Holding pattern…

Well, still waiting for feedback on Kindred Hearts, and my own heart is sinking rapidly.  Are the beta readers just not engaged enough to finished?  Does it suck so badly they're afraid to tell me the bad news?  The longer this goes on the less confident in the story I am.  Lynda described it as "ambitious," and I guess it is, far more so than "Zach."  Which was, essentially, just a romance.   But then, Kindred Hearts is also just a romance–albeit one set in an historical period with characters like Lord Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington.  I dunno.  I never thought "Zach" would receive the kind of reception it has–the original intent was just to see if I could A, finish a book and B, get it published.  The fact that it's still getting good reviews after six months seems to me to indicate that it has legs, which is good.  God only knows what Kindred Hearts will have.  Hooves?  Tentacles?

I'm not sure where I'm going with Miles and Adam's story–it started out as sort of an in-joke between me and my friends Adam and Philip.  Or David and Craig, if you're speaking mundanely.  Adam is the SCA name of David, and Philip is the SCA name of Craig.  And David Philip Evans is in Finding Zach, so I had to write a story with Adam Craig, of course. The name sounds like a rock star, so he is.  And Miles Caldwell is a hermit calligrapher who lives by a lake and never goes anywhere and doesn't have a clue who Adam is.  Which Adam kind of likes.  And he likes Miles, and vice versa, but what's going to happen when Adam goes back to LA and takes up his life as a rock star again?  Miles has a very negative opinion of their future, but Adam is optimistic…

Question, totally off-topic:  What do you do when someone asks your opinion of their own book, and you think it sucks?  I mean–really, really bad.  Flat writing, bad characters, uninteresting story…  The problem is that the person is someone you either work with or have to meet regularly in a social situation or is another author with your publisher, and they've published before and you couldn't read their other books either?  So far I've been able to avoid the subject when we've met, but I'm scared to death that I'll be asked for input–and I just can't give it.  Because it's really that bad.  And I don't want them mad at me or insulted, because they are a nice person.

I've read bad books before and it amazes the hell out of me that they got published.  I do galley proofreading for my own publisher, and one of the books I had to proof was absolutely terrible.  I was so relieved when I was done!  And then a few weeks later, the editor asked me to proof the sequel.  Fortunately I was absolutely slammed with other work and couldn't do it anyway, so that saved me coming up with an excuse not to read it.  I'm not being picky or snobby–it was just that bad.  I'm curious to hear what the reviewers have to say about it.

My ambition is to have Sarah Frantz from Dear Author review Kindred Hearts and give it a good review.  She's tough, but I respect her opinion.  Her reviews were in the back of my mind the whole time I was writing KH, and I kept editing it by her voice in my head.  But first I have to get feedback from my betas…