So, when your editor chooses to add #borntojudge to her tweet saying she’s ready to deal with the photos entered in the ’50 Shades of Kay’ contest, it makes you pay attention. In the end, I said, ‘we’ve been together too long’ as the two of us were in startling agreement. Nicole did send this note for posting here:

It was a tougher decision than I expected it to be because so many of the submissions were thoughtful, bold and clever, but I did find myself especially drawn to the photos of people reading in settings that reflect their own lives.  Reading is such an important part of our lives but the experience of it is different for each of us and I was really struck by the photos that showed that.

That made sense as a way of thinking for us. Trust an editor/publisher to angle it that way. More than just the book, people intersecting with it. I actually noted 7 or 8 I smiled at. One with a beer and a pipe at sunset outside, one in a snowbank, a couple of witty riffs on the contest title, one in a museum with an ancient bronze. All the others can be seen at the Twitter hashtag #riverofstars and I think that photos are also being uploaded to the Forums at brightweavings.com, for those without access to twitter, and to archive them there.

But we actually got to three pretty smoothly, using a lovely little webtool that gathered them all – created for us by the splendid Anar Simpson of llearth (@llearth). And so, first, here are the two that just missed.

Shh! Mommy’s reading

This was funny, ‘real’ and demonstrated impeccable low-key taste in blending robe and bedspread! The tbr pile on the beside table marks a reader, too.

And then this:

River of Stars in the wild, both figuratively and literally

This was beautiful and evocative: a really professional shot and composition, matched with a witty caption. I had used ‘in the wild’ to refer to the book being first released and seen ‘out there’. There’s even a slight hint of the ‘bound’ theme that (alas?) got into the contest with the ’50 Shades’ idea.

And finally, our winner:

Squeezing an air refuel in between chapters…

As Nicole said (and I had to agree) it really is hard to top (!) a setting like this for a book photo. A lot of us read on the job. Few of us can … well, you know. I am guessing all viewers of the picture are grateful for the presence of the other pilot!

And I am grateful to all who entered. It was a small, fun idea when it started – and when the devious people at Wunderkind PR leaped on the joke about ’50 Shades of Kay’ – but it played out beautifully. Thanks to everyone, especially Nicole Winstanley, a good sport and a gamer if ever there was one.

Yes, to champagne.

River of Stars debuted in publication week at #1 on the hardcover bestseller lists of both Maclean’s – Canada’s national newsmagazine -and the Canadian Booksellers’ Association. The lists are very different (bestseller lists often are) but River tops both.

It means a lot, personally, and for the publishers, and going forward in all markets.

An author writes his or her books, but needs help, even if self-publishing, in bringing them to the world, or the world to the books. The people at Penguin Canada have collectively done a great deal to make this happen.

Looking ahead, this means that ‘National #1 Bestseller’ can be used in ads, in all press releases, on the next editions. Other markets can do an old variant which is ‘International #1 Bestseller’ and, as my agent in New York said today, ‘people pay attention in this business to a #1.’

So it is all good. I’m still thinking about that moment on publication day when I closed the door here and just paged through the novel, keeping it a story, something shaped over time with a lot of care. I hang on to that sense as much as I can.

But we’ll have a glass of champagne at dinner, and I have a long-booked single malt tasting group later this evening. I’m expecting all the scotch to taste good tonight.

Today’s post is mostly about Canada, and books, but the concept should appeal to everyone who reads, and there’s a giveaway at the end. I’m the ‘face’ of Project Bookmark for April 9th.

Canadians are often accused, and often accurately, of not flashing any measure of pride – or even awareness – concerning our own history. Quick, name three Fathers of Confederation. For American or other contestants, let’s try: quick, name a Canadian not named Justin Bieber. (Yes, Virginia, he’s Canadian.)

It can be argued that muting a sense of national identity means not getting caught up in the craziness that can go with that. But it is also true that it can leave a people feeling rootless, unconnected, lacking a history, lacking stories. And people who have read me know I see a lot of value in historical awareness and storytelling.

Project Bookmark is a national campaign to place plaques with words – from books and stories and poems – on buildings and at sites where those very scenes and images are set. They don’t honour military or political leaders from here or anywhere else. They recognize the writers and the narratives and the places. They tell anyone walking by that here, right here, something happened in a creative work. That this exact place plays a role in a work of art.

