Reader Mail Bag
Mar. 25th, 2011 12:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinThere's an interesting and unexpected side effect of releasing The Gift of the Bad Guy: I'm getting reader e-mail in a way I never have before, even when I have a visible contact address on the MU website (which I do now). I attribute this to the fact that the people who've purchased and read GOTBG are mostly if not entirely MU readers and they're used to being able to comment on what they read from me.
And of course I'm used to getting comments, so I don't regard this as a bad thing. But a reader/author email is one-on-one communication, typically, so I wanted to take some time to address the feedback in a general sort of way. I'm going to be paraphrasing things because I didn't seek permission to quote people here.
Two of the first pieces of feedback I got were in the form of someone on Facebook likening the book to a TV pilot and an email from someone who said she was surprised that it was a "day in the life" type story. I enjoyed reading both of these things because they gave me a feeling of Oooh, I nailed it. Those both pretty much sum up what I was going for with this piece.
Its follow-up Working Class Villain is going to give a wider look at the world by basically showing you a typical week for Marie. This isn't to say that the series is going to follow the day-to-day minutiae model of Tales of MU. There's an arc there. But it's going to be seen through the lens of "I'm a professional antagonist, and this is my life."
As far as the arc-vs.-minutiae angle goes, I had another insightful reader say "This is another one of your anti-stories, isn't it?" They made it clear that it wasn't exactly a complaint but they were expecting something different. Well, in my defense, I believe GOTBG is something different. There are only so many ways to follow a conventional model. There are a lot more ways to go off in a different direction. Anyone who's spent much time reading my stuff probably has noticed that I think shaggy dog stories are high art, but rest assured The Gifters Saga isn't one of them.
More than one person (two, to be precise) remarked that it's shorter than they expected. Neither of them seems to be disappointed or upset about this, but it's one of the things that leaves me shaking my head. When I started talking this book up, I thought it was going to be 40-60 pages. I sold it on a sight called LitSnacks that proclaims itself on the front page to be a home for works of around a hundred pages or under. The final version of GOTBG clocks in at right around a hundred pages. I'm going to add an approximate page count field to the story page on LitSnacks, but that aside I don't know what more I can or should do to let people know what they're getting.
I got a lot of "did not see that coming" with regards to Marie's identity as a villain, or as a woman. Note that I don't regard those things as spoilers even though they were during the preview period. While I could market the book without mentioning them, if I tried to treat them as spoilers it would really put a damper on any discussion of the book if any discussion of the person who the book is about was considered to be spoilery.
So far I only got one "Didn't see it coming" about Marie's relationship with Anne. I was curious about how that would go. I wrote the first chapter in such a way that the implication is that there is familiarity there, that she knows Anne-the-person not just Anne-the-semi-celebrity but without outright stating it. My hope was that it would be a *click* moment when you see that they're together, rather than a DUN! DUN!! DUNNNNNNN!!!" one.
On that subject, the only really negative feedback I've received has been from someone who couldn't gearshift when the woman who's flirting and making plans to go out with a man comes home to a woman. I didn't establish that she's bisexual and in an open relationship; that means that having her flirt with a man establishes (or rather confirms) that she's single and straight.
I'll be perfectly honest: when I write things like this, I know it's going to throw some readers. And I'm okay with that. I am, in fact, in favor of it. Non-straight and non-monogamous characters shouldn't have to proclaim their existence.
This isn't about "tricking" people into reading something, though I will say that a positive side effect of not labeling characters/stories as being queer or non-heteronormative characters and stories is that people who aren't overtly bigoted but who wouldn't perceive a story so labeled as being "for" them can end up checking them out. It's simply about writing minority characters in a way that's on an equal footing with majority ones.
Marie's established as bisexual the same way she'd be established as straight: you see her relationships, nobody has to tell you. Her poly arrangement is as matter-of-fact as a mono one is.
