A Fondness for Truth, A Polizei Bern Novel by Kim Hays

Today, our guest post is from Kim Hays, a crime fiction author on the rise. She writes the gripping Polizei Bern procedural series, featuring Swiss cops Giuliana Linder and Renzo Donatello. It’s one of the best detective series you’ll ever read. The setting is fresh and engaging, the themes current and relevant, and the rich ensemble cast of characters shines, especially Giuliana and Renato. Never far from boiling over, their mutual attraction simmers restlessly throughout the series, adding spice and nuance to their complex working relationship. 

Here’s what I thought of the first book in the series, Pesticide:

“Kim Hays's Pesticide is Switzerland's answer to Scandinavian noir. Fresh and oh so readable, you won't want to put it down."

Don’t want to take my word for it? How about Deborah Crombie, New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James novels?

"Kim Hays brings a sparkling new voice to police procedurals, giving us engaging and realistically drawn detectives who struggle to balance their personal lives with the demands of a gripping investigation. Set against the fascinating backdrop of modern Switzerland, Pesticide will delight crime fiction fans--a standout debut for 2022!" —DEBORAH CROMBIE

Or how about George Easter at Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine?

"For aficionados of fine police detection and procedure, it doesn’t get better than Kim Hays’s Linder and Donatelli series. Puzzling mysteries, artful prose, and engaging characters abound in these Swiss-based treats for mystery fans of all tastes.” —GEORGE EASTER

A Fondness for Truth is the third installment of the series, and it’s out this week (April 16, 2024, Seventh Street Bools). I’m a huge fan of these books, and highly recommend them!

Meine Damen und Herren, ich präsentiere euch Kim Hays…

But What Is Your Book Really About?

 

When my German-speaking Swiss husband was a senior in high school, a teacher assigned his class a recently published novel to read; it was by a Swiss writer in his thirties who was just becoming famous. When the pupils and teacher discussed the book in class, my husband and some of his friends disagreed with their teacher’s interpretation of how it ended and argued with him about it. They rehashed the argument during lunch in the school cafeteria, still convinced their teacher was wrong. 

So these four or five boys went to the school’s one payphone, looked up the author’s name in the phone book, called him—and he answered. Feeding coins into the slot from their pockets, they told the writer about the argument and asked him what he had meant by the ending.

 

“Oh, there’s no right or wrong interpretation,” he said. “It can mean different things to different readers.” The boys were crushed.

 

When my husband told me this tale years ago, I thought the author was a spoilsport. Now that I write novels myself, I still shake my head over him. To have a group of teenagers find your book so intriguing that they call you from their school to ask about its meaning—surely that’s a terrific thing to happen. Okay, so the kids were hoping to hear that their interpretation was right and the teacher’s was wrong. But they were also showing enthusiasm and asking for information, and all they got in return was a gobbledygook answer.

 

I thought of this story recently when I was invited to a book club meeting to discuss my first mystery, Pesticide. Usually, having an engaging discussion about any book but a classic is almost impossible if you are trying not to reveal the plot. If you can’t bring up what a book’s about, how can you say anything entertaining about it? This is a quandary that I imagine lots of authors and reviewers face. But at this book club meeting, I was going to have a chance to field all kinds of questions about Pesticide, and—since everyone in the room would have read it—I could debate about the plot, characters, and themes to my heart’s content. 

 

The group welcomed me warmly. Many of them told me how much they’d enjoyed my book, and then . . . and then they were too kind to challenge what they’d read. Or perhaps plot, characters, and themes take on a certain inevitability once they are in print, making it hard for readers to see them as the results of an author considering, choosing, writing, changing, reconsidering, and choosing again—and perhaps making a bad decision.

 

Now I’ve been asked to attend another book club meeting to discuss Sons and Brothers, the second book in the Polizei Bern series. This time, I’m going to make it clear that every decision I made as a writer can be called into question. Other aspects of the novels should be open for discussion as well. Each of my mysteries is an entertaining story about how two police detectives solve a homicide. In telling those stories, I’ve introduced issues worth debating: organic versus conventional farming, the legalization of marijuana, the existence of a patrician class in Bern, and the idea of a universal service for young people, among others. Perhaps one of those themes will inspire a challenging question.

 

The third book in my series, A Fondness for Truth, just came out, so there hasn’t been time for any invitations to talk with readers. At least if I’m lucky enough to be asked to explain what this new book is really about—as the famous Swiss writer was asked by my husband and his friends—I’ll do my best to give a real answer.

