Others have covered “Nawlins” (saying that is a good way to get yourself labeled a tourist) and the strong Irish presence in the city. One society lady around the turn of the 19th century was especially well known for her bright red hair, so this wasn’t unheard of even 200 years ago. Now, given the enormous melting pot that New Orleans has become, it’s going to be completely unremarkable. Assuming this is a contemporary, neither a female cop nor an Irish one is going to get so much as a second glance.

I really, really recommend you go back and do some more research. Read as much as you can about New Orleans’ history– it is a unique and fascinating place, but the only way to understand it and avoid some of these glaring mistakes is to understand where it comes from. There isn’t enough here to know where your paranormal elements are coming from, but in particular if they are meant to be NOLA-specific, you absolutely have to have a strong feel for your setting that I feel is lacking in this excerpt.

Krakatoa: East of Java

Thanks for the B-52′s earworm, Julia! ;-)

Here are some of the technical problems: The comma splices are just horrific; there are a couple in every paragraph. I would reject based on that alone, if this submission crossed my desk.

The opening line, which pretty much everyone else has singled out as jarring, is also an inaccurate representation of any specific New Orleans dialect. Julie Smith does this accurately (though I’m not crazy about it, ever), and there are several very in-depth webpages by NO natives about it.

To me, it works better to put in representative sentence structures and word choices rather than to try to spell the sounds phonetically: “Hey, partner, where you at? I thought I’d pass by your office, but they said you was over to St. Bernard Parish” or similar.

“McDunna” is a HORRIBLE choice for a name, because it’s a misspelling of the much more common name “McDonough” (or “McDonagh”). Yes, I know that there are people whose last name that is (and it’s a famous Chicago bar as well), but that’s because someone–either the immigrant or an emigration official–misspelled it when the first bearer of the name came to the US. It’s not a logical variation of the Irish spelling, and it would drive me nuts to see it in a book.

Everyone else has already covered the whole “there are no Irish police officers in New Orleans” canard. It’s really important not to get this stuff wrong these days–editors all have Google now, so the days of Krakatoa: East of Java and other similar factual blunders are long gone.

Dianna McDunna

McDunna as a last name is just AWFUL in and of itself but the two triple syllable words with ‘nn’ and both ending in ‘a’ – bad bad combination.

And not every Irish name is a ‘Mc’ (or an ‘O’) btw – a quick google gives me this

http://www.ireland-information.com/heraldichall/irishsurnames.htm

What struck me the most about this sequence was its pace. It felt nearly stagnant to me. The lack of action makes the info-dumps feel more obvious than they might otherwise have been. I felt there was too much description of the setting, and too much time spent on the heroine thinking about what others thought about her – at a time when an experienced cop would be paying more attention to her upcoming meet. This issue, in addition to some of the other issues others have raised about representation of New Orleans cops, led me to not quite trust this aspect of the storytelling – which drew me out of the story entirely.

There are some very nice descriptions in this excerpt, but all things being equal, I much prefer to be dumped into the action – and if the heroine is a cop, I’m expecting a LOT of action. I wouldn’t give this story too many more pages to pick up the pace.

I would find this excerpt a lot more compelling if it started at “Beautiful, isn’t it?” – the meet with DeVega. You can find other opportunities to drop key backstory throughout the first few chapters.

You’ve got a great start here, and have received some great feedback. Keep going!

Provided I’d read past that line, as a book browser, the rarity of an Irish cop in New Orleans would have landed this book back on the shelf. Really? No. Also, I’m sick to death of red headed Irish women. The vast majority of Irish women I know ARE NOT red headed, but in Romancelandia? Wouldn’t you know, they practically all are.

Aside from that, there’s a lot of info dump, and the feisty heroine who gets crap from her coworkers because of her lady bits is SO very tired.

twelve years dealing with street gangs and street weirdness

Please, please cut out “street weirdness.” The phrase isn’t nearly specific enough, and it scans oddly.

I feel like I’m trashing on this, which isn’t my intention. I actually do like the author’s voice, but the page is so overladen with hackneyed tropes, I don’t have a lot of specific positive things to say. I’m interested in De Vega. I hope he’s the villain of the piece, because the gold stud earring? GAG.

