So this past Saturday I hosted the beta readers of Love and Loyalty to a lunch on my dime where they could give me their feedback. This is the fourth such feedback dinner/lunch I have hosted for one of my novels.

For The Mark Of Cain, it instigated a pretty deep re-write of the manuscript.

For Love and Loyalty 2009 version there were moderate edits.

For Cawdor it put the project on hold until I can find a plot that works. ( I love the universe but trying to shoe-horn in MacBeth had failed because I followed the original text too closely.)

That brings me to Love and Loyalty the heavily revised version. What makes this feedback dinner different is that in fact there are two groups of people providing me with a critique of the work. The people at the dinner are friends and co-workers, causal readers and little writing aspiration among them. The second group is my writers group at Mysterious Galaxy.

If I drew a Venn diagram of the two groups critiques, there would be a spot where the two circles touched and no more overlap than that. More interesting is that the two groups have totally different takes on the same subject matter. (I’m not getting into the details of their review as some are still outstanding.) One group might have said I dislike the characters while the other liked the characters.

I’m very curious to see what the remaining readers have to say.

I’ve been hard at work this week on my writing thang. I’ve complied a list of nearly 50 agents that look possibly suitable for representing me as a Science-Fiction author, I’ve been busily making notes on my next novel which I hope to start serious outlining within a few weeks, and I mailed off a non-genre story to a print magazine. This was a first for me. Odds are it will not sell, but surprises do happen.

Last night I finished my query letter (off to my sweetie for a prrof read) and got the first draft done of a 1 page synopsis. (495 pages boiled down to 1, that was tough.)

During the day I re-read the very first attempt I had made at writing a Seth Jackson story, Assuming Command written about 1992. While I used far too many passive sentences and glossed over too many things that needed their own scenes, the core story and characters still worked out very well.

So I liked, in part what I had written more than 20 years ago. Not sure if this says that the core is strong or that I haven’t grown enough.

I hate writing them…

Here’s a taste fo the one I am currently working on.

Seth Jackson, American expatriate and Captain of the European starship Montgomery, holds humanity’s future in his hands. He can save the European Stellar Union from conquest, escape the destruction of his career, and repudiate the prejudiced idea that he is nothing but a glory-seeking Yank, but to do this he must kill Minou Shippen, the woman he loves.

So I’m working on a story that has no potential for sale or submission, but I’m writing it just the same. It’s crude, very crude, but likely to be short. I think under two thousand words. after that hardly anyone is ever going to see it.

My self published e-anthology of horror and dar Science-Fiction stories, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades, is now available for purchases as most ebook retailers. At all the retailers the price is just 99 cents. That’s one slim dollar for five stories of of ghosts, murderous computers, unnameable things from beyond, and terrifying benevolence. If you are reading this odds are you are family or friends. If you do download a copy and read I ask one favor, please leave a review on the retailers website. Leave an honest review, 1 star if that what you think.

It is currently available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and the apple iBook store.