Saturday, May 14, 2011

Critique group! And book recs

Had the first meeting of our critique group today, and it went way better than I could have hoped. Tiana, Cheryl, and Evangeline are all very nice, smart, and encouraging, so I have great hopes for the group.

Currently reading Suzanne Brockmann's "Prince Joe", one of two books in a combo that I bought at the GRW meeting she spoke at. The other book is "Forever Blue", and the combo is called "Tall, Dark and Dangerous". The cover shows a guy in a white shirt with a six-pack: the good kind, not the beer kind. The last romance novel I read was so awful that I was worried that maybe I didn't like the genre anymore, but her characters grabbed me and I was totally sucked in. I'd never read anything by her before, but now I understand why she's so popular.

Before that book, I read "The Help", by Kathryn Stockett. I don't usually read literary fiction, but I like Emma Stone and she's in the movie version that's coming out in August, so I decided to read the book first. It grabbed me the way few books have recently.

And if you want a lesson on "voice", read that book! It's told in first person by three different characters, each of whom narrate a few chapters at a time, and it's very clear, even without the labels at the top of each new section, whose story it is.

So who wants to go see the movie with me when it comes out?!?!?!!

And now I'm going to go back to working on that story with the May 23 deadline. :)

ETA: trying to change settings so the time comes up correctly....

4 comments:

  1. When did you get a critique group? O.o How did I miss that? What's more, how did you find one?

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  2. LOL. From the GRW forums. I emailed people in the Marietta/Smyrna area who were looking for critique partners, and we finally found a date we were all free. Crossing fingers that it works out! Everyone seems very nice, though, so I have high hopes.

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  3. I found this under the critique partners forum.

    http://www.georgiaromancewriters.org/forum/index.php?topic=80.0

    The posts are from back in 2009, so I'm not sure if they're still looking, but you could give them a try, OR start your own topic.

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  4. Ooh, here's one for Alpharetta, but it's still from 2009:

    http://www.georgiaromancewriters.org/forum/index.php?topic=272.0

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