—Kim Hays, A Fondness for Truth

 

A Fondness for Truth: Summary

Andi Eberhart is riding her bicycle home on an icy winter night when she is killed in a hit-and-run. Her devastated partner, Nisha, is convinced the death was no accident. Andi had been receiving homophobic hate mail for several years, and the letters grew uglier after the couple’s baby was born. 

As Bern homicide detective Giuliana Linder pieces together the details of Andi and Nisha’s lives, her assistant Renzo Donatelli looks into Andi’s job advising young men who’ve been drafted intoSwitzerland’s civilian service. Working closely together on the case, Giuliana and Renzo are again tempted to become more than just friendly colleagues. 

As both detectives dig into Andi’s life, one thing becomes clear: Andi’s friends and family may have loved her for her honesty, but her outspoken integrity threatened others, including, perhaps, her killer.

  

 

Not my story

What would make you quit writing? Age? Infirmity? Lack of what you consider success? Boredom? Something else?

by Dietrich

Death.

To put it another way, I’m planning for the long haul, so I tell myself the best is yet to come. And that’s easy to do when I think of the many greats who did their best work late in life — take George Orwell and Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Okay, he was on his deathbed, but he was around long enough to see his masterpiece published and rise to critical acclaim.

In spite of a wealth of talent, Cormac McCarthy saw little success from his early writing. In fact he was sixty before All the Pretty Horses, the start of his border trilogy, hit it big. Margaret Atwood wrote The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, when she nearing eighty. Philip Roth was seventy-seven when he penned Nemesis. And Agatha Christie had already turned eighty-five when Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case hit the shelves.

There have been many other late-bloomers over the years, take Toni Morrison, Henry Miller, Raymond Chandler. And many others who stretched out prolific and long careers: Norman Mailer, Ray Bradbury and Leo Tolstoy each wrote for nearly sixty years. Tom Wolfe, Kurt Vonnegut, and Agatha Christie were at it for over fifty year.  

Science tells us that there’s no correlation between age and creativity. So, while retaining ones marbles is a good thing for any of us, it’s also reassuring to consider that a wealth of life experience can serve us well, meaning the older we get, the more of it there is to draw on.

It’s good that writing a novel doesn’t require the physical stamina of a marathon athlete, and lucky for some of us couch potatoes, there’s no heavy lifting involved. Not to say that writing is easy, or to imply that anybody can do it well enough to get an agent to commit that writer’s number to speed dial. In fact, thinking it’s a piece of cake — figuring the first draft is perfect and ready to send out, that the editor has it all wrong, or to have illusions of an immediate Rowling kind of $uccess — could lead to such a writer packing it in early. A thick skin and a realistic attitude go a long way to overcome setbacks, bad reviews and critique, and how about those pesky rejection notes.

As for boredom — not a chance. As long as the wheels keep turning, and the ideas keep coming, why worry about ticking clocks? I plan to keep on; no quitting on account of age, infirmity, or boredom. That just ain’t my story.

Quit? Never.

 

Terry here, with the answer to the burning question: 

 What would make you quit writing? Age? Infirmity? Lack of what you consider success? Boredom? Something else? 

 I’ve often said that doctors will be ready to pull the plug on me, and I’ll yell, “Wait. Let me finish this paragraph.” 

 I guess that means the short answer is “nothing will make me quit writing.” I wrote before I ever had thoughts of being published. I’d write short stories or descriptions or scenes. It was my way of thinking. And sometimes my way of relaxing. I never was successful at keeping a journal, so maybe it was my way of journaling—but making most of it up. 

 And as for boredom, If I find I’m bored with something I’m writing, I know it will also bore the reader, so I do the creative (and sometimes hard) work of finding ways to make what I’m writing more exiting (another body!) 

 The bigger question, though, is whether I would keep writing for publication. I just attended Left Coast Crime and there was quite a bit of buzz about how chaotic the publishing industry is these days. And how carelessly publishers treat authors. Many writers who are not in the top echelon feel at best taken advantage of and at worst treated like throwaway commodities. I heard several stories of authors who had a couple of contracts with major publishers and who found after those contracts were fulfilled, they were dumped. It seems that major publishers, and even some smaller ones are only in the publishing business for the money and not because they love books. The ones in it for love of books are exceptions, and they are golden. And usually small. 

