#how to get a book reviewed

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/perchance-to-dream-17/

Perchance To Dream #17

When an email with an attachment popped up on my computer screen,  I snapped to attention. The message was from a New York book agent.  I’d queried the woman about my memoir Getting Lost to Find Home two years ago. Having heard nothing, I’d written her off.  Yet, the  email’s subject line read, “contract attached.”  Like a dog gazing up at a picnic table, I salivated. Was this agent making me an off I couldn’t refuse? My index finger hovered above the attachment while my mind raced. Should I scrap my plans to self-publish? Was that wise? And was my attorney available to read the contract? After a moment’s pause, I dialed a set of numbers, but they weren’t my lawyer’s.  The computer guy answered. I asked him if the attachment was a scam.   He didn’t keep me in suspense.  “Open that puppy, and I’ll spend hours cleaning up the mess. The address has been hacked.”  Sadder and wiser, I deleted the email before my computer guy could hang up. In the “good old days,” when the mail arrived by stagecoach, the cost of sending a letter was exorbitant and the inability to hack into someone’s communication was nonexistent.  The system may have been inconvenient but the mail was seldom tampered with unless the carriage was hauling gold. Further back in history, cuneiform tablets offered an additional benefit. Given the time it took to stamp a nasty message into the wet clay, a person could repent and make a pot instead.   But back to my point. Convinced no agent wanted my book, my thoughts returned to the question of how to promote it. With or without an agent, all writers face the same challenge. Genius doesn’t get noticed unless there’s chatter. And, there’s no chatter unless the author dances naked in Times Square.  And, maybe not even then. The usual route to fame is to plead for book reviews, readings, television appearances, and guest shots on podcasts or YouTube.  An alternative might be to hire trained squirrels to dance the can-can around the book’s cover on TikTok. Famous or known only to their mothers, writers climb the same rocky slope.  Though my memoir isn’t set to publish until November, my begging has begun. Like confetti, I’m offering advance reader copies (ARCs) to anyone in the writing world. A word to neophytes.  Never send an arc without receiving permission. Otherwise, your book will end up unread in a landfill.  On the other hand, if you get the nod and the reviewer likes your work, don’t be shy.  Flaunt it! That’s what I’m doing here. New York Times best-selling crime writer Rebecca Morris agreed to read my book and, though she is busy writing her own, she’s penned a full review.  That makes her more than a generous person.  It makes her a saint. Below are her remarks which I share with a grateful heart. Review for Getting Lost to Find Home By Rebecca Morris After Elizabeth Gilbert published Eat, Pray, Love (2007), and Cheryl Strayed wrote Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012) hundreds, maybe thousands of women wrote memoirs about finding themselves. They went to Antarctica, the Alaskan wild, and around the world to do it, the more remote the better. A book that should be shelved with the best of them is Getting Lost to Find Home, by Caroline Miller. It is more poignant because it takes place in the 1960s English Midlands, with its post-war hardships, and Africa, where British rule is waning.  Miller, just out of college, is pursuing a British fiancé who finds numerous ways to stall marriage. While she waits, she teaches students in Englands (unable to understand their dialects) and in segregated Rhodesia, where her students catch insects in the air and eat them. At each teaching post, there is either no heat or too much heat.  Her experiences with her students, fellow teachers, and members of the many tribes she meets are told with a companionable self-deprecation.  Miller grew up to be the first Hispanic woman elected to office in Portland, Oregon, a strong advocate for citizen involvement in government and health care, and a prolific author and playwright.  The better-known memoirs stop in middle age. Elizabeth Gilbert and Cheryl Strayed became best-selling authors and their books were filmed. The poignancy of Getting Lost to Find Home is the coming-of-age story is told in the present tense by the author, now an elderly woman. Never married and with no children, she is the odd resident in her retirement center. She feels more like a stranger in a strange land than she ever did traveling. But, oh, the stories she can tell!

[cfffrk]

+ little bonus

I think I accidentally created their son instead of Jeeves when I was drawing the first frame😭

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Now that I know more about writing, I'm upset at all the writing advice that urged new writers to find the one best way to write stories, when they should be telling us to play with writing techniques like toys.

