This post is your opportunity to comment on any miscellaneous items, such as:
• What did you think of the book overall?
• Did the themes of the fall (up or down), revelation, science, the interplay of revelation and science, coming of age, relationships, pride, flying, etc. jive with the Greek mythology/Mormon doctrine packaging?
• Were there issues of my writing style -- mechanics or substance -- that worked or didn't work for you?
• Was it paced well?
• Did you want to turn the page?
• Did you feel for the characters?
• Who would you say is the audience for this book?
• If you had to give a twenty-word synopsis of the book, what would it be?
• Publishing tips?
7 comments:
Steve,
I am over three quarters of the way through the book. Overall, I really like it, although you told me how it ends and I probably won't like the ending. But even knowing how it ends, I have enjoyed reading it and continued to want to see what happens on the next page, etc. I enjoy the partial biographical nature of the book. But I don't see any exact matches and so can't see that any particular person should be bothered by the close references. My main comment is, and as soon as I finish reading the whole book, I will read this part over again so that I could be more specific, that the first 2 or 3 chapters didn't flow along as easily as the latter ones did. The word use of the action or something seemed a little stilted or awkward. After that, it moved along smoothly and I amreally enjoying reading it. Great job, Steve! Good luck on the publishing.
Me again, Love all the art work on your blogsite. Pam
Steve, I am only on chapter 6, but would love to talk with you about your novel.
Like mom, I've really enjoyed the autobiographical nature of the book, but at the same time I am wondering if that is limiting you in making your charcter truely alive on the page. Like take Isaac. Is he really reckless like his father thinks he is? Why is his dad worried about him? What (besides totally typical teenager stuff like cliff jumping) has made his father concerned. Is Isaac reckless? Because Steve wasn't ever truely a reckless person and so I see so much of Isaac as a form of you that I don't know how much his character is different from my brother at that age. If you want Isaac to be edgy, then he definitely needs to be edgier. And if you're going to have him die in the end and have this novel be a tragedy then I am very sad!!
Also, if you determine to make your book LDS fiction and have him be Mormon, you bring up other, perhapse more complicated questions. Does he have a testimony? Why or why not? Also, what type of character is his father? What do they both look like? I think more exposition in the beginning, really grounding your characters will add depth and allow your readers to connect with them more easily.
See further comments in the individual chapter sections.
Another though.
Like mom, I really love all the art work you brought to the web site. It really is vivid and creates a strong, dark mood. Is this the mood you want for the book? Like I said, I'm still in the beginning, but if you want a dark mood I haven't quite gotten that yet. Brooding, yes I somewhat picked up on that, but I haven't qutie gotten true teenage angst yet. Think through what type of mood you want it to have. If its going to be tragic lets make it be gorgeously tragic!
Steve, since so much of your theory revolves around gravity I'm wondering if you've read the new bio on Albert Einstein. Did you know he determined that time is basically a byproduct of gravity? I find this fascinating, even if I can't understand the mathematics behind it. I'd really like to read his book. Maybe it would make for good research for Isaac Jordan (I really like his name, by the way). Also, have you seen the documentary about bird migration where they followed those different bird flocks across the globe? There were some very poignant flying quotes in that that might further inspire your text and I highly recommend it for you and your boys.
Becky,
As to that last comment, I'm afraid that Einsteinian gravitational theories aren't the best suited to the polarity of gravity principle. Einstein, at least to my reading, did not view gravity as a force. My understanding is that Einstein viewed gravity as the curvature of space time resulting from the presence of mass -- ie, that space time warped, if you will, around masses -- and the more substantial the mass, the more significant the warping. He viewed gravity as the effect, rather than the cause. I thought of discussing this in the book but decided against explicitly saying that Einstein was wrong. (At that point all readers' suspension of disbeleif would fall upward out the window.)
My theory of the polarity principle jives much better with quantum mechanics -- and the notion of exchange particles -- ie, the notion that energy exchanges among forms through the exchange of various particles. For example, an electron can exchange energy with a photon, resulting in the exchange of electrical to light energy. Under the polarity theory, an electron can exchange energy with another particle, a theoretical one any way, called a graviton. (In the book Daniel quips that he knows how to make an electron dance with a graviton.)
I actually explained some of this in previous drafts of the book, but took it all out for two reasons: 1) It slowed things down and lost the reader; and 2) I'm probably wrong on my understanding of everything I've said above.
But thanks for the idea.
I bet that Einstein and polarity could (I mean do) peacefully co-exist, we just don't have the grand unification theory all figured out yet!
Thanks for the explanation :)
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