday, so the parking lot was full but I managed to find a spot and squeeze in between a Lexus and a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Marie's is a hash house much like thousands of others, but being a stone's throw from the second largest casino in the country, you never knew who is going to grace their doors. Rumor has it that Michael Jordan once had a hash breakfast here, sitting on a stool at the counter.
Several of the regulars were already seated in booths and Marie was busily pouring coffee. There's an un-written protocol in Marie's: The postal guys, who start at eight, occupy the big booth to the left of the door. The paramedics who have been working since midnight take the booth opposite. Our place is back in the corner, next to the rest rooms. Mostly, it's never a problem; the causal breakfast crowd seems to know instinctively that that's the way it is.
****
This one has a very distinct New England flavor to it, from the lobsterman to the local breakfast hangout. You get the feeling you are in for a long homey tale, but the last paragraph hints things are not going to go according to plan. The rules are about to be broken. I liked the edge of anticipation it left me with, making it my choice as the best of the five selections.
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April Higgenbotham
Atoning Ayla
Ramie (Boehmeria nivea) is a flowering plant in the nettle family. The leaves are heart-shaped.
Where was I when the book was written on how to torment a soul?
She glances down to the lined white paper, now stained with her tears. The whiteness of the paper stands in great contrast to the darkness in her soul. How telling, she thinks to herself, because she knows "he" brought the darkness with him when he came. The tears always come easily as she remembers him. Ramie. Ramie Taha, the man she called, "her heart." The man who called her, "his wife." The man she loved. The man she adored. The man who brought love into her life. A love unlike any love she had ever known.
But now, all she has are questions. Questions not only with no answers, but answers that may never come. Or will they? That is what she lives for. "Ramie, why?" she thinks to herself. "Why did you do this?" And she cries harder as she pours her heart out in words, hoping that someday she will understand.
Marked on the top of her hand that she writes with is an ornately beautiful mark of a ritual of her wedding. A wedding that only she showed up for, at least according to her heart. She gazes down at the tattoo on top of her right hand, a tattoo made from the flowering plant called henna which stains the skin a red-brown color. While once a temporary marking for a wedding that never took place, it is now a permanent tattoo. And she realizes that by making it permanent, that she will be reminded forever of his lies. While once she wore it proudly and delighted in its intricate details, she can't help but think that it is now like a symbol of death, a slow agonizing death. And the lies were just as intricate. Or were they lies?
And she screams inside her mind, will I ever know his heart?
****
Atoning Alya is a mood piece and as such it leaves a definite mark. The author strikes a resounding chord in all of us, but I'm not sure quite where she is going with this as it's hard to maintain sadness for long and keep the reader along for the journey. She might do well to plant some glimmer of hope or strength to face the day. A little hint of revenge might even be in order if she wants to liven it up.
Carol Newman Cronin
Game of Sails: An Olympic Love Story
BANG!
The loud but harmless warning gun blew an acrid whiff of smoke across my boat. Five minutes to the start of race two—and I was planning to win this next one as well.
I felt like I'd been spun through a salt water rinse cycle. Water dripped off my waterproof top and neoprene shorts, and my arms and legs ached. But today's thumping southerly breeze rewarded my height and strength. So if I was a little tired, the thirty-four girls I'd beaten in the first race must be exhausted.
This was the best place—the only place—to be, and even the thick buildup of salt on my cheeks couldn't keep me from smiling. Perched on my fourteen foot Solo in the middle of Miami's Biscayne Bay, surrounded by the best Olympic sailors in the world—and ready to show them all over again who was boss.
"Your kind of day, Casey," Rachel had told me this morning as we rigged our boats, palm trees already thrashing overhead. "You'll make the team this year—easy."
Four days and nine races from now, the top three boats—along with the top three from the men's fleet—would qualify for the national team, which meant enough funding to train full time for the Olympic Trials. That regatta would be in Newport, Rhode Island, where Rachel and I had spent summers since we were five years old. But only one of us (or, God forbid, someone far less deserving) would go to the Olympics.
"Jenny Garcia's the only other girl who's been practicing at all," Rachel had told me yesterday. "And she doesn't have even half of your drive."
I shook my head to clear it, chafing my thick braid against the back of my lifejacket. Time to focus on winning this race.
****
Wonderful action scenes and well a well drawn character. The problem with this selection is the overuse of em dashes (—). About the only thing that will turn off an editor faster is a bunch of ellipses…. The other problem is the capitalized word, BANG. It leads me to believe there will be more of the same later in the book. Otherwise, this story in a winner. But both problems are easily corrected.
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