 In the past six months I’ve heard more and more stories of authors undertaking hybrid publishing. That is, publishing some books with traditional presses, and other books independently. Why? Because for those authors with a track record, they make a lot more money if they publish their own books. People are tired of getting a paltry few cents of each dollar the publisher brings in. 

 The ones who find success as independent authors are not writers who dash off a book and throw it up on Amazon. They are the ones who do the following: 

 

1) Have dedicated beta readers 

2) Either hire an editor or do very careful editing themselves 

3) Either hire someone who knows how to format an email and “tree” books, or take the time to learn the details themselves 

4) Either hire someone to do great covers unless they feel confident that they have a creative eye for cover design. 

5) Either hire someone who knows how to promote their books or learn the ins and outs of marketing. 

 It’s tempting! But it’s also a lot of extra-curricular work or is expensive. By the time you hire all the grunt work out you might find that you have evened out the amount of money you would have made with a traditional publisher. The people who are most successful at this have developed a team of people they are happy with and/or have learned to do it themselves. The say yes, there is a learning curve, but once you learn it, it gets easier. 

One of the most chilling comments I heard was that there is a trend toward dismissing mid-list authors in bookstores. Publishers push big books and debut authors, but those authors who write good, solid books that aren’t huge sellers get shoved aside. 

Sadly, I even heard a few stories of authors whose publishers had cheated on their royalties. And I have an example from my own experience. Anyone who has ever tried to read a royalty statement knows that wouldn’t be hard to cheat. But what is the point? We’re talking small money here. I’m willing to believe that sometimes it’s carelessness, but it’s a real issue. My first agent, with whom I’ve maintained a cordial relationship found that my publisher had routinely underpaid me for e-book sales. She confronted the publisher, and they corrected the problem and sent me a check. I was grateful to her for continuing to pay attention to the books that were sold through her agency. But why should she have to keep an eagle eye on a publisher to make sure they do the accounting right? Why would a publisher routinely cheat an author? Is it carelessness or venality? I’m afraid it’s hard to tell the difference. 

 So why do I persist with traditional publishing? Partly, it’s laziness. Learning how to do the publishing work myself is daunting. Partly, though, I do it because I like my publishing team. My editor, the publicist and the proofreaders are hard-working and they are very supportive. Their business model isn’t perfect, but I know they do care about books, so I’m not ready to jump ship. And I’m not ready to quit writing. 

When people find out I’ve quit, they’ll know the plug has been pulled!

Twenty Years and Still No Quit

What would make you quit writing? Age? Infirmity? Lack of what you consider success? Boredom? Something else?

Brenda starting off the week.

This is a timely question as my 25th book Fatal Harvest is released today. This also marks 20 years since my first published book. I'd be lying if I didn't say that I've thought about stopping on a few occasions. Then I give my head a shake.

I love writing. When I'm away from the keyboard for a while, I still can't wait to get back. Of course infirmity would cause me to stop writing, but until then, I'll carry on. As for lack of success, this has not always been my driving goal, rather my enjoyment of the process. I've never found writing to be boring, so this wouldn't factor in either.

If I ran out of ideas, this might have me stop ... until I come up with another idea.

So, in keeping with today's release, I'm delighted to share a little bit about Fatal Harvest, third in the Hunter and Tate mystery series. Here is the cover blurb:

Small Towns can be Murder

Eleven-year-old Matt Clark is staying in the outlying village of Ashton for the summer while his parents work out their separation. He’s been told to keep his head down and to stay off social media. Labour Day has come and gone, and Matt believes he’ll be home soon, completely unaware that someone has been posting his photo and location on one of the sites, and trouble is on its way.

Detective Liam Hunter gets the call — a double murder and a missing boy. While he spearheads the investigation, true crime podcaster Ella Tate undertakes her own search for the killer with mixed results. Meanwhile Homicide and Major Crimes is undergoing a major upheaval and the top position is up for grabs as Hunter’s partner struggles to keep her job.

The rainiest September in recent history proves a fitting backdrop for this haunting story of lies, betrayal, and deadly repercussions.

And a snippet from a review: 

If you’re looking for a mystery with intrigue, heart, a finely drawn setting and relatable characters finding their way through tragic circumstances, Fatal Harvest is for you. Brenda Chapman knows how to tell a story and is, quite frankly, one of the most readable Canadian mystery writers of our time. 

