When I went to the fall session of the Insider’s Guide to Publishing Workshop run by Cynthia Good at The Humber School for Writers, we did a marketing exercise and had to say who we thought our book would appeal to. I chose women ages 20 – 60, and Jennifer Murray said this was too broad.

I was not sure which end of the age range would be the right one but now I now have a little more information. Based on 8 reviews of the first version, 3 reviews of my second version, and 2 reviews of my third version, I can safely say that The 29th Day is well appreciated by people ages 20 – 35 (and maybe a little higher). I think it is safe to say that women over 50 are not quite as keen on the book – though the last version seems to be more appealing than either of the first two versions. So far only a couple of men have read it. My sense is that, though I wrote it with female readers in mind, there seems to be enough there to interest one or two male readers (and hopefully more).

The young woman below thought my book was “hilarious” and “thought-provoking,” and she also cried twice while reading The 29th Day, even though she was reading it in public and trying not to! Then she said that she wanted to know what happened 30 years later and asked me to write a sequel. Wow. So, for the record: Thank you to Anna for being my #1 fan (not including my friends).

I got the horrible idea of trying to make people cry when I heard my mentor, Terry Fallis speak about The Best Laid Plans at the North York Library last summer – he said, “It is easy to make people cry, but hard to make people laugh.” In my first version of The 29th Day, I had only been trying to make people laugh. When I heard Terry say this, I thought, well maybe I should try to make my readers cry, too. My first version did not quite reach that goal. A good – but extremely critical – friend put it to me like this: “I had five pages left and I went to bed. You’ve got to fix the ending.” Judging by Anna’s comments, I think my revisions worked but I will have to see what others in my target demographic have to say.

Here is what three people who read version 1 of The 29th Day had to say:

“There was a haunting quality to this work that reminds one of the loneliness that accompanies mothers after childbirth. We all have the self-interest to protect ourselves; mothers then extend this attempt at self-security, wrapping their arms vainly around their children, trying to protect them from a world that Evadne Macedo has painted as damaged and damaging. Like the protagonist in We Need to Talk About Kevin, Karine Fortuna is real. She loves, she hurts, she fails miserably and sometimes hilariously. And the world and its dangers, and the pyrrhic nature that stalks innocence, is also painted real. Well done. Reader beware.”

“Thanks so much for entrusting me with your manuscript.  Let me say from the outset that I really, really liked it.  I’m hooked and want to know more about Karine and what happens to her. Well done and well written.  I like your conversational yet still formal writing style. …”

”I like the flow of the book – I didn’t get stuck or bored and want to stop reading. … I like your language, it is funny, full of metaphors and detailed descriptions of situations and feelings. …”

But, the work is not done yet. I still have some substantive revisions to complete, and this (edited) review from a person who read version 2  of The 29th Day sums it up:

“You are a very deft writer – smart, funny, a natural with dialogue. The writing never feels forced or laboured. Bravo! That’s a great accomplishment in itself. My major reservation with the draft is in its structure. To me it feels like two very different books. The opening chapters are very engaging and funny. The Swedish/Canadian tangents are quite clever and your researcher’s deadpan delivery makes the absurdity of the research arrangement work really well. The portrait of the marriage and a young mother’s struggle to understand her exceptional son seems to belong to an entirely different book – a powerful emotional mystery. The story takes on a completely different trajectory. What makes your narrator so effective in the first segment (her humour and the whole  ”outsider” premise of her research) undermines and distracts from the drama of the second half.  … You’ve got great material in this draft. It seems that you can mine in several rich territories.”

I see the point, but this is how the book came to me – in my mind, the two parts are not separable. The book evolved through the eyes of the narrator, Annika, so I don’t think it would be fair to remove her from the story after the fact. Plus, readers in my target demographic liked the blending of the two concepts, and the juxtapositions of humour and tragedy, reality and fantasy – in short, I think they got what I was trying to do (which was based on some of my favourite books by John Irving and Margaret Atwood). Nonetheless, this reviewer noted some issues that I have to resolve in the manuscript before I can submit it to anyone. In this regard, I have to thank Anna for taking the time to make detailed edits and comments throughout the draft that she reviewed. I am also looking forward to more reviews & constructive comments from other people currently reading The 29th Day.

I have also recently met a 16 year old who works at the cafe I write at on Wednesday evenings when my son is at one of his programs. I have told her about The 29th Day, and she is extremely keen to read my manuscript … so I may test my theory about the target demographic and see if my book could appeal to the “young adult” market. I did warn her that I had not written it with teens in mind, and I have no idea whether she would engage with the material, but you never know.

If you have read an early draft of The 29th Day and are reading my blog, please post a comment saying what you thought of it. If you want to read The 29th Day, please post a comment!