Brutal Honesty

Hello all;

Today I was talking to another writer friend of mine. We had got talking about our readers opinions and how they can affect an overall project. Brutal honesty is what we had decided to call the topic of coversation and it had me thinking a bit about my lastest book, A Maiden's Hell.

I was adopted out at a young and had also known about it from a young age as well. So when I finally met my Biological Mother in '06 I was searching for a topic to write about, that where A Maiden's Hell came into play. It started out as a nightmare that I had at first, but as I continued writing it turned into much more. I was halfway through the first chapter when my mother wanted to read it. Well my birth family consisted at the time of alcoholic and criminal background and as you all could imagine child abusers are not well excepted in the prison, as they shouldn't be. My mother then finished what I had written and said flat out that she hated it. I felt awful, her condemnation almost made me want to trash the whole manuscript, but through the course of two weeks and dozens of nightmares later I kept writing, eventually giving young Erica Colt( the main character) a friend, she had befriened a six month old wolf pup. Well after creating the dog I then took my book back to my mother for her opinion. She loved it! totally forgetting about the girls whole life and believed that I had found something that would sell. Reminding her about Erica's life before, I asked her why she liked it all of a sudden, she looked at me and said " because she has a friend now that scares people like she had been and she will never be hurt again"

I liked her answer and from then on I believe that a book has to draw emotion to draw the interest of your audience no matter how good or bad the opinion.