One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch....

[j_cheney]

Oh, no! I'm quoting Jackson 5 lyrics! (I feel old now)

Yep, that critique from Critters that was totally bizarre (the 'this piece isn't really fantasy because it has guns' argument)....the author was going for a MPC award (and got it, BTW). In other words, she had to crit 10 pieces in a week, and reach 300 words on each critique in order to advance her own work in the queue more quickly. If the misuse of the system is especially egregious, one can report that author to the crit-herder, who then sends them a stiffish admonishment or, if they hear enough complaints, drop the offender from the system. I have only done that once (in the case of the guy who padded his critique with song lyrics).

Anyway, I got 3 more critiques this morning, bringing me up to a total of 18, only one of which was goofy. 17 decent critiques is not bad. In skimming, most of them seem to find AMOD well-written, but missing something. (I rather knew that, which is why I ran it through Critters, not Baen's Bar). I haven't had time yet to see if any of them know what that missing part is. ;o) Perhaps there's a real diamond in all those critiques. (I hope.)

Some confusion continues on the FenCon submissions as people are posting theirs on the Yahoo group board, to the submission e-mail, and both or neither. Hey, I followed the instructions..the FIRST set of instructions. (I find disorganization somewhat troubling.)

August 1 crept up on me, and I totally missed the mass onslaught of people dumping submissions over at Clockwork Phoenix. I must fix that today. I was rather hoping Black Gate would open yesterday as well, but it still says closed. At least they're back to reading now. ::fingers crossed::

I hope, by the end of the week to have at least 3 more stories out, taking me up to a grand total of 4. ::anticlimactic woot::

Comments

Keeping

[namelessarchon.livejournal.com]

Keeping up with you is harder than chasing my son! Congrats on having so much out there J, I hope they all find great success.

[tlmorganfield.livejournal.com]

I wanted to send something to that Clockwork Phoenix antho too, but everything I would it currently out to market.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

I skimmed the story in question on Critters but didn't leave a critique there (kinda backing out of Critters). I found the second half of the story (in the tavern) confusing. There were too many characters, and I never got a good picture of the physical layout of the place. I hope that helps.

[kara-gnome.livejournal.com]

Good luck with everything, and I think three stories by the end of the week is marvelous! I vote that if you accomplish that, you get taken out to a nice dinner, preferably with candles :)

[dream-wind.livejournal.com]

If you wanna send the story to a lapsed Critter, I'm at clawrie1 at bigpond dot net dot au.

The one time I posted a story on Critters, the least helpful crits were ones written by people going for a MPC. It looks like they just skim the story without actually taking it in, although in one way, we should be grateful to them - if the story totally sucked, they'd skip it entirely (I often did that if there was too much wrong with a story :) ).