I think I may have figured out how to fix part of the pacing problem in Lucy. Unfortunately, it involves starting it around what is currently page 50, and covering the pertinent material from the earlier chapters in dialogue and flashback.

IOW, work.

Will that make it start when Lucy is already married, then? I need to read this.

Susan, that sounds cogent.

Will that make it start when Lucy is already married, then?

Nope, but at least it'll get her meeting her soon-to-be-husband in Chapter Two rather than Chapter Four, so that's an improvement right there.

Upon re-reading with a few months' distance from finishing the writing, I could actually see why Lucy didn't hook that agent I just heard from--in the first chapter I was really trying to get her relative poverty and utter lack of prospects across, and it reads kinda whiny. ("I'm a poor relation! I have to be a governess in a few years! My cousins were mean to me when we were kids, but if I hadn't grown up with them, I'd be dead of consumption in London years ago!") Whereas on pg. 50 I have her showing up at the house party that's to culminate in her bitchy cousin's wedding, and that cousin being all, "Why did she come? She's an embarrassment to our family." Which gets the point of her circumstances across with much fewer words.

Dealing with having been christened "Anfernee" has got to be tricky enough. Because when you're five, and asked to write your name is first grade?

Anne Rice's birth certificate says something like Howard George Maidenname, though -- apparently her parents really wanted a boy. I think that's worse than Anfernee.

(Not an Anne Rice fan, just possessed with an unfortunate memory for trivia.)

Howard George Maidenname

Up there with Michael for a girl. What are parents thinking, when they do this stuff?

Susan, there is nothing, and I do mean nothing, like a little distance, not only to see where things hiccough, but also where a book is really strong.

Deena, insent with edits about street talk and dealing with the Rat Squad.(Why do I feel like I've got a reputation? Cause I do.) Hope it helps. Loved the ending..I think if you give some more thought to your main characters, you could really have something there.

Up there with Michael for a girl. What are parents thinking, when they do this stuff?

Can't speak for Howard, because I think it's not euphonic, but I'm all about naming a girl Michael. I think it sounds very pretty, and I have no intention of having boys (even if I do, I think it sounds better on a girl).

She won't be the first, and she'll live.

ita, the name is pretty. So is Mirabella. Or Annamaria.

Point I was trying for - and looking at the interconnectivity - is that the kid has to get through first grade, and the really long name or blatantly other-gender name is likely to inhibit that.

Odd name, by itself? Not a problem (edit: in the sense I was going for - obviously, it can be a huge problem). But the five year old Michael girl who has to share classroom space with a bunch of five year old Michael boys is going to have to deal with a lot of rib-digging.

My problem with Anfernee as a name for a five year old is that he had to write it, in full, across all of his classwork from first grade on.

Life's hard enough for a five or six year old kid. Why saddle said child with yet one more thing to make their life harder, when it's perfectly simple not to?

My problem with Anfernee as a name for a five year old is that he had to write it, in full, across all of his classwork from first grade on.

Is it worse than Arabella? Or Wentworth? It's not hard to learn to spell your own name -- it's the other people who'll mangle it incessantly.

But the five year old Michael girl who has to share classroom space with a bunch of five year old Michael boys is going to have to deal with a lot of rib-digging.

The Susans I went to school with had to deal with a lot of rib-digging. I do think there are stupid names, but mostly those are Vagina and Halitosis. I dislike the NaKeishya school of naming a lot too, but I can't knock it. It's just not my tribe.

Why saddle said child with yet one more thing to make their life harder, when it's perfectly simple not to?

That would have had me named Mary. I'm glad it didn't work out that way.