Some New Reviews

Over the past month or so I've been saving up the links to a new interview, and a few reviews to share. Before the time passes further, I thought I would do so.

The first, which I'd intended to post back in April during the Blog tour -- and completely spaced -- is at The Young Ladies Christian Fellowship blog. I did an Interview there and one of the Young Ladies, Natalie Nyquist blogged about Light of Eidon.

Then, Return of the Guardian King was reviewed at Christian Fiction Review here.

Most recently Australian Narelle Mollet reviewed it at her blog, Relz Reviewz. Bethany House has chosen an excerpt from this review to post on the RotGK page at their home website: "Return of the Guardian King is engrossing, entertaining and challenging. The message at it's heart is powerful and not to be missed. This is a landmark series to be enjoyed more than once."

And regarding that "too revealing review on Amazon," the Bethany House conclusion was that its positives outweighed its negatives, especially in light of the fact that due to its length most potential readers would likely only skim it and thus miss many of the details. From what I read recently about Internet reading habits (no one likes to read computer screens, so you should keep it short and sweet) this seems a good point. Also, even if readers don't skim, they may not remember any of the details by the time they get around to reading the book anyway.

Actually, if I were reading a series, I wouldn't even read the reviews on the last book until I'd read it myself (I just did that, in fact, with Fool's Fate) so maybe that's more the rule than the exception in Return of the Guardian King's case.

Today I had to go to the rubber stamp store to pick up the last of the special orders I'd made in the spring. I thought it only made sense to go on the same day as they were having a one day, invitation only, Going Out of Business sale at 25% off of all merchandise. What I didn't expect was that there would be so many other specially invited customers that would have shown up not at 10:15 like I did, but, it would appear, at 10am sharp! The store was packed. I bought a bunch of cool stamps and for the first time in my life stood in a tiny, crowded store with a bunch of ladies I'd never met before and actually had fun! (Usually I avoid such things like the plague)

Unfortunately, I was there until noon (not my plan) and when I came home was too jazzed about the stamps and the things I'd learned to settle down and write. Then there was a phone call and... now my printer is out of black ink and so tomorrow I'm going to go have the cartridge refilled -- a process I've never done before so things are... as usual... weird. Printer instructions warn about not letting the ink tank go dry or it could ruin the machine... (cue scary music) so I can't print up the stuff I did actually work on today. If it's not one thing, it's another. (Which, not surprisingly, was just what Bible class was about today.)

Speaking of things, I spent the weekend unable to write because my wrists and arms were being weird -- sore, cramping and tingling. When I tried to sleep at night they'd either go to sleep or else I'd lie there and they'd throb. I had to take Advil and ice my right wrist on Saturday. Couldn't write longhand for more than a minute or two and using the mouse wasn't good either. It's not so bad now, so I don't know what that was about -- some sort of tendonitis, I guess, and one of the reasons I decided sitting at the table reading a book all Saturday night might not be such a bad idea... but I guess I'd better not push it and stop this now.

Besides, I don't want to get too long here and tax my reader's attention spans or strain their eyes or whatever it is that causes people not to read things on the Internet...

Grace,
Karen