A murder mansion built like a Clue board? AWESOME!

As writers, we hear all the time that we’ve got to hook readers in just the first few pages or else. We’ve got to hook agents in the first few pages or else.

Whether you’re looking to get published or just hoping to hook your reader, first impressions are vital. Compelling opening scenes are the key to catching an agent or editor’s attention, and are crucial for keeping your reader engaged.
JEFF GERKE, THE FIRST FIFTY PAGES

This month I snagged from the New Release shelf:

You Are Fatally Invited by Ande Pliego

Clearly, Pliego was stoked to take the iconic And Then There Were None premise and ratchet it up with a gathering of mystery authors on a mysterious island estate.

Throughout the introduction written by the gathering’s organizer and the opening pages from an attendee’s perspective, readers can see a clear difference in voices, but neither voice comes off as a trustworthy narrator. I particularly love the introduction’s opening line: “If you were to take Story, strap it down onto your dining room table, and slide a scalpel through its chest, you would find the lifeblood is theme.” Such a line gives a very strong sense of what this…soul, I’ll say, will be like. The visual of taking a creature and strapping it down onto your dining room table is already quite an image, but it’s the scalpel that gets me. Not a butcher’s knife or a dagger, but a scalpel. That’s a very surgical, sanitary, clean but deadly tool. Yet this dining room setting is NOT clinical at all–such a juxtaposition says a lot about the person who puts these things together. And the fact that the scalpel goes straight into the chest–the lethal place, the bloodiest place. Such a start promises plenty of “beautiful madness” in the pages ahead.

Let’s see what next month’s find will teach us, shall we?

Coming up, I have another author interview, an author resource spotlight, the lack of books for boys, and why we as writers need to read joyfully.

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!