So, my mom called me today to tell me she finished reading Crumbling Walls. Well, actually she called me to brag about how beautiful Hawaii is. She is there on a two week vacation with my dad and two of their friends. Let me tell you, retirement has been rough on the two of them. They just got back from a month long trip that included Alaska, Seattle and Vancouver … and now Hawaii. I suppose they deserve it. They both worked very, very hard in their lives and should be enjoying themselves now. Plus they had to raise my brother. That in and of itself deserves several extremely relaxing vacations to exotic locations.
But I digress. It was the discussion we had about the book that I wanted to share. First, let me tell you that my mom was one of the lucky few that read the very original draft of Crumbling Walls and has now read the published version. Let me also tell you that she is a retired teacher. And finally, as much as I love her, she can be VERY critical at times. She told me that she thought the final version was great, that the characters and story were brilliant … but … there is always a ‘but’ with her … she had two complaints. She felt that the characters (especially the adults) said ‘yeah’ instead of ‘yes’ too much. She felt the adults, in particular, would say ‘yes’ as opposed to ‘yeah.’ Her other complaint was that in the dialogue the use of ‘I’ and ‘me’ were used incorrectly (ie. Me and Emily are gonna go … instead of Emily and I). I have to admit, I was impressed. If these were her only two complaints then I think we did a pretty awesome job.
Which brings me to these complaints. I told her that I decided very early on that I would only correct spelling errors on things inside of quotes. I figured the characters belonged to Laura and they should speak the way she wanted them to … bad grammar and all. In my opinion it makes the characters more real … accessible. My mom said she found it to be somewhat annoying at times. I suppose she has a point. I can understand that for some of our adult readers we could have cleaned it up a little more. But I also think it is OK the way we have it.
So what do you all think? Yeah … Dave’s mom has a point. Or yeah, I think Dave is right. Your opinion does matter to us. But remember, me and Laura are probably gonna do what me and Laura do. That’s just how we roll 🙂
Orange Publishing 