Romance Novel weblog by Carolyn Jewel
Carolyn Jewel Romance Author

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Writer's Diary

Sunday, July 24, 2005

fear and loathing in northern california - mostly fear

So Liz's Crimson City got great reviews. Marjorie's A Taste of Crimson has great reviews, early indications are that Patti's Through A Crimson Veil is going to get great reviews, too (she's heard from a reviewer already.) Which is great except it's going to be humilating for me. People either like my writing or hate it passionately. So far, I've yet to see evidence that there's any in-between with me. So just great. I'm going to be the weak link. It's going to be "Crimson City? Yeah, fabulous series, except Jewel's. Hers sucked." It's too late to tell Chris to forget it, even if I gave the money back. Liz will never speak to me again, and I won't even want to be around the other authors because they all wrote great books. Sigh.

I made the mistake of googling around a bit while I was pretending to be busy and I came across a bit of conversation about Crimson City and me. They like my historicals (and don't even get me started about historicals) but don't think they'll like ADC. See? People haven't even read the book and they're prepared to not like it. Too violent, based on chapter one, which I admit starts out with two bodies, but they're just lying there dead. What's violent about that? Gross, maybe, but not violent. There's an inter-species war going on and my heroine's a cop. It's not like the bodies get up and walk around - that doesn't happen until chapter 6 or 7 at least and it's not those two. They're just dead. Like my career.
Comments:
Hey Carolyn, don't get so down!

I participated in a thread on the AAR site and yes, some of us who've read your historicals did not express an interest in ADC. But it has nothing to do with your writing style (at least not in my case). I simply am not that interested in sci-fi/futuristic/alternate reality stories. I will occasionally read a vampire or other paranormal story but I don't go out of my way for them. I loved Patricia Waddell's historicals but I had no interest and never read her futuristics. Unfortunately now she's writing contemporaries! I do love MaryJanice Davidson's cartoony Undead and Wyndham Werewolves stories, though! The violence factor does not bother me and I haven't read the excerpt myself so I couldn't comment. I simply prefer a good historical anyday and they are becoming more and more rare these days. Everyone wants to write vampire stories these days and, to me, there's such a glut of that stuff that I have sift through a ton of it to find any that interest me. And, actually, I've seen Crimson City on some readers' lists of most disappointing reads so far in 2005. I've always found it interesting the difference between "professional" reviews and reader reviews . . .

Though you may not want to hear it, I really enjoyed Lord Ruin and I LOVED The Spare. I hope that you sell The Rake sometime soon. I'd love to read it! AND PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DO NOT ABANDON HISTORICALS!!!!!

Trish
Baltimore, MD
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : Wed Jul 27, 07:24:00 PM PDT
 
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