Back in Business

So, I've just finished transferring the bits of my writing room from home to the aft (rear) cabin of our boat. And this is what it looks like. Kinda small, but I'll get used to it. After all, most of my first book, Margel's Madness, was written in here.

I'm starting with the easiest of the line edits, collating the bits and pieces from my various readers and plan to have that part done by this weekend. Then it's on to the real work!

I've decided to throw the occasional book review into this blog and in my last post,  promised one of Jen Blood's All the Blue-Eyed Angels. I’m a sucker for this type of mystery: a smart, wounded, tough-as-nails yet emotionally vulnerable protagonist, dead-on dialogue, terrific sexual tension, and a man-I-never-saw-that-one-coming ending that leaves me thinking about the book for days.

The protagonist in All the Blue-Eyed Angels is the plucky, thirty-something female journalist, Erin Solomon, who’s come home after many years to the small, coastal town of Littlehope, Maine in hopes of uncovering the real story behind a fire that killed an entire religious cult living on a local island when she was a child—the same island where her father later committed suicide.

Unfortunately, very few of Littlehope’s residents are happy to see her—understandable considering she’s hell bent on writing a book about a past they seem determined to keep under wraps. The notable exceptions to this less than enthusiastic reception are her sexy ex-lover and his equally sexy roomie—an FBI agent with a steamy libido and his own mysterious agenda.  As for the rest of Littlehope, someone is permanently hushing up any resident Erin suspects has a promising lead, this as her list of suspects continues to grow—a list that comes to include her estranged mother who’s carrying far too many secrets of her own, and who may or may not be at the center of a longstanding cover up.

In All the Blue-Eyed Angels, Blood has given us a powerful, emotionally complex story peopled with fully-realized characters and terrific, well-honed prose.  Thankfully, this is but the first in the Erin Solomon mystery series.  I’m very much looking forward to the others!

Wanted to let you know about two Matinicus giveaways going on just now, one at http://www.goodreads.com/ (ending May 10) and another at http://www.librarything.com/ (ending May 18).  All winners receive a signed, personalized copy of the book. If you win, please remember to leave feedback on these sites and on Amazon.com!

Upcoming events include a radio interview discussing Matinicus with the folks at Zone Radio, 103.1 FM and AM620 in Bangor, Maine at 9:05a.m. on Tuesday, May 8, followed on May 17th by the official Matinicus Book Launch Party, 7:00 p.m. at RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth, NH. Hope you'll join us!

The Thing About Reviews

All authors want reviews. Okay, maybe not want them the way we want love and chocolate and oodles of money, but we need them. And just the good ones, thank you. They're important for the exposure they generate, and if you're lucky enough to land a few of these priceless things pre-publication and have a half-decent marketing plan in place, you can hit the ground running. Creating early buzz is important when so many hundreds of thousands of books come out every year. That's hundreds of thousands. I try not to think about that part.

Thing is, getting someone to agree to a review is a crapshoot. Even if you've managed to ink out the best book of the year, there'll be plenty of folks who don't like it. Trust me on this. Say your reviewer is a woman who was once jilted by a guy who just happens to have the same name as your lead character, lost a child the exact age as one who dies in your story, or has a fight with the boyfriend or the boss the day she sits down to read your novels. Maybe yours is the hundredth mystery/romance/science fiction/western (take your pick) she's reviewed this year and she's simply had it. Makes herself a big old martini, sits down at the keyboard and takes her snarly mood out on little-old-you.

Paying for reviews is a whole other ball of wax. Some of the most prestigious review sites charge big bucks for a review they promise will be completely honest, which doesn't necessarily mean "good" (see above). That means you can pay a lot of money for the chance to get majorly, where-did-I-hide-those-razorblades depressed. These companies charge a ton for their reviews because they know that you know that if by some miracle you manage to eek out a good one, you've got a leg up in the game.

All of this by way of explaining, perhaps, that I'm fully aware the absolutely stunning review I just received from Kirkus for Matinicus (due out in May) http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/darcy-scott/matinicus/, had as much to do with the luck of the draw as anything else. Don't get me wrong. I'm really proud of the book, I busted my ass on it, and I'm ever-so-grateful that whoever reviewed it liked it almost as much as I do.

Just sayin'.