Writing Style

Surprisingly, Ikons: Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker was well received by an audience I did not anticipate -- women.  Somehow they found it to be a romance novel.  I do not understand how this happened since I do not consider myself romantic at all.  All I wanted to do was tell the story of the people who risked everything, albeit they had little, to come to a totally different world to make a better life for their wives and children.  The story should be familiar to any decedent of immigrants who identifies with the foreign words, foods and places.  Everyone has ancestors who endured hardship, insult, and heartbreak to bring us the lives we now lead.  We owe them enough to tell their story.

Sue Grafton of the The Antioch Writers Conference and members of my writing groups influenced my writing style.  Thanks to Ms Grafton, I always try to use strong verbs and nouns and shy away from adverbs unless absolutely necessary.  She and a gifted writer named Rik Newman, convinced me every action has an associated verb and there are dozens of way to describe walking, looking, standing, etc. without attaching an adverb.  I also learned to end each sentence with its main thought.  But these are just mechanics, how do you write a story someone will read.

My favorite historical-fiction writer is Leon Uris and I would like to do nothing better than emulate his prose.  I chose using the third person, omniscient and told my characters' story from multiple points of view, mostly Massey and Akulina's.  It's a relay race where each character carries the plot for a time before handing it off to the next.  Since Ikons is historical fiction, I added narration describing events outside the sphere of the principle characters.  In Banners and Slogans, I made use of newspaper articles and wire reports to fill in the reader about the era.  Because Ikons was never meant for a wide audience, I included anything I thought was interesting.  The result was more than I expected.

Ikons consists of 21 chapters.  When buying a book, I'll thumb through and check out the index or the chapter headings.  Usually, the they consist of Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, ... Boring.  I thought I would give my book an edge by having alluring chapter titles.  I used quotes from within each chapter and hoped they captured the novel's content as well as the buyer's curiosity.

Examples of my chapter headings are:

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Chapter 4: "Why Does the Hen Run From the Rooster?". 4

Chapter 6: “Everyone Has a Cousin in America". 4 
Chapter 8: "An Act of Moral Turpitude"

Chapter 9: "We Go Rock-a-dale" 
C. 4

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Chapter 20: "Mama, Mama, Help Me". 4

Chapter 21: "I Saw Skulls"

Whether this helped or not, I really can't say, but I thought it was cool.  Now armed with a two hundred plus page Word document, I began my search for a publisher.

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