First Review: Two Thumbs Down

[dr_pretentious]

As bad reviews go, it could have been worse. "Cleverly conceived and executed--yet strangely unaffecting," with a villain evocative of Jack Nicholson...okay. Considering that she'd have liked to see more Nicholsonesque fisticuffs, I wonder if this wasn't just the wrong book for her. Or maybe I haven't improved my characterization as much since the first draft of the Big Book as I thought I had. radiotelescope's comment on that long-ago first draft was, "I'd like all the characters to be about 15% more vivid," and he was absolutely right.

I'm still hoping someone among the dozens of reviewers I sent copies to will give me something I can put on a book jacket. Come 2009, I'm going to need some blurbs from the two e-books to sell the print volume.

Comments

[kjlj.livejournal.com]

Didn't a Famous Author at the NJ Writer's Weekend say she would blurb you?

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

She did, now that you mention it. I should try to get back in touch with her.

Another Famous Author I met at the last Seattle WW I went to was too deadline-crunched to read anything over the summer, but has offered to read with the hope of blurbing when Atlantis Cranks comes out in October. I'm hoping that works out as planned.

[serasempre.livejournal.com]

Ouch. That was a charming review.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I sent her a thank you note. Considering that the book wasn't her cup of tea, it was good of her to take it seriously enough to put the time in, read it to the end, and post about it. If someone I didn't know had sent me a book that was so much not my thing, I don't know that I would have kept going. Plenty else to do, after all.

[happy-dr-friend.livejournal.com]

Bizarre review, IMHO. I had almost the exact opposite reaction to the book. My main complaint, such as it is, is that there are too many vivid characters packed into a small space and so I didn't have enough time to "meet" all of them properly. I was left with a number of unanswered questions about the characters and their motives. Why is Jane involved in a coven when she doesn't seem to believe in any of it? Does she ever figure out that she's acting like a complete codependent and dump her husband? Why is Sophie playing slacker rather than doing anything with her life? How much of his experience is Bob going to tell the world (or his coven)? Questions one can really only ask about vivid, interesting characters. On the other hand, the villain didn't really do it for me as much. He didn't seem as smooth and charming as a 3000 year old con man should. Why did he resort to violence so quickly? On the other hand, I don't see the charm in Jack Nicholson, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, or even Barak Obama either, so that probably says more about my definition of charm than your writing.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

So many readers have told me the characterization was the book's strong point, I mostly just scratched my head at that part of the review.

On the other hand, maybe I should have developed the villain more. He resorts to violence very shortly after he appears on stage, but by that time he's been pushing and manipulating behind the scenes since before the opening of the novella.

I know what you mean about having a definition of charm that makes other people's attractions baffling. One of the reasons I find romance novels unreadable--and I've tried, because I now have several friends who write them at or very near the professional level--is that the alpha male type repulses me. Alpha male romance protagonists just remind me of the biggest jerks among the kids I went to high school with. Why don't they remind everybody of those guys?

Your questions about Jane will all be answered in Atlantis Cranks Need Not Apply. I'm still figuring out how much Bob will tell, and to whom, for Ria's story. Sophie's going to surprise everybody, but that'll take a while.

[happy-dr-friend.livejournal.com]

It was the very fact that the villain had been doing so much behind the scenes, apparently effectively, that made his quick move to violence with Bob seem off. Though one could argue that he did that because he summed Bob up quickly as someone on whom his particular brand of BS was unlikely to work and therefore didn't waste time on it.

Villains, particularly those who appear only after a long build up are very hard to write, IMHO. I can't really think of any examples that I really like.

[jasminewind.livejournal.com]

I really think that the book resonates with pagans. I wish I could write a review for you!

I'm inclined to say insulting things about critics after reading the reveiw. Sour grapes I suppose.

For what its worth, I LOOOOVE the whole Rugosa cast of characters and can't wait to learn more about them. I also wonder how much of my affection for them in Closing Arguments comes from my knowledge of them from Atlantis Cranks and Lambertville Ghost Tours.

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

Okay, where do I get my hands on those? I absolutely adore these characters.

I loved CA from front to back, and not just because I know the author. It was delightful. The reviewer is welcome to her opinion, but I adamantly don't share it.

[jasminewind.livejournal.com]

I was a beta reader for Dr P a while back. I'm a lousy beta reader however, unless my job is to tell her how much I love the stories.

And like you, it isn't just b/c I know the author, I love the characters & their stories.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I have a few beta readers I rely on to give me the painful news, whatever it is for a given manuscript. It's really, really helpful to have beta readers who just cheer me on no matter what, to balance out the moments when I have to see the truth in that other feedback.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Atlantis Cranks Need Not Apply will be coming out from Drollerie Press this fall, probably in October. As you might guess from the title, that one is Jane's story.

"New Jersey's Top Ghost Tours Reviewed and Rated" made the first cut in a major SF/F online magazine's slush pile, but it will probably take them a few months to get through their backlog to give me a final answer. It's much shorter, and only features a few of the Rugosa characters in cameo roles. On the other hand, it's about a ghost tour operator whose ghosts unionize, so I'm pretty sure it would amuse you.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me that I haven't passed back any comments about "Closing Arguments". (Note for onlookers: I didn't read any version of this until the ebook was on the eshelves.)

