P.C. Zick's Blog, page 57

Please check out Indies Unlimited today – they’ve featured Live from the Road and an interview with me.

I just received 5-star review from Alle Wells for Live from the Road.

Ms. Well’s 5-star review blog supports Indie Authors such as myself. She states, in her blog that she will “only post books that I enjoy reading and that meet the standard requirements of a good read.” Her standard requirements include “strong characterization, a recognizable plot, pace, and editing.”

She states, “No bad reviews will be posted on my site. If the work doesn’t meet the standard requirements, I will not write a review.”

I’m pleased and grateful she believes Live from the Road meets these standards. Thanks, Alle.

 

“I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.”

- Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird

Working on it, Ms. Lee.

“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works”

-Virginia Woolf

This quote struck me this morning, and hits on something I’ve believed for a long time. As a writer, I’m often asked if a novel is autobiographical. It’s an annoying question at times, but I try my best to explain.

A novel is fiction (don’t ever query an agent or agent with these words: “my fictional novel”). The plot, characters, dialogue, conflicts, and climax are all made up by the writer. To a point.

Any writer who says a novel doesn’t have any elements of autobiography is lying. It all comes from within us, from our experiences, from our view of stories we’ve heard and things we’ve observed. Dialogue often comes from “real” conversations – or at least the best dialogue usually does.

As I work on the second draft of my current novel, I know there are elements of conversation from my life with my husband since the main characters are a husband and wife team who had to beat insurmountable odds to come together as partners. The matriarch of the story comes from a composite of mothers I’ve known over the years. Anyone who knew her, will certainly recognize parts of my own mother in Gladdy Stokley. My childhood loneliness is revealed in one of the characters, but my career as a journalist and environmentalist comes across in both main characters. The lack of self-esteem in the best friend’s choice in men, along with her professional success as a psychologist, comes from meeting so many women over the years suffering from the same dichotomous lifestyle.

Autobiography? No. Autobiographical? Can’t quite help it.

It’s what I know, and that’s what I write. Virginia, you’re right. It’s written large in my work every single time

 

“Genius gives birth, talent delivers. What Rembrandt or Van Gogh saw in the night can never be seen again. Born writers of the future are amazed already at what they’re seeing now, what we’ll all see in time for the first time, and then see imitated many times by made writers.” Jack Kerouac

 

Two things happened this morning that gave me pause.

Yesterday I finished a book on my Kindle. I’m not going to mention the name of the book, but I kept thinking I should write a review on amazon. So I went to the page and saw the book already had seventy-six reviews – all of them four- and five-star. I planned to give it a three-star review but really wanted to make it a two-star. I thought the writing was immature and the plot over the top and contrived for its genre, which I suppose is “chick lit.”

I couldn’t write the review. I didn’t like it because it’s not my style or genre of choice. I liked the concept of it and loved the title and kept hoping it would redeem itself in some way by the end. But it didn’t. I left the review page without writing anything. It just didn’t seem fair to pour my opinion on another writer.

Then I went to my Goodreads page for my book Live from the Road. I’m not really sure how Goodreads works, but I’m learning. I discovered there were two reviews there. One was already posted on amazon over the weekend. It was a four-star review by someone from Texas. I liked the review because it was specific to the book, and I knew the reader “got it.” But it received a four-star for a very specific reason, too, and the reviewer specified the reason. I appreciate that. But the other review on Goodreads was a two-star review with little information on why the reader didn’t like it. Two stars hurts no matter how hard I try to blow it off. It’s the first negative thing I’ve heard about the book, and I’d really like to know more than it didn’t do anything for this reader. Is it because it’s just not her style or genre? Or is it really that bad?

I’m not whining. I just don’t know what to think. Some reviewers say they won’t post a review unless they can give it a four- or five-star recommendation. But then shouldn’t poorly written books be given honest reviews, too?

I’d like to start a discussion here about reviews and what they mean. In this world of the Internet, folks can post anonymously for a whole cornucopia of reasons. Those of us putting our work out there depend on the reviews, the “likes,” the comments for our success or failure.  The public depends on the reviews to make purchasing decisions. It hurts us all if the reviews less than honest – good and bad. I ask that if anyone reviews my books that you give me an honest review with specifics whether it’s a five-star or two-star review.

What do you think? How important are the reviews to you as a writer and/or consumer?

See – I’m really not whining.

Today my book Live from the Road can be downloaded for free from amazon on Kindle. I thought I’d be casual about it today. On my last free day June 15, approximately 7,000 folks downloaded the book. And since then I’ve been waiting for  a multitude of things to happen either separately or simultaneously. In no particular order except how they’re popping out of my brain onto this computer screen, here they are:

A Hollywood producer is one of the downloads and exclaims, to his/her significant other while reading in bed one night, “This book must be made into a movie.” (Picture Ron Howard here or until two days ago Nora Ephron)
An editor at a big publishing house is one of the downloaders because she is a big fan of women’s fiction and Jack Kerouac (these women do exist – I’m living proof) and she goes to my author page on amazon and follows the link to my blog and well, the rest you can probably well imagine.
After the free day, the reviews – all 5-star – begin inundating my amazon page until there are hundreds, and amazon contacts me to say my reviews have been cut off but it doesn’t matter because by then I’ll have made the Huffington Post and then #1 and #2 happen simultaneously.
The book becomes No. 1 in the Kindle Contemporary Fiction list, knocking Shades of Gray right off the pedestal, and I’m being called to Good Morning America.
I don’t even think about Oprah, but she’ll be there when the day arrives.

But alas, three of my free days  passed and nothing has transpired. Today is my fourth (I get a total of five) day, and I didn’t expect much, but I just checked my numbers and more than 1,000 more folks have downloaded Live from the Road. I wonder who they are and imagine them reading the book and hopefully smiling. Today I know better than to celebrate. I’ll wait to do that.

But still I wonder, who’s reading my book?