Have a look at their website. Tell me you don’t think this is cool:

http://projectbookmarkcanada.ca/discover/

This month, Project Bookmark has asked a number of writers to help them raise their profile, generate national (and international) awareness of an exercise in honouring storytellers and their stories and places and history. How, seriously, would I have declined to participate? There’s a movement afoot, they tell me, to place one of the plaques on Philosopher’s Walk at University of Toronto, to recognize the scene in The Summer Tree that takes place there.

Each writer has a designated day. I’m today, April 9, and anyone coming along with me in donating $20 to Project Bookmark today – and thus becoming a ‘Page Turner’ for them – will be entered into a draw to receive a signed copy of River of Stars. That’s a bonus, though I’m extremely happy to offer it. The cause is the reward.

Join me?

 http://projectbookmarkcanada.ca

Quiet Sunday, which I can use, to be honest. I just drafted another small essay on request, likely it’ll go online during the coming week. Was naive enough to be startled by just how ‘powerful’ Ars Technica is. That video interview I did in New York went online yesterday and I’m told that a search for my name with a limited time range shows page after page of that and various other sites linking to it. I’m grateful for Cesar Torres who did the review, discussion, and edited the interview. As I said when I wrote about it here, you never know how an interview went until you see it. I do bite my tongue once on the video, laughing, because Cesar asks a ‘nature of the universe’ question about what my books show. Call it my Michael Jordan imitation (basketball fans will get that). The piece is here:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/what-were-reading-river-of-stars-by-guy-gavriel-kay/

Spent part of the day at the Ad Astra convention yesterday and read from River again: a longer passage, as there was no interview to follow. The longer scene that seems to work is from chapter eight, in Chunyu (for those who have gotten that far). In the evening, sat in on a concert by Martin and Rebecca Springett, they played ‘Shan’s Theme’ from his River of Stars Suite, among other pieces.

What is the collective noun for a gorup of booksellers? (Go ahead, give it your best shot!). An index of booksellers, a shelf of booksellers, a biblio of booksellers? In any case, I am lunching and chatting tomorrow, escorted by Trish of Penguin, with about 30-35 of them at the head offices of Indigo Books here in Toronto. I like book people, for all the obvious reasons, and I find it interesting to get reports from the front lines. How are the books selling, where are they shelved, who are the buyers? Word of mouth is still a dominant factor, and I have always been generously supported by the people in stores who actually sell the books.

Tuesday, as I mentioned the other day, is a different kind of meeting. I’ll be online from 8-10 EDT at the huge website, reddit, ‘the front page of the internet’. The discussion is called AMA, for Ask Me Anything, and the last one I did there, last year, was a lot of fun. The discussion page goes live on Tuesday morning for questions to be posted, and I show up in the evening with a drink at my elbow and fire away with bad puns, er, cogent, lucid replies. You get there Tuesday by clicking here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy

Thursday evening I am reading and talking and signing for the very fine Words Worth Books in Waterloo. Starts at 7, but not at the store. They’ve booked the Princess Twin theatre on King St, and to defray that they are charging $5 a head, although 2 free tickets are being given for each copy of River purchased. Independent bookstores need to defray these costs when they have to book an external space for a large crowd and Words Worth is a great indie. We like those.

I worry about sounding banal in doing descriptions of events. How interesting is it to read, ‘It was a really enjoyable night.’? Not very, I suspect.

The dynamics of a launch event are, as I’ve said, affected by the venue. A pub gives one vibe, a formal theatre another. This room in the library was not where I read three years ago. It was a more newly-built upper reception room, really beautiful, a few people said it would be a great space in which to get married. They did have a bar, there were a lot of people, full house it turned out, and the reception hour before going on stage gave me a chance to say hello to some friends, and for some readers to come by and do the same. That’s a good thing, doesn’t always happen. These things can be impersonal, this one wasn’t.

I read from chapter two, introducing Shan, the female protagonist. Short reading, as I knew the interview/conversation was to follow. Then walked over over to the armchairs where Laurie Grassi, Books Editor of Chatelaine was waiting. I said, ‘Ready to pounce,’ she said, ‘I’m not that tough.’

