murder.booklocker.com

One of the co-sponsors of Murder In The Grove is Partners in Crime Boise, a chapter of the national organization Sisters in Crime. Wandering around their website, I discovered that they have a service called Criminal Pursuits.

“A number of Partners in Crime Boise’s avid mystery readers are willing to provide feedback on your manuscript. For a $25.00 contribution, you will receive a detailed feedback sheet and comments from four readers on the first 25 pages plus the complete synopsis of your manuscript.”

Since they were bragging that they had helped Lois Lewandowski (they’ve got a very complimentary quote from her), I thought I’d get in touch with Ms. Lewandowski myself and check it out further. The following is Ms. L’s response:

“Joanne Pence and the Partners in Boise have been just wonderful. One of these years I am going to attend Murder in the Grove. I’ve never been to Idaho; I was born and raised in Nebraska and first read about their Criminal Pursuits program in a Sisters In Crime newsletter. At that time, I believe it was $19.95 for the critique. Around Christmas of 2002, I mailed in the first 25 pages of my novel and a complete synopsis (I think my synopsis might have been 14 pages long, double spaced) and this is what I got back:

“Four readers from the Boise chapter each scored criteria under the following headings: Characterization (which includes a segment on the villian), Story Development, Writing Techniques, Background, Dialogue and Narrative, Mechanics, and Synopsis.

The criteria under Dialogue and Narrative (since I scored well in that one :)) is:

• ___Does the dialogue read naturally?
• ___Does the dialogue move the story forward?
• ___Do the characters all “Talk” exactly alike or are there diferences?
• ___Is there a good balance between dialogue and narrative, or does one seem to be overly used? Is so which one.

There are also a couple of lines for comment after each heading. 

“The scoring can range from a 5 (Outstanding) to a 1 (Needs major changes or rethinking). My scores were all between 2 and 4. Also my first 25 pages had nothing to do with the rest of the story and I ended up cutting those pages. One of the critiquers wrote me a page long letter with three issues that needed to be addressed and the first one was that the characters I began with did not appear in the rest of the novel. I think they all wrote on the manuscripts (you have the option of including postage to have the manuscript mailed back and I would highly recommend it.)

“I should point out that it’s wonderful to hear great things about your writing, but that’s really not the point of a critique. A critique should point out what works and what doesn’t work.

“The same manuscript was critiqued by an agent at a writer’s workshop (for a fee of $100.) The agent represents a very well known mystery author and her advice was to keep sending it out. She’d also had pages and a synopsis beforehand but there were no other written comments. It was nice to meet a successful agent who represents several famous writers BUT the critique that helped me do a rewrite was from Criminal Pursuits program.

“Would I recommend a critique by the Criminal Pursuits program? Absolutely. But I’d also recommend to the writer that the manuscript should be complete and meet the requirements of mystery novels.”

This was exactly the sort of thing that I had hoped to hear. I appreciated Ms. Lewandowski taking the time to answer me, but more questions came to me, so I asked:

• Tell me more if you can about getting “keep sending it out” — 4 words for $100.
• I assume you were already writing your mystery and then subscribed to the Sisters in Crime newsletter. Is that the only affiliation you had/have with other writers?
• I’m curious about the comment “the manuscript should be complete and meet the requirements of mystery novels.” Was your manuscript unfinished when it was critiqued? What are the requirements of mystery novels?

Good-hearted soul that she is, I got this reply:

“That other critique I had was at the UNL summer workshop. The woman in charge of the workshop has put a lot of time and effort into putting it on the map so I decided not to complain about the agent. The other part of that was that the agent had not read anything beforehand. Hmmm. The agent has not been back to the workshop since so I am not sure if other people complained.

“My other comment is based on an inquiry about the Criminal Pursuits program from someone who has not finished her manuscript. Even though a synopsis is required and not a finished manuscript, I feel you still need to have that finished manuscript. And for a mystery, there should be some type of murder and mystery involved.

“I belong to three local writing groups as well as Sisters in Crime. I find that the book out there takes just as much time as the one that is nearly complete (which you are probably well aware of.)”

Visit LoisLew.com, Ms. Lewandowski’s website for more information on her book, The Fatal Heir. Joanne Pence says, “An excellent book! I thoroughly enjoyed it.”  Interviewees Take Notice At the end of Ms. Lewandowski’s first email, I found this: “In other news, I went to your website yesterday and am recommending your book (PARK RIDGE) to a friend who used to run a Senior Center and to my mother, who is 90 and lives in a retirement center and who also used to run a senior center.”

Our visiting author wrote in her second email, “Your mystery sounds intriguing. I do like the banana as a weapon, and the Senior Center setting. Have you attended the UNL summer workshop? - there was a woman there in 2004 who read a segment from a retirement home story about a channel changing dispute over the community room television and the tv ended up broken. It was very funny.”