Feedback from My Cousin Jesse

Yes, I have a literal "Cousin Jesse". No, this is not him.

This is actually Uncle Jesse. That's a different guy.

Jesse sent me *five pages* of thoughts on The Return of Dr. Necropolis yesterday, and I can't tell you how grateful I am for that kind of feedback. 

Most of it was incredibly positive, so I'll quote some of the most flattering bits here.

Quote 1:

I thought this was an incredible read. The pacing, character work, and worldbuilding all came together incredibly strongly. I finished reading both perfectly satisfied by Frank’s journey in this novel, and very interested in seeing what happens next if this blossoms into a series. For context, I was already reading A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine when you shared Dr. Necropolis with me. During my reading time each evening, I had to choose between continuing to read that book, which was written by a Hugo Award winner, and yours. I chose to read yours almost every night.

 Quote 2:

I love the way you construct action scenes. They almost play out like fast-paced Sherlock Holmes cases - here is the threat, here are the tools at Frank’s disposal, here’s his goal - figure it out. The solutions that Frank comes up with are consistently surprising in the moment but very clever and properly telegraphed in hindsight. I suspect this will make a subsequent re-read even stronger. 

Quote 3:

I found the pacing to be incredibly strong. On any given page, I know exactly what Frank wants in both a micro and macro sense, so I am reading not just to see what happens next but to see how Frank deals with the next obstacle in his way. I can’t identify any places where the pace slumps unnecessarily, nor can I identify any places where the action or drama is overly relentless. 

Friends, I am normally immune to flattery. I actually wrote about this in my memoir in a chapter called "Satisfaction, Not Success". Basically, so many people told me how great I was for such a prolonged period of time back when I was a sophomore in high school that it fucked up my ability to work towards my goals for almost that entire year. Because of that, I really dislike it when people just praise my work straight-up, even to this day. It's not that I can't hear people praise me. It's that my lived experiences makes that praise an almost negative experience.

But. I've been working on this book so hard for so long that it's hard not to eat this up.

Thankfully, Jesse also sent me some critiques and/or suggestions, several of which I'm going to adopt before releasing this thing into the wild. Hell, I've already made a little change right here on the blog.

[B]efore the story begins, you give us a huge amount of information. We get a full list of characters and brief synopses, a map, and a glossary of terms. By presenting these all up front without any other context, I went into the story under the assumption that I should just have all of this information memorized before chapter 1. That proved not to be the case, however. Every character, event, and neologism was introduced in context and made perfect sense immediately, and were either repeated in context or are intuitive enough that I did not find myself tripping over them when I encountered them. Mundie, AMP, Neural Disruptors, and zero point energy probably don’t need to be introduced like this for the general audience of this novel.

Also, by introducing the characters and locations before the narrative begins, it softly spoils elements that would have been stronger as surprises... The same holds true for the chapter titles. Before reaching chapter 1, I already know that Chapter 6 will feature a [spoiler]. 

 This was extremely useful feedback and not something on which anyone else had commented.

My wife Sally asked for the dossier of characters, and from there I turned it into what it is now -- a roster of People, Places, and Things. But I'd been wondering if anyone besides Sally would find it spoilery, and... it seems that I was right to worry.

Jesse suggests moving that stuff to the back, and indeed, that's an idea that I plan to adopt.

The same holds true for the chapter titles. You may notice that I already removed them here. Friends, they were only ever in the manuscript, so I could remember what happened where without having to search all over the place. However, it seems that their utility has perhaps come to an end.

There's more, but it's entirely too spoilery to post here, and anyway, I'd already addressed most of it in the rewrite. Beyond that, you'll just have to read the book for yourselves.