The Armageddon Chord

I want to give a shout out to a writer in my agent's stable. Jeremy Wagner is the first of Dawn Dowdle's clients to receive a review in Publishers Weekly. In the July 25, 2011 issue, The Armageddon Chord received the following review:

Death metal guitarist Wagner (of bands Broken Hope and Lupara) debuts with a highly entertaining, albeit predictable, blend of heavy metal and hardcore horror. Festus Baustone III, a morally bankrupt billionaire secretly suffering from terminal cancer, hires archeologists to uncover musical hieroglyphs that,if correctly translated, could ignite apocalypse.The dying tycoon then sets out to find a guitarist who can literally "raise Hell on Earth and wipe the world clean." Kirk Vaisto is just finishing up his latest solo album when his agent manipulates him into taking Baustone's offer, and soon the virtuoso rock guitarist finds himself at the center of a conspiracy with the spiritual future of humankind at stake. Electrified by breakneck pacing, a cast of over-the-top characters (a deformed Nazi Egypologist, a self-obsessed frontman, a stigmatic priest, etc.) and memorable lines like "The power of the riff compels you," this triller neatly exploits the considerable shared fanbase of apocalyptic fiction and Apocalyptica.

The book comes out in late August. Hint. Hint.

Way to go, Jeremy. Way to go, Dawn.

Writing and Editing

The old maxim is true: you never begin writing until you begin rewriting and editing. In my case, I received edits and suggestions back from my agent, Dawn Dowdle. I worked through them and sent them over for her second review after Thanksgiving.

There truly is nothing like having an agent review every page, every comma (many misplaced) and every line of your book. I'm lucky, because not all agents put in the amount of effort to make a manuscript squeaky-clean. (And from many of the books I've read lately, the fine art of copy editing is dying.)

So, when I finished reviewing every change, answering every comment, adding a few comments of my own, I realized my manuscript is in much better shape than it was.

My eternal gratitude for Dawn's close review. After three critique groups had a go at the work, and two professional editors had their say...

And now we will see what additional changes Dawn suggests to make the manuscript marketable.