Deb, I think you should plug the PRS in. At least you could claim you were trying to educate them about rock and roll, which is more than what their dog is doing.

Heh. Great minds work alike. I plugged JP!RS in and put Kenny Wayne Shepherd's Blue on Black on and cranked it and played along. There is now an frightened silence coming from next door. Which I'm sure will disappear tomorrow morning when they're out in their #@$#$# yard with the dog and the cellphone, shouting merrily over the fence at the other neighbours with the dog....because I don't think their recall is the best on the rack, you know?

Anyone want to beta the first small chunk of this damned thing? See if it puts you to sleep?

Hey, I'll beta.

What about writing the story that's in your head now and going back to slang it up later?

I don't think that would work, because it's all about setting the character's rhythms from the get-go.

Soon as this damned thing is first-drafted, I'll send it on.

Aw. Kirkus didn't like "Cruel Sister". At least, I can't tell, but I don't think they did. The review is more snarky than anything else.

They complete missed the reason for Ringan being affected, and got most of the plot summation wrong.

I was wondering when Kirkus would finally dislike something I wrote; they generally hate everything.

Aw. Bummer.

Nah. It's not even a bad review - it's more snarky than anything else. I suspect they gave it to someone who does the "I don't read ANYTHING that even comes CLOSE to woo-woo!', who rolled their eyes and cashed the cheque.

Laura Ann Gilman has promised to teach me the Secret Handshake; Kirkus has loathed everything of hers, pretty much down the line.

With Kirkus, Editor & Publisher and Library Journal someone told me that what is important is getting the review, not whether the review is good. True? False?

Huh. Good question, Gar. Never stopped to consider it.

At least two of them have always reviewed everything I've ever published in long fiction form, so I have no experience of it the other way.

I think a bad review can do damage, especially from PW, because smaller pubs around the country just lift from the original review, tweak the occasional word so they won't have to pay PW reprint rights or get his with copyright infringement stuff, and reprint it as their own.

Now that you have several out and in libraries etc - can it hurt you as much?

(Because we library patrons want to read the next book in the series and then if there's a new series -- we want that too.)