Although I have a few good fish stories, fishing was never my thing. I don’t have the patience to spend five minutes baiting a hook then three hours waiting for a fish to come along. Sure, there’s the more active fishing where the arms wear out from constantly tossing out a line and reeling it back in.

Only to find some fish came along and stole the bait.

Other times, the fish couldn’t care less about my little offering.

I figured out there’s another form of fishing I despise. Well, not the fishing so much, but the bait. I can’t seem to come up with a good hook for “Traitors.” An author who will be attending the conference offered to give advice on hooks. I presented two iterations, and both left her befuddled.

The author basically said why would anyone care about the protagonist who’s an assassin? What makes her the protagonist? In the second shot, I added that my protagonist is telepathic, but again that didn’t do much for the hook. The author asked why the telepathy is important? Does it help or hurt the protagonist?

How can I answer that in one 25-word-maximum sentence?

I’ve written so many one-two sentence hooks I couldn’t begin to count them. At one point I got so frustrated I wanted to throw my hands up and say, “I quit! It’s not worth attempting to get published if I’m this stressed over one teensie sentence.”

As with all temper tantrums, however, I gave myself a moment (or fifty) to calm down. I purged on an electronic notebook, and was able to come up with what, I hope, is something better. Although I’m more than a little nervous to ask the author to give it one more look. I don’t think I could take the disappointment.

Today anyway. Tomorrow? Who knows.

I’ll give you a chance to weigh in, however. Tell me, does this pique your interest?

Given a Bible by a man she’s about to kill, a telepathic assassin discovers God’s forgiveness. However, redemption demands she betray her friends and a military who considers her more weapon than human being.

Not quite the 25 word sentence, but that’s as far as I could get with this frustrated brain.

Did I mention I hate fishing?