The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - reading

Finished "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" by Stieg Larsson. It seemed as though the author was gearing up for a fourth book, but then decided to put all the content into the third since there were so many things repeated in this one. I'm not necessarily talking about the switch from one character's perspective to another's. I'm talking more about the explanations of things that are well established.

As to the story itself, my suspension of disbelief was challenged here and there, but the events were well done. There were some quite shocking moments, and (without giving too much away) the style of the story was different than the previous two books. There were a couple characters who behaved in a way I did not expect, to their detriment. I either expected more from them or expected there would be hints more in line with their ultimate decisions and actions.

And a lot was packed into the epilogue. It seemed like the author had a scene in mind and couldn't let it go.

The Girl Who Played with Fire - reading

Finished "The Girl Who Played with Fire" by Stieg Larsson. This one was a bit more escapist than the first, but still a good story. The ending wasn't so much an ending as it was a break between chapters. I picked up the sequel right away.

Scribophile and "Following the First Star" part 2

Overnight I received two more critiques of what I posted to Scribophile. The first of the two HATED the piece but offered several legitimate criticisms. My answer back was that it was about time someone hated my writing! He acknowledged that his critique might have been a bit harsh (it was). But it is nice to get critical feedback from someone I don't know and who isn't afraid to point out things that are wrong. This same user then critiqued something that I had written a critique for, and immediately contradicted two things I mentioned. It's a bit frustrating, but shouldn't change how I use the site. I am interested in getting my work out there among folks who can help me improve.

The second overnight reviewer was far friendlier and also had a lot of good criticisms, done in a far more positive light.

The question now becomes: how do I manage making changes to my story based on this feedback? Since I don't really work well on-screen - strange I know since I do that for my job - I'd like to print out their critiques, but that would be 32 pages long! (And would need to be in color, I think.) I might be able to pull something together through Word's "compare documents" feature.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter - reading

Finished "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" by Jeff Lindsay. I'm a big fan of the Showtime show and in my mind, Michael C. Hall *is* Dexter. I felt a bit impatient as I went through the story because it was going over familiar ground. The ending was very different, though, and now I want to read more of the novels!

Scribophile and "Following the First Star"

"Following the First Star" is the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2010. I have recently been working on a second draft of it. I actually made a change where what was chapter 1 and chapter 2 before is now the prologue. The unfortunate side effect is that now the prologue is 6,000+ words long! (I'm still actually debating on whether it is a good idea or not.)

Scribophile is a web-based forum where writers can post work for others to critique. In order to post something for critique, you have to critique other people's work to earn 5 Karma points (or become a paying member of the site, but we all know how cheap I am).

You can see where this is going. I posted the first HALF of the prologue of "Following the First Star" - essentially what was originally Chapter 1 - to Scribophile. I have so far gotten one reviewer suggesting I look again at the point of view I used. This is mildly humorous since a review I did recently talked about having difficulty establishing the point of view of someone else's story.

Anyway, this is a new experiment. I've seen some good reviews on Scribophile, and am hoping I get some decent feedback from there.