My First Review

So over the weekend the awesome Lady Cade Crowley read and reviewed my first book, Earth. I have to start by saying how excited I was that she had started to read it so quickly after I asked her too. Bloggers are super busy, in demand individuals so I sent my requests assuming it would be at least a month or more before I’d see my first review. But Cade got to it by Friday and finished it last night. She was cool enough to tweet me her progress because she was enjoying it. I’m sure the entire block heard me squeal in delight when I saw that first tweet. I scared my dog. But no matter.

I’ve told you that friends and family are going to tell you your work is awesome and “good” and that they “liked it, a lot!” Which is nice, really, but you wouldn’t expect any less. But Cade doesn’t know me, has no obligation or ties to me. Cade is a total stranger whose blog I happen to find and loved her “zombie rating” system and asked her if she’d like to read my book and review it. I knew there was a very good chance she wasn’t going to like the book, or would maybe find it mediocre at best but no, she liked it, she really liked it! And she wants to read the sequel! I screamed again when she finished the book.

That was my biggest fear; that people wouldn’t like the end. I find the end to be the hardest part of writing a book. You have to reach the climax with a believable outcome and I am terrified it will come across as “easy” for my characters. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s sitting through a 2 hour movie and the first 1 hour and forty minutes is awesome then the big finish comes and you’re left sitting there, staring at the screen dumbstruck and slack jawed because the ending sucked.

Now she did give some light critical comments, which I appreciate because I know that she was objective and honest. But this being my first complete novel and doing this on my own, I couldn’t have asked for a better review. Sadly I didn’t realize I hadn’t given a detailed description of what Shay and Jodi look like. I guess I was so caught up in not doing a cliché staring at herself in the mirror scene that I must’ve missed it. And seriously, I thought I described Jodi. But I guess you just learn that Shay has long auburn hair and Jodi is blond with a bob cut. Damnit. I’ll have to give book 2, Air, a skim and make sure there’s a decent description in there somewhere. Maybe, because they characters are so clear in my mind, I thought I had done it for the audience. But I will say, since my books are told first person from Shay’s POV it is difficult to have her describe herself. And that isn’t something that Shayna would care about. This is a new challenge I’ll have to tackle before I release Air.

Okay now I have to get to work on the line edits my crit partner sent me for Air and finish my last read through of Water before it’s ready for said crit partner.