Why the Light?

You might be wondering why I have featured a picture of a lighthouse on this blog page. The fundamental and easy answer is simply that I like them. In my last post, I listed some of the most aesthetically pleasing places on the planet. These venerable and regrettably disappearing nautical landmarks and the locales in which they reside richly deserve inclusion in that company. Why the light? By the Light is the name of my yet-to-be-agented novel. So you will understand the title’s meaning, here’s the initial or hook paragraph that I generally use in my agent queries:

My completed 72,000-word manuscript, By the Light, is a fabric of suspense highlighted with threads of romance. A man and woman are drawn into the pursuit of a serial killer that leaves two nude corpses at the foot of the Biloxi Light. The man is a profiler who has resigned from the FBI and returned to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to care for his Alzheimer’s-stricken father. The woman is an Atlanta crime reporter and award-winning author whose curiosity is piqued when she spots a wire report of the double homicide in her hometown. They have a past. As they discover couple by couple at lighthouse after lighthouse, so does a murderer that eliminates practitioners of infidelity and by signature comes to be known as Rose.

The lighthouse pictured here was built on the Mighty Mississippi at Hannibal, Missouri, to commemorate the hundredth birthday of Mark Twain. It was originally illuminated from the Oval Office by FDR. Years later after needed refurbishment, it was again illuminated from the White House by JFK. More recently after further restoration, it was relit from the Oval once more by Bill Clinton. Since the villain in my story kills couples involved in extramarital carnality and enjoys taunting his pursuers, it was a natural that he leave the remains of a philandering televangelist and his squeeze du jour by this light with storied connections to three presidents between whom infidelity is an additional common thread.

If these peeks at By the Light intrigue you, please tell the most effective literary agent on your Christmas card list about it. Ask them to light a fire under a suspense/thriller-needy publisher on their Christmas card list. Cranking up a bucket brigade here might help my story earn its dustcover. Thank you for your support. My apologies to Bartles and Jaymes are sincere.