Don't tell us to avoid certain points of view! Don't box us into the one currently popular prose style! Let us play and see what effects different techniques achieve, so we can learn the best ways to make use of them! Give us a whole ton of possibility instead of one cookie-cutter template!

[iightwoodbane]

i don't trust people who don't like adam parrish as a character. i'm usually very open to people's opinions but if you think adam is anything but an amazingly written character then ur wrong and u just don't get his vibes like i do.

[tea-tuesday]

london stationery haul for my stationery freaks !!! i went a little crazy with stationery on this trip but to my defense, it was all funded by my state tax return hehe... these are the various things i got, which i linked:

yellow hard shell charger case from London Graphic Centre

special edition totebag from London Review of Books

gallimard journal from Choosing Keeping

brass hand clip from Choosing Keeping (honestly my fave purchase on this trip !!)

vintage bus blind journal from Choosing Keeping

kaweco perkeo fountain pen and inks from Present & Correct

grid flatlay book from Present & Correct

the epicurean notebook from Magma London

i also visited Smythson of Bond Street and Mount Street Printers but they were out of my budget. beautiful places to get luxury stationery goods!

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Those Beyond The Wall

sequel/companion to The Space Between Worlds, set a decade later

character-focused sci-fi set in an area divided in two, the rich protected city on one side and everyone else in the post-apocalyptic desert

follows a woman who works under the Emperor in Ashtown, keeping the peace

when mangled bodies start showing up with seemingly no murderer, she’s tasked with finding the cause, and finds out that it’s the result of corruption spanning both cities and multiple worlds

explores oppression and messy revolution, police violence and apartheid

bi & polyamorous MC

[bonefall]

I do feel bad for Owen. Clearly this is NOT his forte. #freeowen

I'm guessing Owen has some kind of contract to do all the covers for the "Erin Hunter" books, since he also seems to do the art for Bravelands and Survivors. Which baffles me.

When you look at his portfolio, it seems clear that animals are NOT his strong suit. He mostly designs them as monsters or setpieces, not as characters in their own right. His humans, objects, and backgrounds are excellent, while his animals are quite generic-- So why did they choose this artist to design for their xenofiction series?

The art he does for Percy Jackson and Artemis Fowl is not as jilted and uninspired as his work for any of the Erin Hunter series. He does have a thing for harsh lighting (too harsh for my taste) but the composition is fine and the characters are recognizable. Certainly not "someone tried to unlock your phone" tier. It's strange.

It strikes me like he's not "comfortable" enough with animals to experiment with them, heavily referencing zoomed-in photos and leaving it there. Note how his cats are almost never doing anything, just sitting or standing around looking confused.

Has he ever even drawn a battle cat... battling?

I don't really feel "bad" for him, OR "mad" at him, because we have no idea what's happening behind the scenes, but I WILL say that I feel he is an absolutely awful match for WC. I don't understand what about his portfolio made him look like a good replacement for Wayne McLoughlin, besides some executive recognizing his style from somewhere else.

I hope he is compensated well for his work, but I don't buy hardcovers because of his art and am holding out hope that someone else takes over someday.

[fictionadventurer]

The worst part about reading in a genre where you have low expectations (in this case, Christian historical fiction) is that when a book impresses you, you have no idea if it's actually good or if you're just overly impressed because it was a fraction of a degree better than the usual garbage.

[azure-clockwork]

How Does it Feel to Read Classic Sci-Fi?

Orson Scott Card: Two of the most interesting books you’ll ever read if you’re willing to look past a handful of things. And then you find the planet of Chinese people who worship having debilitating OCD. And the Mormonism. And the fact that the author is wildly homophobic and ought to read his own books.

Robert Heinlein (or at least the Wikipedia Summaries): I guess that’s a neat concept—oh, it’s a sex thing. Um. Gotcha.

Ray Bradbury: Man, I gotta read this thing for class huh. Well here’s hoping it’s good! *three hours later* oh. that’s why he’s famous. this will stick with me forever and I will never look at the phrase ‘soft rain’ the same again. christ. And then repeat 3x.

Isaac Asimov: Wow, this is such an interesting concept! I wonder how the exploration of it will influence the plot! Wait, hey, are you going to add any characters? Any of em? No like, with character traits other than ‘robot psychologist’ and ‘autistic’ and ‘woman’? None of em? No, ‘detective’ isn’t a character trait. Those are all just facts. Aaaand now I’m bored.

