Prologues and epilogues: a good idea?

Prologue and Epilogue. Do they have a use? Should they be used? Can you have one without the other?

What an interesting topic and one I hadn’t really thought about since neither is a permanent part of my writer’s toolbox. I have used the prologue twice, in both instances when only a short blurb was necessary to set the rest of the book.

In T’s Trial, I needed to show the hero’s depravity and ego in order for his redemption to be all the more worthy. In Wedding Belle Blues, I needed an intro to the five part book set-up and to give it a fairy tale entry, a ‘once upon a time’ lead-in that, of course, totally falls apart before the first chapter is ended!

I’ve used an epilogue only once in order to tie up all the loose ends of One Year Past Perfect. I needed to skip time, which seems to be a main purpose of epilogues, to show the Happily Ever After for all the parties concerned.

Can you have one without the other? Well, I obviously think so.

The only time I get a bit sideways with prologues is when they give us a terrific hero/heroine in distress moment and then—wham!—take it away from us by going back a day or two. Or a year. Yes, it grabs my attention. Sometimes, it holds it. Not guaranteed. Now this happens a lot in episodic TV also, when you think you must have missed an episode because you don’t remember the characters having been left dangling from a rope over a canyon with a train about to cross the bridge they’re affixed to. Then, it says, ’24 hours earlier.’ I can handle that transgression a bit better. And, of course, being TV, it’s over in an hour, not 300 pages later.

Please check out the other participants in this blog tour, all answering the question of prologues and epilogues.

Participants:

Margaret Fieland
Skye Taylor
Dr. Bob Rich
Marci Baun
A.J. Maguire
Diane Bator
Victoria Chatham
Anne Stenhouse
Helena Fairfax
Beverley Bateman
Connie Vines
Rachael Kosinski Rhobin Courtright

A special promotion for One Year Past Perfect

I'll be featured as a new release--or rather, One Year Past Perfect will be featured as a new release--at Free Kindle Books and Tips tomorrow. In honor of such, I've set the Kindle price at 99 cents through the weekend. Here's your chance to get a peek at a modern take on Goldilocks and the Three Bears and a scandalous diary they're all reading! Check it out here!

One Year Past Perfect is out!

My next single-title contemporary romance, One Year Past Perfect, is now available in the Kindle store and will be available on the Nook within a few days. Think of it as a modern riff on Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The back cover blurb:

"Dr. Katti Thompson arrives in Honolulu to not only settle her great-aunt's estate but also to find the older woman's scandalous diary. If there are family secrets hidden within, Katti wants to read them while sitting on the deck of the beach house she's inherited. But when she arrives, she finds the house occupied by three handsome Latin men--and they are reading the diary. The solution is obvious: Katti moves in as the new housekeeper.

Widower Cesar Osorio has risen from valet's son on a Costa Rican coffee plantation to international fame as a singer and performer. His albums have sold millions but he wants this hotel gig to be his last. Now he just has to find the nerve to tell his brother-in-law and manager. It would help if his attention wasn't diverted by the new housekeeper who acts like she owns the place.

One may be too old, one may be too young, but the one with the sad smile… he might be just right, even if, at thirty-six, Katti is one year past perfect"