And she would definitely have back up or at least have let someone know. They have tests to be detectives that weed out the TSTL ones.

Also, must all cops be Irish? Srsly.

Sorry for the rant. I probably should have said this at the top of the comment (especially since I hate being mean on these things, believe me I know how hard it is to put yourself out there), but the writing style seemed pretty good to me. The sentence structure started falling apart a bit when it got to the last couple of paragraphs, but otherwise, it worked for me as a reader.

I think I would pick this book up from the library if I saw it come out. If you fix the cop bits to be a little bit more accurate, I might — Maybe — buy it.

Oooh, unless she’s a vamp/were/whatever that’s doing supasecret paranormal stuff that she can’t let the precinct know about because paranormal critters aren’t known yet, so that’s why she doesn’t have back up?

I really liked it. Good luck, whoever you are!

One was that she was a red headed heroine. And I’m assuming she’s feisty.

I do like her voice, though I thought the comment that she was having a mental pity party was astute. I like that she comes off as naturally tough, just don’t sacrifice her to that.

A agree about the Nawlins, thing, as well.

Here’s my suggestion.

Have her out sightseeing. Have her not be a cop for a second, and have de Vega approach her, when she’s unprepared, unarmed, nervous but can’t show it, and a little scared because she can’t call for backup.

That will prevent the “she’s being stupid” thing. It will give you a chance to let her think about New Orleans and New York, and then her world will become really scary really quick.

Overall, this is the most potential I’ve seen in one of these as well.

So far nothing that pulls me into the universe, let alone the story. No big writing errors, just nothing compelling.

There are a lot of books out there about feisty women in mens’ worlds, and they not infrequently involve the heroine doing very stupid things in order to create some sort of plot.

A cop going out to meet a major criminal without any sort of back-up, or even the knowledge of her colleagues, certainly fulfils the stupidity requirement, but does the author really want to demonstrate on page 1 that her heroine deserves to be busted back to being a patrol officer?

I’m assuming not…

And I think there’s no question you are a skilled writer, I enjoyed the clarity of the writing. Relax your reader into it, this is good.

The only thing that sort of threw me off was:

“I was referring to the building, but I could be beautiful too. For a woman such as you I could be many things.”

I thought that was pretty cheesy, banal dialogue. It didn’t give me, really, any clues to what sort of person de Vega was, other than someone who liked to indulge in bad pick-up lines with red-headed cops. ;)

Anyway, this is the first Dear Author “First Page” that I’ve actually been able to read all the way through. I would definitely read more. Good luck!

It’s interesting how tastes differ. Except for the opening paragraph, I enjoyed this. I might change a few commas and some word choices here and there, but all in all, a good page that made me want to read more.

Mind you, I don’t think the opening paragraph should be removed, just reworked. To flow properly it may require reworking the beginning of the next paragraph to make it clear that she is remembering this conversation in her head.

Really? Seriously? Because the Irish flooded New Orleans about the same time they came pouring into New York in the mid-1800s. A lot of them died of various fevers, but a lot of them lived and stayed. The Irish Channel used to be the Irish neighborhood in NO, near the Garden District.

#researchfail.

A lot of people would stop reading there and then, including me…

Of course this is just me, but your Hn didn’t grab me at all. She came across, to me, like she was in the midst of a pity party.

She’s told she’s not shit.
She’ll go back to driving a patrol car.
She’s doubting what she’s doing.
She left NY because of someone else.
She can never go back because of that someone else.
She has enough self-doubt that she has to keep checking to make sure her gun is at her side.

She comes across as having very little backbone. I’m not big on those Hns though that’s just me.

One other thing, she thinks “the old Spanish fort” is one of her favorite places in NO, but she’s only been there a week and if she’s been working full time (and beyond which is common for detectives (I’m assuming she must be one)) how would she have time to ‘sight see’ the city?

You’re trying to stuff way too much information into the first page. Because you are, you’re not allowing yourself enough room to give the reader depth to anything there. It’s all little snapshots and could be much stronger if worked in later.

Where I thought the story got interesting was when de Vega showed up. Then it caught my attention. Up until then it was too much info and not enough to make me care.

Again as always, MHO

Good luck.