– Anthony Bidulka, author of Going to Beautiful, Crime Writers of Canada 2023 Best Crime Novel, and the Merry Bell trilogy (including 2024’s From Sweetgrass Bridge)

The first two books in this series are Bind Date and When Last Seen:  “… compelling characters, an interesting plot and a conclusion that one does not see coming.”– Glebe Report

Website: www.brendachapman.ca

Instagram & Facebook: BrendaChapmanAuthor

X: brendaAchapman

Never look back: Writing a serial novel, by Thomas Pluck

 

Thank you, Josh, for the opportunity to write this. The only thing more surprising to me than Josh liking a contemporary YA fantasy is that I wrote one. And here's the story of how that happened.

My latest book almost didn't happen because of the pandemic, and then only happened because of the pandemic. One of my friends and literary heroes is Lawrence Block, who has written books while on cruise ships, so I decided that my next book would be written while I embarked upon a grand circuit of the United States by rail. (You see where this is going, don't you?) I even asked ol' LB for advice on which Amtrak services to take. The book was at heart a road story, and the places I visited would inspire the tale. It would practically write itself!

Thankfully I hadn't booked the tickets by March, when everything shut down. A lot of things happened. I won't bore you with it, you went through it too, but one of the lesser indignities was having to witness a million writers decide to post daily word counts on social media, to let everyone know they were still typing away while the world changed around them. Because somewhere, someone said that to be a writer, you should write every day.

Now, you can write however the hell you want. I shouldn't even have to say that, but due to the enormousness and the enormity of writing "advice" on the internet, a lot of people don't feel like they are "real writers," whatever that means. (Have you written something? You're a writer.) Now, there's something to say about momentum. The first law of motion applies to writing, sometimes, somehow.

 

It's worked for me. I finished my first novel during National Novel Writing Month. It was even a coherent narrative with a three act structure! Five novels later—three of which were published—daily word counts became less of a challenge, and more of a dread. It kept me from writing. And working for a children's hospital during the pandemic—even remotely—made for long, stressful days that left me little time or desire to write, especially in "sprints" or with a pedometer strapped to my brain.

What had kept me writing was a newsletter, delivered via Patreon, that a few dozen people followed me on. I promised them a few short stories, so I had to pay up. One of those stories was "Good People," published in Vautrin, and chosen as a distinguished mystery story in Best American Mysteries and Suspense 2021. Another was "88 Lines About .44 Magnums," still one of my favorite titles. "Good People" was written in four parts, over successive weekends, so I couldn't go back and edit. I had to make it work.

It sounds like madness, but it worked. I didn't know how it would end when I started, but I had to find a way there. It recharged my urge to write. So I decided to write the road trip book one chapter at a time, publishing them on Sundays, with no ability to go back and edit them, because they were delivered to readers serially.

It worked for Dickens, didn't it? (No pressure.) Somehow, it made me more eager to write than ever, even if it didn't make any sense. If a thousand words a day is too daunting, how the heck is writing a chapter a day any better? Because my method was to sit down at the keyboard with my morning coffee, and sit there until the chapter was done. I didn't write a little each day. I didn't start on Saturday. I could think about what I wanted to write all week, and I did, on long morning hikes at Eagle Rock preserve, where some of the story is set, on long commutes to the hospital to work in the data center, and from my recliner while everyone else binged TV.

I had a vague idea of a story: a young kid's parents are taken by ICE, and they have to make their way across the country to safety. I had purchased a set of postcards based on old WPA art of the National Parks, and I used them as my guide. The kid wanted to visit all the National Parks, and would use the postcards, bought by their dad, as a sort of road map. 

Some of them didn't make sense; Vyx starts the story in Jersey City, and wants to get to California, near Sequoia National Park. so Acadia in Maine wasn't in the cards (pun intended!). 

But 30 chapters later, and Devil's Tower, Bryce Canyon, Glacier, Shenandoah, and somehow, Mount Denali, all managed to make it into the story, and let me tell you, traveling that way by imagination was a lot cheaper than by train. (I have looked at the Talkeetna rail trip from Seward Alaska, since I visited Denali while crammed in a wobbly old pickup truck with my cousin and his family, and the clouds hid the mountain peaks the whole time we were there.) 

As always with writing, whatever works, works. Cliffhanger endings inspired imaginative escapes. Surprises could be explained chapters later. "When in doubt, have someone come through the door with a gun in his hand," much like "Chekhov's gun," doesn't need to be taken literally. Something exciting has to happen. In Vyx's case, it was never a man with a gun: it was a talking fox and magpie, a dragon on a hoard of blinged-out cell phones, and a government agent who could freeze people solid with his breath.

