So, I’ve been adding plenty of new Author links over on the right sidebar. I’ve become an avid collector of links to authors’ websites. But I wanted to call special attention to a link I added on Friday last week. The link is to Slushlush.com, and it’s the site of Erin M. Evans.
Years ago, I posted the prior draft of my ever-in-progress novel (insert reference to blathering here) up on a fantasy and science-fiction art website called Elfwood. (The eight-ish chapters and never-ending prologue that I posted are still there, for the adventurous, but they will not remain thus always; at some point I will have to bring them down. Besides, this is an old version, and nothing like the final direction this novel will be taking, when I sit down to write it again, in earnest. So it’s not a very good example of what I think I’m capable of. Okay… I’m bringing this extended parenthetical aside to an end, now.) Elfwood, obviously, also had a space for writers to post their work (although I do not advise doing so with anything you want to have published in the future; it’s not a terribly good place to get useful critiques, and posting there may constitute prior publication). One writer there commented on the prologue and first chapter of my novel. Her comments were insightful, if sometimes difficult to accept.
We entered into a brief period of correspondence in which we did more detailed analyses and critiques of each other work. We only got through the first couple chapters of each of our books before life and general busyness got in the way on both ends. Either way, the critiques I got on those first couple chapters were really important. It eventually became clear to me that I would never sell that manuscript, in its current form.
So, late last week I was idly googling myself, and after digging far and deep into Google’s listings, I found a link to one of my old chapters up on Elfwood. I followed it, because apparently I’m a narcissist. (Note: I don’t think I’m actually a narcissist.) On that Elfwood page, I saw one of Erin’s comments, and remembered our brief exchange of critiques. I noticed she didn’t have an Elfwood page anymore. So, I googled her name.
And discovered this: http://www.amazon.com/Erin-M.-Evans/e/B0032OJT1C
I dug up the old e-mail I had from her, asked if it was hers, and indeed it was. So, wow. How cool is that? I kind of, sort of, but not really know a published author. I got her regular site and posted a link here. But I also want to encourage you readers to check out both her site and her work. The books on her Amazon page are tie-in novels, so if you have any interest in the D&D “Forgotten Realms” setting, I imagine these will be wonderful reads.
But what I really hope is that she’s successful enough with these tie-in novels that she’ll eventually make enough of a name for herself that she’ll get some of her original work (i.e. all stuff she made up herself, instead of writing a story set in a world someone else made up) published, as well. Frankly, I think that would be really cool. (Plus, she had some unique stuff that was not just bog-standard fantasy, as I recall, and the years can only have made her work even better.)
So, encouraging my few readers here to go check out her work is really the least I can do for the useful critiques she handed my work back several years ago.
Happy reading!
The Undiscovered Author 