one more draft…

okay, i’ve been mostly complaining lately, so here’s something different.

near the end of april, i sent a copy of Witness to an online fantasy/sf book review blog who said they’d be interested in giving it a go, but apparently the package never arrived. i got distracted in the intervening time, however, and never followed up*, and i would have missed the chance completely if the blogger hadn’t emailed me yesterday to ask about the book, noting that the book had never arrived.

how cool is that? the blogger contacted me to ask about the book. even cooler, the blogger asked if i wanted to send it along again, as there was still interest reading it; to which i responded something vaguely more intelligent than “well, duh!” before racing out to the post office.

not to put too much into it, but this is just one of those things that feels great to be impacted by, and i am thankful. restores the faith in the human race and all that. (i’m not mentioning the blog/blogger by name as i’m not sure whether there might be some interpretation of obligation for review or whatever and though i tend to overthink such things, i’d rather err on the side of caution. anyway, the blog in question is one of the book review blogs on my sidebar, so share the love and give them all a visit.)

* the vast majority of my mailings (review copies/manuscripts/query letters) are within the US and i use the Priority Mail envelope, plus the delivery confirmation, so i don’t have to pester folks. however, for international mailings, like this blog, the USPS doesn’t do delivery confirmation, so i have to remember to touch base with these folks after a couple weeks.

a good review has appeared on amazon.com, and while there are some downsides, the reviewer goes so far as to compare elements of my style to Glen Cook, which is is clearly an enormous ego boost, thank you very much!

so, here i am again, at the top of the rollercoaster. a common misconception of my zodiac sign, libra, is the belief that we are balanced and stable individuals.

pfiffle.

being a libra, at least for me, is being always in search of equilibirium. as a result, i’m never quite there. case in point: my previous post. saddling myself with the familiar weight of self-pity, i bemoaned the fact that the store i was hoping to have a booksigning at was going out of business. a few days later i discover this review (which, in fact, was posted the day before the book store news) and voila, validation once more.

what i have learned, however, is that the rollercoaster costs extra. what that means is…well, honestly, i don’t know what that means; it just sounded clever.

what i do know, though, is the experience with the bookstore would have been something to knock me out of the game, some years ago. i would’ve taken it as a sign or some other foolishness, and buried my head back in work and self-pity. now, though, what i most took away from that discovery (once i got past the moment, of course; i’m human) was the fact that i’d let the unimportant things clutter my view and fill my days.

i am never so bloody busy that i can’t spend five minutes writing, nor am i so busy that i can’t make a call to a store and set up a signing, particularly one with a manager who was so clearly willing to help. i made this happen, as much by what i didn’t do as what i did.

so there’s the lesson: stop wasting time.

when i’m on my game, i feel like i could write without stopping until i breathe my last breath and not get all the stories out of my head. when i’m not on my game, i have sheaf after sheaf, drawer after drawer, and file after file of story ideas scrawled down to keep me busy. (of course, i’m the first to admit not all those ideas are worth sharing, but you get the point) either way, i’m an idiot for stopping.

so, i started again, and you’ll see more of it here very soon.

this weekend i received a review over at Dark Wolf Fantasy Reviews. a number of items didn’t work for Dark Wolf, but again, this is all about seeing the positive and negative, and I’m thankful for the honest commentary and the clarity around what didn’t work and why.

yes, it’s been quiet here. don’t get me started. anyway, hit a bright spot in my email last night, when i received the Kirkus Discoveries Newsletter for May, and there, at the top of the list, was Witness!

the review is the same as I listed elsewhere, but now it’s out on their site, all official-like!

Check it out!

quick update:

okay, things have been a little quiet on the foot patrol, recently (though things are starting to happen in review-land!), but i thought i’d let folks know where the books can be found on store shelves, so far.

having hit pretty much the saturation point in the greater portland (maine, that is) area, the following bookstores have agreed to carry at least one copy of Witness:

confirmed (as in, I saw the copies myself!)

• Borders by the Maine Mall (South Portland)
• Nonesuch Books in the Mill Creek Plaza (South Portland)

unconfirmed (haven’t been in to the stores this week to see)

• Waldenbooks in the Maine Mall (South Portland)
• Waldenbooks in the Auburn Mall (Auburn)
• Longfellow Books in Monument Square (Portland)
• Books, Etc. on Exchange Street (Portland)
• Bookland Cafe (Brunswick)

i almost took a picture of myself next to the shelf with my books on it in Borders, but it was saturday afternoon and there were a lot of people around and i got all bashful. maybe this weekend we’ll hit one of the stores first thing.

looks like my email is not working 100%, as i just found this review from the Kirkus Discoveries team buried in my alternate email box, sandwiched between other emails which did make it to my main box. no idea what’s going on there. all the more frustrating since i’ve been waiting and waiting for this and it’s been there since March 31.

but who cares about my email problems? i received this great review from Kirkus Discoveries!

