Hailey's Novel Diary – 12/7/17

I'm a little concerned about the structure of the book. Most of the chapters take place in multiple locations. Rather than set up each new scene with an expositional "one day later" or something that spells out to readers that it is a new scene, I simply move from one to another. With different characters in a different location, it should be obvious that it is a new scene, but obvious is not what it used to be. Online, what used to be called obvious is now considered subtle. Subtle is now mass confusion.

My instinct is that anyone who reads books will easily understand. I'm hardly the first person in the history of the world to do this. But what kind of books are people reading these days? If you are used to Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, my books are never going to tax your brain. But a lot of people read a lot of crap. Modern authors dumb down far more than they should. It is not their fault. Modern publishers insist that everything has to be dumbed down because they don't have much confidence in their readers. Maybe they see books like Fifty Shades of Grey on the bestseller list and realize that Austen and Dickens had a very different audience.

It is all serials about vampires and zombies now, or books designed solely for a movie adaptation. If the great American novel is written today, it will probably never be published. It would not test well with teenagers.