Being Reviewed

In my quest to attract readers to Scary Mary, I submitted my story to Pages Unbound. I'm not sure when this site began. It seems fairly new, but it appears to be growing very quickly with a pretty passionate crew. Pages Unbound allows users to review the stories listed, which I had not seen on other directories, like Free Online Novels. I submitted SM only a couple of days ago and have already gotten my first review. It wasn't unadulterated praise, but a very honest review which pointed out flaws that I thought were there, but well, nobody ever wants to think ill of her creation.

I'm always interested in what people liked about the story. This reviewer was the first to point out one particular bit of Mary's ability being a double edged sword that he found interesting. He's the first to point that out. And overall, he was complimentary of the story.

But onto his criticism, he sited length, or rather the lack thereof, as being the primary issue. SM is only about 35,000 words. Too little for most pro publishers. I have struggled with how slim SM is for a long time. Early in the writing/editing, I cut out half the book because it was a storyline I didn't particularly like or wanted to pursue. I also had a lot of flashbacks that I thought bogged down the story such as the memory of Mary's parents dieing. The reviewer said he wanted to know how they died. I think I only have a sentence now detailing what happened to the parents. (Drunk driver killed both while Mary was young. In the flashback, she is in the car as well, and the ghost of her mother stays with her until the paramedics arrive. It is her first ghostly experience.) I don't know if I want to add that in now, if I even can, or if it is that interesting, seems kind of movie of the week now. But his comment may make me flesh out that information in the sequel (even if the sequel is only a speck on the horizon). He says Vicky is a cardboard character, well she seems much richer to me, but in the current incarnation of the story, she may seem a little one dimensional. She's the damsel in distress in the sequel so we definitely see more of her and through her interactions with Mary, she becomes more 3-D.

Anyway, I may only have gotten a 7.3 out of 10, but I'm still pretty happy. The written comments are very helpful. But I don't know really what 7.3 means. I guess it's something like a 'C' in letter grades or possibly a high 'D'. And I should stop analyzing the number. I'll take it.

I'll be very interested in any other comments/reviews people make on the site.