Message From My Ideal Reader

As my targeted audience is, well, really it's me. Yep, I'm egotistical to write a novel based on me as the most marvellous audience of all! So I figured that I, as a reader, should write a message to me, as a writer, so that I can figure out just what I want in a novel. I'd suggest you all do the same (and if you do, link me to your blog post through the Comments section).

"What do I want? I want the world. Your world. I want to explore its strange lands and see places I've never visited before - whether that's a New York urinal or a mystical glen. I don't just want to read a word that says I'm there. I want to feel like I've been there, like a tourist who can recount the wonders they've seen, and that means I need to see, hear, and, hell, smell that urinal or mystical glen. I want you to make me think and feel.

I want you to stretch my understanding and help me see the world from a different perspective. Not constantly. That would make my brain hurt. But once or twice in ways that fit with the mentality of the host body I'm riding (also known as the protagonist).

I demand some dose of the strange in the books I read, whether this be an assumption turned on its head (a really cantankerous witness to a homicide telling off the police about how they trampled his hydrangeas rather than a timid or helpful witness) or bizarre sub-dimensions and hell-pockets that barely match our reality. I don't want too much strangeness, though, not outside of a short story. Hell-pockets are all well and good but they're better if they imitate the familiar but just don't quite make it.

Mostly, I want to play the voyeur in an unfamiliar place. I want to root about in someone else's dirty laundry (lots of neat gossipable secrets and issues between characters, please), see what their homes look like, find out what they think about people, and see what certain situations (natural disasters, wars, divorces) are like without having to go through them (and yet somehow feeling like I almost did). I also like seeing someone else being dragged through the mud of tragedy but ultimately I'd like some hope with my horror, thanks."

So that's me. Guess I haven't really simplified things for myself, have I?

Damned demanding Ideal Reader!