What's interesting to me is that handling things this way--matter-of-factly and without fanfare--is often read as being "in your face" with it. I suppose that's because there's no warning. The reader has gotten their face up in the story and then blames the story when they realize where their face is. Yeah, sorry, but I don't coddle that attitude.
That's five paragraphs given over to a negative comment, which is more space than I've devoted to a single positive one, so I'm going to stop it there.
I had one person helpfully pointing out some typos that made it through. I was disheartened to see this at first, as I spent more time going over this story than anything I've written before, and had other people go over it, too. But it was three mistakes in a hundred pages. That's pretty good. If a large enough number of people get a hold of copies with the typos, I will hear from someone who tells me how unprofessional they are and how they don't see typos in "real" published books, but that is of course bullshit so I won't worry about it.
The most frustrating thing is that one of them (a "know" that's missing a "k") I know I fixed at one point, which means that at some point I ended up working in the wrong file or saving over the right one. It's possible I'd fixed the other errors at the same time, but I don't have specific memories of them. In any event this highlights what I was saying before about the importance of processes. I ended up with multiple copies of the file as I was putting it together because I had no process for how to handle creating a final copy from multiple draft documents.
That's a "learn and move on" thing.
Now, the single most common piece of feedback I've received is "When is the sequel coming out?" That is a good thing to hear! Unfortunately, I don't have an answer. In order to avoid a repeat of the rather dysfunctional spiral I was in towards the end of The Gift of the Bad Guy's production I'm not going to set a release date until the thing's all the way nailed down. It's probably going to be a matter of months, rather than weeks or a year. I suspect major new (as opposed to adapted from serials) offerings from LitSnacks will be a quarterly thing, but that's not to say that Working Class Villain will follow exactly three months behind The Gift of the Bad Guy.
And of course I'm used to getting comments, so I don't regard this as a bad thing. But a reader/author email is one-on-one communication, typically, so I wanted to take some time to address the feedback in a general sort of way. I'm going to be paraphrasing things because I didn't seek permission to quote people here.
Two of the first pieces of feedback I got were in the form of someone on Facebook likening the book to a TV pilot and an email from someone who said she was surprised that it was a "day in the life" type story. I enjoyed reading both of these things because they gave me a feeling of Oooh, I nailed it. Those both pretty much sum up what I was going for with this piece.
Its follow-up Working Class Villain is going to give a wider look at the world by basically showing you a typical week for Marie. This isn't to say that the series is going to follow the day-to-day minutiae model of Tales of MU. There's an arc there. But it's going to be seen through the lens of "I'm a professional antagonist, and this is my life."
As far as the arc-vs.-minutiae angle goes, I had another insightful reader say "This is another one of your anti-stories, isn't it?" They made it clear that it wasn't exactly a complaint but they were expecting something different. Well, in my defense, I believe GOTBG is something different. There are only so many ways to follow a conventional model. There are a lot more ways to go off in a different direction. Anyone who's spent much time reading my stuff probably has noticed that I think shaggy dog stories are high art, but rest assured The Gifters Saga isn't one of them.
More than one person (two, to be precise) remarked that it's shorter than they expected. Neither of them seems to be disappointed or upset about this, but it's one of the things that leaves me shaking my head. When I started talking this book up, I thought it was going to be 40-60 pages. I sold it on a sight called LitSnacks that proclaims itself on the front page to be a home for works of around a hundred pages or under. The final version of GOTBG clocks in at right around a hundred pages. I'm going to add an approximate page count field to the story page on LitSnacks, but that aside I don't know what more I can or should do to let people know what they're getting.
I got a lot of "did not see that coming" with regards to Marie's identity as a villain, or as a woman. Note that I don't regard those things as spoilers even though they were during the preview period. While I could market the book without mentioning them, if I tried to treat them as spoilers it would really put a damper on any discussion of the book if any discussion of the person who the book is about was considered to be spoilery.
