Last Friday, I sent an email explaining how The Divided Region is attracting a lot of people who aren't/haven't been big readers.
It explained how I believe audiobooks are partly responsible for this influx, but as it turns out, I foolishly neglected to mention something that Legionnaire — and Patron of the series — Jim reminded me of:
… We love your writing because you explain the way things are. You don't repeat it every other chapter and the book moves forward. We're not just standing there looking around at a cave for 2 days and listening to everyone complain about how the water runs down the Walls.
Truer words were never spoken.
While yes, I can attribute the audiobooks to this wave of readers, ultimately, it's the STORY that keeps people engaged — not the medium.
As a reader and listener myself, I cannot suffer stories that meander or speak endlessly of slathering jam on toast — and I certainly can't write them.
However, I do wonder if things would be different if I had always been a ravenous reader.
I mean, there's something powerful to be said about immersion, and if all I was exposed to were big, hefty epics with more POVs than the Epstein files, one has to ask:
Would my writing have followed suit?
It's hard to tell for sure.
But given most of my fiction consumption has come in the form of movies, there might be some truth to this hypothesis.
Unlike books, movies have time constraints and this other thing called a budget.
They have to move fast.
They have to keep the story going.
Every scene must earn its keep, or else it's costing them in retention and — more importantly — Benjamins.
Books, on the other hand?
They don't have these constraints.
They CAN spend several chapters explaining every crack of a tree or how the water trickles down the wall, as Jim put it.
And sadly, many writers do.
I'm far too paranoid of boring myself and my readers to engage in such antics.
Or maybe I'm just ADHD.
While none of this is an excuse for me having a lousy fiction reading habit, the lack of exposure might have just helped keep my writing lean, mean, and fast-moving.
I accept this isn't everyone's cup of mead, but I've never been in the business of making every Tom, Dick, and Jerry smile.
Only my people.
And if you're one of them?
Well, you can grab Books 1-4 of the series in ebook and audiobook here:
https://djjwatsonstore.com/products/TDR-Bundle
Or if you want a trophy of your adventures, the paperbacks:
https://djjwatsonstore.com/products/tdr-paperback-bundle
DJJW