Ray thanks Indu for her talk at our November meeting.

Author Indu Sundaresan, writer of "Feast of Roses" and "The Twentieth Wife",  talked about her experiences with publishing. Indu has been writing for over 10 years now with two acclaimed novels to her credit. "The Twentieth Wife" won the prestigious Washington State Book Award.

An agent is important to your career. They know who is accepting what type of writing, and can handle negotiations and smooth over problems with publishers. How do you select an agent to contact? Look at books similar to yours and see who the author thanks. Usually an agent will be on the list. These people will have the contacts for this type of book. You can try to self-publish but publishers have the marketing muscle to make your book successful. Agents can make suggestions about your book. This is good because it shows they have read it and will be able to market it better because they know your work.

Writing must come from within yourself. Do the writing first, then critiques and help books will make sense. No one can really teach you to write - you must have written to understand the suggestions. Then you can know what critiques to take to heart and which to reject.

It's important to have a short statement of what your book is about for the marketing of it. If you are familiar with screenwriting, this is called a logline there - .your story in one sentence. Get to the heart of what your story is about. This will help you clarify your writing and editing.