Makes sense to me, Barb. Although I think you want to say "brought about BY my love of baseball."

whoops

And I can't wait to see some of the crazies' responses.

The ones at RtB, I mean.

Not only that, but that writers should be downright grateful (preferably in some groveling sort of fashion) and apply themselves diligently to serve the needs of their readers.

If you are actually writing for a living, I would think there would already be plenty of incentive to please the readers without worrying about gratitude.

You'd think, right, Gud? But sadly, no. There are readers who have this attitude:

I think authors ought to be doing their darnedest to deliver the goods the best they can in the most timely manner possible and with a smile on their faces and gratitude in their hearts that readers actually want to spend their hard-earned money on their books, that they love those stories so much that they’re upset when someone insults them and can’t wait for the next book to come out. And a fan re-writing a book, this is the height of flattery! Remember, *readers pay the bills.* It’s in the authors’ own best interests to at least present an extremely grateful attitude.

Maybe my expectations are low, but I tend to take what an author gives me and, if I like it, buy more books and, if not, not.

I do sometimes wish I could meet and author and request that they write faster (with a sigh and a wistful tone) ... but not that seriously (and certainly not demand it).

Wrod. But then, I don't know which is worse, waiting for something from one of my favorites,or looking at a former fave and thinking "Wow, she just keeps cranking them out." Sue Grafton was so prolific for a while there she almost jumped the shark for me, just cause she wrote the same book two or three times. She took some time on S and T and they are far more inventive.

You know, it's such a catch-22. You WANT those books, like NOW. But at the same time, you want a GOOD book.

It's the readers who think writers can't possibly understand that, who make me crazy.

Not much writing last night. Maybe 400 words or something.

My wife is working on a game prototype for University Games since she got past the proposal or whatever you call it. I spent most of my normal writing time working an a computer program to simulate gameplay so she can experiment with rules variations. Tis time consuming.

I'm on vacation Friday, Monday, and Tuesday. The kids will be at their grandparent's Friday evening and part of Saturday. Then they have summer school Monday and Tuesday. I have some big writing time blocks coming up. First I'll need to finish up the gameplay simulator and run data sets though.

I indugled in the time-honored practice of vanity googling for the title of my story with Drollerie Press, "Shepherd to the Wolves," and I found a lovely review of it and the other story that goes with it (as well as the other stories in the anthology).

[link]

I really need to get over the inherent "Don't brag about things that make you giddily happy" thing that my Puritan ancestors have instilled in me.

The reviewer hopes for more stories about the main character, and there's a major development point that should be covered, but I'm getting "I can't possibly come up with something that's as good as the previous work seems to be" in my head, never mind that I apparently was able to do it before.

I assume other creative fields are plagued with this kind of writerly self-consciousness, but damn this is painful.