First Draft to Published

My newly released book entitled The Simpering, North Dakota Literary Society , based on the stories of six female geniuses bumbling their way through the grim era of 1919. They’re trying to make sense of the practical in their time. More importantly, they’re trying to grab their share of the happiness they deserve using only the tools they’ve got. So what? How can you and I, as serious readers, buy a book like that when the characters are often cheerful, their stories improbably optimistic, and even their names are so stilted that to hear them in the physical world would be astronomically rare? Where does one get off approaching such a tough era through humor and gentle irony when there’s so much terrifying stuff going on? If I’m going to write faithfully to the condition of the world, shouldn’t l start dark and descend from there? Shouldn’t I use a degree of shock more appropriate to the gravity of the day? Wouldn’t anything else be patently dishonest? It’s a problem, because I don’t...