It’s interesting,…

It's interesting, reading these TOR novel synopses. For one thing, I find that I only generally read the first third to first half -- especially if it seems like I might like the book, I don't want to spoil the ending. I only really want to know the setup, to figure out whether it's the sort of thing I'm looking for.

So far, I've only been turning down those that are clearly outside of my purview -- sf, urban fantasy, horror, etc. Anything that had a strong female protagonist and felt like epic/high fantasy, I've asked for the first three chapters. I suppose if the writing in the synopsis were truly terrible, I might turn it down on those grounds too, but so far, that hasn't come up. If I do this for a long time, I may get more selective, but this is all so new to me that I'm inclined to cast a wide net for the moment, looking at as many manuscripts as seems reasonable.

I now have five sets-of-three-chapters in my inbox, sets that I've requested. I'm going to read those next -- I have no idea, at this point, what criteria I'll end up using to decide if I want to see entire manuscripts. This is a fascinating process, I have to say.