Tag: my books

My Answer to a Critic

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

A certain influential person, whose name I will not mention, was invited by a mutual friend to read and review my book, Bell Mountain. He read it, but didn’t review it. This morning, at long last, our mutual friend told me why.

It seems this influential person found Bell Mountain rife with secret Calvinistic messages, and somehow “dangerous” to readers. So he didn’t want to give it any added exposure by reviewing it.

All right–I hope I understand that no writer can hope to please everyone, and only a fool would explain to a reader why he should have liked the book. But as hard as it is to make any headway in the market at all, unfair and stupid criticism really rankles.

Folks, believe me–Bell Mountain is not a sneaky, fiendishly clever trick to turn good Catholics into bad Calvinists. It is not Mein Kampf for kiddies. It’s a fantasy, fer cryin’ out loud! There ain’t any Calvinists or Catholics or Republicans or Democrats or Rotarians or Kiwanis Clubs in the fantasy world which it describes.

I admit the book and its sequels are based–firmly, I hope–on a solid Biblical foundation. I pray that they will be serviceable to My Lord Jesus Christ in the advancement of His Kingdom. But I have tried to do that by writing about another world that has absolutely no connection to our own.

Look, Mr. Big Important Critic–a whole passel of judges for the Global E-Book Awards read Bell Mountain this year and didn’t find any crypto-Calvinism: and they gave it a Bronze Medal, in competition with I dunno how many hundreds of other books. Oh, maybe you’re smarter than they were. Maybe you’re smart enough to see things that aren’t there.

Grow up, will ya?

 

 

Is Self-Promotion a Bad Thing?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Every time I turn on Rush Limbaugh lately, he’s schlepping his book. His daily radio program has 20 million listeners, he’s already famous,his book’s been on the New York Times bestseller list for several weeks in a row–and still he’s plugging it.How many gazillion copies is he going to sell?

Then we come to my books…

For a long time we were thinking of biting the bullet and hiring a publicist. Then we began to notice that it seems all a publicist will do is send out emails to people who immediately delete them. Gee, I could do that myself. I get several dozen emails a week from assorted publicists, inviting me to review books I never heard of, written by people I never heard of, usually on subjects that either don’t interest me or that don’t fall within any of the areas I write about. With all due respect, the saga of an aspiring Country & Western singer’s struggle to kick this or that disgusting habit just doesn’t float my boat. I don’t have time even to read the emails, let alone the books.

Somehow I just can’t bring myself to do what Rush does and subject my tiny audience to a perpetual commercial. No, I must be more subtle and polite than that.

So, look, if you’ve read any of my books and liked them, tell your friends about ’em. And if you haven’t, try ’em. Because people do ask me about this fairly often, let me say you can order my books from amazon.com right here on this blog: just click “Books.”

There, I’ve said my piece.

 

I’ve Finished Writing My Book (Oh, No)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Yup, yesterday afternoon I finished writing The Glass Bridge, Book #7 of the Bell Mountain Series.

This is the kind of writing I love best of all, and I have loved this book from the first page to the last. So it’s gonna be kind of dreary around here without it. But a Book #8 will come along, by and by, because the general arc of the story requires it.

So what’s this one about? Oh, the usual. Danger, adventure, love, hate, treason, courage, honor, weird animals, just another day in the neighborhood. If you’ve read the first five books, you know there’s a huge treasure-trove of gold at the top of Golden Pass–and who is going to wind up owning it? And what’ll they do to get it?

But first Book #6, The Palace, has to be published. We’re waiting for the cover art from Kirk DouPonce.

By the way, if you’ve read the books, and if you know how to do it, I really could use more Customer Reviews on my amazon.com pages. You know, in the Young Adult fiction market, I’m competing with books about boys who want to be girls, witchcraft, teens having sex with vampires or zombies or whatnot. Help me elbow some of this crap off the shelves!