I’m focusing on finishing up a couple of books, so that I can bang out reviews for them on my new eBook Reviews blog, just launched this week. For the launch, I’m extending huge deals on my e-books. Then the price goes up by over 300%.
One of the books I’m anxious to review is Sharon E. Cathcart’s In the Eye of the Beholder, which I started reading a few weeks ago. I’m still enjoying the book, and it’s still in the top 10% of not-crap, but there are slow sections—not calm sections, but godawful slow ones. And the story is starting to take on a feel like The Pickwick Papers, which I never finished for the boredom it inspired. (If you’ve never read The Pickwick Papers, it’s about Mr. Pickwick and his cohorts and their random adventures. And that’s all well and good, but most of the time I was reading it, I wished that Dickens had given me some reason to care how the adventure turned out.)
(BTW, these slow sections of In the Eye of the Beholder and A Time to Tell inspired the post “Intense Conflict vs. Gentle Conflict” over at BeTheStory.com. I’ve noticed that my most favorite stories do not have slow sections; they have calm sections, but the story continues to move forward at a deliberate pace, even through the calm sections.)
Here’s today’s teaser, from p. 71 (randomly chosen via random.org) of the Smashwords PDF edition:
I have been so worried about Claire these past months that I have neglected my journals. Fortunately, I listened to myself instead of the doctor: obviously what Claire wanted was not an infant but another horse.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just follow the directions at the “Teaser Tuesdays” post.
-TimK
Wow, very interesting teaser! It brings up a lot of different questions! Thanks for sharing it!
Pretty interesting teaser — must not be from one of the slow spots.
I’m finding several blogs that are new to me by visiting Teaser Tuesday posts.
I have a teaser two-fer on Rose City Reader.
Thanks for the comments, lisa-marie and Rose.
No, my teaser was not from one of the slow spots. And in these last chapters, I’m really getting into the story now, because I’m getting into the character. What Claire needed was not even a horse, but a friend who would love her (as her new horse did).
-TimK