Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 191

A Totally Unbiased Review of White Heat ;-)

Write your own review of YOUR last book.

by Paul D. Marks

Well, who better to review my book than me. Because no one can be more objective, neutral, fair, honest, trustworthy, impartial, disinterested, unprejudiced (if you want more adjectives than this I’m gonna have to hit the thesaurus) than me? But, as the saying goes, If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when? I guess the answer to the question of when is now:

And, taking a little li...

One Star

"Write a review of your own latest book" By Catriona

Well, this is just unbearable. I've been fretting about writing this blog since I saw the week's topic on Monday.

For one thing I've never written a review before.

But that's not the real problem.

The real problem is that I come from a culture where "You love yourself" is a bitter insult and even "You're good to yourself" is quite a mean thing to say to anyone. So the only review it won't hurt to write is a savage one.

Here goes. My one-star, Am...

Satisfying Shorts for All Tastes...by Cathy Ace

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Good Job, Greenaway! by RM Greenaway

WRITE A REVIEW OF YOUR OWN LATEST NOVEL Review of Creep by RM's inner critic

Like Susan, I got cold all over when first faced with this assignment, but it's turned out to be a healthy exercise,  maybe even an exorcism. That's because my inner critic is really good at giving negative reviews about my work; they're usually one-liners-followed by exclamation marks, but sometimes can get elaborately mean and hurtful. Yet I realize that allowing my live-in critic to get carried away is no...

A Village Mystery with French Atmosphere

Q: A little BSP. Write your own review of YOUR last book.
- from Susan
Funny. This had me sitting with fingers frozen above the keyboard. Ask me to write a review about YOUR last book, and I’m off and running. Ask me to review a stranger’s mystery (which I used to do for a newspaper) and I can do it. But my own book? After all, I wouldn’t have written it, shared it with my agent, let her submit it to a publisher if I didn’t think it was good. But…I could quote other reviewers who liked it, but...

Let's Talk About What Makes Me So Original

"Dammit! Where's the Devil when you need 'im?"
Is it better to be original or give 'em what they want?

For what I want to achieve, I'm fairly original by default and in ways that wouldn't be my choice if allowed one. I've mentioned this early in the week when I offered readers and peers a statement on writing awards in crime fiction.


The TL:DR of this is, put plainly, the traditions of mystery and crime fiction, and their standard conventions don't include someone who looks and lives like me. In...

I Gotta Be Me

Is it better to be original or to give ‘em what they want? And, would you do it for free?
From Jim 

Being original

Is it better to be original or to give ‘em what they want? And, would you do it for free?
by Dietrich Kalteis
You give them what they want by being yourself. Writing’s the process of expressing ideas, a unique expression, different for each of us. Turning mental images into words, and how each of us approach it is different every step. And so is finding the best way to be productive and translating those mental images to words and getting them on the page. In the end we have something original,...

I go my own way

By R.J. Harlick
Is it better to be original or to give ‘em what they want? And, would you do it for free? 
I hate to be so prosaic but the answer is all about dollar and cents. Most publishers, particularly the larger ones, have a fairly good idea on the types of crime fiction that will make money for them, so naturally they seek them out. Rarely do they take a chance on a purely original work of crime fiction that doesn’t fit within their definition of marketability. But most of us when w...

Art or Money?

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