Book Review: Fierce Overture by Gun Brooke

Helena Forsyth is the force behind Venus Media & Publishing, Noelle Laurent is the country’s hottest pop star and under contract to VMP. When Noelle decides she wants to record her own songs on her next CD, she knows she’s taking on the formidable Helena. When Helena’s well known strong-as-steel will power slips and she kisses Noelle, both women’s lives are changed forever.

While both women are intelligent, neither is able to talk to the other about her feelings, and in the case of Helena, she never tells Noelle she’s concerned about their age difference. Both women are beautiful, accomplished, wealthy, and live privileged lives.

Brooke has created two characters who should appeal to most readers - a high-powered businesswoman and a pop star used to getting her way, but without being spoiled. They are reduced to quivering messes when love unexpectedly rears its head between them.

This book needed a firm editorial hand, but didn’t get it. There are several editorial gaffes - point of view issues, character inconsistencies, and contrived plotting devices - to name but three. If this sort of thing drives you out of a story, this may not be the book for you. If you never notice these kinds of things, you will undoubtedly enjoy this book.

Bicycle Writing

I grew up loving speed. I lived on Air Force bases all of my childhood. My father and I would spend Saturday afternoons sitting at the end of the runways watching the fighter jets land. For me, nothing compared to the speed, power, and thrill of those jets and those afternoons.

I came close to duplicating those afternoons with my Dad when I sped down a hill on my bicycle. I felt I was going so fast that I might take off like the jets I watched. I had to take my feet off the pedals because I couldn’t pump as fast as they were turning. On those downhill flights, I felt a soupcon of fear of crashing, which, of course, only added to the thrill.

One of the best descriptions I’ve ever read about writing is by Donald M. Murray in The Writer magazine (December 2009). He said,

“On a good day, I am the boy on the bicycle wobbling downhill so fast his feet are off the pedals, and he is out of control. That’s how I want to write, with such velocity that my typing is bad, my grammar ain’t, and my spelling is worse. I want to write what I do not know in ways I have not written. I need to speed ahead of the censor and write so velocity causes the accidents of insights and language that make good writing . . . .”

As I read those words, I was immediately transported to memories of headlong bicycle flights down a hill. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

These days, there are no afternoons spent watching jets land and no afternoons spent speeding down a hill on two wheels. I haven’t lost that thrill. Now the same thrill comes to me when I spend time on my computer writing novels, when I shut the editor off in my mind, and just write. I enter the zone where nothing penetrates, where my fingers fly across the keyboard so fast words spill onto the blank page like water from an upturned ewer, and characters urgently whisper in my ear. I feel the thrill of the downhill flight. That’s when writing is exciting and makes the time spent writing so wonderfully thrilling.

I want to spend my life writing “with such velocity that my typing is bad, my grammar ain’t, and my spelling worse.”

Query Advice that Makes Sense

Like so many other writers, I have been reading advice from agents about what they’re really looking for not only in the manuscripts they would be willing to represent, but what they want to see in a query letter. I have read literally hundreds, if not thousands, of words of advice about how to write a selling query letter. And still I was unsure. There were times when one agent would contradict another. What was a writer to do?

Then I came across the advice by an agent being quoted on another agent’s blog. In three words, Barbara Poelle of Goodman Literary Agency, gave the best advice I’ve seen on writing a query. Her advice consisted of three words. Those three words so resonated with me, I immediately rewrote my query letter for the manuscript that I’m currently sending to agents. I’ve seen query advice from literally hundreds of agents, but nothing so succinct, so logical, and so on point.

Hook, Book, and Cook were the three words Ms. Poelle wrote.

What do they mean?

Hook - a one-sentence description of what your book is about. Yes, she said one sentence. It may sound impossible, but try it. It really isn’t all that difficult. Hard, yes, but not impossible.

Book - write four or five sentences that give the agent more detail about your story.

Cook - this is where you tell the agent about you as a writer, i.e., the cook of the book.

How much more simple is that? Best of all, it’s easy to remember. It will be there in your head every time you sit down to write a query letter. Oh, you think that your first query letter will be your last? I hope that’s true. In case, its not though, I bet you’ll remember hook, book, and cook when you sit down to write that second letter. By the way, what will happen if your agent drops you because the agency decides to close its doors and/or your agent decides to retire from the business? I read about an author with a similar story not too long ago. She was back to seeking a new agent after having published several books. Something like that could happen to anyone.

I wish I could tell you that immediately upon sending out my first query using the hook, book, and cook formula I got an immediate reply asking to see the full manuscript. It didn’t happen. What did happen is that for the first time since I started sending out queries, I feel as comfortable with my query letter as I did with my manuscript.