Table of Contents

How to navigate this blog

As chapters are published weekly be sure to search for any unread chapters in the list before reading the current post. Feel free to add questions or comments regarding what you have read.

I appreciate your support with this project.







Monday, December 6, 2010

To my faithful, and occasional, readers

Well, I've now posted Chapter Thirty Nine, which brings us to the end of Part Two. Now, before I post any more chapters, I would really love some feedback from anyone interested in The Book of Drachma. There are two issues I need feedback on. The first is related to the first negative comments I got since I've been writing this opus. A potential reader was put off by my using too much medical jargon in the Prologue and Chapter One. Now, I had some reasons for doing this, which I thought were rational reasons, but that was from the perspective of a physician and the author. Now you, as my "lay" readers may be able to comment on this better than I. In other words, is my striving for medical realism misguided, or was the reader right?
The other is whether I should try to publish this effort as a single book, or should I break it into three parts. I was thinking that I would leave that decision up to potential publisher/editor types, but you as potential readers can most definitely have a strong voice in this decision.
Finally, I should let you in on a plan that I thought of while writing this book, and that is that I envisioned writing this with a concept borrowed from echocardiography, namely the first segment I envisioned as representing laminar flow, with the different chapters flowing more or less evenly, independently. The second section I envisioned as showing the concept of coaptation, where one can think of the three cusps of the aortic valve bringing the flowing segments together. The third section is one of turbulence, where the formerly smoothly flowing segments are thrust apart with some violent forces, then reestablish a new laminar flow.
In any event, I look forward to your comments, and I send you my thanks for sticking with this project.

3 comments:

  1. I'm still attempting to read through all of your novel since I came late to the game (you had already posted chapter 37 by the time I found your blog) but I will say that I partially agree with the complaint that the medical "jargon" can be a bit much at times. I found myself sort of glazing over those passages involving too much medical terminology.

    However, what kind of readers are you looking to attract? This kind of writing would certainly appeal to anyone in the medical field or anyone interested at all in medicine so you don't necessarily have to change a thing if that is who would like to reach. In any case, though it was distracting, it wasn't bad enough that I stopped reading all together - and certainly you wouldn't want to "dumb down" your writing - which may make it bland. So really it's up to you and what kind of readers you wish to attract. You may though wish to consider finding a happy medium between complete medical realism and prose that flows a bit easier for those of us who belong to the ignorant masses :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for your comments. I had originally thought of an audience of mostly medical types, but I have since changed my focus to include a broader range of readers. Perhaps someone expert in editing could help me make it more "reader friendly."

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't think the reader was right. The theme of your novel is 'medical' fantasy, so you're bound to use a lot of medical terms in your novel.

    The book itself is quite long, so I would suggest breaking it up into three seperate parts. That way, it can be read easier.

    Good luck. :)

    ReplyDelete