Teahouse Queued on Critters!

My first chapter of In The Teahouse, “A Night of Celebration,” is in this week’s queue over at Critters. It’s a RFDR (Request For Dedicated Readers), meaning that anyone who reads and comments on the chapter sample can obtain the whole rough draft and correspond with me directly.

Well. I’m a teensy bit nervous right now.

I have a natural tendency towards anxiety. I worry about the stupidest things, from having my picture taken to whether or not I’m properly taking care of my pets. Suffice it to say that my writing undergoes pretty much the same treatment, though so far I haven’t woken from any particularly nasty dreams involving critiques. That will probably happen tonight, with my luck. I have enough neuroses to qualify as a Woody Allen character, or perhaps someone from Seinfeld. Still, I try to keep my head as level as I possibly can.

I asked for people’s input because I honestly want to improve upon a story I’m already rather fond of. I enjoyed writing it, but it could be so much better. As it is now I get the feeling that it’s rather standard fare, and I’d like to make sure it rises up enough in quality that some agent out there feels it has moneymaking qualities, because otherwise it’s going to be something that people only see when they ask me about that unpublished book I once wrote.

I’m not going to leak the chapter here, but I don’t think it will hurt to repro the note I tacked on at the end. This rather adequately sums up how I feel about the draft right now and where I need improvements the most.

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Author notes: In the Teahouse is a horror novel dealing with tea, ghosts
and compulsive suicide. This is the cleaned up first draft, and there
will be edits done later on to add chapters between the chapters that
exist now. I am asking any interested reviewers to pay particularly
close attention to both the Japanese element of the story (factual
inaccuracies, places where additional information may be beneficial,
etc.) and places where the plot itself may be lacking. I have already
found a few that I am not entirely happy with, but I feel that outside
opinions at this time may be a great help to me.

Right now the draft stands at 50,500 words, though with edits it should
end up at around 80,000. "A Night of Celebration" is the first of fourteen
chapters, not including a very short epilogue.

Thank you in advance.

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Eagerly awaiting the first of the emails. Manuscripts just went out now, so between right this moment and next Wednesday I should have at least a small amount of feedback to work with.