I liked it, but I felt a bit isolated from all the comings and goings of the coven characters. Their shared experiences were in the... vocabulary of pagan life which I was picking up as I went; and this is not the same as the vocabulary of genre fantasy (which is what I'm experienced in). *Not even* urban fantasy about people interacting with gods and ghosts and spiritual realms of existence.

Can I pin down the differences exactly? No, probably not. There's something about the background assumptions: what wiccan practitioners expect to be true in real life, and what they expect to be true in fantasy written from their point of view. (The latter having several possible answers, of course.) Your plot is to some extent playing off those two bases. Not just "how does a theosophist normally behave?" but "what abnormal behavior signifies a fantasy plot element, versus old age, versus Alzheimers?" I was guessing at those answers, or rather waiting for the story to feed them to me. It did, but at the cost of the initial tension.

Similarly, all the life hassles that we see were in the realm of "Is that how it works?" rather than "Ow, I know how *that* goes."

This is a long-winded way of saying "I wasn't in the target audience", but perhaps with useful detail.

I don't remember "Atlantis Cranks" well enough to say if I had the same reaction to it.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

That is definitely useful detail. It's hard to tell from inside this particular subculture what will and won't make sense to the rest of the world. Having a non-Pagan editor was useful. She flagged some things I'd never have guessed were opaque.

I'm giving Atlantis Cranks a last round of fine-tuning before it goes into production, so I still have a chance to mitigate this problem in it. I have no doubt that it's there to be fixed.

[happy-dr-friend.livejournal.com]

I felt a bit isolated from all the comings and goings of the coven characters. Their shared experiences were in the... vocabulary of pagan life which I was picking up as I went

Actually, that was one of the things I liked best about the novel--the feeling of seeing the internal world of a culture that I am not a part of, seeing how they lived their lives, learning the vocabularly, etc.

And the avoidance of urban fantasy stereotypes. For example, Jane, the group skeptic, doesn't run and hide in a corner when she meets apparent examples of the supernatural: she makes fun of it and tries to learn more.

This avoids what is, IMHO, one of the most annoying memes of urban fantasy: the scene where the supernatural world is shown to be definitively real and the "skeptical character" says something like, "But this can't be...it's against Science." Which is, of course, complete BS. Science is about describing the world as you observe it. If you observe dieties and ghosts and can reproducibly demonstrate their existence to others, then dieties and ghosts are part of the world as described by science. Much of the supernatural action in CA is arguably subjective, but the post it notes are kind of undeniable. (Though they presumably do go away at the end of the story.)

[happy-dr-friend.livejournal.com]

Summary of long-winded comment above: It's good to not be opaque, but don't go too far in the other direction and lose your unique style.

(And I hope all these comments aren't getting obnoxious. I love talking about books and sometimes go overboard.)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Not obnoxious at all. I'm always surprised and delighted when people are interested in my stories. Eventually I might stop being surprised, but the delight looks to be a permanent feature.

I think you summed it up

[amushink.livejournal.com]

Your reviewer is coming from an action-hero set of expectations. More fight scenes wouldn't have strengthened the plot any. And I like being given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to pagan ritual and vocabulary. It gives me a feeling of being included in the story not to have everything painstakingly spelled out. But that's my reading style.

Sounded like she wanted mythic and you were going for comic.

I'm sure you'll get some good reviews, as well as some where your reviewer doesn't 'get' you or your point of view.

Re: I think you summed it up

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Good to see you on livejournal, finally! I put you on all my filters.

Re: I think you summed it up

[laradionne.livejournal.com]

I was trying hard to imagine how more "action" scenes would have improved the story, and I couldn't come up with a single one. I think I had less trouble with the villain going straight to violence in the afterlife scene because the arm-twisting and threatening build-up had already taken place via Post-It Note. I did have a hard time with the fact that the reviewer seemed to be taking a Hollywood approach to the story, not a story-telling approach... especially if she's casting Jack Nicholson as an ancient Egyptian con-man (scratches head in puzzlement). I think she just felt aggravated because you didn't actually include any bawdy lyrics about Helena Blavatsky.

[jaime-sama.livejournal.com]

Just to chime in, I love the Rugosa people too. I thought the steeped-in-paganism atmosphere of the book made for an amusing theme (the pagans are the "normal" religion for once and someone else is the whacko).

About what you would expect Ria to say

[violet-moon25.livejournal.com]

(This is David writing from Rachel's LJ account, because I haven't set up my own account yet, and I'm too lazy to sign out and back in)

I may be resorting to a bit of ad hominem attacking here, but I think you just got the review that Ria would've given the book. I mean, I skimmed this blogger's other reviews, and I didn't see a single other novel in there--just a long list of spiritual books, and as far as I could tell she never met a pagan or new age book she didn't like.

I mean, not that I don't have a healthy respect for spirituality, but if that's the only note in your chorus, then you're going to have a problem with Closing Arguments, because the characters are _people_, not just personifications of divine light.

I've heard or read any number of comments in one place or another from people who see a book as anti-Christian because the Christian characters are treated as human and therefore flawed. I think maybe you just got hit up by the pagan counterpart of that.

Granted, I'm biased, because it pains me to hear that anyone doesn't like this wonderful story, so I may not be giving this particular reviewer her fair shake. But that's my 2 cents.

And I totally don't see Jack Nicholson in that role.

David