FATAL WITNESS

FATAL WITNESS
Friday, February 2, 2024 by Patricia Bradley

Categories: GUEST AUTHORS

PLEASE WELCOME

PATRICIA BRADLEY

FICTION FRIDAY

THE AUTHOR’S STORY

If someone had told me way back in the dark ages when I first picked up a pen in hand to write that it would take thirty-two years for me to see a book in print, would I have put the pen down and chosen another way to express my creativity?

We’ll never know, will we?

Because I didn’t quit.

Of course, it helped that I had encouragement along the way, like getting the very first short story I wrote published in Woman’s World. That was a God thing. The guidelines asked for 2500 words. I sent in a story with 4500 words. By all rights, the editor should have stuck my pages in the SASE (self-addressed envelope) I sent with the manuscript and mailed it back to me. But she didn’t, and Woman’s World went on to buy two more stories.

With that encouragement, I kept plugging away. So the question you might ask is, “What mistakes did you make that you would do differently?” Several things come to mind, not necessarily mistakes, but choices I would make differently if I had a do-over. I don’t think I’m the only writer who has made these choices.

Here they are:

I wrote in a vacuum making the same mistakes over and over because I had no one to tell me I was head hopping, or that I was telling instead of showing. I also used passive verbs and purple prose.

Another thing I would do differently pertains to writer conferences—due to finances, I didn’t attend any until late in my journey. Writers conferences are great ways to network with other authors and meet agents and editors. And it’s great to be around like-minded people—people who get you when you talk about your characters like they are real people … because, to the author, they are.

I would also invest in more craft books. Maybe I couldn’t attend a conference, but I could have bought more craft books and studied them. I don’t know why I didn’t, perhaps because I didn’t know which ones to buy other than the Writer’s Digest books. And don’t get me wrong, they were good craft books, but there were others out there I didn’t know about, like Deb Dixon’s, Goal, Motivation, and Conflict and later, James Scott Bell’s Plot and Structure.

I would have found critique partners earlier. It wasn’t until I joined ACFW that I found out about critique partners! My early partners were brutal, but their advice helped me grow in my craft.

Because I didn’t quit, my seventeenth novel, Fatal Witness, releases February 6, 2024, on the tenth anniversary of my first release, Shadows of the Past. And that’s a God-thing. In parting, I want to encourage writers:

Never give up!

Continue to learn so that, when God opens a door, you can walk through it. What if I had quit at year thirty-one?

ABOUT FATAL WITNESS

Dani Collins sets out on a journey to uncover the secrets of her past and reclaim her true identity. But someone close to her is determined to keep the truth of what happened, all those years ago, hidden.

ABOUT PATRICIA BRADLEY

Patricia Bradley is the author of fifteen Inspirational Romantic Suspense and two sweet romance novels, all set in the South. The winner of a Selah award, and an Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award, she's been the keynote speaker at several conferences where she also teaches workshops on writing fiction.

She and her two rescue kitties call Corinth, Mississippi home, and when she's not writing, she likes to throw mud on a wheel to see what comes out.

Website: https://ptbradley.com https://www.patriciabradleybooks.com/

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