Editorial Comments
Manuscript Title: Condemn Not My Children
Author’s Name: Kasey Coory
Sample Edit Section: Pages 7-11 and an overview of the entire manuscript to facilitate the review.
Overall comments from the sample editor:
Date: 4/23/2015
Condemn Not My Children is a sweeping novel, spanning the years 1887 to 1963, taking place in several different countries and with a wide range of characters. What emerges is a tapestry of scandal revolving around different people in the church.
We see villains and victims, cover-ups and uncoverings. The story, while lengthy, is told at a good pace. I found myself intrigued, even as the action changed from place to place and person to person. The narrative takes no prisoners and pulls no punches in its unflinching look at the consequences of deviance, greed, and condemnation.
On a mechanical level, I found few grammatical errors. The manuscript is quite clean. The language you use is quite formal. Normally, if I encountered a sentence like this one in a novel—
The abrupt curtailing of exhilaration rattled his usually sedate persona, and it took a few moments
to comprehend and adjust to the unanticipated reaction of a presumed shared yearning.
—I would advise the author to write more simply, more plainly; but you make it work. Your word choices serve as a work of art, rather than just a vehicle for telling a story.
Readers who are prepared to invest some of their time and intellect into their literary pursuits will be rewarded with an emotionally honest, occasionally scandalous, and generally powerful piece of historical fiction.
Congratulations on your accomplishment.
Editor's Comment:
June 2, 2015
Condemn not my Children by Kasey Coory
Dear Kasey:
Thank you for the opportunity to edit Condemn not my Children. This novel, following a precedent set by Bernard Malamud’s The Assistant, and more recently Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex, plumbs the depths of human misery compounded by the rash, self-defeating actions taken by characters whose psyches have been damaged by one (or more) of an assortment of traumas, including rape, incest, and murder.
Your elegant and very skilled prose style enriches this complex family saga into one of extreme empathy for those affected by the tragedies of choice and circumstance, and this skill makes the book a sincere pleasure to read. I was thoroughly engrossed the entire time I worked with this text. Wonderful job!
Sandy Brown
Kaleicha Vilo:
I couldn't agree more – such a well written book highlighting the ‘knock-on’ effect that can happen when someone is so mistreated and then go on to have their own generations with the same pain filtering down the line...