I will be attending the Left Coast Crime Writers Conference at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco. It Starts Feb. 25 and runs until March 1. As you can guess, it focuses on books (fiction and non-fiction) about crime.
Learn more here: https://leftcoastcrime.org/
The location changes each year and this year it is in San Francisco. Check the web page to see if one of your favorite writers will be there. It would be a great chance to meet and talk with them. Hope to see you there.

Thanks for the question. I first became aware of the disdain for prologues years ago so I went back and changed my prologue to chapter one. The next four books I read had prologues. Needless to say, this resolved nothing for me.

When a group of writers gather there is always the risk that the topic of prologues will come up. If that happens, I try to switch the discussion to current politics or whether the Catholic church is a cult to prevent discussions from getting heated.

Why is there so much push-back on prologues? Possibly because so many writers use them for the wrong reasons. Ideally, a prologue contains something mysterious or suspenseful that makes the reader think, I need to find out why this happened.

Years ago, author Sue Coletta (See the acknowledgement section in my book) listed some reasons for correctly using a prologue.

Reasons for using a prologue are not;

Do I really care one way or the other about using prologues? Until recently I didn’t think so.

Speaking solely from my experience as a reader, the primary justification for using a prologue is to improve the reader’s enjoyment of the story. Which, of course, echoes the reasons for anything done in constructing a manuscript. Regardless of what CMOS suggests concerning formatting, punctuation, incomplete sentences, etc., I will deviate if I think it will make the scene clearer/more enjoyable for the reader. I’d like to suggest that using a prologue has nothing to do with the mechanics of writing but is a matter of your story structure. Use it if it helps you tell a better story.

Consider a mystery where present day murders are linked by similarities to a string of murders in 1940s New Orleans. Rather than inserting a scene to have a detective remember it and notice the link (or have someone remember it for him) and have to describe it to the team, etc. and stop the action, those long-ago murders might be a candidate for a prologue. The prologue does not necessarily have to include your lead character or any recurring character for that matter. But at some point it does have to provide insight into your main story. A prologue needs to have a purpose for being there just like every other part of a story.

Where does that leave us? Just shut-up and call it chapter one? If the prologue was written for the wrong reasons, that may be the best advice. As a reader, seeing the title prologue, when used properly, alerts me (remember the bit above about reader enjoyment) that this is a special part of the text and should be considered in a different manner. Simply labeling it chapter one might rob the reader of that opportunity.

Some readers claim they never read prologues because they are often poorly written. That might be true. But if the prologue is poorly written, I’d suspect that the rest of the novel is trash-can worthy as well. I’m considering poor writing to be a different case than a justification for not using it. Some don’t read prologues because they’re not considered part of the real story. If that’s your experience, you be you. I’m not going to force you to like cauliflower either.

Given this, it’s entirely reasonable to accept that, if the majority of prologues a reader has encountered were done without valid justification, they may have developed a negative opinion of them. If the converse was the case, the reader may believe prologues have their place.

To simply say that a section of text beneath the heading, prologue, is bad, without considering its content, while allowing that same text would be somehow acceptable if the heading had been chapter one, indicates a personal bias and not a well-reasoned understanding of writing.

Comments welcome.

In November My two fantastic daughters surprised me by organizing a launch party for Dead by Monday. I hadn’t planned on having one because I had no idea what it entailed.
Fortunately, things like that don’t slow my daughters down. They arranged a venue, decorated it with balloons coordinated with colors of the book cover, created plot-specific decorations, printed invitations and sent them to friends, provided world class munchies, and were the perfect hosts.

Welcome! This is how guests were greeted. Classy, huh.

My daughters possibly strong-arming a patron who wandered in (She may have been lost)

One of the food tables they prepared

Pen at the ready, I’m ready for the first customer

And here he is.

When it was over, here I am being asked for my charge card

In October, Booksmart, my local indie bookstore hosted a booksigning for local authors. As it was my first, I didn’t know what to expect but it was a lot of fun. As you can see from the image below, there are a lot of other authors in the area.

These are some of the books written by the showcased authors. I bought several although my ‘To-be-read’ book list is already quite long.

In August of this year my first novel, Dead By Monday, was published. Look for it on the shelves of your favorite book store.

If you don’t see it they can special order it and probably get it to you in just a couple days. It can also be ordered online through Amazon, Barnes and Nobel or your favorite source. It’s available in hardcover, paperback or Kindle ebook. It may be a while before it’s available through your local library. I hope you enjoy it.

After you’ve read it I would greatly appreciate it if you could post an honest review on one of the following online sites.

Amazon.com
https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Monday-CR-Foster/dp/B0FN6Y6HGH/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.-UJA3GATIsO3Z52I8e_DBfWmVsYET54o5q3m3AD55aoJ81DePQIzqN5Ps2_2sCoOXG2khypfA74DKcltXTbLqaVyT5mXz1_Rh6g7Zn1ZHpBDgkgjp7CaNUdld1BdErsLJYNOd04mJLfsA9cCOSP6PA.oJFqHpzyccF6lvYnOaQ-UFbQCBs1AuvYt__dfx8iNd8&dib_tag=se&keywords=dead+by+monday+foster&qid=1764614155&sr=8-1

Barnes and Nobel (You will need a B&N account)
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dead-by-monday-cr-foster/1148092938?ean=9798886798913

Goodreads.com
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/240424231-dead-by-monday