She wasn’t, but she was really good. Witty and sharp, well-prepared. Good questions and a skill I have mentioned, which is responding to the answer given, not just moving on the next query on the prep sheet. There were some surprises, which I always like. I prefer being made to think by a question, not just roll out answers I am familiar with by now.

You can almost always get a feel for an audience during a reading or talk by how they react to the small jokes. If you get a laugh from throwaways, that’s a good thing. And a part of my own mantra about respecting the reader spills into these events: I really try not to do glib sound bite answers. (I will on television, or they never want to see you again.)

We got a chance to talk about why I infuse elements of the supernatural into history, the theme of ‘exile’ I’d just written an essay about, a smart question abut whether the ‘universality’ of using the fantastic means any story could be in any setting (it can’t, and the query let me spell out why). The way every society (and every person) shapes an interpretation of the past, usually to serve a purpose. Also, roles allowed women in periods of history in general, and the Song Dynasty in particular.

And, don’t ask me how, Bill Mazeroski’s home run in the 1960 World Series came up, and then again, and then again. We had talked about how all the themes in a novel aren’t worked out ahead of time (not by me, anyhow), that some slip in and establish themselves: that’s what that damned home run did last night!

After, I had my usual angsty feeling facing a long signing line. I never want to rush people, often they do have things they want to say or ask and only this one chance, but I am endlessly aware that there are people way back in the room and they’ll have a long, long wait. I tell people that I have interesting readers, they should make friends while waiting.

One of my own oldest friends waited it out and spirited me away for a drink and a bite to eat after. He knows the period that inspired River of Stars really well, is about to defend his later-in-life Ph.D dissertation on it, and made me laugh by saying after the reading and talk he could not read the novel till he’s done – or he’d be terrified of blurring my ‘quarter-turn to the fantastic’ and the real period he needs to focus on for another few weeks. I laughed, because it happens to me while writing all the time. I shift back and forth in names, even my sense of ‘what happened’.

It was good to wrap the night with someone I’ve been so close to since we were in school.

I remember, some years ago, being at an utterly mobbed book launch event here in Toronto. It was for a writer friend who published a smallish book every few years. He was an older fellow, a professional as well as a writer, and a much-loved figure in several subsets of the community. When I say mobbed I mean it. Not only was the event thronged, it was almost a who’s-who gathering. Much media presence.

I joined a cluster around my friend before the event started, gave him my congratulations and murmured, ‘This is sensational, the place is packed!’ He looked at me and rasped (some people can get away with rasping), ‘Guy, you don’t get it! Tonight I am going to sell tho-thirds of my total book sales!’ He was exaggerating, but only to a degree. Essentially, by summoning everyone who knew and liked him, his publishers managed to get two or three copies per person bought by a lot of well-off people.

That’s one kind of book launch. Another is the straight ‘party time’ where the author and his or her friends just celebrate the arrival of an ideally non-bouncing baby book. ‘Friends’ can have a loose definition sometimes, of course. Jackie Mason, the great comedian, once joked about an event where his wife ‘kept it intimate, she just invited the immediate world’.

I get a little odd with launches. I’ve been upbraided (actually, harangued and aggressively shredded might be closer to the truth) by friends because I haven’t called to tell them a launch was happening. But my take has been, pretty much since I was lucky enough to start having actual readers, that launch events are for the people who have been waiting for the book. (I did alert some friends this time. Aggressive shredding with inventive profanity can have an impact.)

But tonight is about readers. I’ll do some thank you remarks off the top, because there are people to thank, and when I tell the audience I’m grateful to them, that’ll be very real. Enough people seem to want the fiction I deliver to allow me to research and work the books, and rework them, until they are ready – or as ready as I can get them. Should I make a bad joke about that old Paul Masson ad with Orson Welles and his gorgeous voice? ‘Will sell no wine before its time.’

(Actually – digression – that line always felt more an adman’s than a winemaker’s. There’s no upside to selling too soon. If the wine isn’t ready it tastes badly, you lose market share. And a good wine can be kept for a few years anyhow. Get me Don Draper, please.)

For the last few novels the first launch night for a book has been a hybrid evening. I do a short reading, but people seem to enjoy – and I know I prefer – a conversation with someone for at least part of the time. I get to be funny, or try.