Ursula K. Le Guin: Hah, get a load of this guy! He’s never heard of nonbinary people before. Lol, what a riot; how dumb do you have to be to comprehend that these people aren’t men *or* women actually? Oh, wait, what’s happening. Oh shit, it was about society and love and learning to understand each other? And now I’m crying? And perhaps a better human being for it??

Andy Weir: Alright, this guy’s a really good writer. Funny, creative, knows so much engineering stuff…ooh, a new book! …I guess he can’t write women. Well, he wouldn’t be the first sci-fi writer…ooh another new book! And it’s more engineering problem solving and—wow. It’s not just women he can’t write. Please stop letting your characters talk to each other.

Lois Lowry: Oh, I remember this being fun when I was a kid! Wouldn’t it be fucked up to not see color? …upon reread, it would be fucked up to have your humanity stripped away, replaced with a tepid, beige ‘happiness’ for all time. Yeah.

Tamsyn Muir (let me have this ok): Haha, “lesbian necromancers in space” sounds fun. Lemme read this. Oh wow, yeah, this is right up my alley. OH GOD WHAT. NO. FUCK. OH SHIT WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING AND WHY IS IT REFERENCING THE BOOK OF RUTH AND HOMESTUCK BACK TO BACK!!! AHHHHHHHHH!! Now give me more please.

[notetaeker]

May 29, 2023 - Monday - Memorial Day

3 day weekend well spent, Alhamdulillah! The first two days, I did hardcore grading + event logistics. Third day (today) I ran out of steam lol and spent the whole day tending to plants (indoors and outdoors) and trying to figure out how to paint them. It was such a healing time tbh. It reminded me about The Secret Garden and the healing magic of gardening 🥺✨

[jakeperalta]

I'm sorry to this author who is probably just trying very hard to promote something they worked hard on but my god nothing has ever made me want to read a book less than this advert

[dateamonster]

the time i went to a local horror con and aron beauregard author of booktok infamous splatterpunk/extreme horror novel "playground" was there and i was like if i make eye contact with this man hes going to know i pirated his book and rated it 1.5 stars and started walking faster

[mixedup-sideblog]

On ‘Moral Panic’ - reviews of Captive Prince

Just re-reading the trilogy and noticed the terrible reviews of people saying it glorifies abuse, trauma, torture etc - I don’t know if it’s about individual perception but I certainly wasn’t reading the first book thinking I was supposed to be enjoying/revelling in any of the trauma - the whole book sets up how grotesque and awful the society is.

I genuinely think if you find yourself thinking the book glorifies any form of the depicted abuse then I think you probably need to have a look at yourself and how you are reacting to it….

Just my two cents.

Side note - I would be extremely interested to know if any of these reviewers liked/happily consumed Game of Thrones, it would be an interesting double standard.

[jackest-jack]

Yknow what burns my ass a little. Every time I venture onto youtube to listen to people talk about the murderbot diaries, every time some guy says "Well murderbot was meant for you to project onto it and thats why I'm calling it he all the time" and every time I hear that I cant help but think like. Do you have no dick and guns in your arms? Not to say that murderbot isnt a relatable guy, but I cannot imagine thinking murderbot is *so relateable* and so *devoid of preference (it's not)* that you just HAVE to call it she her or he him. It prefers being a robot. It doesnt want to be human. Its gender is security unit. These are all key parts of the character HOW did you miss that

[aplpaca]

honestly kinda interesting how many books people tagged in that "books with no editor" post are tor.com titles. Cause like at least from my experience, a decent amount of tor.com (a subset of the general Tor) books are more "experimental"/"nontraditional" in their writing styles or plot structure or just focus in general (compared to other tradpubbed sff at least) in ways that seem to be pretty hit or miss for people (based on average ratings on goodreads and just how I've seen people talk about them on instagram and stuff) but I've found i tend to really like them

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

small tip: if you're looking through book reviews to see if you wanna start a book don't just go through the five and four star reviews. go to the three and two and one star reviews too and see why they didn't like it. see if things that they've said they don't like about the book (like pacing/bland characters/awkward prose) coincide with things you don't like in a book. check if their hating resonates with your hating <3