Victor, reading....

Meanwhile, a question/sitatuation:

Years ago, I wrote a suspense thriller with supernatural overtones (yeah, I know, there's a big surprise) called "Still Life With Devils." It was one of three casualties of my divorce from the publishing industry in 1993; my agent at the time did nothing for it, no clue how to deal with it, and I simply put it away and forgot it until about 18 months ago or so.

What with the splendid current agent, it's being revisited with a view towards submission, possibly under a psuedonym, although that's likely unnecessary, since ghosts and supernaturals are fairly closely linked with my work and name. Thing is, she (Jenn, the agent) made some really good points about things that need moving, dropping, altering, adding and whatnotting. A lot of the changes (infuriating) are things I changed at the request of the first agent, notably "They're black? You can't make the brother and sister in this black! You're white and you'll piss off the black community because you're, well, white!"

Gah.

Question is, if anyone wants to read and comment on this thing as it now stands, would you let me know? This is not not NOT an editing read; it's a read-as-end-user and so, tell me true, what strikes you about the story? read. No edits, typo checks, etc and whatnots required; read and review as a reader, not an editor, basically.

Anyone who does will be much loved and also added to the thanks/acknowledgments page.

If anyone's remotely interested, give a yell and I'll shoot a PDF over.

Deb, you sent me a copy many residences ago, and I have no idea where it is. Can you sling me another?

Deb, I *definitely* do! Can you send it to ivy_623 AT hotmail DOT com?

Also, if you're interested, here's the latest on my back-pain saga: Steph L. "Spike's Bitches 5: One... Good... Day" Mar 24, 2003 5:12:20 pm EST

Deb, I'd be happy to help out. My home email has a 1 meg limit, however, so if you could send it to my work addy, that would be best. It's aweber AT bernan DOT com.

Oh, yeah. My hotmail has a 1 meg limit, but I was assuming a PDF would be under 1 meg. Hmmm. Well, give it a shot.

If it's under one meg, then go ahead and send it to the hotmail addy (missweber AT hotmail DOT com.)

You all ROCK. It's 572K, well under the limit; coming shortly.

Granted, I might not be able to read it until later this week, because I am currently doped to the GILLS because of my back. But I'm definitely looking forward to reading it!

Argh. My work-in-process is first person, from the heroine's point of view. Or at least I thought it was.

After re-reading the sex scene mentioned upthread, I noticed a few problems, places where it needed a little more here, a little less there. I've been trying to figure out how to make it work without compromising Lucy's voice, which is lucid, controlled, verbose, and quite serious but with a touch of wry humor here and there. In many ways, her personality was molded by my desire to approximate a 19th century writing style.

Anyway, as I was trying to get a better grip on the scene, I re-imagined it from the point of view of Our Hero, James. I don't know if it's going to help me rewrite, but what it has done is make me want to write at least some of the story in his first person POV, because his head is so fun to inhabit. He's so immediate and impulsive I have a hard time reminding him to narrate in past tense. His sense of humor is much closer to the surface, as are his emotions. His voice is more colloquial.

But I can't let myself do this, can I? If I turned James loose with his slangy present-tense narration, I'd completely lose my pseudo-19th century style that I've worked so hard to achieve. It'd be a completely different book. And a 1st person POV romance novel is unconventional enough by itself--two different first person narrators would probably take me right out of marketable land.

I just want to finish the story. Prove to myself that I can carry a long project through to completion. And I'm afraid this is a sidetrack.

Deb, the PDF arrived and is now safely ensconced on my faithful laptop.