So it seems some of my more technical blogs are suddenly getting Russian responses, which I cannot read of course since I don't speak or read Russian. But I hit up an online translator and they seem innocent enough, even though some of the words don't translate and the syntax / grammar is off.
One of the phrases translated to "It is interesting to esteem."
Does anyone reading this blog read Russian? I'd appreciate some translation help to see if this is really spam or not.
On another note, it's terribly disappointing to find a wonderful book that is well-written, has fantastic characterizations, beautiful descriptions, and interesting scenes only to get completely bored before I'm halfway through the novel. It has two protagonists which I absolutely adored, but they were on separate paths doing separate things and I could not figure out how they were going to connect up and effect each other's plotline. As wonderful as it was, the book almost put me to sleep with the lack of connecting tension between the two story arcs.
I decided to put it away, unfinished, but I hate starting and not finishing books. Only really terrible books make me throw them away unread. I gave it another chance, sure I was missing something. Finally the two plotlines dovetailed for the space of one scene, one scene mind, where the protagonists didn't run into each other at all and one was just running an errand (sent by word of mouth by three other people) for the other. Then the details were sent back the same way, by people who never met both (or sometimes either) of the protagonists. And the book still had several more chapters to go until the end.
When I got to the end, I realized it was a novel-sized prologue. I'm sure it was setting up some terribly huge several book plot arc, but as well as something like that might have worked on the television screen, it didn't read at all well to me as prose. I am so disappointed. But I've also learned some valuable writing lessons. 1) Start the book when it starts (don't write a novel-length prologue) and 2) don't do the dual protagonist thing if they can't have any effect on each other. It's not as fun to the reader as the writer thinks it is.
I almost did that, BTW, with Circle of Fire. The only reason I'm not writing a dual-protag story is because both sides of the story got too long and I decided they needed to be separate books. Lesson learned. Bad idea until my writing skills drastically improve. And probably even bad idea then too.
