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@waterlily
Thanks… *awkwardly trails off*.
I’m glad you weren’t (overly) traumatized by my story. I aim not to utterly destroy my readers ( just my characters *sinister chuckling*)
But seriously, thank you. It means so much.
INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
@jenwriter17 @rochellaine @waterlily
Well, my fangirls, I have some questions for you. These are mostly moral and theme questions, I think, so hopefully they make sense. if they don’t just let me know and I’ll try to rephrase them.
Sapphire: okay….well…*stops to scratch head*. In our day and age, teen girls who have kids are not as frowned upon as they were back when Hugo wrote his epic, but I still believe it’s wrong to have a child out of wedlock, as I imagine you probably do too. However, I don’t want to fall into the trap of condemning her, but I also want to show that she did wrong, and that not everything was Darcy’s fault, since such a sin takes two people. How well do you think I did this? Please be honest! I don’t want to seem like I’m condoning something evil, but I also don’t want to seem like I’m bashing girls who do have children out of marriage and making them seem unredeemable.
Okay, what else was I going to say?
What did you see as being the main theme/s?
Which characters do you think embodied the theme/s the most?
What sort of symbolism did you see?
I am so random, sorry! I’ve just been thinking about a lot of these things as I’m preparing my sequel and for editing this one. I have ideas for all the answers, but I want to see how it looks from the perspective of the readers!
INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
@seekjustice Can the same thing happen twice in one night?!!! I just wrote a really long response to your questions and lost it all! I’ll try to rewrite it if I decide I have the patience. 🙂
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
I’m extra sorry now 🙁
That happened to me when I was replying to comments on my blog the other day, and I was super annoyed because my comment was very long and eloquent 🙂
INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
Oh Hooray! I found it! It disappeared for a little while, but clicking back into “history” I was able to salvage it. 🙂 Here it is:
@seekjustice That’s a little hard to answer, actually, since I come from the same viewpoint and am automatically reading it assuming she did something wrong, and interpreting what’s written to read that she did something wrong. 🙂 But I think you did fine with it. I think I mentioned before something about how she was asking “What have I done” when she found out Chess hated her. That is one part that might be changed since it feels like she doesn’t understand why Chess is mad at her. (Which I don’t think you meant.) Other than that I think it’s dealt with pretty well.We’ve also discussed a big theme already – about the rights and wrongs of revolutions. So you know all my thoughts in that area. 🙂 A secondary theme for me, which I am not sure that you meant, was that of Chessy’s outrageously huge feelings for Justice. I felt that the theme was starting out to be crushes aren’t all that they seem at the time, and showing Justice wasn’t as perfect a character as Chess first saw him to be. However, I don’t remember much discussion between anybody about the fact that Justice wasn’t a Christian and Chessy was. Several characters talked about how he loved his country more than her, and how he wasn’t very kind to others, but no one talked about the fact that if she did get him to fall in love with her they would be unequally yoked. You asked someone if they should end up together, and I am not sure which way I lean, but if and before they do, I think there should be some discussion about the fact that she went totally overboard in shouting out her feelings for someone who was obviously not of her faith. I feel that in literature there are too many “bad boys” who are “saved” by their love for the girl, which rarely happens in real life. (My mom actually helped convert my dad to Christianity, so it can happen, I know, but it’s pretty rare, and girls shouldn’t be led to fall in love with a handsome rogue and expect him to change for them.)
Well, that’s all I have. 🙂 I hope it’s what you were looking for.
By the way, fangirl? Definitely. I feel like I should start writing fanfiction for your novel…
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@seekjustice I’m glad I didn’t lose it after all. Whew! At least now I only have one thing to rewrite. 🙂
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Thanks for that insightful comment. I had actually never considered that to be part of the theme, it just appeared and I had never thought about the fact that her first impressions were different to what he really was. (sort of like Pride and Prejudice, but the other way around).
I was pondering the fact that she fell in love with Justice when he was obviously not a Christian, and I was wondering if I should address that, which I think I probably should. I honestly don’t know who will read my book, and I don’t want to be sending the wrong impression that getting into a relationship with a non-Christian man is a good idea. I am planning to have him become a Christian by the end of the series though, and I can attempt to make a point of how that changes their relationship.
Yes, thanks!
😀 @dekreel @catwing and @dragon-snapper already drew some very cool characters for me! My friend and I actually wrote fanfiction for each others novels once and it was so much fun. (By the way, I feel like someone telling you that they stayed up til 3 reading your novel makes you a “real and successful” novelist :P)
INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
@seekjustice Or the fact that they’re staying up til 2 discussing it with you? 🙂 I’m in the US on the East Coast.
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
@seekjustice By the way, have you ever published a book before? I’ve published 7 so far, though none as grand as yours. 6 books in a kids series and a 300 page novel. No real themes to speak of. But just wondering what your publishing experience is.
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*gasp* I had no idea. Time zones literally confuse me so much. It’s 6pm here. I haven’t even had dinner. I feel you should probably sleep.
