"Ward had Grafton as mentor, who basically told her to cut the adverbs and a lot of detail; sketching picture, not painting a portrait."

This is kind of funny given the length of Ward's latest, but in general I think it's horrible, horrible advice. In fact, I think it's this etch-a-sketch philosophy that's forced the genre into more shorthand, readers into more work filling in blanks, and resulted in a general lack of *pop* among alarmingly SHORTER novels.

Robin