LJ Review

[alanajoli]

dmoonfire was kind enough to post his review of Into the Reach on his livejournal. He's got a good eye for some of what I was really trying to do right (yay!) and some of what didn't work so well, but I tried to improve upon in books two and three. It's potentially spoilery (vague enough that most probably won't mind), so if you haven't read Into the Reach, consider yourself warned.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I find it odd to read commentary on one of my books. (I never seek it, but sometimes stumble on it.) Someone's attention where my head was so intensely.

Anyway, he makes it sound like a good read, and I am going to keep an eye out for it.

[dmoonfire.livejournal.com]

One of the brightest points of my writing career was wandering around the Internet for something and finding reviews of my stories in places I didn't even know they read that type of story. I think I've came up to at least half a dozen of them now and I'm stunned by each one.

And I once found one of my poems on someone's website, but for the life of me, I can't find that site again through Google, MSN, or Yahoo searching. :(

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

You bring up the second branch of the discussion, which was, "With all that stuff out there, how can anyone possibly find anything?" to which the answer was generally accepted to be gatekeepers one chooses oneself. In other words, Cory Doctorow and the others at BoingNoing don't have a stranglehold on the net, they are popular because people like to read them. So if they recco a work, that work has a good chance of at least being tried.

One of the more interesting aspects of the fanfic world, I've found in my forays there, is how very sophisticated the gate-keeping is: people publishing picks of lists, often with various cryptic comments about type of story, which helds guide readership to what they like.

But all this, while being a great topic in itself, wasn't germane to the issue of "does free publishing hurt other writers." So I didn't post on it.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Honestly the fanfic community fascinates me--and your discussion of the gate-keeping interests me even moreso. The issues of copyright involved are positively intriguing, and I'd love to learn more... unfortunately, that would mean I'd start getting involved in the fanfic community, which would mean watching what free time I have remaining vanish down a spiral vacuum.

But I'd love to read more articles/blog entries about the whole fanfic-o-sphere. ;)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. i have to be absolutely rigid with myself, or my time would totally vanish. But fanfic is basically something women invented for themselves, and the way fanficers organized themselved back in the seventies, and then again when the Internet because widely available is absolutely fascinating.

and many excellent writers got their starts there.