Court/Ship, my Fate Setting about an alien invasion in the Court of Louis XV, is now going into edits. I’ve gotten a bunch of feedback from the Fate backers, and I’m taking that feedback and integrating the relevant parts into Court/Ship.
Editing based on this kind of reader feedback is an interesting process. When I was writing for 365 Tomorrows, I would often get totally contradictory feedback. A person would write something like this on the forum: This is the worst things I have ever read! Stories on this site are totally going downhill.
Then I would get an e-mail, on the same day, about the same story from someone who says “This morning I was feeling terrible, and then I read your story and I realized that someone else knows how I feel right now. Thank you for writing this.”
This was a great experience for me, because it gave me the perspective to step back from feedback and look at things objectively. To understand that this feedback isn’t an ultimatum, it’s a perspective.
If you hate Court intrigue, and are bored by aliens, you might hate Court/Ship no matter what I do! If you LOVE Court intrigue, you might like it even if it’s not great, because you just love the genre. I’m looking at all the feedback now, from the edits on grammar, to the person that hated it, to the people that loved it, and the folks who fell somewhere in between. All of the feedback is important to me. Even if the feedback I get doesn’t change an element about the setting, that doesn’t mean I didn’t read it and think about it.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to read Court/Ship and provide feedback. Your help is incredibly valuable to me, and I’ll be considering your thoughts as I shape Court/Ship in the final draft.
J.R. Blackwell 