Ouchies… but in a good way!

I just got my first major feedback on The Hangman’s Cross. And I have to say, it was a punch in the stomach. The beta reader couldn’t finish the book. She had to bail pretty early on, in fact. After three drafts and hundreds of hours of work… I wanted to cry.

But I didn’t! I took a few deep breaths and talked to her about why, what was bothering her about The Hangman’s Cross. And you know what? I found myself nodding along. None of those things were my intentions, but I could absolutely see where the problems were coming from. It still made my stomach hurt, but it started feeling a little better and I thanked our beta reader as many times as I could without her smacking me. She just made the most wonderful, important contribution to our book.

Critique is hard. It’s hard to give and it’s hard to take. My books are my babies. Every one of them is a massive investment of time and emotion. But it was hard on our reader, too, to look me in the eye and tell me she didn’t like what Aron and I had written. She was afraid of hurting my feelings, but I’ll never be able to thank her enough for telling me what I needed to hear.

So tomorrow – or tonight, if I have some time before bed – I’ll start on the fixes. Because one of the great things about a book (especially a self-published one with no release date) is that when I fuck something up, I can just cut it and try again until I get it right.