BLURB! (‘scuse me)

by Leigh Lundin

Whereas writers ideally welcome critique, they are considerably more trepidatious about reviews. Private critiques help guide the writer. Public reviews come after a work is published and are out there for the world to see. Reviews are in magazines, in newspapers, on the radio, and they’re all over the internet.

My understanding is that the average author has to beat the bushes, beg reviewers, solicit signings and radio time. Imagine my surprise when I learned I not only didn”t have to run that gauntlet, but I could be guaranteed terrific reviews. Yes, I received an eMail offering to review my novel, but amazingly, they said I would find the reviews “a pleasure to read”, a “notch in my literary belt”, a stepping stone to “higher earnings”.

Wow! They were offering me a way to duck those potentially negative reviews other writers suffer. All I had to do was ship them ten books and $59.95, or alternatively, $129.95 and one copy, but since I was so well regarded, I was “authorized” to eMail a copy and $99 via PayPal. Other places charge $600 to over a thousand dollars, they said, proving theirs was a real bargain.

Okay, I was being asked to buy a review, but ten books? What was that all about? Were they truly being delivered to reviewers or did the scammer happen to own a bookstore?

I am a seasoned reader, but a rookie writer. As a new writer, I look at reviewing in a different light than I did as a heavy-weight serious reader. Like a critic, a reader knows good from bad, even though they might not be able to create their own work of art. But when a new artist comments upon a colleague, both are judged as well as the worthiness of one to second-guess another.

Sometimes reviewers damn with faint praise, such as the concert reviewer who wrote that the musician “played all the notes”. For a writer, it would be the equivalent of “Leigh Lundin spelled all the words correctly.”

As a reader, two happenstances would prompt me to put pen to paper for a review:

1. A book that impressed the hell out of me.
2. A book that disappointed the hell out of me (usually a novel by an author that I otherwise admired).

Thomason and Caldwell’s The Rule of Four definitely impressed me. The sense of place was strong, the characters likable, and the tale carried a sense of destiny. Oddly, a weakness in the book was the murder mystery, which for us mystery fans is inexplicable, but for a first novel, the overall quality of the story bowled me over.

To my surprise, a high percentage of reader reviews trashed the novel. Some claimed it was boring (and went back to their Paris Hilton video), while others compared it with The Da Vinci Code (before they went back on their meds). The authors spent seven years writing The Rule of Four, so it’s unlikely they were influenced by Brown’s book beyond the synergy of the public’s momentary interested in the arts.

The dark side of a bookworm’s passion is a novel expected to be great, but which fails dramatically. Merely disappointing isn’t enough; the work must be abysmal. Reading a book costs the reader time and probably money, and the reader wants value for his dollar (or her euro). Almost worse than the novel so bad you stop reading, is a book so remarkably awful you can’t stop reading it.

A handful of authors defy review by writing to please a handful of like-minded people. Cubism, retsina, German cheese, and internet Indy music isn’t for everyone, but each thrives within a niche market. James Warren doesn’t care that Britney Spears won’t be reading his Treviscoe series (although she might and he might, once they read this column). The stories are meticulously good, but not everyone wants to immerse themselves in an 18th century mystery.

This past week, I read that new enterprises (probably scammers fleeing the sub-prime mortgage markets) are casting themselves as “professional blurbers”. For $29.95 (or worse), they’ll do a product endorsement for anyone’s book. However, for writers everywhere, I offer this service for free. Simply fill in the blanks, forge my signature (which looks like a polygraph line on LSD), and print in your local newspaper.
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A Tisket, A Tasket

As South Carolina author Fran Rizer‘s finishing her third novel, her first, A Tisket, A Tasket, made it to bookshelves last month.

Bookstores call it a cozy, and though the protagonist, Callie Parrish, is clearly a descendent of Miss Marple, she also bears mixed genes of Rebecca (of Sunnybrook Farm) and Shirley Manson (of Garbage). Callie’s best friend is a blind, LSD acolyte neo-hippie whose career is a 1-900 sex-talk operator. At last, a sidekick who works for a living!

Instead of working for a living, Callie works for the dead as a mortician’s make-up artist. Throughout, the book reveals funerary details we, the living, seldom consider. In the course of making up a corpse, Callie discovers a broken hypodermic buried in a man.

The book has a couple of plot twists, one which I saw coming and one I didn’t. The sense of scene is good, too, but the part I liked best was the insight into the feminine mind. That may sound odd for a guy to say, but being male, I’m always interested in what takes place inside the female of the species.

Callie opens (and ends) the novel with her Victoria’s Secret inflatable bra. I’ve never seen one let alone a demonstration, but in the 7th grade, I was standing in a cafeteria queue ahead of Belinda Johnson, when I abruptly spun around, catching my elbow in Belinda’s, er, boob, to use the clinical term.

It went phffffffffffffft.

It was like an Egyptian pyramid was wiped off the map.

As schoolmates glared at me, I had visions of my social standing going phfffffft, but poor Belinda was terribly mortified. (Eventually, however, I believed she made up for lost time.) Fortunately, our girl Callie didn’t have to deal with these issues.

The book is quirky and the middle of the book has a ‘feature’ I’ve never seen before, which the reader must discover for themselves. Two additional Callie books are in the pipeline.

Fran recently had a stint with stents (which she called her broken heart). I’m sure she’d appreciate your comments.