Tomorrow (Saturday, June 25th), I have a “Meet the Author” chat scheduled on Goodreads, from 1pm to 6pm EST. Basically, I’ll be hanging out there, waiting to answer any questions people might have about my stories or life as a famous soon-to-be-fabulously-wealthy author.
If you’d like to join me, follow this link and click on the chat with my name on it. You’ll have to register with Goodreads, but it’s free and it’s not a bad site to have an account on, anyway, if you like to read.
This has been a very up and down week for me. Finishing a novel is always a combination of relief that it’s finally done (the first draft, anyway), exhilaration that this might be a great novel, and anxiety about the fact that it might actually suck.
My husband, Erich, has learned to avoid reading my work as soon as I’ve finished it, because I’m far too emotionally volatile and defensive about it. My first reaction to anything he says that’s critical is, “What are you talking about? I thought it was perfect! You said you loved me!!!”
So he prefers to give my stories a wide berth, until I’m a little less wrapped up in them.
On the other hand, I do tend to send the stories out to friends for feedback right away. Since they can’t see me marching out to the back yard with the intent to build a volcano and throw myself in, because they e-mailed me that my dialog sounds like it came from an episode of Scooby Doo*, I have a little time to calm down and respond to their e-mail without the melodrama. It’s not that I can’t take criticism — it’s just that I’m prone to theatrics.
By That Sin Fell the Angels is actually getting some great feedback from readers, so far. There have been some valid criticisms to take into account for the next draft, but overall the reaction has been very positive and encouraging.
On the other hand, We’re Both Straight, Right? was released by Dreamspinner Press on Wednesday, and the reception has been somewhat mixed. After an initial 5-star rating from a reader, someone else gave it 3 stars a few hours later. Then it got hit with a 2-star review from a reader who said it was “okay,” but she didn’t really like it.
*sigh*
Well, it’s only been two days. Maybe it will get some more good reviews. I don’t think any professional reviewers have had a look at it yet. But I was spoiled with my first two publications, The Christmas Wager and The Meaning of Vengeance. Both got a lot of good reviews right away, and the few bad ratings kind of came in under the radar.
On the other hand, I was afraid that We’re Both Straight, Right? might be too crude for the M/M audience. Unlike my two previous stories through Dreamspinner, the dialog is raunchy and the characters are realistic college guys — which means they’re occasionally sexist, not always terribly sensitive and one has a pretty low-brow sense of humor. There is a subtle distinction between M/M romance and gay romance, and it’s not in the level of raunchy sex — it’s in the crass behavior that gay men often find sexy, but women often find repugnant.**
Still, some (female) readers have liked these characters and found the romance to be sweet, so maybe there’s hope.
I suppose I should give it a month to see how the general reception is, before I give up writing forever, change my name to Brother Iocabus and become a trappist monk.
*NOTE — I was, in fact, told this once. But by an editor, rather than a reader.
**NOTE — Okay, that’s a broad generalization. I’m sure some women like crude men and I’m even more certain that many men find crude behavior in a guy repugnant. But I often find M/M romances written by women to have main characters that seem overly…polished…to me.
This novel really wiped me out. It wasn’t fun. It was more of a purging of all the religious crap I had to deal with as a teenager, and the turmoil I felt, trying to reconcile my sexuality with what the Bible told me. I had to stop several times, during the year it took to write the novel, and put it aside, so I could breathe again. But in the end, I feel that I’ve produced something verging on the poetic and beautiful.
Readers may not feel the same — they may feel that it’s cornball, melodramatic, or (worse!) dull. But it felt beautiful, when I wrote it, and hard to express, and emotionally upsetting, and a host of other emotions. It felt like art.
Which may make it crap, to the rest of the world. We’ll see. I did get some very positive feedback from my friend, Claire, who loved it. So maybe it’s good. I’m still waiting on other people’s comments.
In the meantime, I have so many Bible verses kicking around in my head, I feel vaguely nauseous. Time to move on to something completely different for a while.
Filed under Drama, Writing, Young Adult
So, after all that talk about getting back to work on my cyberpunk stories, what ended up grabbing me instead was my drama about teen suicide and fundamentalism, By That Sin Fell the Angels.
It’s a good novel, in my opinion. I picked it up again and immediately got caught up in it, unable to put it down until I got to where I’d left off, just before the end. Since then, I’ve written a little over 2,000 words (about two days’ work) and I’m within a chapter of the finish. It will probably have an epilogue.
But after regarding it as a YA novel for the past year or so, I’m beginning to wonder if it really is. The story is told from three points of view: Jonah, a teenager who was friends with the kid who killed himself; Terry, a teacher at the high school; and Isaac, the fundamentalist minister whose son killed himself. All of these are narrated in 3rd person.
When I’m writing the story from Jonah’s point of view, it feels very much like a YA novel. But not so much, when I’m writing from Terry’s or Isaac’s point of view. So can a novel be considered a YA novel, when only one-third of it is told from a teenager’s point of view? I’m not sure. But if it’s an adult novel, I’m at a loss where to send it. Because the issues it deals with are more of interest to teens, I think, than adults. Though, of course, that isn’t strictly true. I still read YA novels for fun, and so do a lot of adults, and a novel about teens dealing with suicide is something adults could be interested in reading.
I’m just not certain which publisher or agent I should approach. Certainly, it doesn’t seem appropriate for most of the ebook publishers I buy from. There’s no sex, to speak of. A lot of crude language (because, hey, Jamie wrote it) and frank discussions of sex (and drug use), but nothing explicit. There isn’t even any real romance, though there are characters who are in romantic relationships or grow fond of each other during the novel.
But it does have something important to say, I think. I don’t want to let it languish, even if that means self-publishing.
I guess I’ll just finish it and have some people read it, to see what they think.
Filed under Drama, Writing, Young Adult
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