Archive for April 2009
ABNA
I put ‘Nanowrimo Winner’ in for the ‘Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award’, not because I thought it would win but because it was all I’d got.
I didn’t really expect any reaction beyond a possible sales pitch for Amazon’s self-publishing service, but I’ve just had a couple of pieces of feedback from ‘ABNA Expert Reviewers’. A bit good cop, bad cop, really.
First Reviewer
I enjoyed reading this “novel.” I gave it 4 stars for originality, but not 5 because it really doesn’t really seem like a novel. It seems more like a humorous treatise about writing a 50,000 word novel for the ABNA contest or of the author’s chances of winning, perhaps. It certainly seems to be a tongue-in-cheek effort to sort of poke fun at the contest.
Actually, it’s rather difficult to decide what is going on: Is this a story about how the author’s is trying to impress his live-in girl friend to commit to their moderately casual relationship, and is she and the first-person narrator real or fictional?
When the author relates to a childhood friend at “the Royal Oak,” a pub I think, a summary of a detective novel stored in a box in the bottom of a cardboard box in a cupboard somewhere in his residence that he wrote at about age 17, its zany plot sounds pretty good.
The author uses words quite well, frequently playfully, but with good vocabulary and clear prose. The tumbling flow of ideas is rich in content and entertaining. His brief descriptions of characters in his tale make them come to life rather effortlessly. Actually, I think a lot of us who write would like to write like this author has written at least once, just escape the bounds of sensible restraint and go supernova with wit.
I want to add-I think it is important to add-that this author has potential, and I wish he would of “had a go” at writing the detective novel he enticingly described, instead of a “novel” about writing a novel for an actual contest. Would any publisher be interested in this “spoof”? Well, maybe.
Second Reviewer
Though I really wanted to like this excerpt based on the premise, I simply wasn’t able to in the end. What I thought would be a tongue-in-cheek look at the novel writing process turned into a pedantic novel about a pedantic novel-writer. It was not at all amusing and certainly did not inspire a desire to continue reading.
The narrator of this novel is not at all a sympathetic character, and his snide approach to novel-writing seemed a touch bitter for a writing competition. When read aloud, the dialogue is clunky and does not flow naturally. If I read this excerpt in a bookstore, I would not purchase the full novel.
I’m afraid the net effect on me is one of mild encouragement…
