wednesday is blog day

I am fortunate to have have wednesdays off, which breaks up the five day work week and allows me an extra day to sleep in. It also gives me almost an entire day to devote to writing until I pick my niece up at 2:30 to hang out and do artsy fartsy stuff.

Once I have my coffee in hand I usually start by checking my email and then my blog and all those I follow. I comment as much as possible because we bloggers LOVE comments. Lately I've started something new. Every time I go to a blog I follow I try to find one new blog to follow. I scroll down the list and see if there's a heading that catches my eye, or even a blog title I find interesting. Then I go there. I've found some great new blogs to follow and you can see them in my blog roll. Check 'm out!

Meanwhile, I'm revising chapter 11 (only 42 more to go...) and reading two books which, sadly, I'm finding disappointing. One is by a very well known author of horror (no, not Stephen King - I may not always like what he writes but it's usually well written, imho). The other is by a relatively new author, the first of two stand alone books set in the same world. I'm not going to tell you the books yet because I want to finish them before passing final judgement but reading them reminds me just how subjective the business of publishing is.

In the case of the second book I'm surprised by how many 'rules' are broken, and broken early. The most obvious one is telling instead of showing. Now mind you, I think it's ok to tell - in limited amounts. But the real trick is knowing when and where AND most importantly, doing it well. In this book, there's a long description explaining the history of the land and its rulers and I have to tell you I was bored to death, skipped over half of it to get back to the story. But the thing is the information the author wanted to impart could easily have been offered in the dialogue that soon follows between the characters. Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying this book and the idea for it is completely original. I am also liking the characters, which is a good thing because otherwise, I would've put the book down - which is what I'm thinking of doing with the other book. I hardly care about those characters so why should I read on to see what happens to them?

What makes you put a book down and quit reading?



Lastly, in case anyone is interested (mum, that's you) I've posted my revised query and chapter one for Grimoire in the static pages.