When Jon Rance reviewed a few sample chapters of Not Famous for me a while back he told me, “One of the first things I was told by my publishers is that most of your readers are women. You need to appeal to women as well as men.” So, I decided to find another female…

Well, my beta-reader has finished her review of Not Famous. My beta-reader gave me a lot of insightful and useful  criticism. I’d love to share it all with you, but some of it reveals some key plot points and I don’t want to share spoilers… but she did complimented the the  “excellent story” and “strong…

Well, my beta-reader is now about sixty percent through Not Famous. Today I got some useful critiques that I have to work on. All of them center around issues she has with the main character Nick. She says he’s “jealous and self-centered sometimes” but she’s noted areas where I can easily tone it down.  His…

My trusted beta-reader has some new updates for me regarding her read-through of Not Famous. She is now a third of the way through. The overall response was very positive, but the primary issue was the following: You never gave any physical descriptions of anyone. I don’t know what the characters look like! I was…

I’ve mentioned before that the first draft of my novel is currently being beta-read by my first beta-reader. It’s nerve-racking, having someone reading it for the first time in seven years, but, this is an important part of the process, and I’ve asked my beta-reader to be completely honest in assessing the story to help…