Erika! Just popping in to add my congratulations! I haven't had a chance to read the article yet but plan to later tonight.

It's a great piece, Erika. Everything I read of yours makes me more impatient for that book.

Challenge #37: Falling

I’ve never been to Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I love New York otherwise—the energy, neon lights and voices and the rush of tires combining into a living pulse. But that many drunken people looking for excitement in one place frightens me.

On year, just uptown, I opened the windows to listen to the crowd cheering as the ball began to drop. I was watching it on TV, and counted down with them as the outrageous ball descended, brash and bright and too big, marking another year falling away with a rude good-bye. Quiet reflection comes with the hangover.

Oh, I love that AmyLiz. You captured it so beautifully.

Anyway, best wishes to everyone for their writing in 2005!

edit: Deb, I meant to ask how your final edits on the my turn piece went? I can't imagine much changed...

edit 2: Susan... Not that I know much about the historical market, but I don't get the first person hang-up? The voice should be more removed because the time period is??? feh, I say. As long as it's well written. The only real first person issues I've encounted is with poetry and even those seemed kind of ridiculous... I had a prof who cautioned that poetry (especially in first person) doesn't get treated as fiction and should you decide to write a first person ode to a (fictional) dead relative, you can expect condolence mail. Haven't tested that theory yet.

(holding ears and telling Brynn to take the crit theory to Literary, please please please)

Seriously. Talking about crit in here makes the thread uninhabitable for me, and this is one only three threads I still do inhabit. Please not? Pretty please?

re edits, no, not much changed. A couple of tweaks.

Deb,

Sorry. It can tend to explode out of me. I will take down the crit stuff and leave up the pov stuff which is more relevant. Again. Apologies. Ack I feel *really* bad.

No, no, not to worry - leave it up, by all means. Just warn me next time...

Deb No, no you're right and that's ultimately why I trimmed. Specific crit related to people's work and responses it garners in this thread makes sense. General ravings on the topic of crit, not so much. I fear that all of this holiday debauchery has affected my netiquette.

(one closing digression, last one, I promise) A crit thread though, might be an idea. BTvS (the series, its writers, its fans) strike me as the cultural theorist's dream. I would be glad to host such a thing in lj if there were takers.

Not that I know much about the historical market, but I don't get the first person hang-up? The voice should be more removed because the time period is??? feh, I say. As long as it's well written.

Oh, nothing like that at all. AFAICT, first person is rare in romance in general, not just the historical subgenre, because of a perception that you can't tell a love story without both protagonists' POV. Me, I think it all depends on the story, but that's the market trend as it stands today. That could easily change--20-30 years ago, almost all romances were written solely from the heroine's POV, though usually in third limited rather than first, and including the hero's side of the story was the daring and risky choice!

And believe me, this judge wasn't trying to give me a better historical voice. I am not kidding when I say that if I followed her line edits, James and Lucy would sound more like a pair of lawyers flirting at a bar in 2004 than a Regency baronet and poor relation at a ball in 1809. t rolls eyes forever But my other Lucy judge specifically said I had a good Regency voice, and one of my Anna judges said I had a good grasp of period tone, so I'm going to continue to believe I know what I'm doing.