Who is The Music Box Girl?

BOOK REVIEWERS!  I will be ordering proof copies of The Music Box Girl within the next few days.  If you want me to reserve you a print copy, email me at kari (dot) stewart21 (at) gmail (dot) com.  If you’d rather have an ebook copy, I can make that happen too, just let me know what format you want it in.  (sorry, folk, I can't just hand out books to everyone who asks.  You need to have an actual book review site before I can give up my proof copies)

Thus far, you can pre-order the ebook here:
Kindle
Nook
iBooks
Kobo

The print copy will be released approximately a week prior to the ebook release (which is April 26th), so that everyone can be reading it on release day!

Any questions?

My Thoughts on Reviews

Reviews are the one thing that every author both dreads and craves. We want to know that people are enjoying our work, but we also fear that no one's going to like it, that we didn't do our job well.

A lot of authors I know don't read their reviews. For them, it's less stressful, and as many people often say, the reviews aren't really for the author anyway, they're for the other readers. If an author wants constructive criticism, they need to rely on their beta readers, not on reviewers.

However, I read every review I find, and this post is just kind of my way of explaining why.

First off, understand that I'm entirely too neurotic to NOT read a review. If I know it's out there, I have to know what was said. It would drive me insane not to. I read the good ones, I read the bad ones, I read the ones that are just downright puzzling. Because I want to know what people did and didn't like. I want to know if people are following on the journey I tried to take them on. If they're finding places that don't work for them, that means I didn't accomplish all that I wanted to.

Second, I read reviews because every person that writes one has taken the time to stop and read my books. Even as speedy as I read, that's a minimum of three hours of their day, and for most people it's a lot more time than that.

Then, on top of that time spent, they took the time to stop and think about what I wrote. And this goes beyond just "did I like it, or didn't I?" They have to think about why they liked it, or didn't. What elements appealed to them? What places dragged on? Which characters had them cheering, which ones fell flat?

If you've never tried to write a book review, the reading that you do to form one is totally different than reading just for pleasure. It's work! It's hard to pin down the minute details of a story, hard to see the trees for the forest. You have to think about a book like a puzzle, and decide what pieces were missing, which ones locked together tightly, and which ones were just a little warped.

I figure, if someone has gone to all that work, then the least I can do is read what they've written. I mean, they took the time to read 80,000 words of mine, to analyze it, to put into words their thoughts on it. I owe them the time it takes to read 500 words of theirs. Doesn't matter if it's a glowing review, or the worst one I've ever gotten. A reviewer's time and effort should be respected.

I don't comment on reviews, typically. Like I said, they're not written for me. They're written so that other readers have a chance to say "Hey, I might like that" or "nah, I'll pass." In this tight economy, I can appreciate having a system in place to help people decide where to pass on their money.

And really, arguing with someone over their opinion is a bit ridiculous. That's like arguing with someone who says they like salty better than sweet. There's no logical basis for an argument like that.

So I don't comment, but I do read, because I think I owe a reviewer that much respect. There we are. My feelings on reviews in a nutshell.

Jesse Dawson Goes to Jail

A high school friend of mine wrote this blog post, and I thought I'd share it with you all. It made me smile.

Jesse James Dawson vs. The Andrew County Experience

Reviews & Contests!

Been an interesting week!

My first reviews are starting to trickle in (well, ok, two) but one of them is a starred review in Publisher's Weekly! (starred reviews are big deals) Here's the link, scroll to the very bottom of the page.

They like me, they really like me!

And as for contests, skip on over to the Dear Author blog for the ACE/ROC Summer Giveaway! In addition to 3 (count it, THREE!) ARCs of A DEVIL IN THE DETAILS, they're also giving away a TON of other great upcoming books. There's gotta be something there for everyone to love.

In writing news, almost done getting beta notes back, gonna start writing all that up this weekend I think. Dr. Gita is helping me (read: taking charge of, and bless her) set up a launch party and there may or may not be a book signing to go with it! I'll keep you all posted.

Word from a Beta

I'm in the habit of jokingly giving assignments to my beta readers. See Gita's book report for an example. Well, Theo has furnished me with an excellent essay on my hero, Jesse Dawson, and with his permission, I am posting it here. Everyone have a good weekend!

“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dawson: The Five Minute Man

For Dawson, he lives in those five minutes all the time. He is that guy that each of us finds ourselves being at some given point in our life when we are called upon to don the mantle of a hero even for the briefest of moments. Dawson is both an example of an extraordinary person and an ordinary person, not because he's the typical poet-warrior that classical literature explores, but because he dwells within that five minutes of super-normality that everyone experiences at some point. He just does it better than most.

