Hello all,
A little more than a month and a half ago I sent my book, "Dancing with Dragonflies" to a few friends and family members, I think there were around 10 people I sent to? Anyway, I've only heard back from two of them and I'm running out of time for peoples' opinions on it, so I will be finding three more people to send to.
This story is finished, however, it is not completely ready for publishing. I will go through another round or two of proofreading and editing, but before I do that, I would like some more feedback on it, from the readers. Why? Because I have my reservations about this book. I spent eight years (or more?) off and on writing it because I was bored with it a lot of the time and I didn't think it was going to be a good story.
Those thoughts have changed. It's now one of MY favorites, but I need to know if other readers feel the same. I think I thought it was boring before because it was taking me so long to write--it had always been a "back burner" story, you see--so I wasn't seeing it as what it really is, which is an exciting adventure.
I had originally planned on Cole, a teenage boy, to be the main character and protagonist, but somewhere along the way, another character stepped up and took that position (I did not have that planned, but sometimes our characters take over a story and make us write things we had no intentions of doing). I need to know if that's okay. I need to know if that's going to bug the readers. I just want to know if it progresses smoothly or if it's kind of a mess.
I also intentionally added some cliches to this story because I wanted it to have an old fairy-tale type feel to it. I need to know if readers will be rolling their eyes at this or if I balanced things all right.
I need several opinions about these issues, of course. I can't just take the word of one person (my editor), which is why having beta readers to give me feedback (brutal--but constructive--honesty) is so important.
I'm not going to bother leaving a link here because, to be honest, I don't think anyone reads this blog (lol), but on the off chance there is someone reading and that person is interested in being a beta reader, you'll find more info on my Facebook account (Author Sara Hogan).
