K.E. Skedgell

S o I have myself a few beta readers now and they're actually reading my story! Uh, yeah, I mean that's what I want, no doubt about it, but see, I'm used to handing off the first chapter or two for friends to read to get their opinion (and granted this was back when my writing sucked insert expletive ) and the usual caveat was no reply back. Ever. Even though my writing is somewhat decent nowadays, I expected that to happen again after finding me a few betas. Well, the first one that I hitched up with hasn't responded to me in two weeks, and I gave them the first six chapters three weeks ago. Gave them some time, thinking, okay, people have lives and they probably can't get to it right away. No biggie. Got an email saying they were still working on their notes and would send them to me in a few days. Sweet. So I waited, and waited, and still no email. That figures, I thought. Well, perhaps my story really does suck insert expletive . I tell peeps, if it isn...

A nd the search begins for beta readers. I have a few willing readers already, that's if they can make it through all 180k words. Yeah, I failed to cut it to my goal of 150k words, but doing so would have taken out large chunks of the story that I would have had to rewrite and possibly change the story to where I didn't want it to be. Maybe I'm just too attached to the thing and maybe a beta or two may find something that can be cut or reduced (hopefully not expanded on, it's a doorstop as it is). My next task at hand is to search for another couple more betas, see if any of them will be a good fit for me and my work, and begin working on book two and a query letter. I may hold off on the query letter for a while yet until I get some more feedback from my betas in case any major restructuring will have to happen, which I doubt but you never know. Ideally I would like at least one beta that knows their stuff about 15th century Romania and Hungary and can help me mak...