Monday Morning, and a poll

[lagilman]

Spent Sunday afternoon hidden in a downtown bar with a bunch of fellow Giants fans, some early-arriving Jets fans, a few random Redskin fans, and a bunch of very rowdy and enthusiastic Detroit fans who got very very quiet as the game ended. Sorry, guys. But I was rooting against you just because your fight song was so damn annoying. For those of you who don't follow such things -- yeah, the Giants won (41-13).

Mass transit to/from the game: $4
A steak-and-eggs brunch and two pints of Bass -- $35
Being carded by the bouncer: priceless.
Being hit on by a 20-something Jets fan: hysterical.

But now it is Monday, the weekend has been rolled up and put to rest, and I'm back to the desk. And I've realized that trying to balance what the Story needs with the Actual Process of wine-making is making me second-guess the readership for Vineart War. The history/geography/politics/religion I have no trouble messing with -- readers understand second world/sidestep fantasy as not-quite-but-like. But how will people respond to something less malleable -- a scientific process, after all -- as being not-quite-but-like? Especially if they too are fans of the process and the results?

EtA: I'm not (hopefully) talking an infodump, but the details of the process as an ongoing thread within the books)

So, to reduce my headache, I'm actually asking the readership (or you guys, anyway):
[Poll #1259845]

In a different Universe, for those who don't want to wait for their news, there was an update to The Cosa Nostradamus OnLine over the weekend...

Comments

[kriz1818.livejournal.com]

Well, does *anybody* there make wine just for drinking? Or is beer the only alternative? There could be two modes of winemaking or something and you could mention the differences.

As to it being a 14th-century analogue - well, in that case, I can't imagine why anybody would *expect* it to be the same as modern methods!

[lagilman]

*looks at rather detailed and multi-layered worldbuilding notes, then at 80,000 words of draft already written, covering two continents and four different cultures. head implodes*

*goes back into cave and refuses to come out*

[kriz1818.livejournal.com]

:winces: Uh-oh ...

This is beginning to sound like a crisis of confidence, so I'll be blunt: You've already written a successful series in which electricity = magic, and many many readers are perfectly happy to along with that. Why are you worried they won't go along with wine = magic, and in a semi-foreign setting to boot?

[lagilman]

Because most laypeople accept electricity the way they do magic, anyway?

(more seriously: I knew exactly how much I could use and how much I could skirt, setting the Retrievers stories in a contemporary setting. Writing something where I'm creating the entire universe (religion, politics, magic) out of different cloth is... well, different.

Also, epic fantasy readers are tough.)

[kriz1818.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Maybe this will help? It happens that I know *exactly* how electricity works. In fact, I was the first girl in my high school to take electronics classes, and I can still rewire stuff and swap out a busted outlet.

And I had *no* problem going along with your electricity = magic notion.

Reading fiction is all about willing suspension of disbelief, after all; and if a reader's not willing to suspend that disbelief - they probably weren't really *your* reader, anyway.