Also, I got knocked out of the ABNA this round, which didn't surprise me terribly because how many of Amazon's contest readers probably know a damn thing about Japanese boybands. I was kind of hoping to make it one more round just so I could say I was a quarter-finalist, but oh well. On the other hand, I got an email tonight that I could go and read the reviews the two people who reviewed my excerpt sent and they're a bit...
...um. Awful. One is at least fair, it's true that the word limit cut mine off in a terrible spot, and the dialogue does sound funny, and it's a pretty niche thing. I can respect all that. The 2nd one, on the other hand, is really sort of cruel. I actually only read the couple header/teaser lines on the frontpage and didn't click into it yet, because even those were...unpleasant.
I'm a pretty confident person, and I know I can write and all, but I'd be lying if I said that didn't sting more than a little. So. Fail. I wish this had come a couple days ago when I still felt awful instead of today when I was starting to feel better. I'm not posting this so everybody goes all "omg but ilu" in the comments, I just wanted to get this off my chest before I went back and read it for real.
so much for my plan to quit my job and lie about writing trashy novels all day.