A Kiss from Bookslut

I had the opportunity to talk with reviewer Clayton Moore when he was writing for Kirkus Reviews. Now he's writing about mysteries for Bookslut (his sobriquet is Mystery Strumpet). I enjoyed our conversation and I'm glad he enjoyed my book:

I’ve never been one for the outdoorsy sub-genre, although I certainly understand the attraction of CJ Box and his ilk. Yet somehow Paul Doiron’s debut novel The Poacher’s Sontranscends its setting, lending a bleak austerity to its milieu while simultaneously infusing its main character with Steinbeckian humanity.

Any reviewer who mentions Steinbeck and me in the same sentence has earned a lifelong place on my Christmas card list.

BookPage Rave

Bruce Tierney writes the Whodunit column for BookPage, and he just made my day with this review. It concludes on a high note: 

The setting is wildly atmospheric, the pacing swift and the characters well drawn. The Poacher’s Son is easily one of the best debut novels in recent memory.

If you told me I'd receive a notice like this back when I was first starting my novel, I never would have believed you.

Big Day in the Big Apple

I've been on the go since I got back from New York and haven't had a moment to blog about this, but I spent a long but wonderful day last week in Manhattan meeting with my publishers, Minotaur Books. Headquartered in the Flatiron Building (above), Minotaur is an imprint of St. Martin's Press. It was my last publicity outing before the official book launch.

My schedule was jam-packed almost from the moment I arrived at LaGuardia: lunch with executives from Barnes & Noble at a place called Rye House (I recommend the blackened striped bass sandwich); a session signing several hundred copies of The Poacher's Son that had been special-ordered by mystery booksellers; recording an author interview to accompany the release of the audio version of the book; meeting with my editor to discuss final revisions on my second, as-yet-untitled novel; and finally trading stories with Minotaur staffers and fellow authors, Andrew Grant and Tasha Alexander, over Italian small plates.

It was only the next day, as I was waiting at LaGuardia for the plane to take me back to Portland, that I realized I'd just had the experience aspiring novelists always dream about. Don't think I wasn't grateful.

Vacation with a Book

I have a new Editor's Note up over at the day job, this one discussing my tendency to pick up a local book whenever I'm on the road. It occurs to me now that if people follow my sage advice, a few travelers might be touring Maine this summer with a copy of The Poacher's Son in hand. I'm not sure whether the folks at the Maine Department of Tourism will consider that a good or a bad thing.

Test Your First Aid IQ

Sorry for the slow blogging. With the May 11 publication day of The Poacher's Son approaching fast, life has been a mad scramble to the finish line.

Thanks to Matt Yglesias, I came across this short but challenging first aid quiz today. It's worth taking the test as a basic refresher. Registered Maine Guides are required to be certified in first aid, but I've learned that it never hurts to brush up on this information regularly since you never know when you'll need it. For instance, the recommended guidelines for administering CPR — the ratio of compressons to rescue breaths, specifically — changed a while back.

How well did you score?