I watched the Terri Irwin interview on 20/20 last night - my God that was intense. What an incredibly impressive and strong woman. I can understand why she did the interviews - she had to talk so that everyone would stop speculating about when she was going to talk - but man it was hard for her. If anything I'm even more of a fan then I was before; she just really impressed the hell out of me.
I have just finished my November column and I'm whipped. There's nothing like reading six books on war, all of them with teenage protagonists in trouble, to really get your depressed. Of course the fact that they came on the heels of my October YA books - all about teens in peril from decidedly creepy forces, didn't make it any easier. Needless to say, I was really ready for some fun books last night. I've started on the December column - quirky famlies! Go Cassons! - and some historical fiction for Eclectica's next round. Would you believe I also have enough books to write a column on "protagonists who turn to comic books to handle difficult circumstances"? Who would have thought that would turn into a tiny sub genre?
In other news, LIkely Stories (the Booklist blog) points to an author who spent a lot of time on his book and now, because of some negative reviews, is beginning to doubt himself.
Right now, I just want an intelligent review that will second my good opinion of my novel–because, to be honest, my confidence in the book has risen and fallen like a lifeboat on the waves, depending on what people have said about it. Is the book great, or is it garbage?
When you’re the author, you just can’t know.
I've never had to think about how negative reviews would affect me - haven't gotten to that stage yet, but I'm thinking it's like dating or high school or anything else. You have to have a thick skin and just not care about what everyone else thinks. (In my own family my book has gotten negative reviews so at least I'm practiced in saying "well, it's not a book written for your kind of audience, thank you very much!"). The whole piece on this is at Salon.
John Green's book blog tour continues today - he's going to be here next Tuesday and after getting over my panic about not having read the book yet, I put together an interview more about the YA genre vs adult books and that sort of thing - stuff I was curious about asking him about anyway. I haven't read his book, An Abundance of Katherines, because my next high school column is in Jan and Feb. (One on heirs to Judy Blume's Forever and the other on surviving the insanity of school itself) - no point in reading Katherines for the war column, that's for sure. I wonder though if I will still be serving the book well by reviewing it six months after it comes out. There is just no way that I can review all new books in a timely manner - my columns at Bookslut and my pieces at Eclectica are built around themes because that is the way my editors like it. So I have to plan what is going where and that means some books are reviewed the month they come out (or shortly thereafter) while others wait around for six months (and sometimes even more). I like to think that a positive review always helps but I do worry about that. There's not much I can do about, but I do worry. I hate to be wasting anyone's time after all.
But really, who can possibly stay on top of all the new books?
