Real Readers Giving Real Reactions

Here's the best thing about this whole self-publishing business: Over the internet, promoting your work, you encounter real readers you don't know from Adam who have real reactions. Thought I'd list a couple here.

I don't remember how Katy Sozaeva found my work. But find my work early she did and even devoted a weekend to reading it and reviewing it on her blog. She's become an ambassador. (In the interest of full disclosure, I use her editing and proofreading services to do the final polish on my works before I put them into print. I learned the painful way what a poor editor and proof reader I am of my own works. But all the reviews Katy wrote were before I ever hired her.)

Rabbletown resonated with her and she has called it THE (caps here justified) BEST BOOK SHE HAS EVER READ. She provided audio and I put together this Youtube video.

Preston McConkie I met through eFiction, a wonderful effort to create eMagazines for this internet age. It reminds me of the sort of magazine I understand HP Lovecraft wrote for, and without pay. You find kindred souls who write kindred stories and you share. Preston and I, despite our canyon gaps in politics, are kindred souls. Imagine that! Much of my work has resonated with him. Here's a look at Preston. You want to disagree with this guy? You can follow him on Facebook.

Here's what he's had to say about some of my work.

The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley

"...Attwood manages to out-Lovecraft the original Lovecraft."

That is high praise, indeed. Link to the entire review can be found at the bottom of this post.

When Preston sent me this note after reading Crazy About You, it bowled me over:

"Having finished Crazy About You, I realized you are a prodigy, and that you may soon join my top ten favorite writers, a group including Mark Twain, Neal A. Stephenson and Robert Heinlein. You've got it, bro. Have you shopped Crazy around? If so, it boggles the mind that it hasn't been accepted by a major publisher."

Would that Preston worked for a major publisher.

Publicly, on Facebook, Preston wrote this:

"To my literary friends: The best value I can recommend in books today is "Crazy About You" by Randy Attwood. It's $4.99 for the Kindle at Amazon, also available through Smashwords and, I think, Nook (for you losers who have a Nook). I honestly can't think of a better novel in its size--full novel, but not a very long one--and price range, and NOTHING better from the self-published world. It's a coming-of-age tale about a young man living on the grounds of a state asylum and driven by motives both admirable and animal. I couldn't set it down, and that's perhaps the second book in two years I could say that of. Attwood has ascended into a tiny group of living authors whose prose I consistently love."

Recently, Preston called Tell Us Everything, the opening tale in 3 Very Quirky Tales here as an ebook and in Very Quirky Tales here as a paperback, "One of the greatest SF shorts ever written."

Okay, and now one funny phony endorsement. This one for Blow Up the Roses.