And while Chandler could never explain who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep, who you write about magic, it has to have some rules and make sense. I kept it somewhat simple, but sometimes it felt like I was building boxcars on a moving train. But I finished the book, and even pulled the old "everything changes" at precisely chapter 15, even though I didn't know what the change was going to be. Vyx just got thrown through a faerie-house door, and even I didn't know where it went when it happened. 

It was a lot of fun. Before it was published as Vyx Starts the Mythpocalypse, I did edit it again, and I had the chance to go back and seed it with foreshadowing, create callbacks, and strengthen the structure, but the readers loved the story the first time because they didn't know what would happen next. How could they, when I didn't? "Pantsers" say this all the time, but I'd never considered myself one. I always had "mile markers" thought out ahead, even in this case, so I considered myself a Plotter. But like Vyx, I've found that I'm never just one thing.

Would I do it again? I'm planning to, right now. Writing the sequel, one chapter at a time. Oddly enough, it's the only time I've written a book under a hundred thousand words, so I think the boundaries suit me. Can lightning strike twice? I'll let you know, once I finish Vyx Stops Weathergeddon.

You can order the paperback of Vyx Starts the Mythpocalypse from Amazon! The e-book is available on Kindle and all other e-book formats, and if you would like a signed paperback, you can buy one directly from me.

That's just, like, your opinion, man.... by Eric Beetner

Business: I just found out that Publishers Weekly has let go of some its reviewers and is reviewing fewer mysteries. PW is one of the top reviewers. Which reviewers will take their place? Kirkus? Booklist? Library Journal? Or maybe some of the private reviewers. Do reviews matter to you? Do you think they influence readers? Who do you count on for reviews and why? 

Reviews are great if you trust the reviewer. These days it seems everyone is a critic. Some outlets have more caché, like Publisher’s Weekly and the news that they are cutting back on staff and reviewing fewer mysteries is not good news, but their audience is also industry-focused. Sure, a great review will likely end up on the cover of a book as endorsement to potential readers who have never seen a copy of PW, but I know I’ve bought far more books from recommendations of a select group of people I know and trust than I ever have off a PW review.

Any large publication – the NY Times, Kirkus (also industry-centric) Wall St Journal – adds a certain weight behind their reviews, just as a big-name author blurb adds the weight of their own work to a new book or author. But I think most people take that extra step of buying a book based off a tip from someone they know personally. The old word-of-mouth.

The more a book is being talked about in circles where I know I trust the opinions of the people talking, the more likely I am to pick up a book. I often find myself at odds with many mainstream reviewers or other endorsements, for example the Edgar Awards. I haven’t enjoyed very many Edgar nominees. They usually aren’t to my personal taste. So while that gold star on a book will move many people to check it out, it doesn’t influence me.

The rise of social media influencers has made a huge impact on book sales, though it seems like much of the biggest numbers come from fantasy, YA, romance or romantic suspense over traditional crime/mystery/thrillers. Certain groups just tend to use social media differently. 

The magic bullet for coverage on a book is that tipping point of when the conversation is less about the book and becomes about the fact that everyone is talking about the book. Because if everyone is talking about it, there must be something there, right? Phenomena like Gone Girl, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Twilight all had that moment when the discussion about the book was about how popular it had become, not whether or not it was a good book. I can’t tell you how many people said to me that “the first 100 pages was really dull, but then it picked up” when discussing the Stieg Larsson books. That wasn’t an endorsement for me and I never bothered to read them. I knew it wasn’t for me. But it didn’t stop millions from checking out the book on everyone’s lips.

Reviews are important, but who you trust with your reviews makes all the difference. With a scale-back of PW it means fewer mystery titles will get in front of librarians and booksellers, which can be an issue. If your book isn’t on a shelf then no amount of social media chatter about it can help you. But in this world of global influence coming from someone’s bedroom, the bigger review outlets are less relevant than before. The same thing has happened to movies where once a thumbs up or down from only two guys in Chicago could make or break a film’s release, now the internet is overflowing with armchair Siskels and Eberts more than willing to shove their unsolicited two cents about a film into your ear. 

Like anything online, you have to find your trusted sources. But I think anything that gets people talking about books more is a good thing. 

