I love critiques...especially ones read by scifi (hence, Mark Brand) readers who think they know a good story - what a story should be - entertaining. Here you have a wannabe Gardner Dozios.
I'm surprised Mark Brand had something decent to say about The Empty Planet (that was actually my FIRST science fiction story ever written in 1996 and submitted and accepted). I look back at that one now and laugh.
It's kind of funny, my mentor is KURT VONNEGUT - I know him well, have had coffee with him and been to his lectures...HE taught me a lot. HE showed me the way. Yes, Kurt Vonnegut.
Mark disliked "Let's Play God" - Amazing! It's already been accepted for 2007 in a Semi-Pro for $150.00 - Hello! It's a tale of cybernetic conditioning on a Human's Brain in a Lab Setting!!! If you're so experienced at reading sci-fi, how could you overlook that?
He dislikes my work - my 4th Novel due out in early 2006, ALLEGIANCE TO ARMS, a Western, I have book signings for in the midwest...and POSSIBLE movie rights.
I have won Semi-Pro Anthologies, and even this writer of 9 going on 10 years
started with the old stapled fanzines like everyone else...the pulps...and with a Trade School Education in Creative Writing & Journalism.......AMAZING, I have an invitation to NYU for a Master's Degree in the Science of Publishing (should I attend).
Listen, Mark - you got to chill out...stop reading mainstreamers like Dan Brown and Stephen King. I much prefer 'War and Peace' or 'Anna Karenina' to any of the authors mentioned above. Get more into the Semi-Pros, like myself, then knock on my door. Or the classics.
You think you could write better - choose the genre, location, character type - give me 4 to 6 weeks of honing and crafting..........I bet my story outdoes YOURS......
Sincerely,
-Lawrence R. Dagstine
