Kristen Lamb, an author, editor and writing coach recently addressed this question on her blog when she wrote about The Seven Deadly Sins of Prologues . Since I write prologues for most of my mysteries, I hopped on over to see what sins I was committing. Being a good Catholic girl raised with the guilt-syndrome, all I had to do was see the word "sin" and I broke out in a cold sweat. What a relief it was to find out that prologues are okay for certain books and within certain parameters. Some agents and editors still say prologues are out, period, and some readers skip them entirely when reading, although I can't imagine why. When I get a new book I read everything including the copyright page. I want to find every trace of blood, sweat, and tears that a writer put into the book, but maybe that's just me. For my Seasons Mystery Series , the books start with a prologue, mainly because that's the way the stories came to me. The prologues are written from the ...

Jenny attached the manuscript to an email and breathed a sigh of relief. Her eyes felt heavy and her back ached, but she was used to the discomfort of working long hours. Usually she enjoyed her job, but every once in a while a writer came along who challenged and frustrated her. Rose Felman's writing was a nightmare of incorrect tense usage and bad punctuation, but her dialog was sharp, the plotting fast-paced and filled with tension and the characters were so real that it was hard not to get involved in the story. Jenny was always tired when she finished editing a Rose Felman book. The excitement she felt after reading a Felman novel lingered, and she opened her instant messenger. She was sure to get a reply soon. Rose Felman hated seeing her work marked by the "editor's pencil." She fought to keep her manuscripts intact and unedited, arguing over every little correction. Most of the publisher's editors hated working on a Felman manuscript; hated the shouting an...