Ilpo responds to his beta reader
Dear friend!
You gave me a word of warning refering to the impatience of the teenager readers. The same challenge concerns them in Finland. I have thought about the challenge, and I think I have to open up my strategy a bit more.
There are three protagonists in the novel: the cavalry officer Lance, the avenger Matt and the horse Light, who can speak for himself (in 1st person). Even if their stories intertwine, they consist mostly of three different storylines: 1 Lance's romance with Emma, the Black nurse during his stay at hospital and in recovery, the whole time in Brownsville Texas. 2 Matt's Road Trip from Summerville South Carolina to Texas to meet Lance in a duel. 3 Light's adventures in wilderness and civilization following "Lassie Come Home" storyline. The chapters follow the order 1, 2 and 3.
The reader changes from one story to another, and if he or she is not interested in the horse's story, it can be skipped. When I was a boy, and read a long historical book, I skipped the chapters where the writer, Zachris Topelius, wrote "dull" narrative from the author's perspective. I read only the exciting chapters where the action took place.
My chapters in Horse Ranger are not long, so although the number of chapters is big, the pages to read are moderate. And there is another point in reading. If the story fascinates you, it doesn't make a difference if the story is short or long. It has to keep up your interest, that's the main demand. There are very long TV serials that attract their audience, not depending on the length.
Of course, TV is different from books, but I think there is a similarity when it comes to their attractiveness. It's possible that my novel doesn't interest a big audience but I am in a situation where I'd like to take the risk.
BTW, this is the beginning of a larger entity where the next book "The One-legged Sheriff" is already in my mind, and I have collected important authentic material from the web sources for it. It's said that if not the first, the second book in the series may be successful.
Anyway, I have constructed the novel "Horse Ranger Part I - Threatened Love" so that there are many loose ends that lead the reader to want more.
You must know better the American audience, it's self-evident. I appreciate your opinions, and if you have ideas or hints that you'd like to share with me, I'll welcome them with my greatest pleasure. Thank you for supporting me on my path of fiction writing!