That is very good. I am a lawyer, and I have to write briefs. I have written briefs for the Michigan Court of Appeals arguing why the order of the Michigan Public Service Commission ought to be upheld. In my office we use the system that the Appellate Division has set for us, utilizing Brian Garner's ideas on how to write persuasively. Your proposal outline seems to follow a lot of what we have to do in brief writing, framing the issue and writing the argument to tell the court why we should win before they even read the supporting argument.

This is a good balance to the blithering idiocy of Academentia in the side lines. Too bad that nothing you say here could ever apply to the tenured numbskulls who have no language to edit.

Yup. That's what Jane Dystel told me except not nearly as condensed.

As a former tradpubbed writer and current Kindling authopreneur, I believe the future is digital. Books are lovely but the business isn't. It's broken for midlist authors. Because of the self-inflicted damage done by publishers and agents, the door was flung open for Amazon to step in. The Big Six still don't get what's happening.

John Grisham and Joanne K. Rowling approve... NOT!

One of the basics of engineering is to avoid having a single point of failure. A single editor acting as a gateway between the book and the outside world is bad design. OK, maybe there was no choice in the past, but now we don't have to suffer it. Now, don't get the wrong ideas here: Book publishers are a good thing. What I'm saying is, if an author is fated to fail, let it be because the public doesn't like his stuff, not because one single, solitary editor didn't. Self-publish your first and second book, and then, if you strike online fame, get it published the old, hardcopy way.

I got a compliment from my daughter, after she read 'Boy', by Roald Dahl.

"It was good. Funny, too. But not as interesting as your life, mom."

I should be as Dull as Dahl and lucky to be published.

Bless you.

Jewel, I hope that your daughter can use Dahl as a mentor and mine your stories for raw material.

As long as she isn't tempted to outdo her mother, or reenacted scenes from my life, I'm okay with that.