Blais sets his fish-out-of-water story against a rich imaginary landscape teeming with arresting creations, including “it,” a nameless god fallen on such hard times that it must hitch rides on passing spiders to get about. The author, who has a master’s degree in medieval studies, expertly blends his authority of the age with a cunning knack for invention.

Kirkus Discoveries (the review is not posted on their site yet, but will be soon)

now, to put this in perspective, Kirkus Discoveries is an off-shoot of Kirkus Reviews, and is a paid service. this means i paid someone to write the review, and may well cause skepticism, but Kirkus has a reputation for honest, impartial reviews, and KD is held to the same standard: “A review is commissioned from the Discoveries team, who assigns the book to one person within the Kirkus-brand pool of professional reviewers, who in turn provides an honest, caveat-emptor evaluation, under the same impartial rubric as Kirkus Reviews.”

further, this is not the same kind of depth as was given by Alice at Sandstorm, and this is also worth noting. as i mentioned in the my post about Alice’s review, the balance of positives with negatives inherently increases the value of both.

finally, while i am unquestionably thrilled with the KD review, it is, like the Sandstorm review, just one person’s point of view, and i tend to err on the side of caution in all such things. nonetheless, i am thrilled by both reviews, for different reasons,

Full KD Review:

Two unsuspecting office workers sojourn from modern times, upending a magical medieval world in this entertaining fantasy adventure.

When a melee of warriors and werewolves, accompanied by a small tornado, breaks out on a Boston street, mild-mannered call center rep Rick Frith and ill-behaved sales manager Stephen Prescott fall through a manhole into a space-time portal. They emerge in the Valley, a melting pot of medieval societies. Greek-like Heccan goat herders, German-esque Narician horsemen, Slavic-type shapeshifters and French-modeled Kerosian witches make their home there, all overshadowed by the encroaching empire of the Romanic Skyrran Council.

Rick, a nerdy devotee of sword-and-sorcery fantasies, is thrilled until he realizes that his counterpart Stephen, a handsome, muscle-bound meathead who can actually heft a blade, cuts a far more heroic figure in the eyes of the Valley’s inhabitants. Pursued by the realm’s Byzantine political factions, who surmise that the duo somehow figure into a 1,284-year-old prophecy about The World Breaker, Rick and Stephen fall into the clutches of thuggish Narician chieftain Omma and devious Skyrran ambassador Ptereseus.

In this first installment of his All Prophets are Liars series, Blais reworks the usual fantasy tropes into a sharp, funny culture clash. At sea in a grungily realistic, if slightly enchanted environment, Rick finds himself low man on the totem pole in a place that rudely violates all his romantic preconceptions about the feudal world. Meanwhile, Omma and Ptereseus ponder the baffling alchemy behind Rick’s zippered synthetic warm-up clothes, his walkman and Mortal Kombat II CD, which seem to have captured the very souls of the damned.

Blais sets his fish-out-of-water story against a rich imaginary landscape teeming with arresting creations, including “it,” a nameless god fallen on such hard times that it must hitch rides on passing spiders to get about. The author, who has a master’s degree in medieval studies, expertly blends his authority of the age with a cunning knack for invention.

Charming, fanciful kickoff to a promising new series.

Kirkus Discoveries (the review is not posted on their site yet, but will be soon)

“Bill Blais is clearly genre-savvy and aware of the pitfalls here, and in Witness he attempts to skate around the trope’s failings and do it properly. The success of this is somewhat qualified, but it was by no means a bad read.”

read the whole review, courtesy of Sandstorm Reviews!

is Witness the NEXT BIG THING? will it turn the fantasy world on its ear? should Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch be looking for day jobs?

no. of course not.

nor was that the (honest) expectation.* all i truly held out any hope for was the simple fact of a review, positive, negative, or otherwise, and this has happened.

now, while i’m extremely appreciative of both the positives and negatives my family and friends have given me regarding this book, and the value of those reviews and comments cannot be overstated (particularly in getting me this far), the above review is also the very first view i have of someone who doesn’t know me from adam, and who has no vested interest in either the book or me.

this review is solely on the written words. period.

and that said, i think i came out fairly well, particularly for my first try. there are some very positive comments throughout, which are all the more impressive given the equal evaluation of the negatives.

rather than beat this thing to death, though (too late!), i’ll just end by saying thank you to Alice at Sandstorm for being honest and clear. it is deeply appreciated.

* so, okay, why would i not harbor some small hope for that same? i mean, come on. i’m just another flawed human, thank you very much.