The archetype is familiar to us, not just because of its relationship to our own moments of heroism but also because its closeness to the modern interpretation of the hero. We know this five-minute man. We've seen him thrive in characters like Han Solo, the space-opera anti-hero who through a brief encounter with someone of more innate goodness than themselves forces them into the five minutes which they will spend the rest of their lives in. We know him in the western hero Shane, who despite being a gunslinger, finds himself attracted to the notions of a normal happy life even if such a thing is denied to him by virtue of...that's right....his five minutes that he lives in. Dawson is aware he lives in those five minutes. We know he does when he asks himself “Am I the only person who gets paranoid when life is going too good?”

So where is the religion? The higher calling? The fate and destiny and supernatural aspects of being heroic that we often crave in our heroes? It's there like it is in each of us but it's grounded in the practical good. Does a man become a samurai because he can memorize the code of Bushido or does he become a samurai because he addresses a commonality of goodness that can exist in your everyday person? Dawson seems to do a pretty good job answering that question. The markers of higher ideals are all around him, the trappings of Bushido and the placement of a Buddha in his garden. However, he is no Buddhist and he's not exactly a samurai either and yet we find him bowing because of “Courtesy, you know.” Dawson bypasses the pomp and circumstances of honorific titles or codes but bypassing such, he comes to the heart of it. In this we celebrate with him the irony of a noble existence; sometimes if we are simply true to ourselves and believe in doing the right thing our of common decency, we become much more sublime in our inherent goodness and the codes to which we adhere ourselves exist independently in themselves, free of any forced regulation or sublimation. By no means do they lose their meaning for us or for Dawson but he doesn't need to force them upon himself. He embodies them without knowing it.

But that's getting complicated. And Dawson is uniquely noble in his simplicity. It's also what makes him loveable. And we love to love the sardonic everyday hero. We love to love ourselves after all while we pray for that five minutes when we get to put our base character to the test.

In Live Free of Die Hard, the latest installment of the adventures of another five-minute man John McClane, he asks the question any sane person would “Why does this always happen to me?”. The answer is as practical as the question “Because you're that guy”. Even the choice of words underscores the inherent normality of the everyman hero we find in Dawson. Dawson is also that guy.

We wonder when Dawson had those five minutes and we wonder why he stayed. But we only wonder for a moment because we're drawn into the time and space he lives in because it is so very familiar to us, not just because it is a popularized archetype but because we wonder if our own five minutes are coming and if and when they do, if we would find a hauberk dreadfully uncomfortable or not.

Book Report

So... I let my bestest bud and medical consultant, Gita, read the first 15 chapters of project number 2. And, jokingly, I told her that she was required to write a 500 word book report on it.

And she did.

Granted, she wrote it on the level of a second grader, but I found it hilarious, and decided that I would post my first ever book report/review here, for all to see. (with her permission, of course)

"Why I like Jesse Dawson"

Jesse Dawson is a really cool guy! I like him because he fights offmonsters, and demons, and other really bad things. He is always nice to other people and not the bad things. He does get beaten up a lot which is not good. He has a very nice daughter. She reminds me of my little sister. She can't eat without getting food all over either. My sister is a very silly person, and she is always stealing my clothes with I do not like. I want to cut her down with a sword, just like Jesse does with the crab demon.

Jesse's wife also seems nice. She is a witch, but not like the witch in the Wizard of Oz, she is a good witch. She performs all kinds of really cool spells on people. I do not like the talking squirrel. Grandpa says that squirrels aren't good for anything and just steel acorns off our tree. Squirrels are silly creatures.

I don't like the baseball player. He seems mean. Anyone who sells their soul to a demon is up to no good. And I am pretty sure that Jesus would not approve. He needs to go to church or have Sr. Delarosa yell at him for being bad.

I want to work in a store just like Jesse Dawson. I like music, and I really want to dye my hair pink, but my mom won't let me. She can be really mean sometimes too, and doesn't understand that I want my dress to match my hair. I also want to be able to carry a sword around so that Shaun Bell and other bullies will not pick on me. If they do pick on me then I can just pull out my magic sword and make them cry.

My favorite charecter is the doctor. She is really cool! She fixes Jesse back up after he gets beaten up by crab demons. someday I want to be a doctor too. It seems like it would be the best job in the whole world.

I am looking forward to the end of the book. I hope no one dies. Except for maybe the bad baseball player. Of course if he dies then he will go to hell because he sold his soul to the demon. And wishing that someone goes to hell is not a very Christian thing to do, so I suppose he will have to live. But he should be made to feel very sorry for what he has done. I also hope that Jesse remembers to buy his mother a birthday present. He will be in big trouble with his mother if he forgets. And birthday parties are not fun without presents, and lots of cake and ice cream. And there should be balloons at a birthday party too. And all of Jesse's friends, Marty, Will, and Lori, plus his wife and daughter should be there. Then it would be a reallly big party, and everyone will live happily ever after.
The End.

If anyone bothered counting, it came in at 507 words.

And there you have it, the bare bones of some of project #2's plot, in a rather simplistic nutshell. Hope everyone is having a good holiday weekend!