Reply To: ETA: Next book
Reviews are what they are, reading is such a subjective experience by definition.
And I wrote this book(s) for hardcore SF/Fantasy/Gamer readers and such people, almost by definition, have strong passions. I know the crowd, I am the crowd.
The thing is, when one really gets into a book and then have to wait some time for the next, you can build up all these expectations for how you would have written it. If the author doesn’t do what you expected, or hoped, then you get a big huge letdown.
I hope that some who were disappointed will give it another shot later to read it without all the old expectations.
I knew I’d have some problems because I got responses for people that went in diametrically opposed directions in what they wanted to see. No way to keep everyone happy.
So there was this one guy on Amazon who called himself “The Hater” he read both the first and the second and post these 1 star reviews of both.
Hey as long as he read them…the gold crowns still pile up!
But at least hir lives up (?) to hir name. Hir hates. Went to look at some of hir other reviews. Lots of negative reviews, but a few positive ones which makes me almost curious to read the ones The Hater likes.
I think the criticism “I get” the most is probably the rehashing. I knew I was doing it, but I was trying to capture everyone’s reactions and responses. In hindsight, I should have been more efficient during these scenes so as to not over-retell. But I had a lot of people going “I want to know X person’s reactions!”
The POV switching was done in the first book, but since it took place over 30 days, individual scenes were longer. In the new book it’s 1/3 the time and I had to cover a lot of ground so shorter scenes because it was all happening at once.
I knew I was taking a chance, but I figured if you look at the pacing of modern TV shows (MTV generation++++) compared to older ones, I thought it would work for most.
Ah well.
Book 3 takes place over a longer period of time so POV switching will slow down, maybe back to Book 1 levels.
Definitely going to try to be careful and efficient on reaction scenes.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks!