It may be a miracle. I'm fighting my way through the book's first draft and there's large swaths of narrative that aren't that bad! I don't quite know what happened during the beer-fogged haze that was NaNo, but it must've been good.
It still needs a hell of a lot of work, of course. I worry about pacing (I always worry about pacing), the characterization for some of the minor characters needs spruced up a little, and I need to crank up the tension with two of three of the MFC's main conflicts, to make one more of a threat and the other more of a revelation.
Gah. I hate to make it sound cryptic but I intend to keep this sn and that pen name separate in much the same way I keep my sn and IRL self separate. Eventually I'll get around to putting together a site/journal for the pen name, but I've got a lot of work to do before I can worry about that as well.
Finished The Gun Seller. Liked it. It's a little rough if you put it down and forget some of the minor characters' names, because they all crop up again later, but overall it's nice and well-worded, skipping merrily between forward momentum, sharp-edged plot twists, and moments of narrative silliness. And my 'ship came through in the end.
Started a Best of Lovecraft omni. It's well-written, with some bits that need saved and rolled around with and huggled for later use, though it doesn't have quite the same tension as more modern works. For the nice roll of the prose I'd recommend it; for the historical-literary aspects I'd recommend it; for the horror aspect, not so much. Much of the scariness factor relies on descriptors such as "unspeakable," "unimaginable," "horror," "supreme horror," and so forth. Maybe it'll pass beyond medium-creepy later.
It still needs a hell of a lot of work, of course. I worry about pacing (I always worry about pacing), the characterization for some of the minor characters needs spruced up a little, and I need to crank up the tension with two of three of the MFC's main conflicts, to make one more of a threat and the other more of a revelation.
Gah. I hate to make it sound cryptic but I intend to keep this sn and that pen name separate in much the same way I keep my sn and IRL self separate. Eventually I'll get around to putting together a site/journal for the pen name, but I've got a lot of work to do before I can worry about that as well.
Finished The Gun Seller. Liked it. It's a little rough if you put it down and forget some of the minor characters' names, because they all crop up again later, but overall it's nice and well-worded, skipping merrily between forward momentum, sharp-edged plot twists, and moments of narrative silliness. And my 'ship came through in the end.
Started a Best of Lovecraft omni. It's well-written, with some bits that need saved and rolled around with and huggled for later use, though it doesn't have quite the same tension as more modern works. For the nice roll of the prose I'd recommend it; for the historical-literary aspects I'd recommend it; for the horror aspect, not so much. Much of the scariness factor relies on descriptors such as "unspeakable," "unimaginable," "horror," "supreme horror," and so forth. Maybe it'll pass beyond medium-creepy later.