Tanked and Cratered

I just adore colorful slang, which I populate all my books with. Speaking of books, Promiscuous Mode pretty much tanked (or was it cratered) in the Gather Crime Novel Contest. Good comments, but not enough, and for some reason, it was rated VERY LOW the first few days, and never made it back up to nine plus. The gossip bird sings that the judges who pick the less popular but perhaps overlooked entries also overlooked or didn't like PM.

Reading the beginning again, I realize that although there is a murder and intimations of sexual misconduct and plenty of sleaze, along with internal conflict, it is still a rather quiet beginning, without a lot of hoo-hah. This obviously doesn't work these days, and I changed the beginning of Festival Madness, but I think it's going to have the same problem. The implication of violence to come. Well, duh, it's a crime novel, isn't it? And there are no LOL moments, either, just a bit of wry humor.

So I am left sucking it up again, and wondering if the Amazon contest will be the same old do-si-do. One would hope for less a popularity contest than Gather, where having lots of "friends" obviously helped. You could tell from the "awesome" and "excellent" comments without any backup, so to speak, that friends were voting. Other comments were insightful, and there were obviously many decent thoughtful writers on board, so perhaps the grapes are just sour. Fruit salad, anyone?

I have to admit that seldom is heard an encouraging word, except from denizens of this household and my writing group, and does that really count? I mean, the writing group loved the novel that cratered on Gather. And I haven't noticed any agents lapping it up, either.

Whatchagonnado?

Grapeshot