There are people out there who are really good at helping on stage in this way. It is a skill, no question. And this format doesn’t always work. I attended an evening a few years back with David Cronenberg generously giving his time to interview Stephen King. It didn’t really take off. Maybe too much star-power up there, but more the discrepancy between David, who really is an intellectual, and King, who is very bright (obviously!) but just as obviously didn’t want to go that route.

Tonight I’m with Laurie Grassi, Books Editor of Chatelaine Magazine. Laurie has her own constituency and a real love of books in the widest sense. (Her all-time favourites list is online somewhere. It includes Bel Canto. Go read that.) She’s also funny. Through emails yesterday we made the shared executive decision not to tango on stage if the conversation flags. I doubt it will, just as I doubt a tango would have been especially edifying.

Event is at 7 tonight, cash bar beforehand at 6 PM. At least one bookworld acquaintance wrote me when he heard that and said, ‘No one told me! Now I’m there!’ No comment.

Free online tickets are a request from the library, which is hosting this at the main Reference Library at Yonge and Bloor, in their really gorgeous, very large atrium.

http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDMEVT128087&R=EVT128087

No tangos, unlikely to be any tangling (except maybe plot threads?), but it really is special, the night you bring a book to the world, or that segment of it that has been waiting.

Double meaning (what, me, a pun?). The day before today was quite predictably crazy, in an entirely good way, though with that feeling you get after one or two cups of coffee too many. There was a huge amount going on backstage, too (digression: anyone ever see “Noises Off” – brilliant comedy on the chaos backstage while a play is running out front.).

I am, obviously, really pleased with the response of reviewers so far. (Am I being set up for the humongous hammer of cataclysmic criticism soon?) I’m especially rewarded when people write well, and catch things. One reviewer noted a rivers starting small before becoming a torrent image I use, and linked it (perfectly) to the way the book begins.

A few things to note here, before they slip what remains of my mind.

The other meaning of ‘the day before’: the launch event in Toronto is tomorrow. It was a really good event three years ago, at the lovely Toronto Reference Library space, and I’m looking forward to this one, too. I always think of these as events for readers, not a party for friends, but I know a number of friends are planning to come. Cash bar works wonders.

The library wants tickets ordered (free) to help with figuring out how many chairs to set up. They have a lot of space, but come early if you want to be fairly close. Bar is from 6 PM, they tell me, we’ll start the gig at 7ish. Laurie Grassi, Books Editor of Chatelaine, is chatting on stage with me after a short reading (by me, not her, though she’d be great). Am picking the reading passage today. Laurie and I agreed not to plan or discuss anything. I know nothing (as Manuel says on “Fawlty Towers”).

http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDMEVT128087&R=EVT128087

Next, an early heads-up (will repeat nearer the day). I am doing another AMA on reddit on the evening of April 9th, after a fun evening a year ago with them. I followed, by one evening, Woody Harrelson (or his manager, some think) who managed to mess up prodigiously, and had warnings all day from every friend who knows reddit, but it was great fun, with good questions. I’m happy to go back.

The overall link, for now, is this:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy

and my evening is on the right sidebar (may be some other authors you want to diarize there, too). On the 9th, that sidebar link will be opened in the morning. You can go early and post questions or do it real time in the evening. I get there at 7:00 EDT and start typing as fast as I can.

What else? Martin Springett’s lovely “River of Stars Suite” inspired (obviously?) by the book, is available now as a CD, he tells me. It is at his website at http://martinspringett.com and also under his name on iTunes and CD Baby for download. The CD, with signed artwork, too, is a bonus prize for the #riverofstars photo contest on Twitter.

And, the contest.Under fierce and unrelenting pressure (read: polite requests) we have extended the deadline for that from the 7th to the 10th. People have been worried their ordered copies might not arrive in time, which is a fair concern. Here’s the contest description from downscreen again, for those who missed it:

http://www.brightweavings.com/journal/2013/03/fifty-shades-of-kay-the-contest/

Go ahead, be creative, funny, adorable…

I do something today, every release day, call it a tradition.

It is so easy to get caught up in the ‘process’ as a book nears publication and then appears. An author lucky enough to be in-demand to some degree shifts from being a creator to being a marketing person. The book shifts from being a book towards being ‘the product’.

I get it, it is entirely necessary, but I like to take release day to step back a bit, if only for part of the morning. I bring a coffee and close the study door and after this post is done I’m going to sit and read through parts of River of Stars.

