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