D L Richardson

Human beings never cease to amaze me. I walk down the street and everyone wants to pet my dog. She's adorable, loves attention, people love petting her. But if I were to ask for money to pet her, what would they say? I don't know. They'd probably think I was weird. Yet Cat Cafe's are popping up all over the world, and people pay to pet animals that, unlike dogs, take great joy from tearing flesh off arms.

I've had cats as pets. I say 'had' cats as pets because one does not own a cat, one 'has' a piece of nitro glycerine that can go off given the slightest change in atmospheric pressure or a slight jolt in equilibrium or simply because it is designed to explode.

Most of my cats were nice. One was a rescue cat, a ginger tabby I called J.R, and once I got him used to me he was loyal only to me. He used to curl up on my lap at night and he almost break my jaw with his head-rub kisses. He was a sweetie. It broke my heart when he got cancer of his kidneys…

It's accepted that writers need to have a strong grasp on grammar, punctuation, dialogue, story structure, while writing their novel. Yet once the book is finished we need to know a whole new language called publishing speak. Today's post is about the terms you'll hear or read about to do with your novel once it's finished and prior to publishing. Some you may already know, some you may not.

Elevator Pitch This is not where you pitch somebody off an elevator.

Imagine you get into an elevator with a New York literary agent, you have 10 seconds to convince him or her to read your draft. Elevator pitch is your book summed up in 25 words or less. Start doing it now. A good way to do this is to write a pen elevator pitch that will fit on Twitter. If it doesn't fit, tighten your storyline until it does.

Example: Harry Potter is a young wizard who learns that the evil warlock who killed his parents is coming back from the underworld to kill him.

The above example comes in …