What helped get his detective novels noticed by publishers - Paul Leonard Williams, Tom Ray's Art Podcast Clip

What process helped this writer get his novel noticed when submitting it to publishers?

I met the writer Paul Leonard Williams on my podcast. Paul writes a detective novel series and he told me one of the things that he discovered that not only helped his writing but also helped it get noticed by publishers.

You write a whole book and now you're gonna put it out there. I don't know if you started with the publisher that you have or if you were putting stuff out there first?

I was very very lucky in that I had a friend who used to be in the industry.

He was a screener. So he was the guy that decides, does this go in the circular file or do we want to pay this attention.

So he told me some wonderful things that really helped me out.

First of all, you got to grab the screener's attention, the publisher's attention in the first two paragraphs. If you haven't they're probably not going to make it past the first page or the second page and you're forgotten about.

And he was my first line editor. So we developed this relationship of work.

I was telling him about the ideas for my book and he was like, "oh that sounds fantastic!"

He came in one day and goes, "how's your book come along?"

(I said) It's horrible. It's terrible. I'm not good at this.

So he said, "I don't want to read it. I want you to read it to me."

And so I did!

He went, "you're a fantastic storyteller, you just need a line editor. I'll be your line editor".

So we got into this thing where he'd have me read it to him first before he edited it so he could get a picture in his own head.

And he told me later when I would read (to him) there's a character father Dominic who is from Northern Ireland.

"I heard Father Dom's voice in my head!"

So that was a wonderful relationship to have while I was kind of learning, so it was easier for him to know what I was going for when he was editing.

Listen to the whole interview with Paul Leonard Williams https://www.tomrayswebsite.com/2022/05/paul-leonard-williams-writer.html

Artwork for the original Candy Land game by Milton Bradley from 1955.

I have a vintage Candy Land game from 1955 by Milton Bradley and I was about to sell it so I thought I would add it to my personal art history course concept I've been doing . I'm going to try and see if I can find out how this game was created, designed and why? Here is what I found out about this game https://candy-land.fandom.com/wiki/Candy_Land_Wiki Candy Land is a board game about children exploring a world made out of candy and other sweets that originally came out in 1949. In every version of the game, there are a group of children that go through Candy Land. In the earliest versions of the game, it was a realistically drawn boy and girl. Drawing of the Candy Land kids I did on my phone ☝ https://board-games-galore.fandom.com/wiki/Candy_Land The game was designed in 1948 by Eleanor Abbott , while she was recovering from polio in San Diego, California. It's rumored that Eleanor also did the original artwork but I didn't find anything that

To Do: Multitasking My Business, Music, and Comics

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A quick peek behind-the-scenes of a new webcomic series. Coming soon!

I've recently paused my usual diary comic to dedicate my attention to an exciting new project—a fiction webcomic series featuring two characters that may be familiar to my long-time followers. These characters, Bobert and the Monster have made appearances on my website before , and now they're taking center stage. I'm working diligently with the hope of launching the series shortly. In the meantime, I'd like to share this behind-the-scenes video of the drawing process for one of the upcoming pages. Stay tuned for more updates as I bring this creative vision to life.

New song! Variation witch

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Tom Ray

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