manuscripts

How I Found the Right Editor

Lynette M Burrows

It was more than luck. Creating a book takes a team. I spoke about how I chose my cover artist. How I found the right editor for My Soul to Keep was to search for the right one several months before I needed one. It took some work, some due diligence, and some patience. But it paid off. Which Type? The first step in my journey to find the right editor was to research the different types of editors. It can get confusing. When you search the internet there are folks who say there are four types, five types, nine types, and more! But for most freelancers, it boils down to four general types. Developmental editors who work with you on the structure and arc of the story. Copy editors examine your finished story for consistency, grammar, and flow. Line editors address the writing style, language, and content on a sentence level. Proofreaders are the nit-pickers who look for typos and misplaced words or punctuation. Each writer’s needs, every novel’s needs, are different. I had a mentor who had helped me with developing the story. But my weaknesses were grammar and consistency. So I needed a copy editor. But there […]

Book Cover Reveal: My Soul to Keep

Lynette M Burrows

I’m delighted to present the book cover reveal for my debut novel, My Soul to Keep. On sale: August 2018 Artist/Illustrator/Designer: Elizabeth Leggett Publisher: Rocket Dog Publishing ABOUT MY SOUL TO KEEP Miranda Clarke lived a charmed life…until she broke the rules. It is 1961 and America’s a theocracy controlled by the Fellowship and its tyrannical council of eleven men. Miranda Clarke’s family is part of the ruling elite, wealthy and privileged. Miranda wants nothing more than to stay out of the public eye, but her power-hungry mother has different plans. She forces Miranda into an engagement to an up-and-coming Fellowship member and schemes to get Miranda’s father elected President of the United States. To escape the arranged marriage and the repressive Fellowship, Miranda makes a break for freedom. But lurid family secrets and a dead man lands her in prison. She not only must escape prison and outwit her mother’s ruthless ambitions but avoid the deadly Azrael, the Fellowship’s enforcers who Take unbelievers. Will Miranda survive ‘outing’ the family secrets? Told from four different perspectives, My Soul to Keep is a spine-tingling science-fiction thriller and will be available in all your favorite online bookstores. My Soul to Keep is the […]

An Idea That Grew Into a Story

Lynette M Burrows

I met Rob Chilson at a local science fiction group meeting.  He is the soft-spoken author of seven novels and numerous short stories and novellas published in science fiction magazines. Visit his website at www.RobChilson.com to learn a little more about this Oklahoma born author. After one meeting, Rob came to me with an idea for a story.  He thought I would be the perfect collaborator because I was both writer and nurse. It was an idea that grew into a story. The Spark We each read a short article in a science magazine about how when you are sick your ‘sick cells’ changed electrical polarity from the ‘well’ state. Two science fiction authors should not have been surprised that we’d read the same article, but we were. When we talked about this discovery we wondered if someday there might be a box that could read and correct the polarity of cells making illness and disease a thing of the past. Rob wondered how that change would impact society. He thought that perhaps we wouldn’t need doctors and nurses any longer. I argued that we would always need someone with a healing touch.  Then we discussed characters, a basic plot, and […]