Back in 2007 I finished my first novel, a time-travel romance set (mostly) in the Smoky Mountains. It’s pretty bad.

I was so excited when I finished it–and I should have been. I’d just written a book. That’s a cause worth celebrating. What I shouldn’t have done, however, was submit it to agents. But I did. I’ve lost count now of how many agents I queried, but I remember only a couple asked to see additional pages. It went nowhere other than into a drawer. Did I mention it was bad?

I thought it would be interesting to dig it out and take a look at it as an editor. Then I thought it would be interesting to share with you the problems I see with it and how I would recommend fixing them if a client had submitted this book to me.

I don’t know how many blog entries it will take to do this, but welcome to the first one.

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