In Which I Explain Where I was the Last 8 Weeks

So, it’s been a while. Let me begin by saying February sucks.  It’s chilly, but not in a good, crisp wintery sort of way and there’s a letdown from all the foofaraw of Christmas and New Year’s. It’s the month of the year when you’re at a midway point between the solstice and the coming of spring, a long exhalation before any of us can breathe again.  For me, it seems like Douglas Adam’s Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul. 

And so, of course, everyone got sick. First it was food poisoning, which morphed into a weeks-long carnival of gastroenteritis that no one escaped. In our debilitated condition, we all fell prey to a nasty upper respiratory bug.  There was not a day in that six-week period where someone wasn’t vomiting or hacking or curled up in agony.  Despite all this, people still had to go to work and school and scouts and drama practice and choir and soccer. It’s truly a wonder we’re not all dead.  Added to that, I’ve had a computer virus that has blocked me from posting for several weeks. I stubbornly decided to cure it myself, which – considering my negative technological polarity – has been somewhat, ah, difficult. I believe it’s fixed. 

So my train of thought was derailed for a while, and it’s taken half of March and most of April to get it running back down the track. Not that all that time was wasted. After a small promotion in February and a big promotion in April, I’ve finally hit the Amazon bestseller lists. It was at #98, but I was briefly number one in several mystery and suspense subcategories. The ensuing sales meant that I’ve actually started to sporadically earn more from the books than from my day job.  The fact that (between free promos and paid sales) there are now 20,000+ people reading my work, and more every day,  is both exhilarating and terrifying. 

And so now it’s time to put the house in order. I’ve gone to part-time work (mostly for established clients and as favors to friends) and I’ve told the other people who live in the house to shut up and make their own damned macaroni.  I’ve heard from fans asking when the next Maddie book is coming out – which caused Susan and I to come to the revelation that Curtain Call, which was supposed to be the next Maddie book and was partially written and plotted, was boring and we didn’t care for it. Luckily, we already have the next six Maddie books semi-plotted, so the demise of Curtain Call means the ascendance of Scene Stealer, which we hope to have finished before the end of the year.  My first short story collection, Dead Girls and Other Stories, will be out shortly. (I’m still poking one of the stories to make sure it’s truly dead and formatting the manuscript). Then the next two novels, which are each meant to anchor a series, are in some stage of serious work.  Dead of Winter, which is 2/3 of the way finished, has been tied up and shoved into a closet until further notice.

So for those of you keeping score at home, you can currently buy Darker By Degree, Director’s Cut, and Running Red. During the next eight months, expect the release of  A Willingness of Witches, Lost Things, Scene Stealer, Dead Girls and Other Stories, and possibly another short story collection by Christmas. 

Oh, and I have to get back to blogging, both here and the other place. So, expect things to return to normal – or at least as normal as they ever were. Which probably wasn’t very.

Short Story Cover Extravaganza

Spent today working, working on covers for the  coming short stories. Way more fun than cleaning my closet. You've got vampires, zombies in two flavors, and a contract killer trying to do a good deed. Just shows what you can do with $12 worth of artwork and seven hours of free time. Yay! Please let me know what looks good and what sucks!

What Makes A Great Review?

[cross-posted at Publishing Yourself]

Last night we got the best review ever for Darker By Degree. Well, maybe not the best review ever, but a damned satisfying one, the kind that makes a smile pop out on your face throughout the day and gives you the warm fuzzies, the kind that lets you know you did what you meant to do. More about that in a moment.

Reviews are important, especially for those of us who've taken the self-pub route, and they're important for a number of reasons. First, most readers are reluctant to take a blind jump. If they've never heard of you, they may be reluctant to give you a try, even if you've got a nifty cover and a catchy blurb. But if they see other people dipping a toe in the water, and then caring enough to describe that experience, they're more likely to take the plunge. Second, well-done reviews give a little more information, and information from a reader's perspective as opposed to the author's perspective. We as writers sometimes miss what's best (or worst) or most compelling about our own works. Reviewers can point that out, especially to other potential readers who might be of a like mind. Third, reviews help you get noticed. They move you up in searches, they help you get linked, they drive people to your books.

