Rejected for Reviewing

I am a professional reviewer, having worked for AuthorLink for nearly 10 years, and a consumer reviewer since nothing is purchased without someone emailing to know what I thought of their product, service, or opinions. I have reviewed several books for NetGalley over the years and haven denied access to books to read and review, but this is the first time I have been rejected and specifically asked to apply for access again. No such option is available to me on the NetGalley website. The FAQs mentioned that I could request the book from the publisher, which I have just done, but I thought I'd put my opinions out in the world for everyone to read, learn, or comment about. Why not? Is this world not a connected world where all opinions are debated, denied, calumnized, and laughed at by everyone? I might just get my wish to read an advance copy on my Kindle reader to see whether or not I will enjoy The Rules of Magic as much as I enjoyed Practical Magic or the numerous other books I have read by Alice Hoffman, even books I didn't think I would like and discovered I thoroughly enjoyed.

Hoffman is a consistently good author and her subject matter of practical magic for the characters in her books is endlessly fascinating without the over hyped sexual aspect of paranormal books and authors dabbling in the paranormal genre over the past few decades. In spite of my personal views of PDAs and the avoidance thereof, Hoffman does not go that route with her books or her characters and I do like that.

Simon and Schuster is one of the Big Six Publishers that many indie and Big-6 published writers deal with when they decide to enter the publishing world, but I will have to wait until some unknown publicist for this book here in the USA decide to read and respond to my query regarding an advance copy. Until then, I will continue to plan on reading the book when it is published in October or contact one of my contacts to do me a favor. Either way, I will of course get the book, read it, and review it here or wherever (Amazon, Good Reads, newspapers, magazines, or here on my own blog) and whenever I may. That's life and the way the pages fall.

This rejection is not the end and I still have other authors to fill my time in the meantime and beyond until this 3rd density existence is either upgrade by the Cosmic Sneeze or the Grim Reaper comes for me at length.

I wonder. Will I be able to read books -- or care about them -- when I have ascended?

That is all. Disperse.

Review: White Horse by Alex Adams

There's nothing worse than getting to the end of a book and reading the author bio on the back flap of the dust jacket to find out what you thought was over has just begun, that it's the beginning of a trilogy.

There's nothing better than finding out a story will continue, that it's the beginning of a trilogy.

There are few serial novels that have sparked my interest as much as Alex Adams's White Horse. In short, it's Alex Adams's debut novel and the book is good. The girl can write. No doubt about that, not after being lured into accompanying Zoe on her journey through the landscape of hell and out the other side into a whole new kind of Gehenna.

Zoe is a reluctant heroine, a Pandora who resists the urge to open the box full of disease and pain and loss -- and the gentle spark of hope at the bottom of the jar. She begins by seeking help from a therapist, Nick Rose, who is attractive and dark. Zoe can resist opening the ancient sealed jar in her apartment as easily as she resists Nick's charms. She is a girl with a mission, a janitor working for a pharmaceutical company so she can afford to go to college and get a better education so she will have a better life. Hers is a life on hold while she keeps her eyes on the future, a future that quickly slips through her grasp.

Zoe's colleagues, friends, and family die one by one as a disease cooked up in some lab and dubbed White Horse by a southern minister decimates the population, leaving 90% of the world dead and the remaining 10% either immune or genetically changed into abominations. Zoe is immune, although why she is immune is anybody's guess, and there is no one left to strap her to a table and dissect her to find out.

What begins with an ordinary woman on an ordinary day quickly becomes a juggernaut that barrels through the barren landscape of the present while trying to find meaning from the past. White Horse isn't talented, it's brilliant in concept and execution. Alex Adams has hit on something that could be lurking around the corner waiting to pounce tomorrow or next year and woven a spell of seductive power that has long, strong legs.

And there's a website with all kinds of goodies just waiting to be devoured until the 2nd installment of this promising trilogy is released.

I can hardly wait.

That's the problem with trilogies -- waiting.

