A Nurturance Deficit

Stand well back, writer about to brag...

"What a beautiful and touching piece. You have a gift for creating vibrant images and feelings. I was swept away by your physical and emotional journey after the devastation of the 9/11 attacks and appreciated your keen observations about the landscape and the feelings of the people around you. We are very excited to offer Dissolute Kinship a Grub Street Reads Endorsement and to add your work to the official Grub Street Reads library."

So writes Jessica Bennett of Grub Street Reads in her ringing endorsement of my book.

Deeming my work meets the standard in the following categories:

✓ Plot

✓ Characters

✓ Pace

✓ Accurcacy

✓ Grammar/Layout

✓ Overall Assessment

Grub Street Reads not only accepted and endorsed it, they added it to their Grub Street Greats category ("the books we couldn't put down"), an honour only afforded five books out of some forty novels they've endorsed so far.

Now, the whole concept of endorsements has come under scrutiny lately, and I even poked fun at it myself, but I can say in all honesty that no money changed hands between myself and the people who run that site, so I will take the praise and try to turn it into more sales. The question still remains, however: are we replacing the old gatekeepers with yet more gatekeepers? Is the new world order of publishing in danger of succumbing to some of the same pitfalls that befell the old model? While we debate this, however, we still need to get our books into the hands of readers, so I will use any legal and ethical means possible in order to do that.

Writers, huh? I swear most of us weren't breastfed or something. So needy are we that our knees go weak whenever someone with an opinion even glances in our direction. Sigh. As long as we're not tempted to part those knees, however, I suppose that's okay.

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.