Hi. I’m Von, the ‘chief beta-reader’ for Take a Lemon. Which basically meant that, whenever I wasn’t being too obnoxious, Russ sent me an advanced copy and I told him what I thought was wrong with it. Then he either made a change or told me I was an idiot. Or both.
Along the way I kept saying to myself, “why doesn’t he do this”, or “what if he were to do that.” And so, then, one day, I decided the way to relieve my frustration was to, well, write my own story. Not that I needed another story, but I needed to work out my view of his story, or his story starter anyway.
I started by trying to make mine ‘equivalent’, so that for each chapter one of mine could be substituted for one of his: same characters, basically same personalities, same plot, etc. However my imagination ran too wild for that, and Russ wrote too slowly so, eventually, I just flew free. ‘Scrabbled’ is the result.
One thing I hope that these posts will do is to give Russ an equal opportunity to tell me what I should write as I had for him. And, hopefully, to help me improve my story in the way that (I hope) I helped him improve his.
Feel free, feel exceedingly free, to criticize, to suggest, to pound me on the head metaphorically. Seriously. Please.
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