So, yes, we want reviews. We need reviews. But we want good reviews. And by good reviews, I don't mean, "Oooh, that was the best book I ever read!" reviews. I mean thoughtful, meaningful reviews. Yes, we hope they're flattering and complimentary, but we also hope they add something to the conversation, that they pique someone's interest, that they illuminate.

I've seen people tweet about "Another 5-star Review!" But I've also learned that the vaunted 5-star review is not all it's cracked up to be. It's common knowledge that reviews can be gamed, and are gamed quite regularly. Many people don't "trust" a 5-star review, figuring that it's either friends of the author or the authors themselves salting the mine. I've read time and time again in comments hither and yon that potential readers are really interested in the 3- and 4-star reviews, because they tend to be better balanced, reasoned, thought-out, and explained.

There was an interesting post on Konrath's blog earlier this week where he sort of trashes the notion of 1-star reviews. I can see his point -- which was that a lot of 1-star reviews (hell, a lot of reviews, period) are nonsense because they're not really reviews, but instead knee-jerk reactions to what may or may not even be legitimate critical points, like the price of the book or the genre. As someone who often writes in the horror genre, I would like to personally pound anyone who gives a horror novel an automatic 1-star because they "don't like horror." But I do think Konrath kind of wanders off his main point just a tad by twisting things to say in effect there are "no 1-star books." In his defense, he did start off my stating something about "assuming a certain level of competence," but still, there are some pretty atrocious books out there. As always, nice debate in the comments section.

There's also mixed feeling in readers about soliciting reviews, mostly because many don't understand that's how any traditionally published book gets reviews: you send out arcs or free copies and hope that reviewers will read and review them. It's really no different than, say, using a service like the new BookRooster, which for a reasonable fee will give free copies to their readers (in your genre) until you've received a minimum of 10 Amazon reviews. The part that makes people feel squidgy about it is that each review has to start out with a disclaimer that the reviewer received a free copy to review. For readers who understand the process, this should be no problem, but more casual readers may think, "Hey, why do they have to GIVE the book away...." Hopefully, that kind of attitude will be dispelled over time as the practice becomes more common. After all, you're not guaranteed a "good" review, so it's not like an old payola scam.

And there are increasingly people and sites, like Red Adept, that will review self-pubbed books for free. Also joining groups like GoodReads, Shelfari, and LibraryThing can link you up to readers who are more likely to review your books.

But sometimes the best review is the one you haven't sought out, the reader who found your book, who enjoyed it, and who took the time to tell everybody why. Which brings me back to the most excellent review that we got last night for Darker By Degree. Yeah, it wasn't a "5-star," and it wasn't all gushy, but it was better than that.  First of all, it was by someone who does lots of reviews (over 600!), and they're thoughtful reviews, not drive-bys or love fests. And in looking over those reviews, the reader is not afraid to point out what's good and bad in a book. They didn't give away too much of the plot, but they hit they high points that they found compelling. And then at the end, they gave the best compliment a self-pubbed author could hope to receive:

"Maddie Pryce has a career as an actor, but not a lot of work. In fact her day to day bills are paid by her job as an usher in an elegant but crumbling old art deco theatre showing vintage movies.

One night after a triple bill of 30's and 40's classic horror, she finds one of her coworkers murdered. Another coworker makes himself scarce when the cops try to interview him about the homicide. One detective in particular, Kyle Oberman, takes a more than casual interest in Maddie, as it seems that she has managed to become the object of a stalker who is looking for a missing porn actress and thinks Maddie might know something about the missing woman.

With a dose of action, some good dialogue and Maddie's entertaining views on Hollywood, this mystery is well worth reading. I read it on my iphone and didn't notice any major formatting problems. In fact I would not have been surprised to pull this one off a library shelf in hard cover.

Recommended."

Yep, the best thing about that review, the thing that warmed the cockles of my cynical little heart? "I would not have been surprised to pull this one off a library shelf in hardcover." Wow. I will say, Susan and Harold and I worked our collective butts off to not only put together an engrossing read, but to present is as professionally as a traditionally published novel from a major house. For at least one reader, we accomplished that, and that is a fine, fine thing.