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.

An Irish Country Girl - reading

Finished "An Irish Country Girl" by Patrick Taylor. I have in mind a story I would like to write that includes fae-folk, so in the meantime, I picked this one up from the library. It would've been several hundred words shorter with the word "so" removed! Unfortunately, the story only started talking about the Sidthe ("shee"), and then for much of it, they were no more than a bit part. It was otherwise a love story bordering on romance novel. The ending was much like the ending of some stories I've written - far too short and abrupt! All in all, it wasn't bad.


I should also mention - this is fourth in a series, and reports are that other books in the series are better, though this one stands up fine on its own.

Have Space Suit-Will Travel - reading

Finished "Have Space Suit-Will Travel" by Robert A. Heinlein. What can I say? It covered a lot of ground but never went anywhere, if that makes sense. It was okay.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - reading

Finished "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson. If the previous book I finished caused me to lose all faith in the genre, this book restored it. I had no idea what to expect when I started, and found the back cover text to be somewhat misleading, which caused me to take a little while to warm up to the story. But after that, apart from getting a bit bogged down in a somewhat biblical "who begat whom" section, the story flowed well and escalated well throughout. It also tied up loose ends for the most part and still left the door open for the sequel.