Book reviews are tricky creatures. Authors want them. Writers need them. Artists hunt high and low for the wily beasts through patches of tangled feedback trees.
I am an Indie author of eight books (plus or minus, depending on how you count the short story collections). I write across genre lines. I write for love, for dreams, for kicks, for readers. I write for reviews.
Good reviews are the sticks we use to build our rickety storage units of approval.
The bad ones are sticks we use to beat our confidence over the head.
We send words out and hope for some to come back. Reviews.
I’m hoping to review more this year, but I’m looking at the mother of all writing dilemmas: telling the truth, keeping the faith, guarding the gate without sending people into fractured confidence comas.
And I think I’ve figured it out.
I'm going to review books under cover of anonymity. No titles. No authors. Just the words and what works and what does not work. But not stars. Not a star rating. Three stars. Five Stars. Nope.
Snacks. I want a snack rating. One snack bag of Fritos if I can make it through the first five pages. Five snack bags when I hit fifty pages, and I haven't run into one of the big three: telling not showing, obnoxious grammatical roadblocks, or characters made of cardboard. Halfway and I salute you with a full-size bag of Fritos. And if I get to the end of all the lines, all the way to the great big resolution at the end, I'm making a toast, with lemonade, my favorite.
1 snack bag = five pages
5 snack bags = fifty pages (this is my elementary school teacher's standard if I'm not in love with it by fifty . . .)
Halfway = full-size bag of Fritos
If it goes off the rails before the end = party sized bag
The big finish = lemonade toast
Disclaimer: Please be advised that I have never picked up a book and not wanted to adore it. NEVER. EVER. I want to be transported. I want to be swept up and away and farther than that. I want the author to step quietly to the back of the room to watch me being transported. I want to love every book I read. ALWAYS.
Linda (The Unknown Reviewer) Zern