I want to remember the moments when – over three years ago – I was starting to think about a book inspired by the Song Dynasty. Wondering if I could, or should, venture back into Chinese history, a completely different era. Aware of just how much research would be involved, conscious of how hugely different the arc of the Song was, compared to the earlier Tang Dynasty that gave rise to Under Heaven. Beginning to glimpse and be daunted by the nature of that challenge.

I’ll remember (I’m remembering now) the earliest reading, correspondence, note-taking,notes to myself, names, character ideas, motifs I wanted to be sure to use … the long quiet of research. Then the recurring, necessary nagging voice, a year or so later, pointing out in my head that research was all very well but …

So, starting to write, feeling my way in to characters and settings and voices. I recall telling my older son that at that early stage I felt like someone entering a forest holding a light that only illuminated a little way ahead. (Is that why Daiyan goes into the forest so early? Probably not: I’ve felt that way with every book. Not enough light, not as smart as I needed to be.)

Then, in every novel, for me, there’s a period, usually about halfway through or a little more, when I am so appallingly tired of the book. Aware I’ve been working on it for what feels forever -brood, write, revise, repeat – and there is still so far to go and it is probably no good, anyhow. I can conjure that feeling up again right now.

But on the flip side, there comes the sensation that emerges towards the end when, despite all the anxiety associated with trying to make the ending work (I feel very good about the ending of River of Stars) I have become aware, even if I don’t want to jinx myself by admitting it, that this particular book will get done and … maybe it is strong, after all.

And so this morning I’ll page through it, rereading some passages, remembering how many times I read and revised them, right through the proofreading stage (I wrote about that in this Journal, how much I rely on the tolerance of the production people!).

Basically, I try to turn it back into a book for part of a morning. Into, if you’ll forgive me, something I wanted to be a work of art, to the best of my own ability, to shape something that might have a chance to last. (I have written about this dream/wish/desire of all artists before, most directly in the Sarantine books.)

But the paradox enters, and it isn’t a bad thing, it is just … part of what is involved. In order to endure, to have a chance at that, a book needs to find readers. Only that way can enough people decide this is really good. And start talking about it, writing about it, thinking about it after closing the last page, giving it a chance at a longer life in a culture that gets rid of things fast.

So we come back to how much depends on the marketing and publicity people, their talent, commitment to the work (sometimes love for it), their ideas, and a writer needs to (or should, to my mind) support them, be part of that team.

After that, it is over to the readers. Which is where today comes in, as we begin.

River of Stars launches this morning. I hope you enjoy it. Actually, to confide, and be really honest, I hope for more than that. I hope it becomes important to you.

Well, someone in a comment to the last post on Reviews wondered if the Washington Post would do one and … clearly he has the power. (My people would like to talk to your people!)

The Washington Post review of River went up late this afternoon (it’ll be in the print paper tomorrow). It is wonderful. Really is. Hugely positive and smart.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/river-of-stars-by-guy-gavriel-kay/2013/04/01/4eaf9692-9186-11e2-bdea-e32ad90da239_story.html

Here’s an additional reason why it is so good (same point applies to the Globe & Mail on Saturday): when major papers review a book right around publication date, that means that if they applaud the book they are doing so while copies are hitting stores and easier to find – with luck, displayed as new arrivals.

A strong review that runs a couple of months late will still be helpful (not just terms of making writers feel good) as it can be used for future editions or helping agents sell into foreign language markets, but a good review that is also timely is … golden. 

It is even a signal of sorts these days. Review space is shrinking in all papers and magazines, but there are still a lot of books appearing, and editors, publicists, authors shrieking variously for coverage. So for the Washington Post, which is a major, major book review source to cover any novel right on its publication date is hugely rewarding.

I’m not going to keep linking to reviews. All of what Elena has called Team River of Stars are doing alerts on Twitter, and the Bright Weavings FB page will have links to some of them. But this one felt worth noting here and making these points about, in part because of the timing.

It set up a good evening-before-official-on-sale day here.

I didn’t have a drink (yet). I celebrated in an even more shockingly decadent authorial way. Something so sybaritic, so flamboyantly self-indulgent I need you all not to tell anyone.

My mother’s chocolate chip cookies. And milk. Of course, milk.

