In the ongoing battle against modern entropy and chaos, I was taking out the recycling yesterday when I noticed a single sheet of loose paper with my handwriting on it. Curious, I looked it over, and to my amazement realized that it was the hastily scribbled notes I’d made while listening to the feedback of my test readers for Lost Under Two Moons, my first novel.
Looking over the notes brought back a wave of nostalgia for me. I remember the room filled with supportive friends who had agreed to take my dream of being a writer seriously enough to read an unpublished manuscript and tell me what they liked and didn’t like. I also remember how scared I was to expose a part of myself like this then ask for feedback, but I’m so glad that I did. The comments I got were incredibly helpful, and definitely influenced the final round of rewrites I did before publication.
What follows is a full transcript of my small collection of notes. Whether you are a fan of my books or a writer looking forward to your own first beta read, I hope you enjoy seeing the sort of feedback I got on the manuscript for my first book. Enjoy!
- Old-fashioned sci-fi
- held everyone’s interest
- Randal: middle ground between sci-fi and literary
- Again everyone seems to want more Yurril
- People seem to really want the sketches
- sketches on the cover may give the wrong impression and may be bad
- Everyone wants more at the end
- Possibly more entries at the very end by both Yurril and Richard
