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Joined: 6/18/2012
Posts: 228
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Hi, eveyone.
I'm Brandi Larsen, the new Book Country Director.
I look forward to meeting everyone, joining the discussion, and, once we expand the genre map this summer, uploading my own work.
I think this is an incredible community, and I'm honored to be here. Please let me know if there's anything specific you want in critiques, as well as if there are any features that you wish we had on Book Country.
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Joined: 2/9/2012
Posts: 427
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Hi Brandi,
Welcome aboard! We're looking forward to working with you and making the site even more awesome!
=)
Nevena
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Joined: 3/14/2011
Posts: 226
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Welcome to the madhouse, Brandi! *grin* Just finished reading your interview; yay for cat people!
I'm one of the betafish, and haven't been as active as I'd like to be (life sucks, sometimes), but I'm working on getting back into the critiques while I write. I, too, found Kerry's Twitter chat inspiring in terms of getting my butt writing again. Drafting is fun, but I hate editing so I sometimes get hung up in the drafting stage thinking, "oh, man, this is going to need so much work." And then it's a few weeks before I can break through the sudden block.
Anyway, glad you're joining us and can't wait to get to know you better.
x♥x
Noelle
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Joined: 2/27/2011
Posts: 353
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An official "welcome aboard!", Brandi, complete with exclamation point. =)
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Joined: 6/14/2012
Posts: 194
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Hi, Brandi! I'm one of the wandering folk who come in and talk about writing until the next deadline is too close, then disappear for awhile. Enjoyed your interview and hope to meet you someday.
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Joined: 6/7/2011
Posts: 467
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Hello, Brandi. Welcome. I'm sure you'll receive no end of specific wants and wishes from members in no time. Meanwhile, enjoy the honeymoon.
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Joined: 2/27/2011
Posts: 353
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Brandi -
Elizabeth is being modest; she is a NYT bestselling science fiction and fantasy writer, and her posts on the discussion board are some of the best ones up there.
And Atthys is a colleague of mine from WAY BACK, when we were both working at a bookstore in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 90s. He is also one of the most talented writers on this site; I encourage you to go read his stuff when you get a moment.
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Joined: 6/18/2012
Posts: 228
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Thanks for the warm welcomes. Colleen and Nevena, I really appreciate you showing me the ropes.
@Noelle: I'm looking forward to getting to know you too. We'll have to have a longer conversation around editing. I'm curious why you hate it (I love it!).
@Elizabeth: Thanks for taking the time to say hi. I really appreciate the advice you've given on the boards. Nevena, Colleen, and I were talking about The Speed of Dark. I'm working with an autistic character, and I'd love to pick your brain at some point.
@Atthys Hello! I'm excited to read your manuscript. (And the bevy of Book Country requests that will await me.)
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Joined: 2/9/2012
Posts: 427
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Seems like business as usual =).
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Joined: 8/13/2011
Posts: 272
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Noelle said it first, but welcome to the madhouse. I'm sure I'll do something to annoy you, so I apologise in advance.
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Joined: 6/18/2012
Posts: 228
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Thanks, Timothy. No apologies needed. I have a high level of tolerance for annoyance, so I'll take my chances. 
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Joined: 3/7/2011
Posts: 55
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Welcome aboard! Glad to have you!
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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Welcome, Brandi! I really appreciated what you said in your interview about learning from the process of providing feedback to other writers. I would love to see some functionality that could encourage more multilateral discussions along those lines, perhaps even in real time. A reviewing chat room might work, or an option to "connect" to a dedicated PM chain for a given book, so that any time one connected person left a comment or review related to the book, it would populate into the PM chain for everyone connected. Another possibility would be the option to create and join themed groups, whose members might get a common set of alerts when any member's work received a new review or comment.
I'm looking forward to seeing where things go from here. Thanks for taking on the challenge!
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Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
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Hi Brandi! Welcome!
Herb, your suggestions for group chat are appealing. I often wonder, especially in the course of a review, about my positions.
I'd love to hear, from someone other than the author, who will naturally be in a circle-the-wagons mode: Dump that thought. You're on the wrong track, and here's why.
Would anyone be interested in a formal review feedback/compare notes thing? I do it already, a bit, commenting on other reviews in my reviews.
Brandi, is this a useful idea, or not?
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Joined: 6/7/2011
Posts: 467
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Yes Herb and Mimi; Some of the best comments end up in the comment sections after the review itself. I've been part of a couple of exceedingly long threads, mashing it back and forth. It's often more useful than the formal review (and more fun.)
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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Thanks, Atthys. Springboarding off of that, maybe another useful piece of functionality would be a category to go alongside "Buzz Books" and "Book Country Favorites" that would pick the books with the most active review/comment threads for a given two-week period.
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Joined: 6/18/2012
Posts: 228
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Hello, Marshall, Herb, Mimi and Atthys.
Herb, thanks for speaking up and for sparking the discussion of what could be. It's incredibly helpful, and I like the ideas that are bouncing around here.
We're in development right now and just started our conversations around how the reader will handle comments. I think we'll open a new thread to talk about ideas for what you want to see and what we're building.
Thanks for taking the time to say hi and think about how Book Country could be better.
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Joined: 2/9/2012
Posts: 427
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Hi there-
I created a "Site Ideas and Improvements" thread under the "Book Country News & Announcements" topic. Feel free to share all of your awesome ideas there. Brandi and I will look through them, and try to please you as best as we can.
http://www.bookcountry.com/Community/Discussions/Default.aspx?id=137674
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Joined: 2/22/2013
Posts: 5
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Hello Brandi,
Good luck with this challenging job. As you know I'm new to this site and have to feel my way around before I'll be in any position to comment. I do wish that it was a requirement that more of the stories submitted was available to read. It's often difficult to assess when so few words are uploaded. I'd like to see a minimum of 30000 words rather than the present setup.
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Joined: 6/18/2012
Posts: 228
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Hello again!
Thanks for your suggestion. It's a fine balance because you want to give an excellent critique, but you also want to support writers at all stages of the process. Readers in a bookstore (or online) often read the blurb or only a single page to decide if they're going to buy or read more so there is that to consider...
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