Random stranger and fellow writer here who happened on your blog through Storiopathy. I read the Lake in the Clouds excerpt, and I must say, it's extremely well done.

I think the second scene with Liam is absolutely necessary. The opportunity for Jemima to make use of what she's just learned by watching, her coldblooded calculations of how to get what she most wants, and her going through with that in writing, in the story itself, is, I think, critical. If you faded to black or cut away from the scene I think you'd lose a huge amount of power, and a huge amount of showing us how this woman has developed and is developing as a character. She's not intended to be sympathetic, but she's tremendously compelling and fascinating. Ruthless people often are.

Yeah. Absolutely keep the second scene, if you were debating it. I'm not one for sex scenes for the sake of sex scenes, but the parallels there, and Jemima's development--more hers than Liam's, but I don't know much of his story, obviously--are really important. You'd lose a lot of whammy if you glossed over the second scene in any way.

So sayeth Random Reader. :)

All right, I'm a little slow, having just looked over your website in general and having discovered that LAKE is already published (I'm going to have to pick your books up; that scene was terrific), so the odds of the second scene being cut are rather slim at this point, I should think. None-the-less, I still think it's a bloody important scene. :)

Catie-- thanks for coming by, and for the feedback. It doesn't matter that the book is in print already, really; it's still very useful to hear people's reactions.

When I initially read these two scenes, it was with horror and fascination.

And then I wasn't sure if I thought they were part of the story, so I read them again (not for thrills or anything) but because I wanted to be sure they were part of the story.

And they are. Jemimi is just like her father and life hasn't been good to her, but now she has something to barter with and if you hadn't pulled the outcome to what you did, I think we wouldn't have known quite how willing Jemimi was to sell her soul for what she wanted.

The scenes are explicit, and if I don't want to read them, I don't have to, but I think you lose a lot of what makes Jemimi what she is and what Liam turns out to be if you don't read them.

I found them brutal to read at first, then the growing fascination with the car crash that is Jemima's life overcame my squeamishness, and in the end, it would have been strange to skip the scene when reading the entire book. I mean - I would have been missing information. I think it made me squeamish because it was so realistic. There is something right about how clinically you wrote Jemima's reactions to her loss of virginity with Liam - it may seem strange to those who believe the first time would be highly romantic with the man of your dreams. But for some out there, loss of virginity is like a step on a path "outta here." And maybe sometimes those who have experienced so much reality, so young, absolutely cannot take anything for granted. They question, they analyze, they inquire all the way through what would be a beautiful experience to the more conventionally oriented innocent masses. Or they are lost in building bubbles of "a nice life" as they imagine it should have been, never mentioning it again. That awkward first time lost on a chain of awkward life events. The only quibble I'd had was that the inclusion of these scenes felt a titch too modern for the setting. I remember thinking, 'what the...' at first. But Jemima took over the narrative, and I guess I hadn't really noticed her before, in the books. I mean - if you were hearing Jemima tell the story to her grandchildren, she'd only smile wickedly and say - "oh there was some wicked things men'd get up to back in those days...(pause for a sad (wistful?) smile)...men and ladies both, as I recall...(then she'd catch them watching her too closely, and she'd add) Mind you don't get caught up with one of them these days, neither!" Then maybe she'd pat the head of the nearest red-headed boy, a little too roughly for his liking, and Gramma 'Mima (or "Gryma" as the littlest insisted), would launch into another story about the fire at the school house. Or maybe the cat and the pigs under the stairs. She's just brutal, in my imagination.
Gosh this is too long, but I'll post it anyway.

Might interest you to know -- because of various life events, it happened that I had interrupted my reading of Lake in the Clouds to read the brand new Dawn on a Distant Shore. When I read the new book I didn't know of these scenes -- I picked up at Hannah's widowhood story as if I were someone who had been away from town for years and had just returned, pretty much being able to infer what had happened in my absence. Except, Jemima was the Widow Kuick's daughter-in-law! And as miserable as that situation was, it was obviously a longstanding fact. (Which didn't diminish my enjoyment of the book -- it felt authentic, actually, I know how strange things in a small town can go unexplained.)

When I returned to the earlier book and arrived at That Scene, things clicked into place with a terrible rightness -- so THAT's how Jemima did it! -- which may have made it more powerful for me. The sequence and timing of when knowlege is revealed is such a complex thing, one of the arts that separates "a writer" from "a novelist."

Robyn -- do you mean the brand new "Fire Along the Sky"? And yes, that does interest me. You never know how things are going to work on multiple levels, and it's good to know the events feels appropriate to a small town.

Pam -- you know, I'm glad you see Jemima's life as a train wreck. Mostly I hear from readers who hate her, full stop. I really have meant for her to be interesting, if rather horrifying -- what people can do, when pressed. What people become.

Jenniferanne -- horror and fascination are the reactions I was looking for, so that's a relief.

i found these, too, sends feelings like the others, shocking...fascinating, horrifying, etc. then iT ALL falls into place why Isaiah avoids her... iT gives Dye a more human side even though he is still a creep. i LOVe the way you put tibits of the character's LiFe in the stories, it makes one understand them more... (when Jemima is remembering her LiFe as a child, listening to what she knew of a man and woman coming together, how sad that she never realized what LOVe between two humans could be, it makes her father's character even more of a ass.)

I found disappointment in Liam's weakness... he was given such a gift to live with the Bonner's in comparison with being completely raised by his brother... but what really captivated me was by Jemima's mental creativity in getting what she wants. Even though i do not believe in her choices, one must admitt she is never ever laid low by her station in LiFe... she forges right ahead, a lot of times it seems blindly to obtain what she wants... or does iT appear to be blindly only to us?

She is something else, i LOVe the way your writing comes together like a puzzle, the fitting pieces seem endless and the questions, insights that your writing provokes, fascinate me. I cannot believe the emotion and feelings and questions that you pull out of me when i read your work... Train~WReCk, that is a GReAT description of her.

I had to add my comment about your ability to pull the reader in to the scene and make them a part of it. Speaking of sex scenes after I first started reading ITW, after reading the scene in the cave under the falls, that night as I was going to bed, I told my husband not to be offended if I called him Nathaniel in my sleep...:)
I do have to say how these story lines are in no way predictable. They keep you guessing and hoping and wishing. I positivly love them and wish them never to end. I have the whole collection in hard back that I have read twice. Keep them coming!!