wiseheart | TSD statistics

"The Shoemaker's Daughter" is one of my favourite stories. Granted, it's not exactly the kind of story that would attract the average Tolkienfic reader: it deals with a bunch of OCs, it has an ungodly abundance of trivia and long, loving descriptions, and it's updated about once in a year or so. Still, I've hoped that at least the handful of people who seemed to like my other Halabor stories would be interested.

Well, not so much luck. The two recently posted chapters not only didn't get a single review (together), despite having been posted to four (!) different places, on SoA, they didn't even get a single hit! Yeah, hit counters can be depressing sometimes. On FF.Net and TFF at least they had a handful of hits.

I know, we aren't living in the times when people would be willing to crack open an epic novel - or start reading a fic of the same proportions. I know the reasons, and I'm sympathetic, really. It's still depressing, though.

Well, at least it hasn't attracted any malevolent "critics" yet, either. I guess I ought to count my blessings, small as they might be.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It can be so disheartening when you work for hours on a good story and then nobody reads it or if they do they don't say what they think.
I know I'm fortunate for hits and reviews but it still hurts if they drop,so I feel for you.

Thanks. :)

I know, usually the story one likes best isn't the one the readers would like best. The complete disinterest is still a bit discouraging, though.

I know. One of my personal favourites,"At the Rising of the Moon" had far less interest at ff.net than some of my other stories which I did not feel as pleased with.

Yep, having a passion for a particular topic doesn't necessarily mean that the readers would be interested in it as well.

For me, the whole Halabor-cycle is about the world-building part. Since I chose a really existing medieval town as a model (Yvoire in France), I had a solid basis on which to build the rest. Then I chose Cornish names for the Old Folk, so that they would have shared roots. Then I did an ungodly amount of research how many - and what sort of - craftsmen a town of that size would have needed, how those craftsmen worked in the Middle Ages and so on. Then I did just as much research on medieval life in general. And finally, I began to figure out the relations among a thousand or so characters, to draw family trees, set their individual ages... that sort of thing.

It's great fun. The finished parts are posted to the Otherworlds board (http://s4.invisionfree.com/Otherworlds/index.php?act=idx), in case you are interested. Scroll down the main page, and all this trivia is under the forum "The Halabor Game". It's unlikely that there will ever be a game, I'm afraid, but I store there these details if someone wants to find out more about Lord Orchald's town.

Oh, and by the way, thanks for the review! It made my whole day. :))

I actually like "Shoemaker's daughter". The thing is, exactly, that it is almost original work. It doesn't work as a quick fix for a fanfic junkie, you see... I know I'll read the current (or next) installment when my brain defries itself.

Yeah, I know it's an acquired taste - and not exactly an easy read. I didn't even expect anyone else than the people who've already grown interested in Halabor and its inhabitants to read it. There are too many OCs, too little link to the most popular canon characters - although Gildor Inglorion will appear in the next chapter, and in the future, more and more canonical ones will be coming. The second part of the story takes place in Lossarnach and Minas Tirith, after all.

But personally, it's all about Halabor for me. How the people lived there under the shadow of Mordor, what the perils of daily life were - again, in the next chapter you'll see that Orcs aren't the only problem... in short, what life was like in Gondor outside of Minas Tirith or Dol Amroth.

Plus, as I have a vexed interest for the Middle Ages, I get a major kick out of all the research, of course. *g*

TSD statistics

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject