award – Noreen Lace

As a writing community, I believe we need to help one another. There doesn’t need to be a competition or an unfriendly or unhealthy antagonism between us. We are people who share a love of the written word, a desire to share our stories.

When one of my writer friends introduced me to one of her writer friends, I was happy to join and jump in to help.

I had the honor of helping Dan Rhys bring The Lone Escapist to publication life.

When I heard he’d become a finalist in the Chanticleer Awards, I knew his book would be a great success.

It’s a detective, sort of mystery, sort of noir of old. I think Hitchcock would have loved it. The baser of our human needs and selves sometimes win out and cause us larger problems. Where exactly was Kelton when a school shooting took place in his very own classroom?

Wracked with guilt, he wants to find the shooter himself.

Released just this week – the writing is tight and the topic is contemporary – The Lone Escapist is available on kindle and in print. Audiobook to follow.

How do you get your book to become a finalist? to win an award? – Read Dan’s and find out!

test If someone says they read your work, it does not matter whether you believe them or not or whether they did or not – Don’t test them!

I work with an American Pen Award winner – he is the epitome of modest and professional. I ran into him and said, “loved the book.” He said thank you. And that is all we should say!

I had one writer begin asking me questions about their work. I felt they didn’t believe I’d read their work, so they wanted to test me.

Maybe it was they just wanted to ask my opinion or probe my analysis of certain aspects of their work. But, see, I read for pleasure.I’m unprepared to answer questions other than what I enjoyed about the novel.

There are times I’ve read to analyze someone’s work because I wanted to learn something from or when they’ve asked me too because they want my opinion on one or more aspects of their work.

So – when a writer asks some in depth question about some random detail on page 145 – I’m test1 really sort of stopped short.

I read nightly. If I read their book or story last week, I’ve probably read another book and 50 student essays since. If I read it last month, we’re talking at least two books, possibly three, and over 124 student essays and 300 short literature responses from students.

Last, but not least, it’s just plain rude. When someone has told me they’ve read my story, I say thank you. If they want to ask me questions or say more, I’m willing to listen. But I leave it to the reader.