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[ksmith]

Signs of Spring!

1) Robin sightings!
2) My eyes and throat itch! Allergies!
3) Muddy puppy paws!

No love form the latest SFBC review of the Code/Rules/Law omnibus. I am not a goddess in this reader's pantheon. He expected a story with a female protag written by a female author to be a gripping read. He was ungripped. He hopes my storytelling improves, though, because I apparently have an interesting interpersonal relationship style for my character's interactions.

Comments

[anisosynchronic.livejournal.com]

Massachusetts robins are fulltime residents... some of them seemed to be starting to collect nesting materials back in January!

There are a pair of swans which reside in and around a small lake that I drive on a road that goes through the middle of, going to and from work. I saw the two swans out swimming around this morning. I didn't see swan #3 which was the sole survivor last year of the eight or cygnets. The lake reputedly is full of big snapping turtles and the snapping turtles apparently got cygnet supping.

Meanwhile, there is a hawk in a tree on the other side of the parking lot, I couldn't get a good enough look at it to attempt a species identification.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Our robins well and truly go away. It's always so good to see the first one.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

I want so badly to make a joke about the reviewer and his grip. Yes, sometimes I am Beavis and Butthead-level immature.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I am shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you.

[(Anonymous)]

Jani is a precious and unique character. I'll sic my writer's group on your books and see how many fall prey to the whole series. You can sic Jani on said reviewer. She'll put him in his place right quick.

Spring is here too. It *smells* like spring. We have robins all year round, but the birdsong is starting to sound like mating season. The wheat is now 6" tall. And every day something gets a little more green, though the wild lands are still silver and muddy brown more than green.

Adrianne

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the good word. The books just don't work for some folks, though, and that's just the way it is.

One thing that did crop up in those reviews was the mention of Code's slow start. I asked a writer friend about it, since she had mentioned it, too, and she said that there was so much stuff in the first chapter--new words and a new world and the idomeni and Jani herself--that it was hard to adjust to everything all at once. She advised patience with the first chapter or so as well.

I'm assuming that's what folks meant by slow.

[(Anonymous)]

It's really hard to know what to put into that first chapter. With SF&F you have so much world building to do, that it's almost inevitably going to start out slow by comparison to someone like Harlan Coben, who can devote all of his first chapter to capturing your attention with questions, high tension stakes, and action because his world is modern day Chicago. Personally, I didn't find _Code_ slow. I'm getting crotchety in my old age and impatient with needlessly long books. Your books always hit me like being swept into a hurricane.

Adrianne

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

STOOpid reviewer. Thought a female writer and female protagonist would look at the world just as she did, eh?

HA!

It rocks. It rocks mountains.

E.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, the reviewer was a guy, so I don't know what he expected. More sex? Less talk and more straightforward action? Damsel in distress?

Male readers seem to lose patience with Jani's choices in men more quickly than do most women, but that usually doesn't crop up until LAW.

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

I don't always like Jani's choice in men, but so what?

It's stories I could not have imagined or written, but that suck me in anyway.

There's an ad for a YMCA club where this hotel has privileges called "Tepid Baths"....I think that's what some readers want.

E.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

It rocks. It rocks mountains.

And thanks!