Day 6 – BIAW
I had a hard time concentrating on Translucent Trust today since I was also blogging at Prairie Chicks Write Romance. My post, Trolling for an Agent, showed my take on the agent issue. I was very curious to see what everyone thought and so, I kept going over and checking. It’s hard to write one thing when you’re thinking on another.
Storywise – Some animals died in my wip today. It wasn’t Dyler nor Hayley’s doing...or was it? If they hadn’t been investigating the cold case, then the villain wouldn’t be stalking them. He only killed the animals because he could. He wanted to show Dyler and Hayley that he could get close enough to hurt them. And, Dyler definitely suffered when he saw what had happened to his herd.
But, now I’m wondering about my readers – the animal lovers in the crowd.
You see, in one of my other stories, the heroine isn’t crazy about dogs. So, when a smallish dog is thrust in her arms she just holds it awkwardly. In her POV, she refers to the dog as ‘it’. Someone who read my wip said I can’t do that. She said my heroine has to cuddle the dog and refer to it as ‘he’ or ‘she’ or I was going to ‘turn off’ all my dog lover readers. But, it was in my heroine's POV and she wasn't crazy about the dog.
I know today’s readers are a fickle bunch, but do you think if they read a book where animals are hurt, they’ll put down the book permanently? Would you? What about a certain type of animal? Like...it’s fine if the cat falls out of the tree but I’d better catch the dog? Do people really think like this? Come on, talk to me....
Yep, here I am again! I've been told that too - in Lady Bells one of the manor dogs (who Lady Bells has come to love greatly) eats the poisoned food meant for Lady Bells! Now, I'm a huge dog person (as anyone who knows me can attest) and I had a very hard time writing that scene. BUT, it had to be in there - how else would Hugh know that his wife was nearly poisoned and that her disappearance is now suspicious? I did make the dog an older dog - to try and justify it? Not sure. And I cry everytime I read the scene - and the other scene where Lady Bells grieves for her beloved dog.
ReplyDeleteOK - do I stop reading a book if the heroine isn't a dog lover? No. Do I stop reading if an animal is killed as a plot advancement? No. It would be pretty boring if authors created worlds that were not authentic - and not everyone likes dogs and cats.
It's morning, I'm rambling. Loved reading your BIAW updates. Good job, Anita.
Janet - my oh my - Now what am I going to do next week when I don't have BIAW reports? Yikes
ReplyDeleteRe your 2nd para - That's my feeling as well. I read over a hundred books a year and I haven't put one down yet because something happened that I didn't approve of. But then, I mostly read category romance books so I thought that might've been the difference. It's hard to mix romance with gristly.
Thanks Janet. I'm having the uncanny feeling that our books are similar even if they are hundreds of years apart. I'm looking forward to reading yours.