Beta Readers

One of the stages of writing that is perhaps less familiar to readers is the feedback-driven revision that happens thanks to beta readers. Beta readers are the first extra-author audience that a work sees. The idea is that they'll spot flaws that a writer is too close to the work to recognize. In the same way that it was difficult to spot misspelled words before spell check because our minds automatically unscramble the scrambled letters, it can be difficult for a writer to identify weak points in plot or character details in a larger work. Some personality trait that I thought was quirky in one of my characters might be grating. I may have launched my protagonist from emotional points A to C without adequately addressing necessary point B. I may have told you that someone had four siblings, only to later mention his or her only child syndrome.

Until now, the people I have relied on most heavily to be my beta readers are my friends. In college, I would literally read short stories to my friends and take notes on their suggested revisions. This process not only makes the story better, it also makes me a better writer as I learn from the feedback what parts of my writing are good (i.e. pleasing to an audience) and what parts need work. As I've started writing longer works, I've tried to divide the labor a bit, but it seems about time to get a pool of volunteers rather than relying exclusively on conscripts. After all, I don't want my poor friends to start wishing they weren't. What's more, people with different backgrounds will bring different kinds of criticism to a work.

I'm currently looking for beta readers for Transcending Limbo, which (reader beware) is not the sequel to The Watchmaker's New Order. Transcending Limbo is literary fiction, an excerpt of which I published in January. If you're intrigued and are interested in providing critical feedback as a beta reader, I invite you to take the survey below. 

FREE download of The Watchmaker's New Order

On Feb 15 and 16, 2014, The Watchmaker's New Order will be available for free to download from Amazon. Enjoy it on your Kindle or on any electronic device that can make use of the Kindle App (computers, tablets, phones).

Reviews so far have called it "a delight for fans from Crichton to Collins." "With an engaging writing style and excellent character development, The Watchmaker's New Order can best be described as The Lord of the Rings meets The Road meets The Hunger Games." And the "couldn't put it down" sentiment has been repeated a number of times. And costing a whole zero dollars, you can try it risk free!

Excerpt from Transcending Limbo

Transcending Limbo is a piece of in-the-works literary fiction. Part compilation and part novel, it's composed of writing that I've done over the course of more than seven years. I expect to complete it later in 2014. Below is an excerpt from the opening chapter.

I DID NOT believe in an afterlife until I arrived here, and now there is very little refuting it. I feel as though I have just woken from a restful sleep, yet I am standing upright, poised to move as though I have merely opened my eyes from a blink. Where I am standing is a white, unadorned hallway with textured mint green linoleum floors that stretch on at least as far as I can see in either direction. It takes a few moments for my eyes to adjust to a white brightness that emanates from nowhere in particular; there are neither light fixtures nor windows, and I do not cast a shadow, as though the light pours from the floor and walls themselves. On either side of the hall are doors, spaced about twenty feet apart and staggered so that a person walking would pass one every ten feet, first on one side, then on the other. Between every second and third door on either side of the hallway is a bench, wrought iron frame and wooden slats that looked weathered, although likely not by weather but perhaps by time and asses

A placard hangs on the wall on either side of me. On it is written “TELL YOUR STORY. KNOW YOURSELF,” in large, black block letters. Underneath and smaller is scrawled, “Good luck.” Though it appears to have been added by hand to both of the signs, they are entirely indistinguishable.

There are only two directions in this hall – forward and backward relative to the orientation in which I became conscious – and it seems important that I remember which is which. To my original left is a bench over which is hung the placard, while to my right the placard is separated from the nearest bench by a doorway, so as long as I remember that the bench-placard wall is left, I will know which way is which.

I sit down on the bench under the placard and contemplate the door across from me. It is the same white as the walls and has neither keyhole, nor peephole, nor knocker; its sole feature is a round brass doorknob.

I think that this is something momentous, these my first moments in this life. In my last life, my first moments must have been chaotic with a doctor and nurses and mother and father and grandparents hovering at the door and orderlies in and out. But I was barely present at that event, and here I am the only spectator and the sole celebrant to these minutes in this life. I try to feel the weight of it. I fail. Instead what I feel is an urge to cry out to the empty hallway, to ask where I am and to what end and what has happened to bring me to this place. Where is everyone else? What is behind the doors? And is this place good or bad? And why am I hungry?