My publishing experience includes a short story in a magazine almost two years ago and a blogful of ramblings. I’m hoping to be traditionally published one day, but I’m happy to look into self-publishing if that doesn’t work out.
Having 7 published is really awesome though! What are they about?
INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
@seekjustice Well the kids series is just simple, clean, adventure stories for about ages 8-14. Four brothers and sisters go underground, in the mountains, to Florida, and solve a few mysteries. 😉 I’ve gotten really good reviews on them since I published the first two in 2014.
The novel is a time travel book I finished in 2016 but we’ve had a lot of stuff going on in our family the last two years and I haven’t done much marketing of that, or finished my several planned sequels. It’s a time-travel story, set in 2025 and 1863. Civil War is going on in America and when a Confederate spy is shot they bring him through the time machine to a better hospital where he can survive in 2025. Through this the FBI finds out about the time machine and the characters have to get the Confederate back through the machine to his own time period before the FBI gets hold of him and the machine. It was my first full-length novel – actually, still is 🙂 – and now I read it and realize it isn’t a wonderful thing, but it was compared to what I’d written before. There are some good parts though, and I still love it because it’s mine. I’m hoping the sequels will turn out even better with my matured writing.
I self-published them all. The reason I asked was because I’d love to recommend the app called bookcoverpro for designing book covers (obviously!) and the printing company lulu.com which is really easy to use. 🙂
And yes, I should definitely go to sleep. I think I will in a few minutes. 🙂
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
I’ve grown out of those sorts of books but I used to love them when I was in that age group.
That is actually a really cool idea! I would definitely read that, I’ve never read much about the Civil War, but I love historical fiction and that premise sounds fascinating. Maybe you should try a rewrite?
Goodnight then. I’ve enjoyed chatting with you. And thanks sso much for all the insight you’ve given me into the book that I actually wrote 🙂
INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
@seekjustice Honestly, I think you did well balancing what Sapphire had done. By no means did I get the feeling that you were thinking it was even kind of okay. Sapphire had guilt and she knew it was wrong (and I appreciate her not abandoning her child btw, which happens), but we’ve all sinned and need forgiveness. So I think this was handled well. 👍
I would think that the themes were forgiveness, God’s healing, and fighting not being the only way to solve a problem (not sure if that last one really is a theme, but that’s one of the things i took away from it)
I think probably Justice embodied the theme most. He and Chessy actually. They both changed a lot over the course of the novel (especially Justice I think)
Symbolism…..I feel like the flag could’ve had some symbolism, but personally I’m not sure if it was in the story long enough to be so. Other than that, I’m not sure. But I might be forgetting something ’cause I read it in big chunks and really quickly.
Hope this helps! I love answering questions
I'm a Kapeefer 'TIL WE'RE OLD AND GREY!
www.jennaterese.com@seekjustice I just remembered: We have a friend who wrote a really successful series and got it published by a publishing company instead of self-publishing. He says that he has a lot of trouble with that because when he goes to conferences and such to sell his books and do book-signings, he has to actually get permission and buy the books from the publisher. He says that it’s a lot of trouble and mix-ups because he no longer owns the rights to his own books.
You may have heard of him – Chuck Black?
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@seekjustice Okay, I have part of the first batch of questions done. I’ll get the rest of them done…sometime. Hopefully soon. Just warning you, I tend to be brutally honest about my opinion of people’s writing. But be assured, your book is better than a lot of published books I’ve read, and I did like it.
Who was your favorite character? Why?
Ooh, that’s tough. I have to say Chessy, with Sapphire being a close second. I typically don’t like multiple POVs, but it really worked with your book. They were my favorites because of their character arcs. I think they both had strong arcs (especially Chessy), and being in their heads and watching them change was really cool.
What were some of your favorite scenes? Why?
Hmm. My favorite scenes were basically whenever Sean showed up and got put in his place by Justice and Quillion. Gotta love poetic justice (pun not intended). I also really liked most of the scenes in the last third of the book. Getting there, the pace seemed pretty slow, but once they started the revolution and the pace picked up, the scenes got into a really good flow and drew me in.
Were there any scenes you thought were pointless or boring?
None of the scenes really struck me as pointless, but especially in the first two-thirds, I think you could shave the word count down just a tad to keep the pace and tension going. It seems like you would have a chapter with quite a bit of action in it, then two or three chapters that wound that tension back down again, which made that part of the book a little confusing because it felt like the stakes didn’t raise much until the climax.
What did you think of the worldbuilding? Was it clear and unique? What could I improve?
I think this area was one of the weaker parts of your book. For most of the locations, I had a vague impression of what it looked like, but none of them jumped out at me. Also, the relationship between different places was confusing. For instance, I didn’t realize that the trenches were outside of the city until they started fighting and marched out there. I think what you need to improve is the descriptions of places. Not blocks of just description, but words, phrases, and sentences woven into the action. The river scene at the beginning was pretty vivid, though.
Part #2 of questions coming soon!
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