When It's Personal and Business: Reviews

 

I just found out that Publishers Weekly has let go of some its reviewers and is reviewing fewer mysteries. PW is one of the top reviewers. Which reviewers will take their place? Kirkus? Booklist? Library Journal? Or maybe some of the private reviewers. Do reviews matter to you? Do you think they influence readers? Who do you count on for reviews and why?

 

Reviews matter, and then they don’t.

 

The question is whether the reason you’re reading reviews is personal or business.

 

As writers, we all crave some form of validation that our efforts are not for naught. We hope that a reader has enjoyed the world we have created between the two covers. Such a reviewer is likely your everyday reader who has come to your work because they like the genre you write in. How they found me is the real question to me. Their reviews could be in-depth because they are fans of the genre or superficial because they are on to the next shiny thing, or they don’t feel confident writing reviews (a very common complaint).

 

Industry reviewers are subject matter experts, and their opinions carry weight (theoretically). These are the critics the publishers and agents stop and listen to, as if EF Hutton said something in a crowded restaurant.

 

Now that I have dated myself with an allusion to the EF Hutton commercials in the Seventies and Eighties, I have to speak now to my own experiences as a reader and then as a writer. Once upon a time, when there was no Internet and people read physical newspapers (gasp), I would grab the Sunday editions of the Boston Globe or the book section of the New York Times. It was a ritual, along with a nice toasted cinnamon raisin bagel slathered with butter. Back in those halcyon days (or daze) when I knew nothing about cholesterol, I would munch and crunch my way through what the critics had to say about this or that author.  When it came to reviews of genre fiction, I read for the gist of the plot and determined whether I would go down to the local bookstore and read the first chapter or not. In a word, I read but didn’t give credence to what was said about the quality of the work. Who made this person judge, jury, and executioner? I would decide for myself. Where I did defer to the ‘experts’ was with technical books, on matters that were academic because I lacked the formal education or exposure to the topic.

 

As a writer, reviews tell me more about what is trending, and that gives me insight to what publishers think is “hot and happening.” Writers face a dilemma: write to market or write what they want, or figure out some kind of compromise for the sake of their creativity and integrity. Writing to market is what you saw satirized in the movie American Fiction.

 

If you do the research, you will discern fads in publishing, from topics, themes, and authors producing it. I’ve always harbored the suspicion that these trends were fermented in the basements of publishing houses because, let’s be honest, what has reigned supreme since the printing press went viral has been Jerry Maguire’s mantra of “SHOW ME THE MONEY.” Do the research. If it is crap but sells, then it will be on the shelf and humped until it is bowlegged. When it doesn’t sell, it’s time to move on. I’ve seen it happen more times than I care to admit.

 

Where does this leave us with reviews, especially in the trades that publishers buy ad space in? Let’s gather the usual suspects.

 

I don’t think PW affects readers at all. In my opinion, PW influences bookstores and libraries. Librarians do help us find the books we enjoy.

 

Kirkus seems to have two doors: one that reviews, and one that sells reviews.

 

Fast forward to my own experience. The mechanism for discovering authors has changed and it hasn’t. What has changed is the existence of Amazon and Goodreads, though I think both are becoming homogeneous, in part because Amazon now owns Goodreads. If a Rupert Murdoch controls all the news, what do you expect to see and hear? If there are Big Five publishers and they have more imprints than a white-collar criminal has shell companies, then what you have is a game of knowing and not knowing who the publisher is. There is no transparency, and that also applies to blurbs, a sophisticated combination of stub-review and celebrity endorsement. You wonder how this writer managed to score words of praise from an established writer. To follow the money trail of most publishers would require a crack team of forensic accountants, though readers don’t care because all they want is a good story. They want their fix and they don’t care how they get it.

 

Authors care, however, because, allegedly, there is this urban legend that once you hit a certain number of reviews and stars on Amazon, then the god in the Bezos machinery promotes you, in ways a monster budget couldn’t. Is this a form of consumer democracy or another way of playing the lottery? If 100 thousand reviewers say X is the Next Great Thing, is it? What happens to authors if the megalodon that is Amazon were to be made into sushi as a result of the Sherman Act? And what does that Amazonian algorithm of promotion from reviews say about the critics in the trades? I can point to books that have thousands of reviews that were never on the NY Times Bestseller List. Likewise, I can point to books that the critics reviewed and fawned over that I’ve read and scratched my head, only to say, “WTF am I missing here because I don’t see it.”