There is an old line, oft-spoken in the book world, about publicists or publishers pulling a fake quote from a bad review. It doesn’t happen much any more, that I know of, though it is still fairly common in the film industry.

I’m talking about where a reviewer wrote, “The awkwardness of the language here is remarkable.” and the book jacket shows: “Remarkable!”

As I say, not too common these days, best I can tell. But there is an art of sorts to pulling short quotes from long reviews and I enjoy watching what publicists do it, and playing the game with them, sometimes. The phrase an author likes most may not be what a publisher judges will appeal most to possible buyers.

Which is all a back door way in to saying that the last few days – and the week ahead – are very much about the earliest responses to River of Stars, pending ‘official’ release on Tuesday. I will confess to a personal awkwardness (‘Remarkable!’) in relaying reviews, here or elsewhere. If they are negative (gods forfend!) why would I post them? If they are positive, even though the nature of the process suggests I broadcast them widely, I feel self-conscious. I’m proud of the novel, and truly delighted (sometimes moved) by an intelligent response to it, but I’m happiest when the publishers do most of the heavy-lifting on getting word out as to reactions. And they do, and will.

At the same time, this Journal is supposed to be about the process of a book coming into the world, and – as the header here suggests – reviews are a big part. So I will say that the early assessments this week online, and this morning’s Globe and Mail (which remains Canada’s pre-eminent books page) have been wonderful.

I am not going to do full links here (forgive me!), I just don’t like it. But you can chase a few down at tor.com, Fantasy Book Critic, blogcritics.org, Fantasy Literature, a website called Beauty in Ruins, and the Globe and Mail website. The Globe review is by the novelist Robert Wiersema, someone whose careful reading through many reviews over the years I greatly admire – which makes a strong review even more rewarding, obviously.

What I will do, after hesitating for awhile (I admit), is show here what has been ‘pulled’ in anticipation from a few of these by the publicists. Quotes like these go out right away to other media, to the sales force (gives them ammunition and motivation to have strong reviews in hand). They also end up in ads, and on later editions of the book – or other books by the author.

How much do reviews matter? Really big, unresolved discussion topic in the industry. One study suggested that the main two elements affecting sales are word-of-mouth (friends recommendations, mainly, but that may be shifting to sites like GoodReads) and book covers. (Covers do matter, it seems.) Price has an impact (that’s why bestsellers stay bestsellers – they are often discounted.) And reviews do for some readers. My instinct (feel free to comment on all this, by the way!) is that a lot of good reviews, 2-3-4 pages of them inside a paperback have a cumulative impact on a possible buyer. A single quote saying ‘Terrific!’ (‘The pleasure I derived from throwing this across the room was terrific.’) may not mean much, unless, perhaps, if written by a superstar figure. The discussion continues, all the time, as publishers try to sort out how to get word of a book out to the world. (Hint: social media is it, these days.)

In any case, here are some quotes that have been circulating among the Team River of Stars (as Elena named them) this week. You can chase the original reviews down and see if you’d have chosen differently.

‘River of Stars is the sort of novel one disappears into, emerging shaken, if not outright changed. A novel of destiny, and the role of individuals within the march of history, it is touched with magic and graced with a keen humanity.’ (Globe and Mail)

‘I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Kay is the greatest fantasist of our generation… I’m still reveling in the post-read trance, but I think even with time this will prove to be among my favorites of his works…’ (Fantasy Book Critic)

‘…graceful, lyrical prose, beautifully drawn characters, moments that stab the heart, a masterful sense of structure and pace, and an overall elegance and skill that denotes a novelist in complete control of his creation.’ (Fantasy Literature)

‘Kay on a bad day remains many times more absorbing than the vast majority of other genre authors, and I dare say River of Stars chronicles him on a great day. This is stunning stuff from one of fantasy fiction’s finest. From one of fiction’s finest, frankly.’ (Tor.com)

‘Kay has the uncanny ability to depict the grand sweep of historical events through the eyes of those living through them…What’s even more amazing is how through his careful rendering of character and environments we are drawn into this history…River Of Stars is an exceptional piece of work.’ (Blogcritics.org)

Honestly, I look at these and feel immensely grateful. After a number of years, each time, I send a novel into the world, and it is deeply rewarding to see it responded to in this way. Too early for another drink, but …