So far I only got one "Didn't see it coming" about Marie's relationship with Anne. I was curious about how that would go. I wrote the first chapter in such a way that the implication is that there is familiarity there, that she knows Anne-the-person not just Anne-the-semi-celebrity but without outright stating it. My hope was that it would be a *click* moment when you see that they're together, rather than a DUN! DUN!! DUNNNNNNN!!!" one.
On that subject, the only really negative feedback I've received has been from someone who couldn't gearshift when the woman who's flirting and making plans to go out with a man comes home to a woman. I didn't establish that she's bisexual and in an open relationship; that means that having her flirt with a man establishes (or rather confirms) that she's single and straight.
I'll be perfectly honest: when I write things like this, I know it's going to throw some readers. And I'm okay with that. I am, in fact, in favor of it. Non-straight and non-monogamous characters shouldn't have to proclaim their existence.
This isn't about "tricking" people into reading something, though I will say that a positive side effect of not labeling characters/stories as being queer or non-heteronormative characters and stories is that people who aren't overtly bigoted but who wouldn't perceive a story so labeled as being "for" them can end up checking them out. It's simply about writing minority characters in a way that's on an equal footing with majority ones.
Marie's established as bisexual the same way she'd be established as straight: you see her relationships, nobody has to tell you. Her poly arrangement is as matter-of-fact as a mono one is.
What's interesting to me is that handling things this way--matter-of-factly and without fanfare--is often read as being "in your face" with it. I suppose that's because there's no warning. The reader has gotten their face up in the story and then blames the story when they realize where their face is. Yeah, sorry, but I don't coddle that attitude.
That's five paragraphs given over to a negative comment, which is more space than I've devoted to a single positive one, so I'm going to stop it there.
I had one person helpfully pointing out some typos that made it through. I was disheartened to see this at first, as I spent more time going over this story than anything I've written before, and had other people go over it, too. But it was three mistakes in a hundred pages. That's pretty good. If a large enough number of people get a hold of copies with the typos, I will hear from someone who tells me how unprofessional they are and how they don't see typos in "real" published books, but that is of course bullshit so I won't worry about it.
The most frustrating thing is that one of them (a "know" that's missing a "k") I know I fixed at one point, which means that at some point I ended up working in the wrong file or saving over the right one. It's possible I'd fixed the other errors at the same time, but I don't have specific memories of them. In any event this highlights what I was saying before about the importance of processes. I ended up with multiple copies of the file as I was putting it together because I had no process for how to handle creating a final copy from multiple draft documents.
That's a "learn and move on" thing.
Now, the single most common piece of feedback I've received is "When is the sequel coming out?" That is a good thing to hear! Unfortunately, I don't have an answer. In order to avoid a repeat of the rather dysfunctional spiral I was in towards the end of The Gift of the Bad Guy's production I'm not going to set a release date until the thing's all the way nailed down. It's probably going to be a matter of months, rather than weeks or a year. I suspect major new (as opposed to adapted from serials) offerings from LitSnacks will be a quarterly thing, but that's not to say that Working Class Villain will follow exactly three months behind The Gift of the Bad Guy.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2011-03-25 05:47 am (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-25 07:38 am (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-25 08:12 am (UTC)Following that, I noticed about halfway through that I really, really, REALLY enjoy your show-don't-tell writing. It's different from Mackenzie's voice and her constant mind-chatter. Mackenzie thinks. Marie does. It's a really nice distinction, and just one more ability that I think sets you apart as a writer.
I did get the sense that Marie knew Anne, so the living with/relationship with was more of a "huh... alright" for me. As was the open relationship and Marie's bisexuality. I think for mature readers writing it so matter-of-factly makes it a non-issue- as it should be, in my opinion. It's a non-issue to the character, so why make a big deal out of it to the reader?
Overall, I loved it. Worth every cent for the author appreciation version.
no subject
on 2011-03-25 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-25 04:47 pm (UTC)