Update on The Lost

The old, erotic, version of The Lost received Honorable Mention in the Romance Divas Best Opening Scene Contest (up to first 15 pages). Just the lovely boost I needed!

I didn't enter with any goal of winning, especially since I'm not going with this version of the story. But I do intend to recycle as much material from it as I can, and incorporate it into the new version. The feedback from the contest was really beneficial on these points:

1. Just about everyone pointed out archaic use of language (modern sounding speech in a story that felt mostly historical). It was only a few places, but it threw them.

2. Related to point one, and surprising, considering the whole erotic angle, a lot of people didn't care for the more explicit language used. Again, they found it jarring. That's not really a concern with the new version, but something to keep in mind.

3. OMG! I am the run-on sentence queen! LOL. Hi, my name is Vanessa and I am a semi-colon addict. :-P I was trying to keep a certain rhythm and flow to the words/sentences. But folks will surely run out of air, before I run out of flow. *gg* Not good.

4. 'K, this is the thing that opened a big fat can of worms for me. And the feedback I'm probably most thankful for. It was actually more 'comments in passing', than feedback. A couple of people noted offhand that while they got the historic vibe, they weren't sure what year it was or where (country/land) the story took place.

::blinkblink:: assume deer in headlights expression.

Wah? I'm supposed to do that? I thought I could just, yanno, make sh*t up. lol. Now before any fantasy readers/writers flay me, I did do A LOT of world building, and it all makes sense/has its own logic for this world. I just thought I could keep my land/country and specific year, er vague.

So I'm working that angle now. Ironically one of the things I hadn't worked out with the word-building, was religion (I did the political backdrop), but I knew it would be important. I just figured it would come to me when it had to.

So now it's come. It's still an alternate history/time line. The years are not AD (Anno Domini), but JA (Jhoraed's Ascension, with Jhoraed being the most powerful wizard to have lived. (Still working on his 'legend/mythology')) The historical period could loosely relate to our late medieval/early renaissance, but I’d have to do the research on that. And at some point, I guess, I'll have to do up one of those maps, (so that's what they're there for. heh.).

The funny thing is, I believe this is an action-adventure romance, whose setting is fantasy/fantastical. Rather than a fantasy with romance subplot. The emphasis is on the romance/plot, not the fantasy stuff, yet, the fantasy elements are intrinsic to the story.

Uhm, so why did I want to be a writer again?