I read my manuscript this week in a hard copy, my final draft before returning it to my developmental editor. Yikes!
I would like to re-introduce you to my vision of my “Ideal Reader,” an exercise from my Women in Publishing group.
If it fits you, stay tuned for Rain Dodging,
October 17, 2023 publication date. She Writes Press, publisher.
I visualize my readers as women aged 30-75, all sizes, all colors, with 5 things in common:
- They love to travel and adore all things Britain
- They dig a good female survivor story, especially one told with humor.
- They are inquisitive, lifelong learners but fun-loving—or want to be.
- They are women adjusting to The Invisibility Club, anywhere along its spectrum, from disbelief to thriving acceptance.
Her idea of a good time is curling up with a good book that gambols through the Cotswold’s or wanders the streets of London. She longs to live in Great Britain for an extended period, so she relishes adventuring England’s back roads—anywhere in Europe for that matter—through the eyes of solo women travelers: Books give her the encouragement that she, too, could do it alone.
My ideal reader devours women’s history and learning about female British royalty. She wants to understand more about the journey of Woman’s fight for intellectual equality. She is either too young to remember what it was like for women before the modern-day women’s movement, or she is old enough but wasn’t paying close attention. She wants to pay attention now. She is still figuring how she feels about The Invisibility Club.
She is open-minded when it comes to sex and relationships, so probably not “Church of Christ!” Though she keeps current politically and may have a history of social activism, Genevieve doesn’t want to read about real-world politics in her downtime. Give her a woman’s travel odyssey, and she is content.
When my reader visits a bookstore, she is looking for a strong—must be likable—female subject. She loves words and the way they play with one another. Her women friends mean the world to her, but she is just as happy in solitude, reading books!
Maybe you are my ideal reader?
