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My sister, consummate reader, gets angry at Penguin

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My sister is a voracious reader and book-aholic. I have her and my mother to thank for the reading–and, later, the writing–bug that bit me early.

Reading, along with horses and dogs, is an absolute passion for her. She routinely buys whole series of authors she likes, often multiple times (her dogs think of them as chew toys), often in hard cover, often in the Kindle edition.

One of the authors she would follow anywhere on the planet, if asked, is Charlaine Harris. She specifically loves the Sookie Stackhouse series and would trade pints of blood for them if that were the going currency.

But not this time. When the latest Sookie Stackhouse book came out in Kindle format just 16 cents less than the hard cover, she lost it.

I’ll let her tell the story in her blog post, Hey Penguin, Bite Me.

Book Critique: Robert Parker’s Looking for Rachel Wallace

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Earlier this week, I talked about the usefulness of the book critique to help refine my writing. I thought I’d show a critique I did on one of crime fiction writer Robert Parker’s best Spenser novels, Looking for Rachel Wallace, a book that has helped me immensely as I try to make a career in the same field.

If the writing seems abbreviated or sloppy or informal, that’s the way I write these so as to better understand the critique later. It’s essentially a monologue I have with myself on paper; if I wrote any more formally or self-consciously, I feel that I’d lose something in the study. Unlike my guide in the previous post, there’s not much in the Issues section and there’s no Summary…I think I cover everything in the other sections. If I get a positive response, I’ll post a more complete critique on another novel.

I hope you find it helpful, but there are huge SPOILERS, obviously. Don’t read the critique if you haven’t read the book!

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Contest: Win an autographed copy of ONE BAD TWELVE!

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Head on over to GoodReads.com for your chance to win an autographed copy of my crime fiction short story collection, one bad twelve! The contest ends in just 2 days, so hurry up!

Registering at GoodReads gives you the opportunity to participate in reading groups, chat with authors, and enter daily giveaways to win many other books, as well. It’s a great site that brings readers and writers together.

Giddyup and enter to snag that copy of one bad twelve for your very own at http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/23491-one-bad-twelve.

 

Printing Your Book With CreateSpace: Part III

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This is Part III of a three-part series on my attempt to print my short story collection, one bad twelve, using Amazon’s CreateSpace method. Part I covered many of the basics; Part II covered the “short list” of tips and tricks that helped me get my title to CreateSpace.

In many ways, this is the easiest part of the CreateSpace process and is more about reporting than tips or tricks. Once I’d been through the formatting and artwork (cover) stages of my book, much of the “creative” process was over. There are still a few issues that might be of interest to writers new to the print format, however.

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A Brief Rant on Bad Reviewers

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Lord knows independent authors couldn’t survive without the wonderful amateur book reviewers on sites like Amazon, Goodreads, and Librarything.com. I love my thoughtful reviewers (the 2-stars and 5-stars alike) and often thank them for their time. If I ever hit it big in e-publishing, it will be because of them.

But there’s a particular kind of reviewer that drives me crazy. Their approach or conception of what it is to rate or review a book is deeply flawed, unfair, and–frankly–unhelpful to other readers. I’ve boiled down what bothers me about this kind of reviewer in a simple statement:

Your dislike for a genre or format does not constitute a fair criticism of a work.

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