Stick a fork in it

[hrj]

And we have a complete first draft of Skin and Bones at 6700 words. I still need to work on a few of the personal names, but all the language bits are filled in. Now to let it sit for a day and start the next pass. I don't anticipate any major story changes, but there's usually a fair bit of stylistic clean-up to do. (I'm especially prone to repeating words or very similar words and not noticing during the composition phase.) Anybody up for a test-read? It might be particularly useful to get an opinion from someone who isn't immediately familiar with the other stories in the series, since in theory they should stand relatively independently (or at least stagger drunkenly independently). No lookie-loos, though -- only serious middle-of-the-creative-process critiques please.

Comments

[lferion]

Happy to be a pre-reader!

I have read the other tales, but it has been a while (3 - 4 years) and the details are fuzzy after so long. I should be able to give reasonable view of how it stands alone.

And just a general YAY for getting a story all written! I have a piece of an idea and a first line, and nothing at all beyond that.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Ok, I'll send you a copy later today. (I still have about half the needed names to fill in and need to do my first-pass edit.)

[xrian.livejournal.com]

I'm interested, if the kind of critiques I usually write would be helpful...

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I'll send you a copy -- I'm looking mostly for story-structure feedback, although really blatant typos are also good to know about.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I'd like to, only I don't know how and whether I'll have internet access in the next week. If you send it to my gmail account (username: valendon) I'll take a look whenever I can.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Can I hold you in reserve for some future project? I'm hoping to get this one sent off on a relatively tight schedule and I don't want you to feel pressured to work on it when you should be having fun at your conference. But thanks!

[dame-cordelia.livejournal.com]

I would be happy to be a reader for you. I will now confess I have not read any of the series.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Ok, you'll be my seriously blank-slate feedback. (I'll warn you that even under the best of circumstances my fiction writing style expects readers to pick things up as they go along rather than having it all explained.)

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

Always willing to pre-read.

I have read I-hope-all of the others, but I have a generally lousy memory.

Don't know how much my comments would help you (I tend to go pretty stream of consciousness, correct grammar (which I don't expect to be able to do to you) and pull out awkward sentences or things that don't seem to fit), but if you want to let me read, I'd love to.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the offer -- but I've sent it off to batch of test-readers already, so let's go with that for now. (Just keep your fingers crossed that you'll get to read it in print.)