From Amateur to School Girl -- Again

A reviewer, who admitted she doesn't read the kind of book I write, said "the writing and character development seemed a little amateurish." I guess a little amateurish is like being a little virginal. On the cusp of being a tramp and on the road to whorish -- or something like that. At least it's a three-star review, so I'm not going to worry.

Not worry? I'm going back to school. Maybe I can burnish the rest of the amateur out of my writing.

I did decide to go back to school, in a way, by signing up for Great Courses. It was a huge bargain, $39.95 down from $215. College at bargain basement prices, and no exams or dissertations or angst about what to wear to class. I always obsessed about having enough paper and a pen and pencil that worked. Silly me. I may even take the course on rhetoric and critique. It's likely my reviewing skills may also seem a little amateurish. Of course, I've earned enough money to buy food when the bills depleted my regular income, and I've had to pay taxes on the earnings for the past six years. Do amateurs pay taxes on earnings? Oh, well, not important.

I decided to try out one of the Great Courses since I've been receiving their catalogues for years. With the long list for the Booker Prize out today, it just makes sense to brush up my reading, writing, and critiquing skills. I took a look at the list and checked them all out on Amazon to see what was available for Kindle and at what prices.

Surprisingly, four of the books were out of print even though they were published within the past few months, and nearly all of the books were priced at near hard cover price, and often more than the paperback price. I guess publishers just don't get it.

How does a book go out of print in the seven weeks since it was published? Low print runs. Most of the books were published with a less than 6000 print run -- for all countries. Had they chosen to offer digital files (at realistic rates), the books would still be available while reprint orders were being made. I guess they didn't believe in the books enough to order a print run sufficient to sell to interested readers, and ebooks readers do actually read. I've finished six books on Kindle and just received the Kindle the first of May. Of course, it goes without saying that I've read many more books in print (that's what the office sends me to review) and a few in digital form that is not compatible with the Kindle. The total is, I believe thirty books that I didn't read on Kindle, and that's a conservative estimate. I've also read two of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice books (A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings, and have begun A Storm of Swords) and have nibbled The Bone People, a Booker Prize winner from 1985 that was a gift from a friend who said after the second chapter she realized the main female character was me.

One of my guilty pleasures, and not including Martin's saga, is the Nikki Heat mysteries written by Richard Castle, of television fame. Now there was a bright marketing ploy. A character on a TV show (one of the few I stream) is an author of mystery novels and, in real life, there are books written by said TV character featuring his partner and love interest, Detective Kate Beckett, aptly named Nikki Heat.

The writing is simple and the mysteries not that difficult to solve, and the byplay between Heat and her literary shadow, magazine writer Jameson Rook (who also writes romance novels as Victoria St. Clair), is heated, to say the least. It's fluff writing but it's fun, hence guilty pleasure. I've read Heat Wave and am working my way through Naked Heat, although the naked part is sadly missing so far, and I'm reading them on Kindle at a price below the paperback price. What a concept. The thing is, I'm enjoying the books, just as I enjoyed reading Terry Pratchett's Discworld series on Kindle.

Kindle is a great product and I'm enjoying the heck out of mine -- when I'm not reading review books, like Prophecy by S. J. Parris or Deed to Death by D. B. Henson, whose writing is long on detail and short on action through the first half of the book. D. B. Henson was first self-published and then picked up by Simon & Schuster, so indie to traditionally published still happens, and not just to Amanda Hocking, who is wringing the very last drop of tease out of her move to St. Martin's Press with her troll series.

What surprised me about the Booker Prize news this morning was the slap at Apple for not having any of the digital books available from the long list and being questioned as to whether they were players or just playing. I guess Apple is an amateur compared to Amazon, but you didn't hear that from me.

So, while the publishing world is heating up and plots are being bandied about, I will return to the beginning and learn to construct artful sentences in an effort to shake off that amateurish taint in my writing and character development. After all, writing is evolution and to write and sell one must evolve.