My Kirkus Review came back today
I decided to wait until a Kirkus Review was returned before I self-published The Search for Circe. That review is now in my hands, and it's available in full now on the Kirkus website. Here's my thumbnail analysis of the review.
It is uneven if an author is looking to earn Kirkus stars and imagine the reviewer doing handsprings across the living room floor. The final analysis misses the mark, but it misses the mark because there are assumptions that are simply not true, and those assumptions are a foundation for much of the reviewer's final analysis.
I'll accent two areas of disagreement.
The reviewer includes this near the end of the analysis: "One can imagine the Chuck Palahniuk-style mind-bender that the author was envisioning ..." That assumption is objectionable. I wasn't trying to copy Chuck Palahniuk's style or goals. In fact, I make it a point to avoid cliche characters and story lines. Many indie authors do their damnedest to color within the lines. They write vampire novels when vampire novels are in vogue, and zombie apocalypse tales when those are all the rage, or Marvel comic ripoffs when movie marquees are jammed with those stories.
If I follow one established author's advice, it is Stephen King's. One of his major points in that an author should write what he or she wants to write, not what others might want that author to write. That is particularly true in this novel. I won't get into details about that advice as it plays out in The Search for Circe until the novel is out for public consumption and readers have a chance to digest the content.
Here's another part that was objectionable. The reviewer boils down my work to being "about a man and his novel." That is like saying that the Coen Brothers' movie No Country for Old Men is about a Texas sheriff and a bad guy. It takes all the complexities in my story line and tosses them away. That line is at the very end of the analysis, and it reads as if the reviewer realized that the desired word count was at hand and something quick and pithy was needed. It is so superficial as to be incorrect.
I also will make use of the review, warts and all, in my marketing. If an author were to cower in a corner because of bad or lukewarm feedback, many good novels would be tossed into the trash and never published. Norman Lear never would have found a niche for his All in the Family TV series, but I'll get into that in a later blog post as well.
I'll let you, my friends and fellow authors, make the decision after you read the novel.
It is uneven if an author is looking to earn Kirkus stars and imagine the reviewer doing handsprings across the living room floor. The final analysis misses the mark, but it misses the mark because there are assumptions that are simply not true, and those assumptions are a foundation for much of the reviewer's final analysis.
I'll accent two areas of disagreement.
The reviewer includes this near the end of the analysis: "One can imagine the Chuck Palahniuk-style mind-bender that the author was envisioning ..." That assumption is objectionable. I wasn't trying to copy Chuck Palahniuk's style or goals. In fact, I make it a point to avoid cliche characters and story lines. Many indie authors do their damnedest to color within the lines. They write vampire novels when vampire novels are in vogue, and zombie apocalypse tales when those are all the rage, or Marvel comic ripoffs when movie marquees are jammed with those stories.
If I follow one established author's advice, it is Stephen King's. One of his major points in that an author should write what he or she wants to write, not what others might want that author to write. That is particularly true in this novel. I won't get into details about that advice as it plays out in The Search for Circe until the novel is out for public consumption and readers have a chance to digest the content.
Here's another part that was objectionable. The reviewer boils down my work to being "about a man and his novel." That is like saying that the Coen Brothers' movie No Country for Old Men is about a Texas sheriff and a bad guy. It takes all the complexities in my story line and tosses them away. That line is at the very end of the analysis, and it reads as if the reviewer realized that the desired word count was at hand and something quick and pithy was needed. It is so superficial as to be incorrect.
I also will make use of the review, warts and all, in my marketing. If an author were to cower in a corner because of bad or lukewarm feedback, many good novels would be tossed into the trash and never published. Norman Lear never would have found a niche for his All in the Family TV series, but I'll get into that in a later blog post as well.
I'll let you, my friends and fellow authors, make the decision after you read the novel.
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