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Tuesday, January 22, 2013

A good book review and a strange one

Last week my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness received to more reviews. A new four-star review on the novel's Goodreads page says that while the reader isn't into paranormal, "The author does an excellent job in incorporating accurate Civil War and Missouri history and handles the military action sequences with ease. The tale reads smoothly and is a very easy read. The motivations of the main protagonists on both sides of the conflict are realistically developed."

He goes on to say: "A Fine Likeness is one of those novels that falls between genres: American historical fiction with a regional focus, paranormal, a bit of the "Western." That may limit the readership, but the writing shouldn't be penalized for that."

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I couldn't find a regular publisher. The rejection letters kept saying how they didn't know how to market it. So I'm marketing it myself!

The second review is from the Indie Book Review. It was positive ("intriguing" "timely") yet odd in places. While I'm not the kind of person who bites the hand that feeds him, I'm wondering why Captain Addison is referred to as "General Captain Addison" and how exactly my background as an archaeologist informs the novel.

But what the hey, don't look a good review in the details!

3 comments:

  1. There's nothing like digging up fossils to inform your knowledge of the Civil war era!

    So, I was wondering about this last night: Do you know of any good alternate-history stories where the Confederacy successfully ceded from the US? I find thinking about "what would have happened?" very interesting, so I'd like to read a story about it.

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    1. Harry Turtledove wrote a series along these lines. I haven't read them, but judging from the trench warfare shot on the cover of one of them, it appears the Civil War was still going strong in 1914!

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  2. Congrats on the reviews! I can understand how hard it is trying to get a unique project traditionally published and especially trying to market something all by yourself.

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