Sometimes, only bad guys can beat the Devil…Victim Souls by Andrew Terech

"The characters are interesting, funny and engaging. The story sweeps along at breakneck pace. I couldn't put this book down. It's a thrilling romp, definitely worth the read (which I did in almost one sitting). Highly recommended." - Amazon

Description: 

Sometimes, only bad guys can beat the Devil… 

The plan is simple: get the money and deliver the car. What could possibly go wrong? 

What can’t? 

Things start to go south when Sam Drake realizes that his brother Johnny is hiding something, a secret about Sam’s troubled childhood that goes beyond his most feverish nightmares… 

Then Johnny’s girlfriend, Ash, starts sending Sam the kind of mixed signals that can only lead to big trouble… 

As the trio of small time crooks falls deeper into an abyss of betrayal and violence, they will discover that the greatest danger they face is not of this world. 

With everything he believes about himself and the world around him shattered, Sam will become the unlikely champion in a battle with true evil, a fight to save a soul that has already been forfeited to darkness. 

His own.

GUEST POST

Benefits and Drawbacks: 

People reading your novel before it is complete 

If you’re a writer then you know the feeling of wanting others to read your work. Nothing is more satisfying than getting positive feedback on something that you’ve poured your heart and soul into. So why would you ever want to keep all that brilliance to yourself? 

Undoubtedly, there are many benefits to getting feedback on your writing, but be careful how you solicit this feedback and who you’re getting it from. Sometimes unfinished work needs to be kept close to the vest or else you may risk losing the fuel that ignited the project to begin with. 

I’m currently a moderator at the Central Phoenix Writing Workshop. It’s a free social group organized through Meetup.com that brings authors together to share their work to get feedback. It’s an amazing concept and I’ve been a part of the workshop since 2012. If you don’t know of anything like this in your area I’d suggest looking it up and/or starting one yourself. There are a lot of us writers out there and we can only benefit by coming together. 

Let’s say you’re going to have someone read your latest chapter: 

Most people rely on friends and family as beta readers. For instance, I frequently had my wife read my writing before I found the writing workshop. And guess who thought he was the most amazing writer ever? Now, that’s not to say my wife couldn’t be critical of my writing (I have the emotional scars to prove it) but she, by her very nature and relationship to me, is not objective enough to be my only source of feedback. The point being, either don’t ask your friends and family for feedback at all or make sure you’re getting feedback from other, more objective sources as well. Otherwise, you’ll never get all that smoke out of your ass long enough to actually improve your writing. 

In my case, I also have the writing workshop where I can get much more objective feedback from other writers. In the beginning, I brought in chapters from a novel I was working on, and although I got positive feedback on the content my grammar, sentence structure, voice, etc. got torn to pieces by a group of experienced writers. This continued until I decided that it wasn’t even worth fixing the novel I had been working on, and I started another one from scratch. I’ve since gone back to read that original novel and it WAS as bad as I remembered. 

One of the biggest benefits of getting feedback on my work in progress was that it made me a much better writer. I learned basic things such as passive voice, maintaining a consistent tense, proper use of dialogue tags, and scenery description. If the extent of your experience in writing is reading plus high school English plus maybe a creative writing class in college then these are likely going to be issues in your writing. 

What are the drawbacks? 

First off, you need to be open to feedback. If you’re handing over something you wrote in anticipation of praise, then don’t bother. By all means, work your butt off to perfect it before sharing, but perfect to you doesn’t mean perfect. The best part about receiving feedback is growing your knowledge and improving. If you’re not interested in being criticized then feedback will only hinder you. 

Stephen King suggests in his book phenomenal book On Writing that one should never let anyone read their book until it is complete. He argues that outside opinions can distort the story and hurt your original vision. Far be it from me to disagree with one of the most prolific writers in American history, but here I go… 

If you’re as good of a writer as Stephen King then yes, you probably don’t want unneeded opinions muddying up your vision before it’s complete. However, if you’re like the person I mentioned earlier there’s probably some strong fundamentals that you need to learn and it’s going to be a lot better learning them up front then during the editing process. 

Where I will agree with Stephen King is that too many opinions on your story can royally screw you up. I can’t tell you how many times people told me what they think my character “should have” done or that they think it would be “cool” if this happens. As a new writer I took a little too much of this advice and found myself writing 5 different stories, none of which were the one I started with. I started trying to please my audience, punctuating each chapter with a climactic moment not realizing how ridiculous that was when I put them all together in novel form. 

Touché Mr. King. However, I still think there’s a lot of value in this type of critique if you know what to listen to. 

After my confidence grew in my writing, I learned what feedback I should learn from: 

Grammar errors 

Continuity issues 

A section that people were unanimously confused on 

Redundant or confusing word choices 

Factual mistakes (i.e. having a police officer critique your depiction of police procedures) 

And I learned what to politely accept, while secretly tuning out: 

Suggestions about how a character should: speak, act, or think 

Plot suggestions 

Opinionated statements that start something like this: “I don’t like it when…” 

A lot of this is unique to my situation, but there are some key concepts here that are useful for any writer because the process of writing a novel can be a long and grueling one (especially when you get to the editing stage). 

You can only benefit from getting solid objective feedback from multiple sources, assuming they are: knowledgeable and not only family and close friends. 

Only seek criticism if you’re willing to admit that your writing can improve. 

Learn to graciously accept all feedback, but don’t internalize every idea or let other people’s ideas de-rail the story you already have in mind.

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About the author: 

Andrew’s a horror fiction writer who is also a massive fan of the genre. He’s been writing short stories and working on his novel for over 5 years. He has several short stories published, as well as some editing credits. He moderates a writing workshop in Phoenix, AZ where he’s been exposed to many different forms of fiction, which have broadened his influences. He aims to write stories that creep out his readers, while offering well-developed, rich characters they can sink their teeth into. He’s also a fan of experimenting with form and structure to create something uniquely my own. 

Andrew grew up on Long Island in New York, and has lived in Arizona for the past 7 years. His professional background is in psychology where he’s carved out a nice career for himself. However, writing has always been his passion. 

Currently, he’s hard at work, developing additional content to publish. He hopes to find an audience that loves the genre, and is up for a good scare. 

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