 

I haven’t even touched on the explosion of reviewers, such as Facebook groups and social influencers who are bookstagrammers, which sounds to me like book stabbers. Then there are booktokers, where performance art takes precedence over the review. Influencers make money having subscribers, likes, etc., and it plays as if it were an absurd game of The Emperor With No Clothes but nobody can say that.

 

I find new books the old way: recommendations from friends who know what I like.

 

It’s nice to read somewhere that someone enjoyed your work. I find it especially interesting if readers tell me who is their favorite character in my Shane Cleary mystery series and why. I’m often surprised because they find something in the character I had never seen. As for reviews correlated to commercial success, I’ve not seen any proof of it.

 

Where Have All the Reviewers Gone?

 Q: Publishers Weekly has let go of some its reviewers and is reviewing fewer mysteries. PW is one of the top reviewers. Which reviewers will take their place? Kirkus? Booklist? Library Journal? Or maybe some of the private reviewers. Do reviews matter to you? Do you think they influence readers? Who do you count on for reviews and why?

 

- from Susan

 

So many professional book review options have disappeared over the past 20 years that this is just another cut into the fabric of traditional book publishing. Whole sections or pages of newspapers dedicated to helping readers find the books that might interest them have vanished. Heck, so have the newspapers. Volunteer online reviewers have tried to provide something similar. Some are better at the job than others, but they do love books and that matters. I hear that they’re now overwhelmed by authors begging for their attention.

 

There are only a few big-time, celebrity-blessed “book clubs,” but the rush to purchase those fortunate books chosen demonstrates that readers really do want some help sorting through the thousands and thousands of books available every year, from romance to military history, most self-published.

 

Libraries still count on the few professional review organizations aimed at them, but I think – do not know – that those reviewers only look at traditionally published, hard cover editions that libraries demand.

 

Some legacy magazines will promote a book via a review. Call me cynical, but I notice that frequently the author has some connection to that part of the publishing world or is perhaps a cosmetics or design professional trying her hand at this other thing.

 

Meanwhile, a relatively new phenomenon is at work: “influencers.” For some reason, hundreds of thousands of people make all kinds of decisions based on TicToc personalities who may or may not have a modicum of expertise about whatever they’re plugging (often for money), be it clothing, vitamins, or books. I saw a demonstration of their power outside a Books Inc. store in San Francisco where I and other Sisters in Crime authors have read. There was a line stretching down the block, around the corner and up the next block one day. I asked someone in line (they were all young women) who they were waiting for: An influencer who had taken some of her posts and turned them into a book about dating. 

 

I tip my hat to the New York Times for maintaining a whole Sunday section dedicated to book (and now audio of books) reviews, some by staff, some by other writers. That’s the place where at least a handful of crime writers get some serious attention. For the record, one of my books was reviewed nicely in the Crime round-up once. Did it spur sales? Not that I could tell, although my traditional publisher was reluctant to share even a dollop of information about sales the following couple of weeks. So, brag point, but not a career-maker.

 

Don’t forget bookstores. They may not be reviewers per se but these are our people. They love books, they treasure authors, they are eager to tell readers about the books they’ve discovered. Bless them!

 

What I’ve noticed and benefitted from is the generosity of other authors and significant book world people who have blog sites like this one. As readers will see soon, we have guest posts coming up, two of many that Minds authors make space for to help other authors get some visibility for great new books. Jungle Red Writers’ seven popular crime writers share space all the time. Terry and I were both invited to talk about our new releases to JRW’s big readership just last week. Everyone’s best friend, Dru Ann Love, a passionate reader but not writer, has a whole system set up to serve as an ongoing platform to which she invites a steady stream of crime fiction authors every week. Online venues like these seem to be replacing the missing reviewers even though they’re not actually critical reviews but friendly promotions. 

 

I’m not a great fan of Amazon as a review site for several reasons. One, because I’m not good at soliciting reviews from individual readers. Second, because the people who elect to review anyone’s book can be so off base as to be weird, but their one-stars are still counted. Ex: “I hated the book because the delivery person left it outside in the rain, so it was wet and I couldn’t read it.”  Third, there have been so many documented cases of authors manipulating the review system to get themselves phony five-star reviews. 

 

So, I’m left with the dilemma: Write anyway, knowing that unless lightening strikes, I will continue to scrabble around the edges for some attention for any new book, or give it up and concentrate on the garden and mastering the best recipe for carrot cake?

In the meantime, feel free to buy, borrow and review any of these wherever you like!