When it doesn’t go write

My first novel was described by someone on Amazon as an easy read. I didn’t quite know how to take this remark. Did that mean my use of diction was somewhat limited… or does an easy ready imply that the plot is easy and the reader doesn’t have to think much.  Does that mean the novel is good or weak???

I personally love reading a book that challenges me, I get excited when I come across new words, new pairings etc. PD James is great at this…..she must have been surrounded by quite a few thesauruses…or is it thesaurus??  and yet, saying that I thought “Remains of the Day” was so simply written it was absolutely beautiful.

One of my favourite writers is Colin Dexter…his background is that he studied at Oxford and of course his Morse series is centred on that famous town but he writes like an Oxford DOn and that perfectly suits where his books are located. It would sound particularly odd if I used Oxford English for a murder mystery set in Australia. If I wrote a book set in NZ, I would use a different language compared to what I would write if I set a book in Australia…..words are contexts….and nothing indicates a setting better than dialect and language. I’ll therefore take the easy read as a compliment. Thank you very much.

I wish I had a mentor to ask these tricky but for a writer debilitating questions. I did talk to a couple of authors about this and some interesting comments were made.