Alas for me, it isn't actually a children's book. I wanted to convey the sort of feel of the old-fashioned adventures like Verne and Sabitini and Dumas. So I'm sort of succeeding and failing simultaneously, because people are getting the lighter "less gritty and scary and grim than the typical adult fantasy" sense I wanted conveyed, but they associate that feel with children's literature. In fact, the books I wanted to invoke are frequently found in the children's section.
So it's a good thing and yet... this book has... er... well, at one point my teen-aged daughter jotted down a margin note that read: "Do you mind? There's a virgin in the room trying to read!" The 19-year-old first-person heroine starts out largely innocent but gets married two-fifths of the way through the first volume. She's by no means shy, and although you don't get a complete blow-by-blow description of her wedding night, she doesn't just skip past it either. All fine and good for many teens, but not likely to be popular with the younger crowd.
The Titanic reaction is very, very, very appropriate though, as long as you skip the part where it sinks. They end up on two different ocean liners very like it... (with the whole being lost at sea in a tiny boat and nearly getting killed by mercenary sea-raiders sandwiched in the middle) :)
And you can't imagine my delight when I discovered that one of the very few adult males survivors of the Titanic was apparently Japanese. He was one of a bare handful of people successfully pulled out of the water. My character isn't actually Japanese because there is no Japan. (This story has actually got a imaginary-earthlike-world-without-magic setting). But the place he's from is inspired by east Asia, just as the place she is from is inspired by Europe. So reading about "the Japanese passenger" getting pulled out of the water after the Titanic sunk had an extra frisson of awesome on top of the inherent awesomeness of the facts themselves. :)
(My family was really startled when I started apparently researching ocean liner disasters -- it wasn't so, I was just researching the liners themselves. But almost all the best material that can be found in the library was focussing on ships that had sunk.)
I wish I could keep the that script font, it's so elegant, and pretty and in period. But alas, people really do need to be able to read the title easily. And not everyone is going to stop and geek over the font. :(
As for the overabundance of fog I refuse to take responsibility for it. That was my husband's fault, and now that someone--plenty of someone's-- besides me are having problems with it, something will be done about it.
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chiming
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Date: 2012-11-09 06:34 pm (UTC)From:Alas for me, it isn't actually a children's book. I wanted to convey the sort of feel of the old-fashioned adventures like Verne and Sabitini and Dumas. So I'm sort of succeeding and failing simultaneously, because people are getting the lighter "less gritty and scary and grim than the typical adult fantasy" sense I wanted conveyed, but they associate that feel with children's literature. In fact, the books I wanted to invoke are frequently found in the children's section.
So it's a good thing and yet... this book has... er... well, at one point my teen-aged daughter jotted down a margin note that read: "Do you mind? There's a virgin in the room trying to read!" The 19-year-old first-person heroine starts out largely innocent but gets married two-fifths of the way through the first volume. She's by no means shy, and although you don't get a complete blow-by-blow description of her wedding night, she doesn't just skip past it either. All fine and good for many teens, but not likely to be popular with the younger crowd.
The Titanic reaction is very, very, very appropriate though, as long as you skip the part where it sinks. They end up on two different ocean liners very like it... (with the whole being lost at sea in a tiny boat and nearly getting killed by mercenary sea-raiders sandwiched in the middle) :)
And you can't imagine my delight when I discovered that one of the very few adult males survivors of the Titanic was apparently Japanese. He was one of a bare handful of people successfully pulled out of the water. My character isn't actually Japanese because there is no Japan. (This story has actually got a imaginary-earthlike-world-without-magic setting). But the place he's from is inspired by east Asia, just as the place she is from is inspired by Europe. So reading about "the Japanese passenger" getting pulled out of the water after the Titanic sunk had an extra frisson of awesome on top of the inherent awesomeness of the facts themselves. :)
(My family was really startled when I started apparently researching ocean liner disasters -- it wasn't so, I was just researching the liners themselves. But almost all the best material that can be found in the library was focussing on ships that had sunk.)
I wish I could keep the that script font, it's so elegant, and pretty and in period.
But alas, people really do need to be able to read the title easily. And not everyone is going to stop and geek over the font. :(
As for the overabundance of fog I refuse to take responsibility for it. That was my husband's fault, and now that someone--plenty of someone's-- besides me are having problems with it, something will be done about it.
Thanks again for replying!