I have a post up this morning at Maine Crime Writers talking about the strange experience, sometimes thrilling and sometimes surreal, of reading the anonymous and psedonymous reviews of one's novels on Amazon, iBooks, Shelfari, Goodreads, Librarything, and all the new online venues for selling and discussing books. It's a brave new world when a reviewer pans the novel you spent six years writing because she found the voice of the audiobook narrator to be "annoying." One frantic mystery author I know tried to petition Amazon to remove a review because she felt it spoiled the ending of her book. Amazon ignored her, as you might have expected. Do book buyers read starred online reviews, I ask. And more to the point can they help—or hurt—sales?
Read the First 7 Chapters of "Bad Little Falls" for Free
Yep, you read that right. You can read the first seven chapters of my new novel for free and even sign up for an email alert that will tell you when the book is available. (Sorry, you can't preorder from the Down East store; don't ask me why.) And if you want to buy a personally inscribed copy for yourself or a friend, you can do that, too. I will have a pen ready for you.
If you can't attend one of my signings later this summer or fall, this is one of the best ways to get an autographed edition, although I will be working with several mystery bookstores to get them signed copies, too. It always pays to start with your independent bookseller and ask what they can do. Those stores remain the heart and soul of the publishing business, in my opinion.
My WERU FM Radio Interview Is Up
I appeared on the Writer's Forum with Victoria Doudera and Dorothy Cannell. Click here to listen to us talk about mysteries and Maine.
Kirkus Raves Over "Bad Little Falls"
Kirkus Reviews advertises itself as the world's toughest book reviewers, and if you ask most authors, you won't hear an argument on that score. (I was lucky to earn one of their rarely awarded stars for The Poacher's Son, and it felt like a real coup.) In their August 1 issue—not yet online, but I will post a link as soon as one is available—they take on Bad Little Falls.
So what's the verdict from Kirkus? Pretty great:
Now that he’s antagonized every other lawman in the state of Maine (Trespasser, 2011, etc.), game warden Mike Bowditch gets exiled to Washington County, the Down East territory where nothing ever happens. Things happen.
A snowy dinner with Doc Larrabee, the elderly veterinarian who’s one of the few people on speaking terms with Mike, and Doc’s friend, survivalist/professor Kevin Kendrick, ends when Doc, somewhat the worse for liquor, asks Mike to respond with him to his neighbor Ben Sprague’s call for help. Seems that someone has staggered out of the blizzard into the Spragues’ home and told Ben and his wife, Doris, a wild story about a friend he left wandering out in the snow. The someone, Mike realizes on their arrival, is Prester Sewall, brother of local beauty Jamie Sewall, who’s constitutionally drawn to all the wrong men, from her bullying little ex Mitch Munro, father of her son Lucas, to Randall Cates, the drug dealer she’s been seeing most recently. The friend, Mike soon discovers when he and Kevin go looking for him, is Randall Cates. His death, which seems at first like a happy ending for Jamie, looks both backward to the overdose last year of college student Trinity Raye and forward to the consequences of Mike’s fatal attraction to Jamie. The story’s ultimate import becomes clear only after more bad weather, some truly ugly surprises and the obligatory standoffs between Mike and everyone capable of fighting with him.
A high-stakes, high-tension yarn in which you keep wishing everything would turn out fine for the deeply flawed, deeply sympathetic hero even though you know it won't.
I've been remarking today that the anonymous reviewer's last sentence probably sums up my Mike Bowditch books better than anything I've read. Those Kirkus reviewers may be tough, but they're sharp too.
"Bad Little Falls" Is the Best Yet
That's the opinion of Linda Rodriguez, who writes widely about literary mysteries and is the author of the wonderful novel Every Last Secret. On her blog today she takes an early look at Bad Little Falls:
Doiron uses his gift for language that evokes the environment surrounding his characters to make this northernmost part of Maine another character within the book. As usual, his plot is complicated and full of suspense and surprising twists, and his characters are multifaceted and well-drawn, making sometimes questionable choices due to unfortunate relationships. One of the real pleasures of Bad Little Falls is watching the development of Mike Bowditch. In the first books in the series, Mike was likable, but self-destructively impulsive with severe anger issues. In this book, he has the same problems, but he’s seriously trying to control them, not always successfully. Doiron offers a very realistic portrait of an engaging and troubled young man who is slowly and painfully maturing.
Linda says my third book is my best yet. That's very kind of her. Like Mike Bowditch, I hope I'm making progress.