An Interesting “Bash”

Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree Tilt.

Somebody sent me an online blurb bashing a book of mine originally written in 1995. It was a recent comment. The bash was for a couple of reasons, primarily things the protagonist said which did sound pretty weird out of context…and for a sentence  fragment and misplaced modifier. You know, I really hate it when people bash grammatical errors that are dialogue of a secondary  character. Of course, on the other hand, if you give your characters perfect speech, you get bashed for  stilted  dialogue. She also seemed to think that the protagonist’s opinions were mine, and though I did share some of her philosophies, the protagonist was written to the extreme side of things.

The Long-Awaited Honest-to-God Secret to Being Happy

The critic’s other problem was that the book was not “original.”  Too many other books out there like it now with  similar  characters, similar premise,  etc,  etc.  She’s right  that  there’s  plenty  else  out  there like  it  now…11 years after I wrote it. At the time, it was very original, largely because so much of the information had just been declassified.

Her comments made me realize how much the world has changed since I wrote  the  book.  She and my daughters have grown up in a world where there’s an immediate report  of danger or destruction, where gobs of women on TV and in movies are tough cookies with the softer side often hidden, where life moves oh-so-fast and has no time for a book that starts slowly and builds to a frantic pace.

But the not-so amusing effect of the bash was that it made me feel old. After all, my critic was only 8 years old when the book was written  and it hasn’t been in print since before she hit puberty. I wasn’t aware there was still a  copy  out  there…though   it’s  being re-released next month.


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