Daily Diary, Day 645: Good productive weekend, I got a total of 1592 words written, I also started to ramp up my walking and exercise.
Started a JA Jance audiobook, but stopped listening at about chapter 4. It was the twelfth book in one of her series I hadn't read (I had read a lot of the Joanna Brady series years ago.) There were just too many characters introduced at the start, and not having read previouis books I couldn't keep them all straight, particularly listening rather than reading.
As the author of a series, I do worry about that. If I spend too much time giving some description of and backstory for a character that is only going to be a walk-on, this can bore those readers who know who they are, but if I give too little, a reader new to the series can be confused. Once again, a reminder that listening is different than reading. When I read, easy to skip through those things--I remember that the Sue Grafton series always started out the say, almost word for word. Reading, I could just skip that part, listening would have had to suffer through.
I have whole day to write today. I've done my walk, gone through my email, read the publishing articles I try to keep up on, and did some business putting novella collection back up to full price everywhere but Kindle (where it is still in top 100 Free store, so will let it slide another day.)
Also had fun watching our dog Leeza and Rio play. They chase each other, then do lots of mock tussling, never seem to get angry at each other, as you can see gladly share the water dish, etc.
I've done the same as you with a book with too many characters right at the beginning - usually listening, but sometimes reading one too. And a big pet peeve on top of that is characters (2 or even 3) with VERY similar names. Like, what is the reason for that?? I finally quit reading an author because she did it in multiple books.
But.... if I have a book that I HAVE to review that begins with a lot of characters, I WILL go back, with a pencil and pad and identify them. Then for at least 1/3 of the book I will keep that list nearby. Usually after that I can identify them.
Right now I'm trying to read a mystery from every country I visited on our vacation - 11 of them. I've finished about 6 so far.